Don’t get me wrong. I love respect the core. But you can’t open a running book, magazine or blog without hearing how important it is for runner’s to train the core. I agree with this to some extent but for 10 years I have advocated for three points to keep in mind when it comes to runners and core training: (more…)
Background
The piece was part of a companion piece on resistance and “core” training for runners. The thrust of that piece was that general resistance training should come first before gut-blasting 5 session/week plank marathon sessions should occur.
Purpose: core exercises are rampant and extremely hyped. They are much too popular and I think many athletes not working with strength coaches focus on the core and perhaps neglect other body parts. A not at all new thesis is that many simple core exercises can be replaced by compound exercises that have other goals (e.g. train the legs) but still require great core activation.
This brief post has two main points:
and
Further, nothing in this post is even remotely new.
I had a discussion with a Physio friend of mine about a blog he wrote championing performing scapular stability exercises before rotator cuff exercises. Because I am bit of a picky bitch I immediately thought that while I can see the clinical rationale for it I don’t think the muscles actually do this in practice and thus we had a respectable difference of opinion. From some old EMG reviews I knew that some of the best exercises to train the lower traps (with out upper trap activity) were actually lame old rotator cuff exercises. A couple of years ago I made a few graphics that illustrated this (prompted by a similar discussion on Mike Reinold’s blog).
Purpose: To prop up for target practice 17 assumed dysfunctions in human movement. Ideally, each “dysfunction” can be thoroughly critiqued to determine its relevance to ideal or painfree movement.
Why am I so critical?
I am critical of the strong. There is no point in slamming ridiculous fitness guru’s or fish in the barrel weak-ass chiropractic/rehabilitation theories. I want to critically evaluate the things that are closest to how I practice and those things that actually seem to dominate big swathes of evidence based practice. I challenge the strong because the ideas should be able to take it. If the “dysfunctions” in the post don’t hold up to scrutiny (and some don’t) then we are all the better for it.
