Article Directory :: Health & Fitness Articles

Shred Your Core in 10 Minutes Per Day!

By Ryan Murdock

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 30Aug2009 Word count: 918 Viewed: 452 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

While a six-pack stomach may be the most conventional benchmark of athletic beauty, functional abdominal strength goes deeper and is far more important than vanity. A strong core improves your posture and reduces the likelihood of lower back pain. It plays a stabilizing role in virtually every movement you do—from carrying the groceries or bending down to tie your shoes to throwing a ball or pulling a heavy lift. It is also the source of power generation in most athletic activities, including singing.

We've all tried using conventional sit ups to build killer abs. The problem with the sit up is that it trains the hip flexors more than it does the core. A number of solutions have been presented for this, all of them involving isolation: crunches, Janda sit ups, and ab machines that cost tens of thousands of dollars and that dictate your range of motion while removing key stabilizing muscles from the equation. All of these methods fail to build real-world strength, because real-world strength is functional.

My answer to this is a simple, incredibly effective bodyweight exercise you can do right now, with a minimum of space. Even more incredibly, you can reap the full benefits of this movement in 10 minutes per day. It's called the Circular Strength Training® Spinal Rock.

Functional Strength for Real World Applications

The CST Spinal Rock will give you: - Superior core activation - The ability to 'be breathed' by movement - Full spinal articulation - Functional, multi-dimensional core strength The Spinal Rock trains you to integrate your breathing and movement, recovering the ability to "be breathed": to allow an exhale on compression and to allow an inhale on expansion. This translates to greater efficiency in all endeavors. You're no longer "fighting" your breath; you're no longer "working" to breathe. Your body is performing in synch.

The Spinal Rock also helps you to recover full spinal articulation. Your spine should move like a string of pearls. Unfortunately, the sedentary nature of modern life too often results in "frozen" areas where our mobility seizes up. Failure to address this is largely responsible for the frailty and immobility of old age. That isn't your birthright—movement is! The CST Spinal Rock helps you recover that supple spinal articulation you had as a child. Working slowly and deliberately through the full range of the Spinal Rock will also reveal "gaps" in your strength that you probably never knew you had. Only when you become aware of these "gaps" and fill them in can you develop true full-range strength.

Once you've recovered your healthy range of motion and built a foundation of strength with the basic CST Spinal Rock presented below, you'll be ready to move on to more advanced variations that will make your core strength multidimensional. It's that sort of strength which will carry over to the complex demands of your daily life.

But what about that six-pack?

Don't get me wrong—the CST Spinal Rock will also give you a killer beach body. It's just that CST places a higher premium on health-first than most other fitness systems. In my opinion, the best of both worlds is to look great while increasing your health and building functional strength that will actually be useful to you under real world demands. There are no puffed up fakes or cosmetic balloon bodies on Circular Strength Training®! If you want a six pack, the Spinal Rock will take you there in a healthy, functional way.

The basic Spinal Rock revealed

1) Lying flat on your back, begin by exhaling hard and rolling your shoulders up and over. Bring yourself to a sitting position by rolling up one vertebra at a time, slowly and smoothly. By going slowly and controlled you'll uncover any weak spots in the range of motion; these will show up as jumps or hitches.

2) At the top, lift your breastbone and raise your head from the crown, elongating your spine and allowing the breath to be sucked into your lungs through the release of pressure.

3) Reverse the movement by exhaling hard and rolling back down to the floor one vertebra at a time. Again, go as slowly as possible in order to reveal and shore up any weak points in the movement. Once on the ground and elongated, allow the breath to be sucked into your lungs by the removal of compression.

So what are you waiting for?

Work your way up to 10 super-slow repetitions before moving on. Yes, I said 10. That may startle those who routinely crank out several hundred sit ups in a session. I'm too busy to waste my valuable time. I like my exercise intense and time-compressed. If 10 super-slow Spinal Rocks doesn't sound like enough, I challenge you to try it and then tell me if you still think so.

One last hint. The CST Spinal Rock, done as slowly and smoothly as I'm asking you to do it, will often reveal "gaps" in your strength. You'll feel these as hitches or clunks in the movement. Don't speed over those bumps! You've gotta move through them deliberately until you've transformed those deficits into strengths. If you're unable to get past them, or if you find your legs coming off the floor uncontrollably, use a bungee chord or jump rope wrapped around a pole to help you through those points. Use as little added assist as you need, and no more! Your goal is to use less and less, until you no longer need training wheels.

Good luck!

EasyPublish™ this article - publishers click here

More articles by Ryan Murdock

Free Report!
Ten Essential Secrets Of Article Marketing ... Grab Your Free
Copy Now:

Need Content?
Regular Top Quality Content for your Blog, Ezine or Website ...
Delivered Direct,
For Free!
Click For Details