I’ve been an athlete for almost my entire life. From youth soccer in kindergarten to club lacrosse at Penn State, sports have been ingrained in my life for a long time. Training has always been important to performance in games, whether it has been practicing on a field or spending time in the weight room. One constant throughout nearly my entire athletic career has been core workouts. It’s been beaten into my head that core strength is key to performance, but is it really that important?

Researchers from the University of Kentucky wanted to find out. The team was made up of 4 students and Professor Terry Malone from the Division of Physical Therapy. They designed a correlational study to determine how much core strength impacted athletic performance. 35 student athletes from Asbury College volunteered to participate in the study.  The athletes came from a wide variety of teams including basketball, soccer, tennis, volleyball, and swimming. These athletes were asked to complete 5 different tests: Leg lowering (core stability test), vertical jump, medicine ball throw, 40-yard dash, and the T-test, an agility test similar to the shuttle run.

The first test, leg lowering, was performed by having the athlete lay on their back on a table. The athlete then had a stabilizer bladder inflated with 40 pounds of pressure placed under their lower back and were instructed to adjust their pelvic region into the posterior tilt position. From there, the athlete’s legs were raised to a 90° angle. They were then instructed to lower their legs slowly until they could no longer stay in the posterior tilt position. The angle at which they were unable to keep the position was recorded. Athletes with more stable cores were able to reach lower leg angles.  After the stability test was administered, the remainder of the tests were carried out.

Malone and his team of students determined that core strength and stability only had a significant correlation with the medicine ball throw (p=.023). All the other correlations were statistically insignificant.

It can generally be agreed on that attributes of speed (40-dash), agility (T-test), and power (vertical jump) are good indicators of athletic ability. The team from The University of Kentucky was unable to find a connection between any of these tests and core stability. While there may not be significant evidence that core strength has a large impact on performance, an athletes core is still an important part of the body to focus on, so it would be unwise to stop training in that area.

Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109894/

Picture: http://www.flexibilityrx.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/LegLoweringTest1.jpg

Works Cited

Sharrock, Chris et al. “A PILOT STUDY OF CORE STABILITY AND ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE: IS THERE A RELATIONSHIP?” International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy 6.2 (2011): 63–74. Print.