Dr. Andy Galpin

And I want you to keep that entire surface of your hand and your fingers on that table as firm as you can.

And then I pulled your middle finger up as high as I can.

And I pulled it up, pulled it up, pulled it up, pulled it up, and then I let it go.

It'll snap to the ground, right?

And if I do it again, I snap the ground.

Now do the same thing, but I want you to lift your hand off the table such that only the tips of your fingers are still in contact with the table.

And now I want you to pull your finger up and snap it down.

It barely moves.

Not a perfect analogy here, but we're trying to get to the concept that says, if you're in this case, the palm of your hand becomes unstable or is not stiff

This does not allow that appendice, in this case the finger, to contract with a lot of power and force.

The more stable, the analogy here being your core is, then the more force I can transmit to my appendices, my arms or my legs.

And so the rationale here was saying, wait a minute.

Again, not training only for aesthetics, but training for performance or pain mitigation and injury.

We need a stiff and stable core so that our other appendices can move with more force transmission and we're not putting our spine at the same time in dangerous positions.

Now I want to be careful here.

When I say stiff core, I don't mean rigid.

I don't want you locked in and you can't move.

It just needs to be stiff and strong when it's supposed to be strong and pliable and motion and movable when it's supposed to be movement-based.

So because of that, earlier in my career, there was this addition of core movements that are anti-movements.

And so you have your flexion, and now we needed to add in anti-flexion exercises.