What Makes THIS Core Training So Special
2021-04-4
Core training is always a topic I like to revisit because it is difficult to do it justice in one or even probably ten posts as well as the fact it has such a huge impact on basically everything we want to accomplish in the gym. As we often discuss in DVRT, real core training isn’t some code name for “ab workouts” and it is more than planks. Proper core training is about teaching the 35 muscles of the core to work together at the right time, the right way, and during higher level movements (in other words we want to have our core work its best off of the ground).
While there are a lot of ways to accomplish these goals and we have discussed many, one of my favorite and means to have the biggest impact is through teaching people how to resist movement in functional patterns like hip hinging, squatting, lunging, pressing, pulling, well, you get the point. What most people do in the industry is keep their core training separate from their focused “strength” work and that is a huge missed opportunity. After all, our core training is only effective IF it can translate to more sophisticated environments.
Some of our favorite ways of doing this is through very simple strategies like using our Sprinter Stance for hip hinges, presses, squats, rows, etc. The simple ability to move to this stance and be very intentional with it allows us to introduce the need to resist other planes of motion while we perform our strength work. Another way of thinking about it is that even if we end up using less weight, we are actually building more functional strength this way.
You can see we have been using our Sprinter (formerly called staggered) Stance for a LONG time to train these qualities.
The Sprinter Stance is an awesome way to introduce instability to foundational lifts and still allow a good amount of load to be lifted. When we see someone have huge differences in their bilateral and Sprinter Stances we can make an educated guess that what is holding them back is better stability especially in understanding how to use their core properly.
This also opens the door for exercises that have us in a half kneeling position. The half kneeling position is a more advanced form of the Sprinter Stance, but we can’t use exactly the same movement patterns in half kneeling that we can in Sprinter Stance just due to the nature of the position.
How can we keep building progression in these core training concepts if we can get a bit limited by the positions we can introduce? Something that I think gets overlooked in our DVRT system all the time is simple tool that we created that was designed with this very goal in mind, our Core Strap. You see, no matter how unique the free weight, they still move primarily up and down because of gravity. That is why tools like bands/cables are unique, they allow us to change the direction of force to more horizontal force vectors. While people will often use free weights or bands/cables I wondered what would happen if we could combine them?
Obviously with almost all free weights this is almost impossible to do, but the Ultimate Sandbag gives us a very unique opportunity. If we simply attach our Core Strap to the Ultimate Sandbag we can get the best of both worlds! In doing so we can bring these core training concepts to more diverse patterns, positions, and angles. Coach Robin Paget does a great job of teasing just a few ways this can be done!
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What we found is not only a means to make core training more advanced and build better overall stability and strength, but we could also teach more complex movements in easier ways. For example, the feedback that a cable or band provides allows us to help people learn how to perform rotational patterns as Ben Beeler shows more effectively. Creating the tension against the Ultimate Sandbag helps us give foundational stability and then adding the cable/band helps us learn good versus poor movement in rotation.
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The use of the Core Strap with our Ultimate Sandbag can help us learn more advanced levels of our movement patterns as Cory Cripe shows with these Deadlift progressions where we incorporate thoracic mobility with lumbar stability which is much higher core training.
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We can use these strategies to make our core training smarter, we can use them for feedback to learn other more challenging movements like how Greg Perlaki shows how we use the Core Strap with our Front Loaded Good Morning to teach how to keep a dynamic plank and create power from the ground so we can learn kettlebell swings faster and more effectively.
Best of all Cory Cripe shows how he uses these concepts with real clients at Fitness Lying Down to learn more advanced training, how to move their bodies smarter, and to understand what core training really means and how it enhances their mobility, stability, and strength. I like to think that we never have created just tools, but we have thought about ways to create the best solutions!
Don’t miss saving 200 dollars and getting over 150 workouts along with our two MOST popular Ultimate Sandbags for THIS week only! No coupon code needed, or allowed, just go HERE now! Want to check out our Core Straps too? You can get them for 20% off with code “save20” HERE
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