[This is a guest blog by Jonte Brown. Jonte is a graduate of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, NC with a degree in Sport Management and is currently serving as an Athletic Development Intern at Athletic Lab.]

Athletes are constantly working to find new ways to train in order to better their performances at a given sport. This is achieved through different strength and conditioning programs that involve some strengthening of the core. Does core strength and stability help improve performance in athletic competition settings? Core stability relates to the bodily region bounded by the abdominal wall, the pelvis, lower back and diaphragm, spinal extensor muscle, and its ability to stabilize the body during movements. Core stability is rarely the main component of an athletic development program. Rather, a part of a larger overall fitness routine.

There are mixed results when it comes to this question on core strength and athletic performance. The lower extremity studies it focused on the lower limb effects of core strengthening, because the core is closely associated with the hip joints, and the crucial role it plays in the stabilization and energy transfer from the lower limb through the the body during movements in squatting and sprinting. Some athletes showed improvements in sport specific skills such as rotational swings, ball velocity and club head velocity in golf, rotational swings tennis players, 40-yard dash sprinters and some baseball pitchers and batters, while some in other sports showed no improvements.

The same has been shown for the upper extremities as well. The population of these studies included males and females competing at various levels in the sports of baseball, handball and golf. In 2007, a coach implemented a 12-week medicine ball training program for high-school baseball athletes. Forty-nine players were randomized to two groups, each performing the same training program plus 100 bat swings a day. The second group performed additional rotational and full-body medicine ball exercises. General performance measures including squat and bench press maximums, as well as torso rotational strength, were tested at four, eight, and twelve weeks. Both groups made significant improvements in all categories, however, the group performing the additional core training demonstrated a significantly greater rotational strength gain and higher bat end velocity over the group performing resistance training and bat swings alone.

In the end, there is little evidence to prove that core strength contributed to athletic performance. First, because it is never a sole exercise being performed, making it hard to isolate the core as a measure of performance. Secondly, many studies show the greatest effects have a study population of recreationally active students or adults and cannot translate to competitive athletes. What core strength does promise that a strong and stable core provides a necessary foundation for performance of a variety of athletic movements.

References

  • Hibbs AE, Thompson KG, French D, et al. Optimizing performance by improving core stability and core strength. Sports Med. 2008
  • Yaggie JA, Campbell BM. Effects of balance training on selected skills. J Strength Cond Res. 2006 May;20( 2)