Core strengthening exercise all athletes must have as part of their training routine. It’s a more advanced technique, builds dynamic core stability and shoulder strength. Make sure to keep the form, focusing on keeping the abdominals tight, squeezing the glutes and setting your scapular stabilizers while doing the exercise.
Tweetables:
The Best Abdominal Exercises for Athlete [Click To Tweet]
The Best Exercises for Complete Core Strength [Click To Tweet]
What Is The Best Workout To Strengthen Core Stability? [Click To Tweet]
Transcript:
Hey guys, this is Manu Kalia, physical therapist and Ayurveda herbalist. So I’m going to show you another core strengthening exercise and we’re going to use a ball for this one, too. Remember, I mentioned in quite a few of my other videos that you want to work on building a solid foundation whether you’re engaging in athletic activities, you’re a runner or just stability and strength.
So what we want to do is, for this exercise, we’re going to use this ball. This is similar to one of the other exercises I showed you guys earlier; we’re going to add one more component to it. So what I’m going to do, and I’m going to start here, ball’s going to be under me, I’m going to walk myself out in a pushup position. Now, here’s where you have to work on getting positioning down. So what you want to do is you want to work on pushing up with your…doing a pushup. I set my shoulder girdle there, my scapular stabilizers.
Next thing I do is I want to pull my lower abdominals, my belly button, up towards the spine. So I kick in my lower abdominals. I’m not doing hip flexion, which is this movement. That’s not what I’m doing for this exercise. That’s bending at your hips. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m kicking in my lower abdominals, I’m setting my stomach muscles, my core, and the next thing I do is I squeeze my butt muscles, my glutes. So now I’m set and stable in that position. Once I’ve got that position, I can maintain it and I can work on, I can either hold the position, and do static holds, work up to 60 seconds at a time. And so this is an easier position. As I step out further, it gets more challenging, so I work the exact same thing. I kick in my lower abdominals, my glutes, and I set it and hold that position. So as you get better you get further and further up.
So now the other thing you can do is you can work on walking back and forth as you’re maintaining that position. So I come out here, and then I might go out here. Now, I’m holding that position again in this butt here, and so what I can do is I can also say, “Okay, well, maybe I’ll walk up to the side a little bit.” Then I’ll go up to my right side, I go to my left side, you go to your right side, so back and forth and forwards, and you work at going backwards. So you’re just working on stability and you’re working on maintaining your balance as you’re holding that position throughout that movement.
So, great way to get really strong and work on good stability for that core. So the ball, because of the unstable surface, it forces you to work on multiple planes while you’re maintaining that core stability. And work on increasing the time. If you start noticing your form starting to go and you’re starting to arch at your low back too much, you’re losing your lower abdominals, you can’t keep your glutes tight, and you start to shake too much, move too much, and you really start losing your form, maybe it’s time to back off and stop. So as you get better at it, increase the time.
Alright, hope you enjoyed that video. Make sure you leave a comment, and if you have any questions you can also shoot me an email through my site. I respond to all my emails. And subscribe to the channel. Thanks, guys.