It has been repeatedly demonstrated, in a series of meta-studies, that specific core training does not outperform general exercise in the management of low back pain.
Ideas emerge, some go viral, others mutate. Ideas are often repurposed in ways which are unanticipated by their originators. The story of The Core exemplifies this phenomenon.
Many traditional healing and movement systems locate spiritual, intuitive and energetic centres in the torso. These centres have long been associated with health, longevity, power and moral character. These centres are not equivalent to the current popular notion of The Core – as a monolithic superficial muscular structure. Stock photos of washboard abdominal muscles with bylines like ‘Hard Core Abs’ – distort and misrepresent the function of the abdominal muscles.
The idea of training the core has been incorporated into innumerable fitness products and rehabilitation protocols. Instructions like ‘tilt your pelvis’, ‘flatten your back’ and ‘suck your tummy in’ are now rampant in many gyms and musculoskeletal clinics.
An egregious permutation of the core is advocated by Cross-Fit pundit Kelly Starrett. Starrett advocates, a readiness for combat, prescribing a perpetual 20% contraction of abdominal muscles. Perpetual 20% abdominal muscular contraction creates rigidity and robotic movement. This continuous muscular imposition bisects the body, disrupts movement patterns, constrains breathing, interferes with visceral motion, perturbs limb alternation and severs upper and lower limbs from their connections via the torso. Starrett’s advice is contrary to all credible research, and is also at odds with accounts from experienced movement practitioners.
The area of the torso commonly referred to as the core can not be located as a distinct functional entity. The functions performed in this area of the body are distributed across many myofascial structures. For example the act of throwing engages a continuous chain of muscles and connective tissue which transiently pass through the torso as a whole.
Poise, power and precision emerge through – the transient and subconscious activation of regionally interdependent body parts, including the torso. Anyone with a background in complex movement, like gymnastics, wrestling, olympic lifting and internal martial arts, has experienced and perhaps even refined whole body activation in this way.
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