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Friday, January 21, 2011

The Core Program.

One of my favorite things to do is find new diet/health/exercise books. I probably read more about exercising than I do exercising. LOL... So I was in Goodwill the other day, and I picked this book up for $1.99 simply because it was a hardback book instead of a softbound one. I already had other books about core training, Pilates, yoga, but this one interested me because it was written by a physical therapist. If any of you have back trouble, you know that you have had to have some kind of treatment for it- core training, Pilates, physical therapy, chiropractic care, or extreme- surgery. Probably for the last 8 years or so, every now and then I will strain my back or what I refer to as "pulling my back out". Sometimes I do this after working in the yard. Sometimes it is from doing some heavy lifting. But sometimes, I can just reach to pick up a piece of paper off the floor, and WHAM! There it goes. This book really explains about muscle elongating and muscle contraction and the reasons you can not only pull your back out, but so many other issues that come from poor muscle quality. So I have only done the beginning 15 minutes a day program two times, but I must say... omg... my back feels so much better after the stretching and conditioning in those minutes. Of course right now it is taking me longer because I am trying to familiarize myself with each exercise. Core training is not a substitute for aerobic or anaerobic exercise. But core training is what we all need as we age. Your core includes the muscles in your shoulders, back, chest, abdomen, and hips. We do so much reaching, bending, pulling, pushing, and twisting that all comes from our core. The title of the book is The Core Program and the author is Peggy W. Brill, P.T. This book is available on half.com or Amazon.com. I hope to make this a habit of working my core with these stretches. The exercises do progress to more strength training which I think I could do now since I have done core training before. However, I just decided to start from the beginning. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

1 comment:

Jen said...

Excellent Dee!! The vast majority of us neglect to take care of our core adequately! Hooray for you for doing something about it! :)