A 5 week schedule to strengthen your core stability

In addition to our previous blog post on how to bridge these times of lockdown in corona. We have worked out a schedule for you that you can download for free below. Whether you are a young or older athlete, a recreational or professional soccer player, you will always benefit from a good “core stability” and that’s why we recommend you to go through this now and in preparation for the new season and pick out some exercises you like to do to be stronger and therefore better.

Look at it this way: your body anatomically consists of a centre of gravity in your upper body (your chest), and a centre of gravity in your lower body (your thighs). In between, you actually only have your vertebra and the surrounding muscles that hold these 2 points straight together. The better these muscles are trained, the better your whole body can eventually perform! Unfortunately, this also applies vice versa: the less trained these core muscles are, the more vulnerable this sensitive point in your body is, the faster your injuries or back pain will get.

Which muscles do you train and where should you stick to with Core stability exercises?

With core training you train your straight, oblique and transverse abdominal muscles, your straight and deep back muscles and your buttock muscles.

But how do you really master the exercises? And how many times do you have to do them? Below we help you step by step on your way to strong core stability!

In the core training schedule below you will find one training session of about one hour on each row. There are different levels of core training. The next level is always on the next row.

It is the intention that you slowly build up to level/row 5. But beware, switching to the next level is only possible when you meet these conditions:

• you can do all the exercises painlessly.
• you can perform all the exercises in the schedule completely and in a controlled way.
• You did a minimum of 5 core training sessions of the previous level.

In principle you can do core stability exercises every day. However, from a certain level the schedule starts to get more difficult and time consuming. Therefore, try to focus on about 4 core stability training sessions per week.

What you need to know!

During these exercises you often lie in a supine position. It is important that you keep pushing your lower back firmly to the ground throughout the entire exercise. If your lower back does not stay against the ground, then the exercise is probably too heavy. It is best to lower your level until you can maintain your posture.

Many of these exercises can be done with some extra weights. It is not necessarily the intention to use heavy weights. Two dumbbells or kettlebells of 2 to 4 kg each will do. You can also use a medicine ball of 3 to 10 kg.

As you can see you also need a fitness ball for many exercises. This is because training on an unstable surface requires more effort from your core.

If you don’t have any weights, it’s best to fill some empty bottles with water or a pillow, or use a regular soccer ball on your coffee table to stand or lie down a bit more unstable. In short, you are sure to find something in the house that you can use for this.