As we discussed in the first part of this article, the core muscles are active all the time and most people don t even know what the muscles are and how they work anyway. We will now take at look at the muscles of the core and how they work. I ll explain how to work them safely and effectively without creating unnecessary risk of injury.

Core muscles include: the abs, the obliques, and muscles of the lower back. Hip flexors will almost always end up getting worked in this group as well. The primary role of all of these muscles is to stabilize your trunk. Your trunk needs all of these muscles to keep

it stable because your spine is a flexible bendable series of small bones. These muscles work in a very complex way because they need to keep your spine protected from twisting or bending too far and breaking. This is where the confusion about core training comes in.

Many people do crunches to train their abs. Some form of crunch is usually at the base of many core training routines. This is unfortunate because this exercise presents some very real risks of injury to your spine.

A crunch is a forceful forward flexion of the spine. In other words, picture being hunched over in a chair and actually forcing yourself into this position on purpose using your ab muscles. Doesn t

make much sense when you picture it this way does it. Isn t this hunched over position in fact the exact posture that you were always told not to do and was bad for you! And yet people will pound away at crunches reinforcing this position.
Regardless if you do your crunches keeping your shoulders back and don t hunch your shoulders, working your abs over and over again like this will slowly pull your posture forward and out of balance.

The forceful contraction of crunches also causes stress on the discs in your spine. In fact in a scientific laboratory setting this is one of the only ways a scientist can experimentally herniated a disc in a test spine!

Once you look at it this way, it becomes clear that a crunch is a bit of a ridiculous exercise to be doing.

If you still think you need to train core there are better options that are both safe for your spine, won t ruin your posture and make some sense scientifically. Here are 2 guidelines to follow to know if a core exercise is worth doing:

1. It doesn t involve you crunching forward or any kind of sit up
2. It works all the muscles of your core including your lower back and obliques

Exercises like planks or bridges, side planks, push ups, sprinting, pull-overs, stability ball leg curl ups, stability ball roll outs, and

mountain climbers, are examples of some good exercises that work all of your core muscles while putting minimal risk on your spine

John Barban is a certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and a varsity strength and conditioning coach. His trademarked http://www.6minuteCircuits.com Circuit Training Workouts have helped thousands of women with weight loss and fat burning and it can be done in less than 45 minutes three times per week. John is a senior contributor at http://www.grrlathlete.com where you will find articles to help you learn to burn fat without doing boring cardio sessions or using fancy equipment. You can ask John a question on the http://www.grrlathlete.freeforums.org a womens workout forum to help you lose fat and get in shape with

circuit training and nutrition.