The 2 best core strengthening exercises

You may recall a couple posts ago about a nasty nosebleed deep inside my sinuses that actually put me in hospital for a few days. Well things are on the mend and so far so good. I've been taking it easy all week and never had any problems. In fact today I went to the gym just for some easy cardio on the treadmill, nothing serious but I wanted to do something as I really miss working out. Hopefully by this time next week I should be good to start weight training again.

Anyway, while I was doing my cardio on the treadmill I was flipping through a magazine, not just any magazine, but a Woman's Fitness Magazine...

Now I know you are probably asking yourself; "Why in the world is Lee reading a woman’s fitness magazine?" Well, first of all it was rolled up and tucked in the water bottle holder on the treadmill, but besides that you'll see more pics of hot sexy girls wearing skimpy clothes in a woman's magazine then you will in a men's magazine so it's not that bad at all LOL :-)

As I was flipping through the pages one article in particular caught my attention, it was about Core Training. Now as I'm sure you already know this whole thing about "core training" is the big buzz in the fitness industry these days. Fitness infomercials and exercise gimmicks all talk about how they can strengthen your "core" as if it were the next best thing since sliced bread. But strengthening your core (aka; working your mid-section) is as old as dirt.

So the thing that caught my attention with this particular article was that it said the 2 best exercises you can do to strengthen your core are squats and deadlifts...

Now I know all you regular gym going muscle heads are saying: "Duh, of course squats and deadlifts are the 2 best core exercises, in fact they are 2 of the best exercises period".

But the cool thing was that this was an article in a woman's magazine! Finally some real honest training information and not some stupid lift soup cans workout BS. The article even referenced a study done in the Journal Of Exercise Physiology that showed doing squats and deadlifts were 70% more effective at building the core muscles around the mid-section then doing a workout consisting of 5 different stability ball exercises.

So if you want to build some real muscle, regardless if you are a man or a woman, don't waste your time farting around with the fancy looking isolation mumble jumble moves and get back to the basics of good old fashion barbell squats and deadlifts. Not just for a strong core, but for a strong body all over.