Now if you don’t know this yet you are about to know that achieving that ripped midsection has more to do with what you stuff in your mouth than what exercises you select.  Getting lean enough to see your abs is nutrition based and you simply cannot out exercised poor eating.  Performing core work everyday for hours on end will not give you the abs your looking for if your stuffing calzones down your throat.

With that being said, today’s blog will be about choosing the best exercises for your core so that when you do shed those layers of body-fat your abs will look even that much better.  It is also about keeping your body healthy and a good core training routine should teach you how to use your abdominal while performing other tasks.

When we look at core stability and core training we want to categorize our core work into 2 categories:

1. Basic Static Stability
2. Dynamic Integrated Stabilization

Basic Static Stability

This type of  exercise is the simplest form of core training one can do.  What we mean by static stability is being able to perform an exercise while bracing your core without movement for a required amount of time or reps.  In this type of exercises you are trying to teach the body the proper way to brace the core muscles and hold them tight.

Dynamic Integrated Stabilization

This type of core training involves the static stability of the example above with additional aspects integrated into the exercise.  What we are learning to do with dynamic integrated stabilization training is keep the core braced while another area of our body is moving.  This produces a much greater demand on the core and therefore will produce a much stronger torso.

This type of exercise can be broken up into 2 sections.

1. Static Hips/Dynamic Shoulders:  this is when the core is braced and we move from the shoulder joint to produce a greater stress on the core musculature.  This can involve equipment such as the TRX suspension trainer, Val-Slides, Stability Ball, Ab wheel, etc  While our shoulders create a movement the rest of our body remains static and braced.
2. Static Shoulders/Dynamic Hips: this is when the core is braced and we move from the hip joint to produce a great load on the core musculature. This also involves such equipment as the ones mentioned above.  While our hips create movement our core and shoulder joint stabilize the rest of the body.

You want rock hard abs and a super strong core?

Forget doing hundreds of situps… Try these core exercises. We like to perform core work at the beginning of your workout right after our dynamic warm ups and activation exercises

These core exercises will help develop functional core stability and strength so you will have a powerful torso for dominating and if your eating right you can rip that shirt off and show off what you got!

Would You Show Her Your Abs?

I love to use this exercise as one of my assistance exercises in an upper body day. I also use it on a recovery day to increase blood flow to the chest and shoulder region. I will perform blast strap push ups after my bench workout or after a military press workout to add much needed volume to my workout. What I like to do is combine it with a pulling movement and perform each back to back for 3 to 4 sets.

This exercise puts a great amount of added stress to your stabilizers in your shoulder since the straps are not stationary and they move freely causing your shoulders to create the stability in order to perform the exercise. By doing so the body also recruits the abdominal region to help the shoulder stabilizers to hold still. This puts much needed added stress to the core muscles which in turn will create a healthier mid-section. This is a great variation to the push up and should be included in any advanced training program.

Tip of the Day: Instead of doing the normal dumbbell bench press or incline bench press after your bench press training, try throwing the blast strap push up into the routine for a few weeks. It will get you off your back and in a position that stresses your abs as well as pumps some volume into your chest region.

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