5 Tips to a Stronger Midsection

Odds are, if you’ve actually taken the first step of going to the gym, one of your goals is probably to improve your midsection. You might want a nice little six-pack to take to the beach with you this summer, you might be an athlete who needs more core strength, or maybe you’re just a weekend warrior with some back problems. No matter what your goal, there are certain principles that everyone should follow when it comes to torso training:

Tip #1: Train Your Midsection.
This might sound like the most obvious thing in the world for an article about core training, but you’d be surprised how many people completely skip abdominal training altogether, let alone obliques, transverse abs, and lower back training. If you think these muscles are getting enough work in your regular workouts, you’re wrong.

Tip #2: Train Your Hip Flexors.
Somewhere in the last 30 years, it became en vogue to “isolate the abs” (thank you, Flex Magazine). Pick up a fitness magazine today and odds are it’ll have an article on how to do just that. What’s the problem with that? Everything. The abdominals and hip flexors are designed to be used together. If you try to exclude them from all your core training, then they’ll shut off, and won’t be able to fire properly when you need them most.

Here’s a simple test: Lay flat on a bench, with your feet flat on the floor slightly in front of you and your arms crossed over your chest. From this position, sit all the way up without letting your feet come up off the floor. If you can’t do it, you need to start training your hips, and you need to start yesterday. If you normally do crunches, do situps. If you normally do knee raises, do straight leg raises. There are a lot more ways to train the hip flexors than that, but those will get you started on the right track.

Tip #3: Train Your Midsection While Standing.
A lot of people miss this one, and it’s a shame. Think about it: does it make sense to practice your tennis serve while sitting in a chair? When’s the last time you saw a guy pull a 500lb deadlift while laying on his back? Practice how you play. One of the best standing ab and hip movements is the standing cable crunch. Attach a rope to a lat pulldown station and pull it down to your neck. With your legs straight, flex your abs and hips to bend over about parallel to the floor, then return to a full upright position. Wide foot placement adds more hip focus, and using a split stance (one foot in front of the other) includes the obliques to a greater degree.

Tip #4: Twist & Turn.
Especially if you’re an athlete, you need to do more than just train with crunches and leg raises. There are very few sports that don’t require any torso rotation. Twisting oblique movements should make up at least one out of three core movements, if not more. Medicine ball rotational work is great if you have access to a partner or a masonry wall. If not, here’s a good replacement: take an Olympic bar and wedge it in the corner of a wall, and lift the other end up with both hands, arms extended at about face level. Let the bar drop to the side toward one hip, then, keeping the arms relatively straight and leading by twisting the waist, raise the bar back up to the starting position. You can do all reps to one side at once, or alternate side-to-side. Don’t be afraid to go heavy on these at least once in a while.

Tip #5: Don’t Neglect Your Lower Back.
Probably 2 out of every 3 clients I get describe symptoms of lower back pain when they first begin training with me. When I ask them what they’ve done to help rehab it they typically tell me that they’ve been excluding any movements that involve the lower back. This is extremely backwards. When a child has difficulty learning to walk, is your solution to carry them everywhere instead? Of course not. So why would you deliberately neglect a weak area? How will that make it any better?

One problem is that most people can’t distinguish between muscle soreness and joint injury, and general practitioners don’t take the time to help patients understand. So when someone goes to their family doc with a sore lower back from, say, helping a friend move, the doctor’s prescription is usually the same: “stay off it for a while.” It’s never “you should train your lower back so it won’t get sore the next time you help someone move.”

For every direct abdominal movement you do (crunches, leg raises, situps, etc.), I would suggest an equivalent number of movements to develop the lower back. Planks, 45-degree back raises, good mornings, bridges, Supermans, etc. are all good choices. If you don’t know the proper execution of any of these movements, consult a good trainer and learn (if you don’t know if your trainer is good, ask around. If nobody knows if he’s good or not, odds are he isn’t).

You can’t build a skyscraper without a strong foundation, and you can’t build the body you want without a strong core. Treat these muscles with the time and respect that they deserve, and they will pay you back tenfold with a healthy, strong, injury-free midsection.