The fitness world is full of relatively useful remedies that are taken to be absolute truths.

One of the most common, and most misprescribed conclusions, I think is “your core is weak; therefore you need to strengthen it.”

Two quick notes before core talk.

1) I’m not implying there are instead some “absolute truths” we should be paying more attention to. Rather, and please forgive the easy reach to physics, but like Einstein’s relativity: something’s velocity, let’s say, *only* makes sense in relativity to what you’re measuring it against.

I.e. “penicillin is good for you” is true only if you have a certain kind of infection. If you don’t, that’s no longer true.

2) In my experience: once we name this, and know it, then we’re no longer searching for 1:1 remedies that are always true … and boom, a huge amount of mental-emotional energy gets freed up for perception.

Less energy planning; more energy really seeing what’s in front of us.

And so …

“Your core is weak.”

There may be problems with this assessment, but let’s just take it at face value for now.

We’ll take this to mean: your abdominal scene isn’t holding its integrity together when you’re doing what you need to, and want to, do.

You know this because your back arches when you try to do a handstand, or because your back hurts, or whatever else like that.

One tactic is, indeed, strengthen those muscles, learn how to use them differently, more efficiently.

Another is to find out WHY that scene is so slide-y, so prone to misalignment, around the abdomen and lower back (which are one in the same) in the first place.

A common place this goes, in my experience personally and in my clinic both, is our relationship to the Earth.

IMAGINE you are a lumbar vertebrae, thick nerve roots sprouting out of you, heading down to, and receiving information from, the feet beneath you.

Let’s say somewhere over the course of years, you “forgot” … I mean really, forgot … that there were feet beneath you, and a whole planet beneath them, supporting you.

Of course you would get exhausted, trying to be self-sufficient and self-contained. You’re trying to “hold yourself up.” And that that exhaustion could express as weakness. Of course.

{{{ Try hovering just above a chair, just 2 mm, for 20 years and you’ll see what I mean. Yes, one remedy could be to build stronger quads … Or you could realize there’s something underneath you, supporting you, and rest and the whole problem goes away. }}}

SO here we are, back at a “weak core” not doing its job, and you’re banging your head against the wall trying to get your TvA to fire better, more, and your internal obliques to engage when you walk and on and on …

… and I’m suggesting it’s a helpful inquiry to release through the feet and legs — a good 20 year project; i.e. not a quick, and therefore not a sexy, sell …

… but you may find your way to this inquiry if nothing else is working.

Lots of examples of this kind of neurologically-upstream thinking, but this is a quite common, and potentially so potent, one.

I’d love to hear your experience, one way or another, with this topic. (Please note, this is not a good place for theory, but for your actual, lived experience.)