Dr. Andy Galpin

And admittedly, this is a little bit weaker.

You will not see a lot of research directly translating, for example, how many sit-ups you can do with how far you can kick a soccer ball.

But there is some stuff that provides loose associations with general athletic performance that says, hey, if you have an insufficient core defined differently in every study, that that probably leads to some slight inefficiencies.

Most practitioners though, we're gonna tell you the eye test,

from the experience test, that if a core is weak, you have a hard time transmitting force.

This is a fancy way of saying things like, if I am a rotational athlete, I throw a baseball, I hit a golf ball, I throw a javelin, and I'm able to transmit certain amount of force through my hips and my feet into the ground, but then my core can't handle that force, it may not translate into my arm or my hand as much, net resulting in me not hitting the golf ball as far as I should or throwing the javelin or baseball or what have you.

And so the framework I would like to move forward with here is something I've been using for a long time now, and that is look, feel, and perform.

So here's the outline.

When I talk about look, let's assume this is people who are here primarily, if not entirely, because they want their abs to look better.

Again, as I just described, I don't have any issue with that.

Totally fine.

Everyone wants their abs to look better.

But this is looking, right?

It's oftentimes associated with things like hypertrophy,

and muscle growth there.

So we want bigger, more defined abs.

We want it to look a certain way.

The second category is what I call feel.

And that is now more synonymous with things like pain reduction.

And so I don't want to feel in pain.