Step Ten: The Importance Of Core Exercises for Abs

The Importance Of Core Exercises for Abs

Most people do isolation abdominal exercises – like crunches or oblique crunches. If you do perform isolation abdominal exercises you are robbing yourself of the benefits that you could have from “core” exercises. This is not only important for flat abs, but it is important for total body strength. Take lifting a couch for instance – you use your legs, arms, shoulders, back, wrists, hands and forearms in addition to your abdominal muscles – why not train them all with simple, core exercises?

They are especially good for bad backs because not only does it train your abdominal muscles, it also trains your back muscles as well. Strength means stability, and that is very important to strength training. Core exercises are geared to strengthen the front of your abdominals to the back of your lower back. The good core exercises even help you develop internal abdominal muscles.

An advantage to core exercises is that your body works as a whole. During the daily activities of living you use almost every muscle group you possess – and why shouldn’t your work out serve the same purposes? If you body gets used to using your entire core, it will use it more efficiently during your everyday activities.

When you train a muscle the body releases a hormone called “human growth hormone” or HGC. This is a natural steroid that will help you grow muscle. The larger the muscle that is being used, the more of the hormone you will produce. By doing core exercising and using your lower back in addition to your abdominals, you are using a larger muscle group and also upping the amount of HGC that your body will produce.

Muscle equilibrium is made better by working your body as a whole unit. This reduces risk of having one side of your muscles stronger than the other, and this is a major cause of back pain. If all the muscles are not equal in strength your body will not properly utilize them correctly and this is the usual cause of muscle pain.

The general consensus is that core exercises are simply more fun than traditional isolation exercises. The definition of a “core” is usually anything that is the most important part of an object – this is no different when referring to the human body. The core is used in every single exercise – even if it is simply used to stabilize the body. The body is only as strong as its weakest link – and if your trunk is weak then you are unstable and your back is weak.

Go about training your body as a whole unit versus a single isolated move. It is important to remember that isolated exercises, while effective, only work on area. So why not spend your time working all muscle groups in a large area? Core exercises are effective for strengthening your lower back, working all of your abdominal muscles, and also improving your balance and stability. Core exercises are very important to maintaining good posture and exercising your abdominal muscles in an effort to reveal those washboard abs.