Everyone knows that it is important to train core muscles. However, people tend to misunderstand when it comes to how to train those muscles. Understanding the importance of core is important, but you need to train it the right way also. To me, injury prevention and performance enhancement training is based on the idea that every joint and body segment should have enough motion but should not have too much motion in isolation and during movement. Some parts of the body are supposed to move and some are not supposed to move a lot. When a part of the body that is not supposed to have a lot motion moves too much, it can lead to an injury or decreased performance. And the core is one of those that should NOT have too much motion. So, when doing a core exercise, you should really focus on keeping your pelvis and lumbar spine stable instead of focusing on how much and how fast you can move your arms and legs, or trunk, or how much weight you can lift.
Here is an example......
This exercise looks simple but not easy for a lot of athletes to do it right. Starting from laying on a physio ball (top picture), you try t extend one knee (bottom picture) WITHOUT losing balance, dropping a hip or hips, keeping pelvis squared to the floor, and maintaining neutral spine position. Like I said, this exercise is NOT about how fast you can move your leg, but how stable you can keep your pelvis and spine and whole body.
