Undulation Exercises

Check out these great undulation exercises published by my Hellerwork colleague Anita Boser. Click on "7 Undulations to Relieve Office Tension" to find a free version of her excellent material.
Here's the link:
http://www.vitalselfinc.com/books.htm

Core Strengthening

New Information - for me -  about core strengthening.
Check this out:

Is Your Ab Workout Hurting Your Back?

By Gretchen Reynolds

Getty Images

The genesis of much of the ab work we do these days probably lies inthe work done in an Australian physiotherapy lab during the mid-1990s.Researchers there, hoping to elucidate the underlying cause of backpain, attached electrodes to people’s midsections and directed them torapidly raise and lower their arms, like the alarmist robot in “Lost inSpace.”

In those with healthy backs, the scientists found, a deep abdominalmuscle tensed several milliseconds before the arms rose. The brainapparently alerted the muscle, the transversus abdominis, to brace thespine in advance of movement. In those with back pain, however, thetransversus abdominis didn’t fire early. The spine wasn’t ready for theflailing. It wobbled and ached. Perhaps, the researchers theorized,increasing abdominal strength could ease back pain. The lab worked withpatients in pain to isolate and strengthen that particular deep muscle,in part by sucking in their guts during exercises. The results, thoughmixed, showed some promise against sore backs.

From that highly technical foray into rehabilitative medicine, abooming industry of fitness classes was born. “The idea leaked” intogyms and Pilates classes that core health was “all about thetransversus abdominis,” Thomas Nesser, an associate professor ofphysical education at Indiana State University who has studied corefitness, told me recently. Personal trainers began directing clients topull in their belly buttons during crunches on Swiss balls or to presstheir backs against the floor during sit-ups, deeply hollowing theirstomachs, then curl up one spinal segment at a time. “People are nowspending hours trying to strengthen” their deep ab muscles, Nesser said.

But there’s growing dissent among sports scientists about whetherall of this attention to the deep abdominal muscles actually gives youa more powerful core and a stronger back and whether it’s even safe. Aprovocative article published in the The British Journal of SportsMedicine last year asserted that some of the key findings from thefirst Australian study of back pain might be wrong. Moreover, even ifthey were true for some people in pain, the results might not apply tothe generally healthy and fit, whose trunk muscles weren’t misfiring inthe first place.

“There’s so much mythology out there about the core,” maintainsStuart McGill, a highly regarded professor of spine biomechanics at theUniversity of Waterloo in Canada and a back-pain clinician who has beencrusading against ab exercises that require hollowing your belly. “Theidea has reached trainers and through them the public that the coremeans only the abs. There’s no science behind that idea.” (McGill’swebsite is backfitpro.com.)

Related

• More from Gretchen Reynolds
• Faster, Higher, Stronger
• Fitness and Nutrition News

The “core” remains a somewhat nebulous concept; but most researchersconsider it the corset of muscles and connective tissue that encircleand hold the spine in place. If your core is stable, your spine remainsupright while your body swivels around it. But, McGill says, themuscles forming the core must be balanced to allow the spine to bearlarge loads. If you concentrate on strengthening only one set ofmuscles within the core, you can destabilize your spine by pulling itout of alignment. Think of the spine as a fishing rod supported bymuscular guy wires. If all of the wires are tensed equally, the rodstays straight. “If you pull the wires closer to the spine,” McGillsays, as you do when you pull in your stomach while trying to isolatethe transversus abdominis, “what happens?” The rod buckles. So, too, hesaid, can your spine if you overly focus on the deep abdominal muscles.“In research at our lab,” he went on to say, “the amount of load thatthe spine can bear without injury was greatly reduced when subjectspulled in their belly buttons” during crunches and other exercises.

Instead, he suggests, a core exercise program should emphasize allof the major muscles that girdle the spine, including but notconcentrating on the abs. Side plank (lie on your side and raise yourupper body) and the “bird dog” (in which, from all fours, you raise analternate arm and leg) exercise the important muscles embedded alongthe back and sides of the core. As for the abdominals, no sit-ups,McGill said; they place devastating loads on the disks. An approvedcrunch begins with you lying down, one knee bent, and hands positionedbeneath your lower back for support. “Do not hollow your stomach orpress your back against the floor,” McGill says. Gently lift your headand shoulders, hold briefly and relax back down. These three exercises,done regularly, McGill said, can provide well-rounded, thorough corestability. And they avoid the pitfalls of the all-abs core routine. “Isee too many people,” McGill told me with a sigh, “who have six-packabs and a ruined back.”