Last time, I had mentioned the importance of strengthening and building endurance of the stabiliser muscles to prevent pain and injuries, including back pain. Today’s column answers these two questions. 1. What are stabiliser muscles? 2. How do I strengthen them and build their endurance?
Your body primarily has two types of muscles (really more than this, but the others are in your internal organs) “ movers and stabilisers. Movers are the big muscles that move your body parts, hence the name. Stabilisers are the muscles that stabilise your body “ i.e., they hold the various parts of your body in place and prevent you from being injured while the movers are moving you. Stabilisers are not directly involved in moving or lifting a weight, but instead keep certain parts of the body steady so that the primary working muscles (the movers) can do their job properly. Instability in the spinal or peripheral joints such as the hip or shoulder, caused by weak stabilisers, can cause pain, degeneration and poor biomechanics. Strengthening the stabiliser muscles helps minimise these harmful joint problems and create a solid body framework, leading to better balance, co-ordination, power and speed.
The stabiliser muscles primarily function at three parts of your body:
The trunk: The stabiliser muscles at the core are responsible for stabilizing the individual spinal segments while supporting your trunk. Good core stability corrects posture and prevents spinal injuries and back pain.
The hip joint: The muscles of your buttocks are the stabilisers of the hip joint and allow for efficient motion when walking and running. The strengthening of these stabilisers will help prevent knee injuries by stabilising the knee joint and maximize the potential power of your quadriceps (front of your thighs).
The shoulder complex: The most mobile joint in the body, the shoulder complex relies heavily on stabiliser function for correct mechanics and injury prevention. The prime stabilisers in your shoulder joint are the rotator cuff muscles. These hold the ball of your shoulder joint tightly against the socket when your shoulder is moving. Strengthening the stabilisers of your shoulder complex prevents soft tissue injuries like tendonitis and reduces tension in the upper back, one of the prime causes of neck pain and spasms.
You need to train your body for stabilization to reduce your risk for neck, back, shoulder, hip and knee injuries and improve your strength and coordination. Here are two ways to train and strengthen your stabilisers:
Perform exercises that sufficiently tense the entire body. Please notice the word “sufficiently.” Practically any exercise will tense your entire body to a degree, but some exercises are particularly effective at causing your entire body to stay tight. Free weight exercises tense your muscles more than their machine equivalents. For your legs and hips, try squats and weighted lunges instead of leg press and leg extension machines. The free weight exercises require the muscles of your back, hip, abdomen and shoulders to support and steady the weight, while the machine exercises shift much of the stabilization responsibility to the seat on which you recline. For similar reasons, pull-ups are better than machine pull-down and push-ups are better than bench press.
Incorporate unilateral movements into your workouts. Do exercises with one arm or one leg at a time. Try one-armed dumbbell bench press, one-legged squat, one-armed dumbbell row, and whatever else seems appropriate. One-armed work causes the abdominal oblique and the lower back muscles to activate and prevent the trunk from excessively rotating. One-legged work causes all of the muscles of the planted leg to work in a stabilising capacity, to help maintain balance.
Strong stabiliser muscles are essential for maximizing your fitness results. Too often individuals concentrate on exercising the major muscle groups while neglecting stability training. Remember, weak stabilisers will not only prevent you from lifting heavier weight even though your mover muscles can handle it, they will also up your risk of neck, shoulder, back, hip and knee injuries. So, fire those stabilisers up!
Nivedita Dempo is a fitness expert and the owner of Studio 101, Goa’s premier fitness centre
