Bending sideways as an exercise 


‘Core’ training is pigeonholed into planking, hollow holds, crunches or leg raises. 

In reality, almost everything you do when you move is core training. Your mid-section remaining braced and steady as you deadlift, squat or lunge that’s using all those muscles we think of as the core. 

Doing a single leg squat. Lots of mid-section to keep things stable. 

One-arm push ups and pull ups? Ridiculous amounts of mid section involved to stabilise things as you get a repetition done. 

And all of this comes from a simple question? What do the muscles around the mid-section do? When you are moving, it’s to keep you stable and balanced. when you are compressed, it’s to keep things from buckling. 

And what constitutes moving? Pretty much anything. Squats, rows, pulls, pushes, carries everything places a stability demand. 

Which brings me to bending sideways. Or lateral flexion of the spine. A underrated capacity. 

You can see Sandhya performing them on a back extension bench. You lie on a bench on your side parallel to the floor. You bend towards the floor. Your armpit on the side facing the sky moves away from the hip as you stretch towards the floor. 

And then you force your way back up. 

Side bends (a common exercise) is a form of lateral flexion and extension. It is more challenging to perform this exercise on the bench as Sandhya is. 

I have an increasing appreciation for moving in every which way the body is designed to. You may scale the difficulty. You can roll back the dosages. If a function exists, find a way to build some capacity with it.