So, your exercise physiologist is always telling you to “pull your belly button in”, but I wonder how many of you are left wondering if its really doing all that much, and on occasion I am left wondering if you are getting the desired effect.

As Exercise Physiologists, the reason we tell you to do this is to increase your core stability, and the reason we make you squirm around on the floor doing things like ‘dead bugs’ is it’s just one of the ways to increase the strength in your core muscles in order to achieve this stability.

The whole point of using your core muscle to be ‘stable’ is for better posture, back health and to have a stronger base from which to successfully coordinate movement without pain or risk of injury.

The operation of your core could be likened to a crane on a worksite which needs a stable and flat platform from which to swivel and be able to operate its levers and pulleys without toppling over or buckling under the load of the material it is moving. It is much the same when you are reaching overhead or out in front for an object. If your base of support-ie; your core muscles surrounding your vertebral column-isn’t stable and strong, then you will buckle in the middle-and I’m sure some of you are already aware, your back is the first thing to suffer.

One of the reasons that strengthening your core is so successful at helping back pain is that many of the muscles that act to support and others that directly surround your vertebral column are the ones targeted by core exercises. Making these muscles stronger shares the load more evenly so that all the forces aren’t supported purely by the joints.

One of the larger supporting muscles involved is the Transverse Abdominus (TA). Go ahead-Google it. It stretches across the lower portion of your belly from one side to the other. The reason for pulling in your belly button is you can usually only do this action by contracting your TA. This action creates a tightening effect across the lower portion of your abdomen. In turn, this increases the pressure through the interior of your abdomen, which stabilizes joints around your pelvic and lower back region.

Once strengthened, because everything is held tightly together, there is less chance of something slipping out of place, wobbling around or of straining something that is working over time to compensate. Everything works together in a synchronous group  ensuring that you stay stable enough to be able to successfully carry out challenging tasks in the safest, stable and most productive way possible, pain free.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Exercise Science, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.