When trainees think about working their abs or core the focus is often put on two things.

1) working the abs by bringing the hips closer to the chest or visa versa (leg raise or crunch type exercises)

2) working the core muscles through stabilization (plank type exercises)

These are definitely two different functions of the core muscles (rotation being a third) but why not try to train a few or all of these functions at once? After all that is how your body moves. If you drop your keys you don’t contract your abs straight down and pick them up. You will likely twist and possibly step or squat while you bring your torso closer to your pelvis so you can reach the keys on the ground.

So If we apply this to ab training we want to try to incorporate bending, twisting and shortening into some movements if we can, to get the most bang for our buck.

Lets take the high to low chop or woodchopper (call it whatever you want) for example. No doubt you have seen people doing this standing straight up, pulling their arm slowly and methodically down and across their body. Now what if you did it like this, band-chop-high-to-low.wmv Which do you think will activate more of the core muscles along with the glutes, hamstrings and too many more to mention? Also when movements are done with speed and power the core has to work to decelerate and stabalize itself. Thats a whole lot going on!

Train the muscles to work together as a unit and not as separate pieces of a puzzle and you will soon see those puzzle pieces falling in to place.

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