12/07/2024
Life is better when:
Your low-back doesn’t hurt
You’re generally strong and physically adept
You don’t have the posture of Nosferatu at a 14-hour/day programming job
At least he can’t see his reflection in the monitor
The problem is when core exercises don’t connect to anything else you’re doing—and are just tacked onto workouts in a perfunctory way. You can take things a lot farther when you consider the kinds of postures you want to have during your most challenging moments of exercise and then reinforce them.
For example, we’ve all seen someone melt under too much weight in a squat or a deadlift. Or go from a beautiful, rhythmic running style to zombie lurch. These compensations don’t just look ghoulish, they’re also less efficient.
You can build up your resistance to fatigue by finding the kinds of postures you want to maintain and layering challenge onto them. This can be as simple as loaded farmer’s carries with nice, open shoulders or knee-raises while hanging from a bar. More complex options involve full range of motion. Here, I like exercise choices where the resistance pulls you out of a great position and you restore it. For example, loaded crunches on a stability ball, where you go from a big arch (supported by the ball) like the fellow below to just past neutral.
This was the best shot the internet had to offer
In each case, you have a clear sense of the positions you want to build strength in and then very intentionally reinforce them.
Read the whole newsletter here:
Dad Strength: What people get monstrously wrong about core training Join the resistance Oh man! A book, a quote, a dad joke
