21st Century Core Training Part 3

Because the function of the core is based integration during other movements, the core can be trained from any position.

In my up coming video I will run through core exercise variations performing the following:

• prone stability hold position variations
• push up position variations
• swissball variations
• deadbug variations
• pallof press variations
• roll out variations
• side stability hold variations
• medicine ball variations
• full body exercise variations

From that lost you will have over 60 variations at your disposal and you can even build your own off these basic positions.

So If I ever hear of sit up been performed again, I'll literally come around to your house and tear you a new one!

21st Century Core Training Part 2

Remember the days of sit ups? Oh, the memories.

The once staple exercise for the 'abs" is outdated and in it's place has come a new wave of core training.

In the 90's it was found that the deep core muscles were the one's that we should focus on but as the years went by it went to far and ended up with idiots standing on swissballs on 1 leg doing a single arm shoulder press while holding their first born with the other.

There are more ways to skin a cat and there are many ways to train the core. Instead of training the core with specific exercises in mind, train the core with specific functions in mind.

As mentioned in my last post, the most important function of the core is to stabilise the lumbar spine and to stabilise is to keep rigid. Basic exercises for this include prone, push up and side hold variations.

Before producing movement you must be able to resist it so enter anti rotation exercises, or the ability resist rotation. Anti Rotation exercises teach the core to stabilise the spine irrespective of any rotation or transverse forces coming through it. Exercises for this include pallof press, landmine and cable chop variations.

A lot of reason why core training is so popular these days is because of the increasing amount of lower back pain in the general population and especially, athletes. There are numerous reasons for lower back pain which I will detail in a future post but an important one is lumbar hyperextension. A lot of athlete's postures and movement patterns reinforce anterior pelvic tilt of which lumbar lordosis is a result of.

We can actually train anti extension too using exercises such as overhead medicine ball slams and roll out variations where our arms come above our heads but we must be able to resist going into lumbar hyperextension by squeezing our core, squeezing out glutes and re-training our motor patterns to stay out of that harmful range of motion.

Tomorrow I will hopefully post my latest video which will basically a montage of various core exercise variations form a prone hold position, a push position, a side hold position as well as pallof press/cable variations, roll variations, swissball variations, deadbug variations and full body exercises that all train various core functions.

Stay tuned and please leave a comment.

21st Century Core Training

With the positive comments coming from the warm up video, I will aim to do 1 each week on a different topic and obviously this week will be training the core musculature.


The core is the engine room of the body and provides the power to your movement. I went into it in the How Much Ya Bench? series but I'll reiterate.

The job of the core from a postural point of view is to stabilise the lumbar spine through resisting rotation. From a performance point of view it transfers force.

Taking jumping as an example. When you jump you 'dip' into a half squat position where you are attempting to produce force by pushing your strength down your legs and into the ground. That same force is then transmitted up the legs and into the core and hopefully distributed into the upper the body to complete the jumping action with maximum force.

If your core is not strong enough to handle the force, then it will dissipate half way through your jump and you'll lose power. This can be referred to as an energy leak so what you need to do is to strengthen up your core to handle the stresses going through it and out to the extremities.

Core Activation

At Full Circle Fitness teaching core activation is part of our initial assessment and it is constantly cued during all exercises and with all the lower back pain getting around, we'll keep doing it.

One way of teaching it is to lie on your back with your feet flat on the ground. Now we want to place our fingers just above the hip bones on the front of the body (the top of the iliac crest for you geeks) and cough. What you should feel is something firm push out against your fingers. Cough again. Yep that is your core muscles activating.

Intrabdominal Pressure

Back in the early 90's it was thought that the best way to activate your core was to draw your belly button into the lumbar spine and a lot of trainer's still do this but what's the first thing you do when someone goes to punch you in the guts? Yep, you push out. But pushing out is only half the battle won.

You need to be able to keep a level of this activation constantly but a lot of people will simply lose this activation when the breathe out and this is where injuries can occur during activity. Now lie down and assume the same position as you did for the activation test and breathe all the way in through your nose.

This is where explaining gets hard.

What you want to do now is exhale through pursed lips over 7 - 10secs but only exhale about 70% of that breathe with the remaining 30% being 'pushed' into the stomach, creating the same pressure as you had when you tensed up your guts before getting punched. This is what you should do before each exercise and the more you do it, the more natural it will become.

Practice this during week and hopefully I can get a video together with various core exercise and progressions for you to use in your own training.

Please leave a comment.

21st Century Warm Up Part 2

Well it's taken me 3 days to work out how to do it but I've finally got it.

Here is a dynamic warm up that you can use prior to training or playing footy and it evens works well as a gym warm up replacing your tired 10mins exercise bike routine.

The sound isn't the best but I think you can see what I'm trying to do with each exercise.

Please feel free to send this to your teammates and coaches if they need some idea's and as always, comments are encouraged.

21st Century Warm Up

If you want to avoid injury, then a thorough warm up is what you need.

The aim of a warm up is to increase core body temperature and to warm up various movements that you'll be using in practice, or during a game.

It is also a great opportunity to stretch out tight muscles, open up restricted joints and activate dormant muscles to give us optimal range of motion to move through, allowing us to play at our best.

Unfortunately a lot of teams are still going through the static stretching protocol of the 80's which can actually decrease the one quality we want above all others, force output. Not a great thing to do when you want to be at your most explosive!

Tomorrow I will attempt my 1st youtube video with a full dynamic warm up geared towards Aussie Rules Football which can be used prior to training and playing.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow to check it out.

Repeated Speed Test

Another test from the AFL Pre Draft Camp is the repeated speed test.

This involves you doing 6 x 30m sprints every 30secs.

For example if you take 6secs to do one 30m sprint then you have the next sprint starting in 24secs.

Each sprint is timed and an average of your sprints is then determined.

This is very specific to Aussie Rules Football, which can require multiple and continuous 100% efforts where the ability to sustain your speed and power is vital to staying in contest after contest.

In the past, sprint training has been a miss-trained where the distances being sprinted have been too long (50 - 100m) which isn't really a sprint test after the first 2 or 3 sets as fatigue sets in, and the pace gets a lot slower.

To train this quality is easy and can be done anywhere at any time. All you need is a stop watch.

1 option is to basically "train the test" where you would do what the test actually is, 6 x 30m sprints every 20secs.

You other, and my preferred option, is to "over reach" where you might sprint over a longer distance in the same time frame, or the sprint over the same distance on a quicker cycle (every 15secs).

This training, providing you're keeping it over short distances, won't induce a lot of soreness post workout (lactate build up will almost kill you during it though) so you could train each option 1/week with at least 3 days of rest in between each session.

Your sprint speed session lay out might look like this:

Week 1 Monday - Train the Test

6 x 30m sprints on a 30sec cycle

Week 1 Thursday - Longer Distances, Same Rest

6 x 35m sprints on a 30sec cycle

Week 2 Monday - Train the Test

6 x 30m sprints on a 30sec cycle

Week 2 Thursday - Test Distance, Shorter Rest

6 x 30m sprints on a 15sec cycle

Retest and adjust accordingly.

If you can, then have a partner time each sprint to get your average as data collection is the only way to know you're getting better.

Please leave a comment.

Making The Kicking Test More Effective?

Yesterday I discussed the kicking test developed by Nathan Buckley for the 2009 draft camp.

I found a video of it here where you can see it action and it goes into the scoring a little bit more too:

http://www.afl.com.au/video/tabid/76/videoid/49980/buckley+trials+kicking+test/default.aspx#VideoPlayerB

What I would like to see is some in traffic decision making included into the test.

This could come from either pressure on the kicker from the front, back and / or side, targets being on a lead and kicking to advantage.

This is only the first year of the test which is "a work in progress" and I have no doubt that it will be improved in the coming years.

This is also a handy test that can be performed at at training or as an extra session during the week if you have a couple of mates, you don't need all of the markers and you could simply run away from the targets and pick the ball up off the ground and whoever calls for it, you kick it to them.

Athlete's look good sometimes (Jarred Brennan) but without football know how and the actual ability to perform the games basic skills, they can get left behind very quickly.

Please leave a comment.