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Stability Training That Makes You Strong!!!

water bag exercise equipment

I always believe most fitness pros and lifters think of stability training as the vegetables of the workout dinner. You should eat more vegetables, you know they are good for you, but man, you want to find a reason to just get to the “good stuff”. That often means most people ditch doing stability training, they put a half hearted effort into it, and there are some that don’t believe it really even makes much of a difference.

That last sentiment especially, is why stability training gets to be stuck as the “vegetables” and not the taken seriously. It is often because we just do a lousy job overall of understanding stability training. The toughest part can in understanding stability training is there are a lot of layers and not ONE thing really defines stability.

For example, a plank is a classic example of a good foundational stability training exercise. Not just because it “works the abs” and the abs are suppose to help your low back. Rather, because the bracing when the plank is done correctly helps teach the 30plus muscles of the core how to properly create stability of the spine.

rib flare

Compare that to a lift/chop that we often show in DVRT, that is a great stability training exercise for the shoulder. It is a great exercise because the diagonal patterns help us engage our core more effectively but taps into the fact that our shoulders work with our core and opposite hip and lower extremity. So, if you just looked at the shoulder it wouldn’t make sense how lifts/chops are great shoulder stability training exercises.

lifts/chops

So you can see I have some sympathy in the confusion that surrounds stability training. What IS helpful is first defining what we mean when we say an exercise in being used for better stability training, like, better stability of what? Here are a few examples…

 

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A post shared by Greg Perlaki (@greg_perlaki)

Coach Greg Perlaki shows a great stability training exercise in this overhead press march. By marching, Greg is forcing the stance leg to drive into the ground and create stability for the knee, hip, pelvis, core, and even shoulders. In pressing the Ultimate Sandbag overhead, the load and instability of the USB requires a stable foundation (the core and lower body) and then the weight moving up the body changes our center of mass increasing the demands of control of these areas of the body. If we aren’t creating proper stability then the load will feel too unstable to move.

What Coach Caroline Juster shows is a more foundational level of such a stability training exercise with these dead bug progressions. The dead bug is a more stable marching movement with many of the same elements. Due to the fact we are more stable we can use the Ultimate Sandbag to create a greater stress on the connection of the lower body, core, and upper body. We could eventually use these concepts in stability training in our marches, but that is far more advanced due to the complexity of standing. That is what makes for good stability training, knowing what you are trying to accomplish, where you are going with the training, and how to incrementally increase the challenges.

When you see the series that Coach Cory Cripe shows below, you can see there can be SOOOO many levels to building better stability training from foundational (not easy, just foundational) to more challenging environments and exercises (going tall kneeling and having more reflexive stability of the USB to challenge the ability to connect the body), to far more dynamic actions by standing, moving with direction, and reacting to the load.

My advice, know what you are trying to stabilize when performing an exercise, where you should start, and what is the smallest level of progression you can make when advancing. This will help you appreciate what stability training can do and will have a HUGE positive impact upon your overall strength training.

A great way to add a powerful dimension to your stability training is with our DVRT Water Bags, you can get 25% off both Water Bag Packages (you will also receive our DVRT Water Bag manual for FREE) HERE and our water fillers HERE with code “sale25” this week only!

 

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A post shared by Cory M. Cripe (@corymcripe)