A strong core is essential to a good physique and posture, it’s the absolute core of your body so its strength affects your balance, movements and performance. The fact is that no matter how much you diet or do cardio you will still not be able to tone your core without locking in that area in a resistance training. And in-locking of that area is not the easiest since its very few movements, often manual labour related movements such as wood chopping, that manage to get to it properly. The fact is that the body rather gets rid of your hard earned muscles before it taps into the stubborn reservoir around your waist! That’s why the middle part is always the hardest part to get hard! So an effective core work out is absolutely necessary if you want to get back in the original (default) shape, and not just settling for the same body shape but in a smaller size. Something which dieting without training will get you. You need to jump-start the body and use the jolt of resistance training in order for the body to get shocked and react desperate for energy by tapping into those reservoirs. And there are a few good exercises and equipments you can use for the purpose, here I present you two of my favourites.
Resistance tubes (aka rubber bands) are good elementary gears for core training and equivalent to the cables at the gym. I personally use them at home and away, in particular for an exercise called the wood chopper (home, gym) which comes in variations and is a killer when it comes to oblique and abdominal exercises. As you see these tubes are portable so you do no longer have any excuse to get lazy while being on the road! Just don’t forget to do like miss Ambrosio, pack a pair of plateaus!lol
When you have advanced a bit and feel that your core has turned stronger then you can switch to some more stationary equipments and heavier weights, such as heavy plates, medicine balls and core-bars! I use them all but prefer a 10 kg double grip medicine ball (can even be used for kettlebell exercises) and a weight-vest at home which gives me a firm grip and allows me to practice targetting exercises in order to get to those muscles hiding around the torso (clips of core training with different types of medicine ball). So it is possible to reshape your core, but it takes a whole lot of time, patience and persistence! They usually say that it takes just as much time peeling the layers off as it took to put them on! But it is worth the effort, just keep reminding yourself that it is the last frontier in your contouring. Good luck!
