So What’s New?
For many years, and even today, many physiotherapists, personal trainers, and other health and fitness professionals recommend exercises that target the core muscles for various reasons: back pain, hip pain, knee rehabilitation, and sprint performance. For low back pain, however, it appears that almost any type of exercise can help. Two Cochrane Reviews in 2016 compared a type of core exercise called “motor-controlled exercise” (MCE) with other forms of exercise for chronic and acute low back pain.4,5 For chronic pain, the researchers concluded, “MCE is not superior to other forms of exercise, the choice of exercise for chronic [low back pain] should probably depend on patient or therapist preferences, therapist training, costs and safety.” Similar results were found for acute pain where “no firm conclusions can be drawn on the effectiveness” of MCE.
“Motor-control exercise aims to improve the coordination and control of the trunk muscles. MCE is not like a typical gym exercise. The idea is to re-learn how to isolate and activate certain muscles (i.e., transversus abdominis and multifidi), and then incorporate them into more complex and functional movements,” Bruno T. Saragiotto explained to Massage & Fitness Magazine, who is a physiotherapist and a
research associate at School of Public Health at the University of Sydney in Australia.
“It is usually performed as a supervised exercise. An example would be to lie down and draw your lower abdomen in toward your spine to learn how to activate these muscles. Some studies in our review reported ‘core exercises’ or ‘stabilisation exercises,’ which we included although these exercises are not entirely included in the definition of MCE.”
Another systematic review from the UK also found similar results: “...stabilisation exercises improves low back pain symptoms, but no better than any other form of active exercise in the long term.”6
These reviews do NOT say that MCE and other core exercises are ineffective for low back pain; they just aren’t that any better than other exercises. “If you have a previous training or experience on MCE, you should use because it seems to be effective just like other exercises, the same if you are trained in another type of exercise—like Pilates—they seem to be equally effective,” Saragiotto said.
Likewise, an American systematic review in 2012 found a lack of strong evidence that indicates core training is more effective in improving athletic performance than other forms of exercise. The outcomes of the included studies (n=24), as usual, had mixed results because they had different ways of measuring core muscle activity and different exercises used, such as side planks and standing on a wobble board. In these studies, core training is rarely isolated from other training methods, so there is no clear cut if core training actually does anything beneficial.8
Also, some of the participants in the studies are non-athletes, so the results may not likely transfer to pros like Usain Bolt or Jeremy Lin—and vice versa. The authors mentioned, “The general trend of these studies suggests that training tailored to the athlete’s sport is more successful in significantly improving sport-specific measures.” In other words, the closer the athlete trains to the actual movement of a specific sport (e.g. golf swing, baseball bat swing), the better conditioned their core and overall performance would be.8
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Exercises that emphasize the core are no better than other types of exercises that focus on other types of movements for low back pain.
The type of exercise depends on the individual’s preference, ability, and finances.
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