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I want to share what I've learned recently regarding principles of core stabilization. I always am surprised to learn how much I don't know. I have been forever confused by the differences between the approaches of the Australian PTs, who have pioneered our understanding of the inner core muscles, and other teachers in the rehab world, who follow Stuart McGill's approach (a more global abdominaland back-training approach).
I have been looking for something that would make sense of this divide, and I think I finally have found it. The teacher with whom I recently studied is Mark Comerford, an Australian PT. Comerford has attempted to integrate, synthesize and understand the principles of both rehab and performance-oriented exercise training. I will attempt to share the basic principles in this article, using the lower back as the model. Future articles will share more specifics. For this article, I am just going to reference the course I attended and Comerford's Web site.1 (I will reference more peer-reviewed material for future articles.)
First, you have to understand how different types of muscles function. We are all aware of tonic or postural muscles and that they are different than phasic or power muscles. Postural/tonic muscles are designed for endurance and are able to be active continually for a long time. They are not designed as prime movers but are designed to stabilize and maintain the center as the arms and legs move around them. The phasic muscles are designed to fire with more power to move the limbs, especially in the sagittal plane for throwing, running or explosive action.
Comerford further divides the postural or stability muscles into local (the inner core) and global (the outer core). The inner core muscles are mostly single-joint, shorter muscles. They are designed to control translation and the small glides that joints make. For the trunk and low back, these would include the transverse abdominals, deep multifidi, pelvic floor and posterior fibers of the psoas.
Moving outward from the inner core, we find the outer core - the global stabilizer muscles. For the trunk and low back, these include the abdominal obliques, anterior psoas, gluteal muscles, quadratus lumborum and the superficial multifidi. These are still tonic, one-joint muscles. These are considerably stronger than...