Show Transcript

If somebody is weak in the muscles of their core or their trunk, they probably experience some degree of pain. At some point, they might experience low back pain.

If you picture a muscle group in your body being 200% stronger, that is a significant, profound difference. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well-being. I’m Amy Hudson.

I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co-hosts are Brian Sagan, co-founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence-based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you for joining us again on the Strength Changes Everything podcast. We are so glad you are here with us. Thank you for tuning in each week and listening to these episodes. We hope that you find them beneficial for you and understanding and deepening your conviction for the actions you can take towards your best health. We did want to remind you as well at the top of this episode that you can always visit us at strengthchangeseverything.com and submit your questions for the show. We want to talk about the things that are on your mind. So visit strengthchangeseverything. calm and submit a question anytime you have one and we would love to address it here on the show Today we are actually addressing a question that was submitted by somebody recently about the core and We’re going to talk today about what the core is How do I know whether my core is strong or not? We often meet clients at studios that come in with the goal of improving core strength. That is something that is on the top of mind for a lot of people. They feel the need to gain strength in their core. So we’re going to talk about how to safely and most effectively train the core, what that looks like, and why that’s so important to address and not neglect, you know, when it comes to your overall strength and functionality. So we have mentioned this topic in the past. Dr. Fisher actually did an interview with Brian a while back in season one. Dr. Fisher, do you remember which episodes those were?

Well, yes, I do. Amy, they’re originally aired as episode 31 and 32 of season one. And we talked about low back pain, uh, and training the muscles of the low back as well.

Okay. If you’ve not tuned into those episodes, those are super, super helpful episodes where Dr. Fisher and Brian take a deep dive into the nuances of low back training, causes of low back pain. It’s really, really interesting.

Of course, the low back is part of our core, but let’s delve in today about core training. So first of all, Dr. Fisher, what is the core?

Yeah, so the core, it’s really interesting. The core as a term has become a real kind of buzzword in the last probably 20 years or so now. And it wasn’t my favorite term when it first originated, but it seems to have stuck around. So we’ll run with it. The core muscles are the muscles of the trunk, the muscles of our torso, so our rectus abdominis, our internal and external obliques, and our erector spinae or our low back muscles or lumbar spinal muscles. And we can even extend that to include our pelvic floor and our diaphragm at the bottom and at the top. So the analogy that’s often made with the muscles of the trunk or the muscles of the core are that it’s like the guy ropes of a tent. If some muscles are stronger than others, then that’s akin to one rope being pulled tighter than another rope, and therefore the tent will obviously, you know, be weak or will lean to one side or will not be, certainly not be as stable. So that’s what we generally talk about when we talk about the muscles of the core or the trunk.

Okay, so actually some people out there may not realize all of that because I think a lot of times when people say core, they mean abdominals. So if you didn’t know that, just keep in mind that there are plenty of other muscles, including the back, low back, pelvic floor, that it’s all part of our core. So that is very interesting. Okay. So thank you for breaking that down for us and giving us that analogy as well. So then, uh, how would somebody know if they have a weak core?

Yeah, that’s a great question. So if somebody is weak in the muscles of their core or their trunk, then they probably experienced some degree of pain at some point. They might experience low back pain or they might experience low back stiffness. And they primarily would experience it in the low back because those are the muscles that are most often neglected. So even if somebody is engaging in exercise or strength training, or even if somebody is taking a lot of steps, maybe they’re running, the rectus abdominis actually do a lot of work to stabilize the trunk for that hip flexion movement of running or walking, whereas the low back doesn’t play such a big role. So what we tend to find is that we’re, going back to our tent analogy, we’re training the gyro at the front, we’re training the rectus abdominis at the front of the tent, but we’re not training the lumbar spinal muscles or the erector spinae muscles at the back of the tent. And therefore we’ve got kind of a weakness or not so much a weakness, but a weakness relative to the other muscles that’s resulting in a degree of back pain. And actually, um, one of the most common most common reasons for non-specific mechanical low back pain which accounts for about 80% of back pain is simply weak lumbar muscles. It’s been shown that strengthening those muscles can reduce that back pain. Now other people might have seen other tests where they can do an exercise to try and train those muscles or test whether their muscles are strong, whether the muscles of the core are strong. So for example, many people will do a plank exercise and I don’t inherently have anything wrong with people doing a plank. A plank is typically where you’re on the forearms, resting on your elbows and your forearms and resting on your toes at the other end. And one of the problems is we can kind of cheat that exercise by if we contract our abdominals more, our hips will start to rise, or we can contract our glutes or our hip muscles as a whole, our hip complex as a whole to stabilize.

So it’s not really a good assessment of our trunk muscles or our core muscles. A really nice way to assess the core muscles is a really simple test and any listener can do this at home. If you put yourself in a seated position with your legs bent about 90 degrees, your hips and knees bent about 90 degrees and you put both feet flat on the floor and then what you do is you simply lift up one foot without letting your body lean over the other foot. So for example I’m sat right now if I lift up my left foot so on this side then my inclination is to lean over onto my right side simply because I’m shifting my center of mass over my base of support. Whereas if I focus on contracting the muscles of my trunk first, my core muscles or my trunk muscles first, and now I lift up my left leg, then I can keep my body perfectly still, but I’ve had to contract those muscles to be able to do that. So that can be a really nice simple test, and I’m sure most people are able to do that.

If you’re not able to do that, that can be a sign that you’re particularly weak in those muscles.

Okay, so if you just did that test along with us because I just did it too and you found yourself tilting and not being able to hold yourself upright, that may be a sign you have a weak, a weaker core. And then one other clarifying question, so you mentioned weak low back muscles as being connected to a frequent pain. So is that because they’re so weak, does that just make them more susceptible to being bothered by everyday activities? They’re just not strong enough to put up with forces.

Yeah, absolutely. So it links back to what’s called the deconditioning hypothesis and it’s inherent in our evolution actually with our movement from a quadruped to a biped, moving from a four-legged animal to a two-legged animal, that we’ve evolved to predominantly use our gluteal muscles and our hamstring muscles and actually perform hip extension rather than trunk extension or low back extension. So our gluteal muscles are some of the biggest muscles that we’ve got in the body.

You know, if somebody stood side on, they visibly protrude. They’re so big. And of course, so we dominantly use those muscles. they visibly protrude, they’re so big. Of course, so we dominantly use those muscles. So even when we think we’re trying to train our low back, we’re actually often training our gluteal muscles.

So what happens is the lumbar muscles actually become neglected, they get weaker and weaker and weaker, and then at some point they are required in a task and they’re too weak to do their role. So they, uh, they’re either, uh, they either take on a lot of strain and that results in some back pain, maybe a soreness, or they simply are unable to produce enough force for that movement. Um, and, and therefore we end up with sort of back pain around that, around that area.

Okay. So one thing you’re just, one thing I just heard you say is that it everyday activities really don’t require a lot of our low back muscles. It’s not very easy to effectively activate and train and strengthen those muscles and the low back with everyday activities. So they often, that’s why they’re often weak, right? We’re just not walking doesn’t get to them.

All kinds of other things that we’re naturally doing every day doesn’t help them get stronger. So then how should we and how can we safely and most effectively train those muscles, both in the low back, and then let’s talk about the whole core as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So just to add some clarity around that, the low back muscles actually are predominantly type 1 muscle fiber, so they’re not high force muscles, they’re high fatigue resistance. So they’re intended to be postural muscles and provide stability to our torso. They’re not designed to produce a high amount of force and that obviously makes sense for our locomotion and our day-to-day activity. And one of the things that we see is that our typical posture, you and I are both, I’m actually on a stool now,

I’m not stood up at my standing desk today, you’re in a seated position. So we actually have effectively switched off those lumbar muscles because we’re in a seated position. So we actually have effectively switched off those lumbar muscles because we’re in a seated position. So even though we should be using those muscles on a day-to-day basis for normal activities, they simply don’t get the activation that they should get, even at that low force output, you know, continuous use. So we do need to think about training. They’re probably one of the most important muscles that we train. Many people will go to the gym and they’ll do a leg press or they’ll do a bicep curl and they’ll think about the visible muscles that they can see. But actually, some of the other muscles that they can’t see are far more important. And in this case, for spinal stability and core stability, we need to look at training the muscles of our low back. So the primary way we can do this is in a seated position with some kind of restraint over our thigh and obviously the exercise coach, the nucleus machine has a lap belt and then it has foot boards for you to place your feet and press your feet into so that you can’t do a hip extension, you can really only do a lumbar or trunk extension exercise. And then of course, add resistance into that movement, pushing back.

Now it’s worth clarifying, it’s quite a difficult movement to do because it’s an unfamiliar movement. If most people have never done a leg press exercise before but they sit down on a leg press machine, it’s pretty self-explanatory to say, press your feet into this pad, and the muscles will apply force and the pad will move away, the foot board will move away.

Whereas when somebody sits down in a nucleus or in a lumbar extension machine, oftentimes they’ll find themselves kind of pushing upwards, rather than backwards through the pad itself. So there’s some degree of learning effect with this as well. But fundamentally, we can train the muscles of the low back in the same way that we train any of the muscles of the body. We add a resistance, we do a controlled range of motion, we do a relatively limited time under time under load, certainly two minutes or less. Uh, and we train them to a high degree of efforts and that we’re comfortable with.

Yes. Okay. There’s a lot of good stuff that you just said there. So, um, you know, those people who sit a lot are going to be the most prone. We just, you just threw me under the bus in terms of sitting here and yourself as well, is that yeah, there’s so much of our day we’re not activating our low back muscles.

So the safest way to train them, you described how the nucleus machine at the exercise coach works and any low back extension exercise, we’re restricting our pelvis, we’re restricting the movement there, we’re working through a controlled range of motion to really isolate the musculature, especially in our low back, in a safe, controlled, slow way. It’s magic. It’s magic when we can do that. And then extending more in a horizontal plane versus up. Okay, so that’s a really, really elegant way to get to those low back muscles.

And one anecdotal piece of just a story that I will share is our clients, especially those who started off with very weak low backs, which is most people, for the reasons you just said, it’s one of their favorite exercises to do because they notice such a profound difference. We, of course, had we all the whole world went through COVID back in 2020, 2021, and many fitness facilities got shut down for a time. Right. And clients told us when they could not come in and do those exercises with us on their low back, they felt that one the most. They felt discomfort in their back coming back.

They missed it. It, they knew they could tell when they did not do it, how beneficial it was. Um, and I can see why that is. Can you also just give us a sneak peek again, we’ve referenced those other interviews that you did with Brian in season one, but you’ve done testing and some experimentation with people training low back muscles with the degree of you’re measuring their progress and how much improvement they got.

Can you give us a refresher on what you have seen when you’ve trained people?

Yeah, so I published a number of studies and book chapters around low back pain and the whole concept of low back pain as a whole is very interesting. And certainly I sympathize with anybody experiencing low back pain and it’s very easy for me to sit and say, oh, you should go and train those muscles. There’s a natural apprehension, especially with the low back to be able to go and exercise those muscles.

If I have pain in my arm, I can to some extent immobilize my arm or kind of look after it, whereas if it’s the muscles of the trunk or the spine, then they’re a lot harder to kind of wrap up in cotton wool and not use. But really the emphasis is that we should be using them. Um, when we’ve worked in our laboratories, when we’ve worked with people with low back pain, we’ve seen a range of increases in strength and reductions in low back pain, up to 200% strength increases in a 10-week training intervention. And of course, that sounds completely ridiculous, I’ll repeat that just so that we’re clear, 200% strength increase. But of course, if somebody’s coming through the door and they’re very apprehensive about the amount of force that they can apply through their back muscles, they’ve got pain as they apply pressure, as they apply force into the pad, really they’re incredibly weak. And so as they get stronger, so that pain dissipates and that pain is alleviated by strengthening the muscles and their muscle can return to a normal and even a much stronger state than it was. And of course, that alleviates the pain and then they’re able to push more thoroughly and yeah, 200% increases. That’s not true of everybody, of course, but, but it’s certainly true of some people in the population.

Can, and it may be hard for somebody to conceptualize 200% stronger, but. If, if you picture a muscle group in your body being 200% stronger, that is a significant, profound difference. Um, and how long did it take those people to achieve that? I mean, how frequent was that training?

Yeah, I think, uh, from that study, it was training once or twice per week. It was certainly no more than twice per week. We’ve never, uh, advocated that within any of our training studies. You know, it’s phenomenal. And of course you would never experience a 200% increase in leg press strength or chest press strength is just unheard of because those muscles are already active to some extent and, and you know, far more developed.

It’s really that the low back muscles are so atrophied beyond what they should be that they’re able to make such drastic increases. But of course that strength increases is carried over to a pain decrease. And of course, then a functional increase and the ability to have good posture as we move around through the day, engage in normal activities, lifting, carrying, walking, so on and so forth. And those things you just said are why it’s important to not neglect training that low back. What would you say to somebody basically just to conclude on this topic as to, you know, what would you like to leave the listener with today in terms of why it’s so important to not neglect the core and why it’s important to participate in strengthening the core?

So I think the, the, the trunk and the core as a whole is just essential to our everyday movement.

We showed with that brief demonstration earlier, the importance of core stability. The phrase in the academic literature is called proximal stability for distal mobility. And really what we’re saying with that is that if my trunk muscles and my core muscles are able to fire accurately, by fire I mean be recruited upon demand, and they’re able to stabilize my trunk, then all the other muscles that I want to use, whether that’s lifting up a bag, whether that’s playing a tennis shot, swinging a golf club, kicking a ball, walking, anything like that, is able to fire far more coherently. So we have that proximal stability, the muscles of our trunk being recruited to allow that distal mobility at the other end of our limb, our foot, or our knee, or our hand, or so forth. And of course, like I said, people with back pain will experience some degree of apprehension over doing this. And what I would encourage is to speak to your coach and talk through what you are happy to do. It’s very easy to limit the range of motion on the nucleus machine and even just do isometric exercise. So even just learning to apply force into a fixed pad can be a great way to start to strengthen those muscles and then of course you can start to move through a small range of motion and then extend the range of motion to where you’re comfortable. But it’s worth remembering that when we talk about the muscles of the trunk we’re really talking about five lumbar vertebrae and they don’t have a large range of movement between each vertebrae. It’s relatively small movement. So a small movement for trunk flexion, for abdominal flexion, or for lumbar extension is completely appropriate to train those muscles. It doesn’t need to be a big movement. And in fact, if we do big movements in the case of things like sit-ups, we’re actually really strengthening our hip flexors because our rectus abdominis don’t play a big role in moving us through that big range of motion.

I’m going to throw a curveball your way. I just thought of something here.

Okay.

And I may be phrasing the question incorrectly, but some people look at magazines and see people with six packs when they think about training the abdominals. Talk to me about how realistic that is for the majority of the population. What’s necessary in order to achieve a six pack?

Yeah, okay. So to achieve a six pack? Yeah, okay. So everybody has a six pack. Everybody has the rectus abdominis underneath their adipose tissue. So everybody has that musculature. What we really need to think about is not so much the aesthetics of it, but the functioning of our trunk.

And a lot of the time, six pack abs are evident because people have very good posture. So six-pack abs will probably become more evident if somebody has good low back strength as well, and good core strength and core stability, as well as the other muscles around their body as well. But the reality is that six-pack abdominals only occurs when our body fat percentage drops below a certain amount.

Now that will differ for some people. For some people, they need to drop to, I don’t know, six or seven percent to have visible abdominals. For other people, it might be 14 percent, 15 percent body fat that they will have visible rectus abdominis and that kind of six pack appearance. But realistically, the only way to get that is actually a reduction in body fat and a change in body composition rather than strengthen the abs. Now all the sit-ups and all the crunches and all the trunk flexion exercises of the exercise coach aren’t going to give those that that appearance is really then down to managing diet and energy expenditure as a whole. What’s key is. Be able to strengthen those muscles so the spine can function properly and so we can function on a day to day basis to extend the concept of that really kind of ruins the health industry because it’s not a focus on health. It’s a focus on aesthetics.

Right.

Yes. I mean, I’ve even seen articles written about people who are really cut those bodybuilders and they have the six pack and they’re on the cover of the magazine, but then they come out later and say, I was so miserable because I wasn’t eating. I had headaches all the time. And it’s an interesting thing to break that down and just sort of debunk the myths that that’s somehow what we’re supposed to have. But I just learned, you know, there is a connection between strengthening your back and then your abdominal strength is what you just said, that a six pack may become more prominent when your back is stronger. That’s information that’s new to me. So. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for breaking this down today. I hope that, uh, this episode leaves you with a renewed sense of passion for, you know, how important it is to maintain a strong core. There’s nothing fancy you have to do. There’s nothing crazy you have to do But it’s very very crucial for your quality of life for your functionality Your pain levels and so we hope that you’ll go into your next workout Energize to work that core and to build up that strength and keep yourself stable and all of the implications that it has

Thank you for joining us this week, and we will see you next time on the podcast build up that strength and keep yourself stable and all of the implications that it has.

Thank you for joining us this week and we will see you next time on the podcast. Hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything.com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts,

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