The Complete Idiot's Guide to Core Conditioning Illustrated

During the last gardening season I wrenched my back, which injury took several months to fully heal. More recently I suffered neck spasms with accompanying nausea. These incidents drove home for me that the care & feeding of muscles is very important, and that as we grow older we must be ever more diligent in our care. While many exercise techniques focus on the "public" muscles, the ones that affect how you look in a swimsuit, it is the "core muscles" which in fact dictate much of our posture and affect much of our health. Consisting of not only the lower back and abdominal muscles but also the muscles around the internal organs, core muscles are the focus around which the limbs and head orbit. Arms and legs bulging with muscle may look impressive, but any system is only as strong as its weakest element, and many people go about with sadly neglected core muscles. I do massage; one problem area on many people is the lower back. I have consistently found that those with persistent lower back problems have weak abdominal muscles. Interestingly enough, weak core muscles also cause problems "referring" into the upper back, and neck. Core muscles help dictate how the thorax relates to the pelvis, and when weight is improperly positioned upon the pelvis it causes problems right up the spine and all the muscles related to it. Core muscles also affect the operation of the internal organs, especially digestion. Perhaps one of the greatest impediments to developing core muscles is their internal nature -- excepting a hard-won "sixpack" of abdominal muscles, most core muscle development is not obvious to the beholder or in the mirror. But luckily a bit of diligence in core exercise produces feelings of stability and well-being which will provide reinforcement for continuing the effort. And luckily, simple and effective exercises exist to tone and strengthen core muscles. The best of these exercises have been collected into this book. Say what you like about the "Idiot's Guides" (I know some library/bookstore patrons who avoid them because of the implied insult of the title) they typically present essential information in clear style. And this book is particularly well laid-out, with nicely organized and progressive exercise plans. The initial exercises, deceptively simple, provide results rapidly enough to encourage the reader to continue. Users move from exercises using body weight alone to resistance bands, while adding in balance exercises using workout balls. Symmetry of effort is stressed throughout the exercise plans. One drawback of machines and weightlifting (and don't get me wrong -- I've clanked a lot of iron in my time) is the likelihood of over-developing one muscle group at the expense of another. It does you little good to have rock-hard abs if your lower back is weak -- in fact, it's a recipe for injury. And since symmetry is an inherent part of posture, these exercises also work to improve posture and balance. These exercises can be

I had a two-fold purpose in purchasing this book. I am a physical therapist, so I feel like I spend half my life preaching the importance of core stabilization to patients with back pain, but I did very little of it myself. I figured by getting this book, it would be a good resource for my own program and at the same time give me more ideas for exercises to give to some of my more advanced patients. There are a lot of great exercises in the book, starting with exercises using only body weight resistance, progressing to exercises with medicine balls, exercise balls, and resistance bands. There is a pretty good introductory unit to give readers some good foundational knowledge before jumping into the exercises. There are plenty of exercises, all with detailed instructions and pictures. After doing some of these exercises for about 8 weeks, I can definitely say that I feel a difference. I find myself activating my core muscles during many daily activities because doing these exercises has made it more of a habit to use them. I have only two complaints about the book. First, despite the author's promise earlier in the book that there would be a "goal" number of sets and reps of each exercise to perform, this was not given for many of the exercises. As a physical therapist, I can probably figure this out on my own, but I would hate to see a so-called "complete idiot," especially only with back pain, overdo an exercise because they were not instructed properly. Second, I didn't feel like there was enough instruction given as to how to progress the program properly. There were some generic beginner, intermediate, and advanced routines given in an appendix, but that was just five exercises per program, which didn't even scratch the surface of all the exercises included in the book. These gripes aside, I have made excellent use of this book as both a personal and professional reference.

This book was great for what it was intended to teach - a good core work out. The chapters have a logical progression, and have good illustrative pictures. I found the exercises challenging, and have tried a number of the routines out already. All were as described in this book. Solid recommendations, and good explanations.

The idea behind core conditioning is that most of the exercise programs out there, particularly body-sculpting and weight-training, focus on the muscles in your extremities. However, these muscles are supported by the muscles in your "core," or your torso from roughly neck to hips, and if these muscles are weak then your other muscles are working from a flawed foundation. Some core exercises use your own body weight to provide resistance, while others use resistance tubing, inflated stabilization balls, or small weighted medicine balls. While these items are certainly cheaper than a gym membership or a complex piece of weight training equipment it can add up a bit, particularly if you have more than one person in your household who wants to try it, and even more so if you're both of radically different heights and strengths (necessitating different sizes of stability ball, strengths of tubing, and weights of medicine ball). Luckily there is a reasonable range of body weight-based exercises, but I do wish there were more. If anything, many of the core conditioning exercises strike me as being Westernized modifications of certain types of qigong and yoga postures, sometimes involving more resistance or faster movement. They look like the kind of exercises where you see someone doing them and think, gee, like you're going to get anything out of *that* wimpy exercise, but I don't think I'll ever think that again--these exercises are harder (not in the sense of being difficult to do, but in the sense of really giving you a workout) than they look! There's a great deal of fantastic information in here. There's plenty to help you understand the point and usefulness of core conditioning and how it can work together with other sorts of exercise such as weight training and cardio. There's information to help you figure out when to do your stretching, how to track and measure your progress, how to be safe, and more. The directions and photos provided for the exercises are particularly helpful; I had no trouble following them. Steps are brief, clear, and easy to understand. Photos are illustrative and clear. Precautions and warnings are ample and appropriate, and make it quite clear at what point there's a problem and you should stop, not to mention which exercises have potential pitfalls and how to avoid them. Much like qigong and yoga, it doesn't take long to start feeling the effects of core conditioning. It might not give you the body of a supermodel or a body-builder, but it's designed to give you a sturdy foundation for all the rest of your exercise endeavors. And it's certainly a great foundation for a healthier body.