Friday Fitness: Finding Your Washboard

If you are serious about taking charge of your body, start by focusing your attention on your core and spine. The key word being “core. ” I’m not talking about just your abdominal region but all the muscle groups that support your pelvic girdle, including the deep muscles of your spine.  Today’s “Friday Fitness” will be focusing on core training simply because I cannot emphasize the importance of strengthening your stabilization muscles.  Strengthening the core helps with posture, stability and balance, prevention and treatment of low back pain, and the list succeeds.  Did you know that about 80% of individuals develop low back pain at some point in their lifetime? We can work to reduce this statistic just by engaging in a regular core strength regiment, which minimizes the long term breakdown of your body and spine, therefore promoting better health and body sustainability! 

So what can we do to build better core strength?

The simplest way to work your core is to introduce instability into every exercise you do. For instance, when doing squats, attempt to do them on the bosu ball. When engaging in upper body strength exercises, try performing them while standing on one leg.  If you have worked with me in the past, you may have already been gracefully handed this core-tastic challenge. If not, your challenge begins today. In honor of Friday Fitness I would like for you clean your dirty laundry (aka. stop being lazy).  Start by integrating instability into your current workout regiments. Whether you opt to utilize available balance tools (BOSU balls, indo boards, fit-balls, balance plates, etc.), and/or you simply attempt to stand on one foot when working out or while performing everyday tasks (brushing teeth, cooking, folding laundry, etc.)… your chore of core cleaning starts TODAY!