Welcome to week 2 of our ” Bracing” series. Last week we looked at ” Are you using your core efficiently” this week Alex will be taking us through his 3 favourite core drills to develop a strong core.
You should be doing some form of core bracing drills, whoever you are and whatever you do.
Whether you’re a super active person or desk bound, correct core drills should be done DAILY.
Not only will doing them on the regular help with bad posture or that stiff lower back it’ll help with how we perform in the gym. From bigger lifts to how we hold ourselves when we run.
So here are 3 of the best bracing drills that can be done anywhere:
- Bird-Dog isometrics
This is a movement we see butchered left, right and centre. We end up seeing legs flailing around all over the place, people
2. Side plank. One which is tough to get wrong but as coaches we see it performed slightly wrong.
The main fault that we tend to see with this, is that people seem to plant on foot on top of the other and I actually spoke to a back specialist (Rob Coles) about this movement. He told me that people put on foot on top of the other because in the picture that Dr Stuart Mcgill (creator of The Mcgill Big Three) cut out his feet in his book!! So people then assumed pone foot rested on top of the other. If perform correctly, the foot that is on top should lay just in front of the foot connected to the floor. Like so
3) The Dead-Bug. A brilliant exercise to learn how to correctly brace you abdomen but hard for some because of the co-ordination (sometimes me).
The main focus on this movement is to drive our lower back hard into the ground (think “belly button through to your spine”). We are looking for NO ARCH in your lower back.
Ideally the first two movements are isometric holds so we are looking to accumulate 1 minute of work on these and the dead bug is repetitions.
Give these 3 movements a try throughout the week and see how you feel day to day.
3 rounds
Bird-Dog & Side Plank x 10 second hold, 6 each side.
Dead-Bug x 5 each side.
Alex