A trend that doesn’t appear to be abating in the fitness and athletic worlds, is core stability training. The core and stability training has taken many different forms. Most popular however, is to do a strength exercise on an unstable surface so that you must not only overcome the resistance, but balance yourself at the same time. The coaches and trainers who are promoting this type of training, believe that most people do not have ample static strength of the hip, abdominal, and lower back muscles (which make up the body core) to stabilize the body in its many activities.
There is no questioning the fact that the midsection and hip muscles should be strong not only for stability, but for movement in many different directions and actions. The problem, however, is in how the muscles are being exercised for strengthening. In my experiences, the methods being used are potentially very dangerous. It is not uncommon to read of athletes blowing out their knees, injuring their backs or other body parts. Equally important is that there is no need for such training.
One of the foremost principles of effective weight training is to maintain a stable position in order to execute the movement with good form and safety. The more unstable your basic position, especially when you are handling ample amounts of weight, the more dangerous the situation becomes. The slightest off balance movement can result in serious injury.
The key here, is that if you want to develop greater balance, then you should do balance training. If you want to develop greater stability, then you should do exercises for greater stability, which in reality entails greater strengthening of the muscles involved. This applies to not only strengthening the muscles to maintain you in an erect balanced position, but to stabilize the joints involved in every skill execution.
Combining the two is possible, but only when you are capable of executing the balance activity. But why bother doing this? You will gain less strength because you must use less weight, you develop only static strength which does not transfer to dynamic strength and you will have a shorter range of motion over which you gain strength. This in turn increases your chances of injury when performing a strength or sports skill movement.
It is interesting to note that many of the trainers who are now advocating this potentially dangerous type of training are the same ones who several years back were advocating doing maximum stability type exercises for safety. They recommended seated and support-type exercises in which your body is held in place in order to do the exercise safely and effectively. For example, machine exercises were highly recommended because they did not involve balance. You were told to do exercises in which your body was literally locked in place so that there would be little chance of injury because of balance.
Instead of doing exercises such as the standing overhead press, they recommended the seated overhead press. Even dumbbell curls were to be done seated rather than in a standing position. They recommended more and more of the maximum stability type exercises rather than promoting full balance with more strength and range of motion over which strength is developed. The latter is the key to doing exercises that can be considered functional or specialized.
Today they are calling core stability training functional training. In reality, this is a far-fetched idea because there is no functionality involved. If functional means execution of everyday activities more effectively, the first question that should be asked is, When are you ever in an unstable position and then have to apply force or exhibit strength? When you are in an unstable position the first thing the body wants to do is return to a stable position, not execute a strength exercise.
Instead of doing strength exercises on unbalanced surfaces, you can develop great stability together with strength by doing most exercises in a standing position on a solid flat surface in a dynamic manner. When you do standing exercises such as front and lateral arm raises to the overhead position, overhead presses, biceps curls, triceps extensions, etc., you must constantly balance your body as you do the exercise. When coupled with full range of motion exercises for the midsection, you develop ample core strength as well as strength of the muscles being worked on. There is no need to do potentially dangerous exercises in an unstable position.
Understand that doing core stability training does not prepare you for dynamic full-range movements. Athletes who do only core stability training experience problems when participating in sports that require considerable dynamic movement together with strength and/or power. The main reason for this is that the strength developed in this core balance training methodology is static. In sports, however, strength is displayed in a dynamic fashion. There is no correlation between static and dynamic strength!
By doing exercises such as the back raise, back raise with a twist, reverse trunk twist, Russian twist, reverse sit-up, and hip flexion, extension, adduction and abduction, you can develop stability and strength of the entire midsection and at the same time, gain greater balance and experience no problems. Most importantly by doing these exercises you will be better able to execute the skills of your sport. This is not possible with the present core stability training that is in vogue. Thus, beware of getting sucked into this nonproductive trend as it will not benefit you in your sport, or in full range of motion everyday activities.
For information on core training and some of the best full range of motion strength exercises see Biomechanics and Kinesiology of Exercise and Build a Better Athlete.