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Engage your Core Muscles for Optimum Stability When your body is working at its best, you will be recruiting your core in all the movements you do. Sitting behind a desk the whole day means your core muscles are weak, and your other large muscle groups take up the slack, affecting your flexibility and body stability. Add these two exercises to your weekly workouts, concentrating on working your core muscles. Your weekly workouts should comprise compound exercises that keep your core engaged. Do these core exercises at least three times a week. Front Bridge Stretch out on the floor with your weight on your toes and forearms, elbows bent at 90 degrees. Your body should be in a straight line from ears to heels. Keep your chin tucked in and your navel pulling towards your spine. Hold for 10 to 20 seconds. Side Bridge Lie on your side with your upper body propped up on your forearm, the elbow directly below your shoulder. Now push your hips up so your body is in a straight line from ankle to shoulder. Hold for 10 to 20 seconds, then swop side. Keep the Balance How does proprioception and the strength stabilizer muscles help with injury prevention? Any movements that your body makes in sport, at work or even at home require stabilization and proprioception. Proprioception is the ability of your brain to know where your body is in time and space. If your stabilizers are weak, or if your muscles are fatigued, you rely only on your primary muscle movers, and your risk of injury skyrockets If any of the nerves in your body are damaged, then your brain is not going to be able to send the right instructions to your muscles. That means your attempt to do a devastating sidestep only results in a devastating injury. Even worse, nerve damage takes much longer than muscles or tendons to heal and it's incredibly difficult to test for nerve damage. This is because most of the current screening tests are static ones, and don't test your proprioception or the function of your muscles when you're fatigued. If you want to test your proprioception or the strength of your stabilizers in action, ask your biokineticist for some sport-specific dynamic tests. Or you can use our simple test below to check whether your lower-limb proprioception is working properly. If it's not, get cracking with our stabilizer exercises. Test Yourself Is your lower-limb proprioception working? Close your eyes, stand on one leg and raise your other knee to hip level, then try balancing for 10 seconds. Failing to do so means you're two and a half times more likely to suffer a sprain than those who can do it, says a new study. Researchers at the University of Connecticut say the test reveals poor ankle proprioception (balancing strength). Proprioception is controlled by sight, the brain and nerve endings in joints. Closing your eyes eliminates visual cues for a truer indication of ankle performance. The Solution To improve your ankle proprioception, do any standing dumbbell exercise, such as biceps curls, standing on one leg instead of two. Not only will this improve your ankle proprioception, but it will exercise the stabilizing muscles in your legs. Sandra Prior runs her own bodybuilding website at http://bodybuild.rr.nu.
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