I believe trunk training is as important as any other body part/movement that is involved in the sport/event. I dont believe it is the priority though.

Far too much time is spent/wasted getting athletes to isolate TVA activation for example. Surely your TVA etc are activated or we would not be standing! In my experience (and was probably guilty of back in the day!) was spending too much time working on the trunk, whether it was seated DB press on a stability ball or trying to stand/kneel on swiss ball - these are new skills not a cure to trunk training. Standing on swiss ball is not going to make me run faster or make me stronger. Working on maximal strength and power (which cannot be done using unstable surfaces) will make me faster by laying the foundation to utilise the strength to create bigger ground reaction forces. Athletes who have run under 10 seconds for 100 metres I am sure never spent whole training sessions working on the core but more fundamentals like explosive power, reactivity strength and max strength.

Look at Olympic Weight Lifters. A guy I know can clean and jerk 200kg and does no/very little trunk/core training. To be able to hold 200kg above the head and even get in there in the first place is pretty impressive. His core is functioning almost perfectly but is not the focus on training. If he did not work on max strength etc, then there is no chance of lifting the bar from the floor.

I know the trunk needs to be worked but need to look at the other key areas too the trunk performs rather than just the normal stability some guysand gals talk about. Lateral flexion of the trunk is as important as stability and rotary movements.

I think the priority goal for sports training is not the core but the greater goal you are aiming for. Core training is a part of it. Maybe the athlete has great core strength already but lacks basic strength. Then the priority now is getting stronger. Focus of training changes with time. What maybe an issue now will not be as important in a later stage of training.

Istvan Bayli talks about Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) and that an athlete will have the foundations already laid by the time they are competing at a high level. This means that the athlete is rounded with good strength, stability, movement patterns and is generally well conditioned. Maybe why the focus is now on core training is due to athlete now were not so well conditioned to movements etc while younger and are playing catch up.

These are my opinions and may not be supported by all (or anyone!) on this forum. But again am interested like FooFoo to hear justifications for the core to be the priority on training above all other training.

like Alex said if you are doing the correct heavy work the core will take care of it's self, I use kettlebells to keep at bay problems with a ruptured disc so I do both heavy and endurance work, I do very little direct "core" work although it is very important to me.

if you are doing football training all the time then throw in core work, if you are doing supplementary lifts, cleans, snatch and squats etc you may not need it. :lol:

Use core work that will help your sport, balancing on one ear on a swiss ball whilst holding odd dumb bells may not help your foot ball. :shock:

Once your core is strong enough that you do not need to go around "zipping up" and you have full function of the TVA go on to more functional exercise's

hope this helps some, have a good un, cheers John Murphy :wink:

totally agree Kaz, some good points made there.

Have a good un, cheers John Murphy :wink:

From a cycling perspective core strength results in greater power when climbing, however the flipside of this is that if you lack core flexibility you will stiffen up on long climbs. I would imagine the same could be said for many other sports such as rowing which require the athlete to use their back for force.

While core strength is important for performance and for keeping injuries at bay, flexibility is a larger concern for many athletes.

I was in considerable discomfort the morning after I last did lower back specific excercises :?

I agree with most of what has been posted, but I still disagree that that the core is the main focus of training. It is an element of training which needs attention but there are areas that may need more attention.

The last post stated coordination training is as effective as massage for back pain - how effective is massage in reducing back pain? It addresses the symptoms and not the cause to an extent (Can you post the reference for that study so I can I have a look at it). How effective is corrective exercise for the trunk - someone comes into a gym completes 30 minutes of corrective work 3 times a week. What does the person do for the remaining 166.5 hours of the week? Surely corrective exercise is a habitual process rather than gym focus (and I understand that these people need to learn these areas somewhere too).

I agree rotational exercises are important to train, and so are the 3 other functions of the trunk - stabilisisation, lateral flexion and flexion. I would almost say training the trunk to stabilise/withstand against the rotational forces created while moving (walking/running) is highly important.

An athlete I started to look after could run 200 metres just over 21 seconds. His musculaculture of his lower body is hugh. His trunk and upper body is tiny in comparison. He has only just started training seriously over the last few months. He was breaking down from injury which the physios were saying was due to poor Stabilisation of the trunk. What no one addressed was that this guy could not even lift his own body weight in a chin up - fundamentally weak in the upper body. While running, the lower body produces hugh forces (vertical can be as much as 20 x body weight). If this guy is so weak in the upper body, how is the upper body going to counteract these forces - it cant so the body breaks down. The core may not be functioning properly but this was due to the one part part of the body producing hugh forces and the other half unable to counteract it. This guy was put on a hypertrophy and max strength phase. It has got bigger, improved his upper body strength (still no comparison to his lower body) so that he can withstand the forces and the physios are saying his core function is better - he completed little core exercises compared to his other training and certainly no isolation exercises. This guy has now smashed his PB (2nd race of season), broken the 21 second barrier, qualified for the under 23 Worlds, will probably qualify for the Commonwealths next year and is injury free (he broke down after 3rd race of lasat season and missed the rest of the season). Training focus was not the core.

If an athlete is injury free, then why start isolating the sling systems. Most if not all movements use sling systems. I agree that there is a maintenance part of training to ensure the trunk is strong for its purpose. But I also feel that practitioners limit the capacity of the athlete by bringing the level of training far below the capability of that athlete - slowing progress. Possibly when there is a break down, then start addressing it. Conflicting research from Richardson & Jull and Stuart Magill show differences in coordination and timing of core control/function - increased core activation before/after/simaltanously with movement. So maybe the core is not where all movements originate? One area I do disagree with, is that during competitive and pre comp phases, training movements (exercises that are directly related to increasing performance - excluding warm up and drills although the velocity will need to increase prior to exercise) needs to be velocity specific, not working at varying speeds. This is coming from athletic performance and not working with the general public.