How much tension in your core do you need? What's the correct amount of abdominal engagement and core contraction? First of all, let's understand what deep core muscles are and how to contract them.
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#core #sixpack #muscle
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:28 Deep core muscles and how to engage them
03:30 How to find the deep core muscles
04:05 How much engagement is healthy?
06:34 A training strategy
This was gonna be about the abdominals activation, the engagement of them, and also how much tension to have in the abdominals. Is there such thing as too much tension to be holding in your abdominals? And should we be trying to control the amount of tension by consciously holding our muscles contracted or engaged, or should it be more of a natural process?
So we're gonna dive deep into that. This is a great illustration of the muscles of the core all the way around. It shows all the layers. We are more focused on the deep core abdominals on these, primarily these three layers of muscles that are underneath your six pack abs. And we want these to be expanded outward.
If there's indentions here or there's it's soft, and you get that doughboy effect when you push in with your hands. And it's Doughboy. That means these muscles are not engaged here, and so we want them, when they are engaged, they actually expand outward, and the abdominals actually could benefit from a little bit more tension in them.
In most cases, the deep abdominals, but even the six pack abs real quickly, the hip flexers. This is the PSOAS muscle and it is attaching directly to the spine. What it does is it comes down and forward or anterior, towards the front of our body from the spine, and it comes out, uh, on the front side of the hip.
So it's a hip flexor, meaning it flexes the hip joint. And so if you were to lift your knee up as in a marching movement, uh, that is largely this muscle. And so if it's pulling on the f. You know, to lift it up on this end of the muscle, it's also pulling on the lumbar spine and that's normal and healthy.
But what we wanna make sure of is that we have good stability of the lumbar spine, so it's not yanking on it, creating instability because that brings the spine out of alignment. And also causes friction and problems. So yes, this is a core muscle. I don't consider it one of the abdominal muscles.
We're gonna be focusing on these four muscles here. So this is the most superficial one. The, the infamous six pack abs. And then we have the layers underneath. Which are more important for creating stability? Six pack abs is more designed to create movement. So if you were gonna do a sit up or a crunch or a curl forward getting out of bed, these muscles are working to move your trunk forward.
So not so much designed for stability. If you can imagine there's not a lot of surface area here. It's long and skinny. Like, like a hamstring or other muscles that are. For movement. If you go to the deeper muscles of the core, you can see they're more broad, more surface area. Their job is to compress.
And by creating that compression like an abdominal corset, they create stability and that. Is what protects the spine. So, these are the muscles that I love to target. These deeper stability muscles that are designed not to move the body, but to create stability for all day long support of the spine so that your power muscles, the hip flexors, these are power movement muscles, have a foundation.
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Disclaimer:
Dr. Ryan Peebles, DPT is licensed to treat people seeking physical therapy in the state of California. All content on the Core Balance Training KZread Channel is provided for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for the advice, diagnosis or treatment of a health care professional familiar with your specific medical history, conditions and needs. Consult with a health care professional in your state/country before attempting any exercise or movement you have seen on this channel, or before making ANY treatment decision. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard, read or seen in any of our content.c