How Your Core Muscle Strength Affects Your Health
Do you ever find yourself slouching in a chair, slumping at the computer or your belly sticking out after standing for awhile? This is a sign of core muscle weakness that can negatively affect your health and create long-term back or neck pain.
What are Your Core Muscles?
Your “core” is the group of muscles that help stabilize your body and give a strong anchor point from which your skeleton can move properly with good posture. The core is made up of your abdominal, low back, pelvic and gluteus muscles. When anyone of these groups is weak, it causes instability and makes it hard to use your body properly. The result is strain to different areas of your body, especially the back and neck muscles. This causes bad posture, fatigue, inflammation, aches and pain.
Can’t I Just Do Sit-ups?
Strengthening the abdominals is just one component of strengthening your core muscles. It takes an expert, trained in the science of human movement to analyze where your pain is coming from and just what core muscles you need to strengthen.
Are you able to do this?
- Lie on the floor face down and prop-up on your elbows
- Now lift your torso off the floor so only your toes and elbows are in contact with the floor
- How long can you hold this?
30 seconds or less = very weak core muscles
30 seconds to 1 minute = moderate weak core muscles
1 – 2 minutes = normal strength in core muscles
2 minutes or more = good strength in core muscles
Get Stronger and Healthier!
If you found yourself also shaking while doing the above test, you probably have poor motor control of the core muscles. With easy to do exercises, our physical therapist experts can show you how to strengthen your core muscles safely and effectively to have long lasting results, alleviate pain and get back to the activities you love! A stronger core means a healthier you!
Our physical therapy professionals are the medical experts in the muscle and skeletal systems of the body. Whether your pain is from your back, neck, shoulders or legs, we perform a thorough analysis of your posture, movement and strength. This allows us to pinpoint exactly what is causing your pain. Only then, can an effective treatment plan be made to obtain the fastest results. Call us today to learn more how we can eliminate your pain and improve your health!
For more information on our spine program and how we can help you quickly relieve your pain, call us today!
