We hear so much about core strength and the importance of it. I myself gleefully gave up doing countless crunches in exchange for the plank. Then I read this book that altered my perspective of the core, which I now fondly call, the pillar. Mark Verstegen is a trainer for many well known athletes and his theories have kept me injury free for 3 years. The key to a better life lies in your hips, torso, and shoulders. Stability in these areas provides you with the pillar of strength that is the basis of everything you do. "If you have a strong foundation and center, you'll not only look better, but you'll be more efficient at any movements you do, which will improve your exercise performance, decrease your potential for injury and help you enjoy an overall better quality of life," says Verstegen.

I think by now we’ve all heard the new rule – don’t stretch a cold muscle. Verstegen’s program revolves around movement preparation and prehab at the beginning of every workout. Movement Prep prepares your body by lengthening your muscles and leaving them in a stretched position. This accomplishes two things - first, by lengthening muscles giving you a greater range of motion, you stabilize all the tiny muscles that help hold your joints together, and second, it activates these little muscles so they are available and participating all the time. Prehab ensures that you have a full team of muscles working together to accomplish the common goal of efficient movement. It is a lot more effective to train your body for movements rather than focus on specific muscles. By doing this, you not only work the muscle(s) you are engaging, but you are challenging your pillar as well.

It begins with the hip joint and surrounding tissue, what Verstegen refers to as the hip cuff. By engaging and improving efficiency in the hip cuff, you will gain improved mobility, stability, and strength. These stable hips better absorb the impact of running. While cycling they aid in a stronger pedal stroke due to improved knee alignment. If the hip cuff is not properly engaging, with small muscles around the hips and gluteus not firing, you will be forced to use excessive motion in your back and knees, setting yourself up for injury.

Shoulder stability is evident in our posture. I think we all know what poor posture looks like. The exercises you can perform to increase shoulder stability will require you to bring your shoulders back and down. The goal here is to lengthen the muscles in the chest and strengthen the muscles of the upper back, rotator cuff, and the rest of the shoulders.

Core stability is the vital link between hip and shoulder stability. The core consists of the muscles of the abdominals, torso, and lower back. There are many small stabilizer muscles between the vertebrae of spine. They are often shut off as a result of some back injury. In order to get them back on board, you have to recruit them, enabling them to work in tandem with your shoulders and you hips.

Many of these exercises can be found online just by Googling Mark Verstegen, movement prep, and prehab. Verstegen states in many of his interviews that the most effective movement prep exercise is the “forward lunge, elbow to instep”. Most of this information I learned from reading Verstegen’s book “Core Performance Endurance”. He has a website as well; www.coreperformance.com. There is a code in the back of his book if you want to sample the program online for three weeks. Here’s to healthy training and an injury free year!