There is a reason why the abs and the lower back are called the core muscles. Your rectus abdominis, obliques, and other internal and external lower back muscles are what makes your core muscles. Those muscles are what's responsible for stability and control. When we train and exercise we are moving, and doing any movement can be more stable and effective when we engage our core. Core engagement is something that should be crucial in anyone's training. In this article I would like to talk about some of the main points on why core engagement and activation can give you better results. 

Syncing the body together and proper muscle function:

Most natural movements that we do everyday work the whole body together, when you walk, run, jump, or punch we use our whole body. The body has its way to move together, and be synced subconsciously. In training when we do any compound movement we use our whole body including the core for stability. All exercises besides isolation exercises use our core. Now lets imagine, what if we put more emphasis on core engagement while performing ANY exercise whether its compound or isolated. What will happen is we will get better muscle activation, and proper muscle function on the targeted muscles of that exercise and make the movement way more effective. Let's take the pullup for example, when most people do a pullup they just focus on the back and biceps when pulling and usually suck in the stomach, arch the back without squeezing any abs or lower back. The next time you do a pullup I want you to try to flex your stomach, the external obliques, and lower back. What you will notice is that the exercise became a lot harder as if it was weighted, and you can feel your muscles better due to the proper muscle function. If you stick to engaging your core on all exercises you will realize the progress and realize how the body moves a lot better when it's in sync and all the muscles move together. The more stable and controlled a movement is the more proper muscle function and full body sync will happen which will lead you to better results. 

Injuries prevention, stability and core training:

As we said the core provides stability to the body. Most injuries happen when we lose stability and control. So this tells us that training the muscles that are responsible for stability and control is a really good idea. Core stability focuses on maintenance of neutral spinal alignment. And better stability means better posture. All of this correlates with having a less chance of being injured. 

The way that we can have better core stability comes from training the core in a specific fashion. First start with movements that require the most muscle recruitment such as the hollow hold, then work on stabilizing movements such as the bird dog, lastly do dynamic stability movements such as a plank on stability ball or front squats on half stability ball. Treat the core muscles just as important as any other muscle, hit them heavy and hard with big movements such as the leg raises, weighted leg raises hyper extensions and weighted hyper extensions. 

Final Word:

There is an important thing that you have to remember after knowing this, core engagement has a cost and that cost is intensity drop. When you engage your core the exercises become a lot harder. Which leads you to drop the weight or find an easier progression movement. This will hurt your ego and humble you, its worth it. Your goal should be long term, imagine hitting the same numbers while engaging the core, this will be possible if you stick to this method. Finally training abs and lower back in general is not the only answer, although core training is important to strengthen the core muscles. But what's also important is learning how to engage the core in all movements and functional activities including isolations. If you want to take your body and training to another level implement more core engagement in your training.