Getting stronger is very simple. Do stuff that’s hard enough for a long enough period of time and you will build strength. We will see muscular changes, bone changes, connective tissue changes and central nervous system changes as you do hard enough stuff over time. Lifting heavy things to get stronger has been around for centuries. But in the last few decades we’ve seen a shift in perception where many people will blame heavy things for the reason they are hurt or injured (or how it will inevitably cause injury). This couldn’t be further from the truth. Strong things don’t break. Weak things vulnerable. It’s as simple as that. I still hear so much negative commentary around heavy lifting or heavy impact activities (running, jumping) that talk about how bad they can be for your joints. I’m here to help put an end to these ideas. They’re wrong for so many reasons. There is far greater evidence out there saying that a joint exposed to these high forces over time have BETTER cartilage preservation and joint health than those that do not. We must stop fearing the things like running, jumping, and lifting heavy. The negative discussion surrounding things that stress the body continues to permeate our culture. The worst culprits, in many ways, are health care providers! So many doctors, physical therapists, chiropractors, masseuses etc. perpetuate these lies without showing any evidence. And, naturally, if the “educated” are willing to spread nonsense, of course the general public is going to believe it. We all agree that the healthiest individuals are typically the ones that train the hardest and eat the best. The stress to our system is far more advantageous than it is disruptive.

It’s not uncommon to see weightlifters get injured. Bench pressers often complain of shoulder pain, squatters deal with a lot of hip and low back pain, deadlifters might experience some low back pain. And for some reason we’ve decided to assume that because these things happen, lifting weights is bad for us or makes us more injury prone. Weightlifting, contrary to popular belief, has one of the lower injury rates of all sports. And, maybe most importantly, the injuries we see in weightlifting are typically under our control (ie you did too many reps, too much weight, poor mechanics etc.). Very rarely so we see any acute trauma in recreational weightlifting that requires major surgery or intervention. There is far more likelihood that you will get injured from NOT lifting heavy than lifting heavy (as long as you train appropriately). Be smart, train hard, and understand that pain is a normal part of the process at times. But good training will significantly reduce the probability for and severity of injury. Don’t be scared of working hard. Be smart, be confident, and push your limits.

How do we go about training with pain or injury? We often over-complicate the process. There are only two things we can control in our body:

1. How well we prepare

2. How well we respond

If we look at diet as an example, we prepare the best we can by eating nutrient dense, well rounded, healthy meals. Most people know that we have a better chance for a healthy body the more regularly we prepare with healthy eating. When we have GI distress or heartburn or inflammation, we then need to make the necessary response by making certain accommodations (ie eliminating fatty, fried, processed foods if we get heartburn, taking some medicine). 

With regards to injury, all we can do is prepare our body as best we can and, when a tissue fails (pain or a tear), shift our focus to recovery. TRAINING IS THE SOLUTION FOR BOTH. The better you prepare your body with strength training, joint mobility, cardiovascular health etc, the better prepared you are to avoid pain and injury. When we have pain or injury, we respond with an adjustment in our training, but rarely remove training altogether. We may lighten the weight, we may move through a partial range of motion instead of a full range, we may reduce the reps or sets. Rarely is absolute rest the correct response. Modification is typically much better for healing. Even acute or traumatic injuries need input and load (lower levels) in order to heal effectively.

We often spend too much time focusing on things outside of what we can actually control. Things like:

Our anatomy is at fault – “I have flat arches”, “I have one leg longer than the other”, “I have a back that is out of alignment”

Or

Our posture is at fault – “My head is too far forward”, “My back is too flat or too rounded”, “I sit the wrong way or I sleep the wrong way”

We have the power to make things move better and the power to make them stronger or more resilient. But we can’t change our anatomy (without surgery) and we can’t really make permanent changes to our posture, nor do we have to (I’ll post more on this later because I  know this is a big and controversial topic). Spend more time preparing your body to move better and get stronger. Ultimately, those are the only things we can actually control day in and day out that can directly impact our likelihood for injury and our daily experience. Focus less of your attention on the flaws that we can’t change. It’s unproductive and inefficient. Create the best version of yourself in spite of the flaws you have. Don’t worry about what you cannot change. Life and pain alike become much simpler when we accept the fact that everyone has pain, and the best way to treat it is to prevent it as best as you can through good quality training. Let us help you to establish a healthy preventative program that will help you to move better and get stronger, the things you can actually change in your body. 

One of the first things I wanted to talk about are the ideas surrounding “Core”. What is it, what is it’s relationship to pain especially in the low back, and is it as important as we believe for reducing injury and enhancing performance?

So what is it? In it’s simplest form, core refers to a lot of the smaller muscles that attach to the spine and help to control movement and provide support. We have lots of other muscles that attach to the spine that are designed for power and large movements, like our “6 pack ab” muscles in the front or our Lats in the back.

Some of the biggest issues I find clinically that I want to try to touch on is that for one, conceptually, patients and practitioners really don’t have a good understanding for what it is. Providers like PT’s, Chiros, Trainers, Doctors can often recite some of the textbook definitions of what muscles are a part of the core, but do a poor job with the application -or training part, which is ultimately the most important part. It doesn’t matter how well you know what muscles make up the core if you can’t train them appropriately. And on the patient or athlete side, they typically think that it means you need strong abs. I’ll touch on that in a minute. The second part that I wanted to address is the core’s relationship to pain and injury. There are some really outdated philosophies that continue to be perpetuated in the clinic and in the mainstream media platforms that are really not true.

So first, how do we train “core muscles” and how can we maybe do a better job of training them effectively. One of the biggest problems with our current philosophy is that we train core muscles in isolation. Over and over again, I see clients being trained in spinal neutral. Exercises like dead bugs, bird dogs, planks…these are very good exercises for a lot of reasons that I will still use in my practice. They all have a purpose, especially for the novice movers that need introduction, the sedentary clients who don’t do a lot of moving, or the patients who are suffering from extreme and debilitating pain. But we are doing our clients a disservice if they are used to moving even a moderate amount. People who run, go to classes, or use the gym regularly need more. For the elite movers, athletes, and gym goers I’d argue that we really shouldn’t be using these much at all.

Core muscles are designed to work during movement, not in isolation. They also turn on and off when they are supposed to. We don’t have to bring that out of them by trying to train certain muscles to “turn on”. These muscles don’t just shut off when we are injured or weak. We would fall apart if that were true. We need to spend more time focusing on movement based core strengthening. I would argue that our perception of people like trainers with these ripped abs do not have the strongest core. Some of them maybe, depending on how they train, but I’d argue that the individuals who have really strong core muscles might be athletes you don’t typically think of because they don’t have a six pack. Powerlifters and olympic lifters, for example, tend to have some fat on them but they handle extreme amounts of load when pushing them, pulling them, lifting them from the floor or catching them overhead. Golfers or baseball players aren’t always shredded, but they can rotate extremely powerfully and accelerate and decelerate very quickly. Dancers or Gymnasts who can control their bodies through extremely large ranges of motion. Core is far more complex than our current basic understanding of “strong abs”.

The next part I wanted to address is the core’s relationship to pain. I still see providers in mine and related fields talking about a weak core and it’s correlation to low back pain. Lots of this stems from studies in the late 90s and early 2000’s that linked weak transverse abdominis muscles to individuals with low back pain. But so many more recent and quality studies disprove what we once believed to be true. Even one of the pioneers of this concept retracted his opinions of it’s relationship! A STRONG CORE WILL NOT FIX LOW BACK PAIN AND IS VERY RARELY THE CAUSE OF IT.

A strong core is important for many different reasons, but very little of it has to do with preventing or solving low back pain. Low back pain can come from so many different sources and reasons, physiological reasons, genetic reasons, even emotional or psychological reasons. So saying or assuming that all of these sources for low back pain can be fixed with stronger core muscles is a joke and needs to be thrown out. 

The average, every day person needs to understand that core is really not related to back pain and that it needs to be trained differently than how we often think it does. And PT’s, chiros, trainers and doctors, people in my field, need to stop perpetuating false concepts and links to low back pain and outdated methods for fixing them. Everybody is built differently, and a good practitioner understands that back pain, and pain in general, is incredibly complex and individualized. We are all unique. We need to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution. Don’t give lazy diagnoses and treatment plans centered around core. Hopefully, we all can continue to grow in our understanding of the core and how we can use it more effectively.   

• Core is poorly understood, even by experts!
• Core muscles are NOT your six pack ab muscles
• Traditional Core exercises are great for novices or when in large amounts of pain, but often poor for regular exercisers and athletes
• Core muscles REQUIRE MOVEMENT to be effective
• Core is very poorly linked to low back pain and injury
• A stronger core, by itself, is NOT very likely to fix back pain
• Low back pain can come from physiological, environmental, genetic, emotional or psychological reasons (to name a few) – stop using a weak core to define something so complex!