The core values of core

movemethics
Nov 19, 2022
3 min read

What is core?

As a dancer or physical performer you must have heard 'tense your core' at least 100 times in your performing lifetime. And what happens after you hear that phrase? You know exactly what to do and what to tense. You immediately address your belly, ensuring it is as hard as it can be to keep you just as stable as you need to be.

Let me throw you off a bit right here (no pun intended). What may seem as a common sense to you, my incredibly knowledgeable performer, is still a field of debate for scientists. The researchers still have not quite decided what belongs to so-called 'core' and what does not. However, what they do seem to be certain of is that it is beneficial and perhaps even essential in performers training (2).

Based on common definition of core - a centre point of something, we shall consider some of those centre muscle points that cross over our torso, hips and pelvis.

Ok, let's take a look at what one may be referring to when talking about the core:

First up, the one and only, the king of the core: Transversus Abdominis (TrA) - the deepest out of 6 abdominal muscles. To feel it out lay down on your back with your knees bent and place your fingers to the sides of your hip bones (in towards your belly button and slightly down) and then contract the muscle by pushing down and away from your fingers. You should be able to maintain the contraction and breath, speak as normal. Try to include some lower/upper body movement and see if you can still preserve the same level of that contraction.

Then we have some runner-ups, such as:

and last but not least - the roof and the floor of our core house: diaphragm and pelvic floor muscles:

In order for the core to do what its job, each of those muscles/muscle groups need to stick to their primarily function first, otherwise our body will start compromising.

Why do we even care?

You ever heard someone talk about their core values, or have you ever been asked about your own? Well, just like in real life core brings stability. In this case core plays a key role in energy transfers and ensuring that other parts of our body don't overwork themselves and, in effect, end up malfunctioning which, as you've probably guessed already, may lead to an injury. The research shows that patients suffering from chronic low back pain have delayed response of TrA muscles when compared to healthy individuals which is also a possible cause of the chronic nature of the pain in the first place (3).

Core values are named after our core for a reason.

So how does the core ensure it does what it is supposed to?

Core is where most of the movement starts from, or we may even say - should start from. The feedforward mechanism is the firing of the core mili-seconds before the grand movement of what you are actually aiming to achieve happens. For example, let's imagine you want to kick your leg up in the air while being in an upright posture. Assuming your body is in optimal condition, before your leg flies up in the air, your brain sends information to fire up your core. That is important for 2 reasons: you are in balance while performing a movement and you are not wasting energy elsewhere in your body being able to send it to your leg for an outstanding, powerful kick.

So we established that the 2 more important core values of the core are:

stability
ergonomy

So where do we take it from here?

Firstly - assess. Assess where you are at with your core based on simple activation exercises and challenge them with some added challenges (use what you already read here by the TrA information). In a healthy active individual that should be the easy part.

Then challenge yourself with some static stability exercises such as traditional plank and side plank variations.

However, here is where you will really put your core to test - more complex exercises with some additional resistance - low back pain or compromised form may be a sign of weak/disengaged core and you may need to bring down the resistance in order to do it right.

And remember, when in doubt - keep it simple and let the movement be your indicator and guide.

With love,

Angelika