All the muscles between your shoulders and hips are called as the “core muscles”. Whenever there is a slight imbalance in the core muscles, you suffer from back pain. Core strengthening exercises help in relieving back pain and form the base of the core stability training program. The aim of these exercises is to provide more support to your back by strengthening the muscles of your spine.
Understand Your Body Muscles
If you imagine your trunk as a cylinder supporting the spine, the walls of this cylinder would be your trunk muscles. The pelvic floor muscles would form the floor of the cylinder and the top would be the muscles around your diaphragm. All these muscles – abdominal, trunk and pelvic – need to be strengthened in order to support the back.
Traditionally, the treatment of the lower back pain has always included exercises that increase the flexibility of the abdominal muscles. Proper exercises would increase the stability of the spine and create the required balance within the muscles. These muscles, in turn, would provide more support and stability to the spinal cord.
The core strengthening exercises are greatly beneficial. If done properly, they help create ideal alignment. When you are doing your routine chores, dancing or playing a sport, if you do not have proper body alignment, the activity would result in back pain. By strengthening your core muscles, you create body mechanics that helps you avoid any kind of back strain. Along with these exercises, maintaining a good posture is imperative. This would create the necessary alignment between the bones and curves of the spinal cord and also allow the muscles to maintain their natural length.
There are many different types of core strengthening programs available nowadays, ranging from Pilates, core support and trunk exercises, yoga, lumbar stabilization, cervical stabilization etc. In order to get the maximum result in any of these programs, you first have to reach your core muscles.
Reaching Core Muscles
Now what is meant by reaching your core muscles? The basis of these exercises is the style of breathing or ‘breathing techniques’, as they are called, combined with the knowledge of where to keep your body parts like palms, feet, shoulders etc. while doing these exercises. Once you activate your deep abdominal muscles, you need to start doing exercises that would help you achieve the right posture.
Some of the basic exercises include the pelvic tilt, yoga postures like supported bridge and a spinal twist. These exercises help you develop the necessary trunk stability. Once your achieve this, you can move on to achieving the skill of a still torso. In this part of the program, the main aim is to keep your torso/trunk still while moving the other body parts such as arms and legs. These exercises train your core muscles to stabilize and strengthen the spinal cord.
The right information and techniques allow you to activate your deep ‘untouched’ core muscles, and work out a good alignment. The most important thing to remember is to never work while in any pain in order to achieve results with core strengthening exercises.