"I want to Develop Core Strength" is one of the most popular terms used in gyms these days but actually knowing what that really means and how best to train this way is often misunderstood. I have been a Personal Trainer specializing in Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Core Strength Training in Melbourne for over 10 years now. I did not intend to take the course of specializing when I started. Like most trainers I was great at sports, highly active and thought I could easily show people how to improve their fitness. However after only a few months I was coming across obstacles that prevented most of my clients from achieving great fitness results. And the biggest obstacle was INJURY! By accident I needed to become great at showing people how to get over their injury in order for me to then help them with their fitness, lose weight, get stronger or whatever their goal may be. And so this is when our Rehab program was born. Over the next 10 years I have evolved to a point where I was developing programs, exercises and workshops to not just clients but other personal trainers in order to help people gain a better understanding of what it means to have a strong core and stay injury free so you can do all of the fun stuff. This is exactly what this 6 week group training workshop is about as I wanted to be able to give people a real glimpse as to HOW TO TRAIN THE CORE CORRECTLY what our years of research and practical work have proven. Our team of trainers are made up of 2 CHEK trainers and 2 Exercise Physiologists and you can check out our details by clicking here.
Who Is This Group Class Suited To?
Classes are held on Wednesday at 7pm. This is perfect for these four cases
- The Beginner to gym or strength training exercises
- The Rehabilitation patient - someone who has is almost completed or just finished physiotherapy treatment and needs to start a strengthening program.
- The Sports Player - any sports person looking for the perfect core strengthening and injury prevention program to compliment their training and keep them on the playing field.
Fill in the form below and I will get back to you within 24 hours to discuss when our next class begins and get you started asap.
What Is Involved In The 6 Week Course?
The first thing people think of when you hear the word Core Strength is some sort of abdominal exercise like a plank or crunch.All forms of isolated abdominal training, which although is excellent training initially to activate core muscles, which can be, and often are very weak, ARE NOT what this class is about. We teach you that the Core is made up of a lot more than just the abdominals and only when you are in a standing position are you now finally activating the Core at it’s highest capacity. Lying on the ground doing crunches and planks will not develop core strength no matter how many you do, which is why so many Pilates and Rehabilitation programs fail, and why so many people still get injured once they go back to their sport or work! The body really is a complex system made up of many chains. These chains (which are called slings) when they are working well, help us move efficiently, produce more force, and create more speed. However, when there is a weak link in the chain most people don’t address the chains, but rather target the muscles. This group training “workshop” teaches you how to firstly assess these slings, and then how to effectively train these slings to enhance your stability and strength, instead of using an isolated muscle approach. Once we have helped you establish an understanding of what your slings are, and how they work, we begin to develop a series of exercises and programs to encourage the deep abdominal stabilizers to work together with the outer muscles with perfect timing in order to provide movement with stability and strength simultaneously.
Watch the video below to see our Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention process in action. This is what CORE Strength is all about. Here is a summary of what is involved over the 6 weeks.
Week 1 - Postural & Flexibility Assessment
This first week we need to define where to start with our program. Every person is unique with their own injuries, muscle imbalances and movement skill deficits. Assessing your posture is critical in the beginning to determine where to start. Regardless of age this is good to do as it gives you many clues as to the areas to focus on first. Our Posture assessment involves a combination of using advanced video technology, to really drill down into the specific areas of your body that may be causing your problem. And basic movement and manual tests to assess thoracic mobility and lumbar curve. See picture below of our video assessment using the Posture Screen Pro App.
The remainder of this session is spent completing our Flexiblity assessment. This is critcial to do first before any strength training as we need to identify any abnormal length tension imbalances within the body before moving forward. The main thing to understand here is that tight muscles will inhibit weak muscles from working. Meaning that even if you have the right exercise it may not be completed correctly as the wrong muscles are trying to do it! This disrupted timing will create instability and weakness. And the only way to stop this from continuing is to weaken the neural message being sent to the tight muscles (known as Tonic muscles), and we do that using stretches and mobilizations, followed up with a well designed stability and strength training program. Our stretch test involves a series of 20 Stretches from head to toe to give us your own specific to you stetching program! Over the course of the next 5 weeks we will include more advanced and effective stretches, but this will give you a great starting point that for many will already start to assist them in correcting postural problems and reducing pain. Watch our video on stretching to see more about this/
Week 2 - Assess Breathing Abdominal Function & Stability
In this lesson we go about assessing your current ability to use your core or inner unit muscles. Firstly I like to identify the current level of core function to assess the stability of the trunk and pelvis. Most problems start at the pelvis so it makes sense for us to look their first. Breathing assessment is massive here and one area often misunderstood or neglected. We teach you the correct method for activating the core by using bio-feedback devices and latest advanced techniques. Watch our video from our breathing workshop for more on this topic. We also use this week to assess stability and balance of the body in dynamic movements requiring skills in all planes of movement requiring stabilization of multiple joints and precise timing and firing of muscles.All joints in the body are under the influence of segmental stabilizers ( muscles crossing that joint only ) and gross stabilizers ( muscles crossing multiple joints ). Assisting with joint stabilization is ligaments, joint capsules and fascial structures. When a muscle imbalance is present a faulty recruitment of stabilizer muscles will begin, resulting in reduced stability of joint or joints. This instability will now result in a strain on the capsule or ligament structures of the affected joints and send faulty information back to the brain via the nervous system. This faulty information develops compensatory movements which now can result in potential injury to other areas of the body.
Here is a video showing our Top Abdominal Exercises.
Week 3 & 4 - Assess Movement Skills
This is where we are now trying to take the learning and improvement of our muscle based approach of weakening the TIGHT muscles and transferring that information into a movement! The human body only knows movement, it does not know muscles! I highly encourage you to read our article on Why Movement Training Succeeds & Isolation Training fails to understand this concept. When you bend over to pull out a weed from the garden there is a series of movements all co-ordinated in a split second to allow you to bend over and pull the weed out. The brain controls the muscles and organizes this process, so it makes sense to go to the brain to create good movement. Evidence from latest research and studies, and also in our own specific case studies with various clients, prove that strength increases in line with the development of the nervous system, which is of more importance to the body in terms of exertion and development of muscular strength.
To do this we focus on what we know are the foundation movements of the body, the movements that all things you do are made from. There are seven key movements to train but we will focus more intently on four movements known as Squats, Lunges, Bending & Twisting. The arm based movement of pushing and pulling and gait will be integrated into these movements in week 6, but these top 4 are where many of the faulty patterns with regards to falling and injury are found.As with our Postural assessment we use advanced video technology to analyze your movement and ensure you can execute perfectly every time.
Watch the videos below to see examples of how we assess and teach these key components.
Week 5 - Isolate Weak Muscles
We are now up to the strengthening stage. We have developed a specific to you stretching program based on areas of tightness that need correcting. We have assessed your breathing and core function and given you some exercises to enhance your ability to activate your core and improve your stability. Then we have tested your movement patterns and identified exercises to improve your co-ordination and skill necessary for developing strength. It now makes sense to try and make the system stronger! We like to start with easy and less co-ordinated exercises that will target your weakest areas. Then follow up with a more the integrated and multi joint movements in week 6.
To ensure success with your program the body must continually be challenged with more difficult tasks or exercises in order for it to continue to adapt and grow. The body will adapt only to the level of challenge that you give it and will not improve any more until it is given a greater challenge. It is not always about lifting heavier weights, sometimes completing more repetitions, performing the exercise for a longer period of time doing the exercise faster or slower can be all you need to enforce change. The key is to use a lot of various methods to continually overload the body’s systems so that you continue to make improvements. Unfortunately many people do not understand this concept once their pain is removed. And they think the job is done. They either think that what they are doing is “good enough” or that working out harder will be dangerous for them. Continuing with your physio's program of light dumbbells or easy resistance bands will also serve no improvement. The muscles need to be challenged in order to grow and adapt and keep you from getting injured again! Only a well balanced program as we have shown you here can do that. Below is some pictures of isolated strength training exercises to target the rotator cuff, glutes and upper back muscles. All commonly weak areas.
Week 6 - Integrate Full Body Exercises
This is the last week and where we try to tie it all together. By no means are many people fully rehabilitated and the job is done. In fact you never really can stop trying to strengthen and improve your posture. What we hope to achieve by this stage is teach you exactly what are the BEST EXERCISES FOR YOU and how to do it correctly everytime. This last week is the important one as this is where you are now trying to prepare for everything you are going to need to be great at in order to play sports, go back to work or even just do daily activities without pain or fear of injury. To some extent we have already touched on this phase with the movement skills phase but now we are applying what is known as progressive overload in order to promote growth and muscular change. Our goal is to get your body’s systems to work in a highly coordinated and effective fashion so that functional tasks are completed successfully. There is an extremely important distinction to be made here. The isolated approach from week 5 is really best for simply training muscles so that they get bigger and stronger. The integrated approach this week is best for improving the efficiency of the neuro musculoskeletal system. The focus is really on the end result that we are after – improved human movement and function. This takes advantage of how the neuromuscular system is designed to work in the first place which is in a highly coordinated manner. The more co-ordinated and complex movements have a greater effect on the brain.
Your Own Personalized Exercise Program
A highly educational group workshop, that evolves into an extremely challenging, fun and very rewarding training session as you improve. Each person will be given a personalised stretching, stability and strength program to complete for the 6 weeks with assessments at the beginning and the end to measure your results. To ensure you can complete your exercises perfectly you will be given access to our Online Training Website complete with print out pictures and videos. See pictures below of what our program looks like
When Is It & How Do I Register?
When: Wednesday nights at 7pm. Click here to see when the next 6 week course is starting.
Who: Male and Female class of all ages and abilities welcome
Cost: $149 for 6 sessions or $449 for 25 sessions
Fill in the form below to register for the class