You know when you read or listen to something that asks you to perform a physical task, and you either get really annoyed while doing it or skip it and keep reading? Well, if you’re going to do that, this article won’t be very insightful for you. No judgment here: when my toddler goes down for a nap, I need to be super efficient with my time so I can write these newsletters. I’d probably skip over it too! But if you’re one of the brave souls who decides to participate in the task that I’ve failed to mention yet, then let’s do this!

We will answer one question for you: Do you need to work on your core? In your feeding-time doomscrolling, I’m sure you’ve come across fitness/movement people who talk about the importance of training your core. “Train your core to fix your back,” or “if you’re pregnant, here’s the three core exercises you need,” or “30-day abs to get the six pack you always wanted.” Woof.



Let’s play a game:

• Lie flat on your back with your legs straight and your toes pointing up.
• Place both arms at your sides, palms facing up.
• With the left leg remaining straight and the back of the knee maintaining contact with the floor, raise your right leg as high as possible.

Now do it 2 more times, raising the right side to get a rough average of how high your leg can reach. Do the same with your left leg (Or if you’re goofy like me and started with your left leg, do your right leg now). Take a mental note of what you felt side-to-side. One side easier? Harder to keep either leg flat on the floor?

Now take a light resistance band, lie flat on your back, grasp it in both hands, and pull the band apart by squeezing your shoulder blades together (If you don’t have a light band, or don’t want to get up and go find it in your garage, simply make a fist with both hands, and pretend like you’re pulling a band apart by squeezing your shoulder blades together). With this shoulder-blade-squeezed-together position, follow the same sequence you used before with your legs, raising each one as high as you can while keeping the other flat on the floor.

What do you notice this time? I’ll wait so you can do it now…Can you raise your leg higher? The same? Maybe even less? If you notice no difference, odds are your core doesn’t need to be at the top of your priority list. But if either leg went higher, your core needs some support.

Jaxson experienced this phenomenon firsthand. He visited after “tweaking” his back, and Jaxson trained in Jiu-Jitsu, so having his back in rough shape really affected his performance. During our assessment, we noticed he had difficulty raising his legs. He says to me, “Oh yeah, my hips are always tight.” I said, “Let’s try something.” We had him follow the sequence above, pull the band apart, and then he could raise his leg considerably higher. “What the heck. What just happened?” he says. His core needed support.

We found some other stuff, did some stuff (including some specific core training at home), and got him back rolling on the mat pain-free. The interesting thing was that Jaxson also noticed his leg kicks could go higher: “I’ve always had trouble with those because of my hips,” he said. He would practice and practice, do some hip stretches, but nothing would help. Why? Because his hips weren’t the issue; it was his core.

So if you, like Jaxson, felt you could raise your leg higher, does that mean you need to do 100 crunches/day? Not in the slightest, in fact, I’ve never once recommended textbook “crunches” for core support. Doing crunches doesn’t train the function of your core – topic for another newsletter. But it does tell you that you could start with doing more awareness work for your core. What does awareness work look like? For some, it’s breathing exercises, for others, it’s placing your body in a position to engage the core, and then for some, it’s about combining the previous two, and learning to breathe in weird positions such as putting your child in the car seat or hunched over in the trunk of your car trying to change a blowout…not speaking from experience or anything.