If you’re anything like me you won’t do it unless you can see the benefit.

Doing ‘core’ strength exercises to effect running performance has quite a lot of question marks around it.

Strengthening and working on the legs seems much more logical. Right?

But……I’m going to offer you some food for thought which might make you consider a little ‘core’ training alongside the running.

I’m basing the content of this blog post on the following research paper:

The Occurrence of Core Muscle Fatigue During High-Intensity Running Exercise and its Limitation to Performance: The Role of Respiratory Work

Tomas K. Tong, Shing Wu , Jinlei Nie , Julien S. Baker and Hua Lin.

What the researchers explore here is the relationship between ‘core’ muscles and respiratory muscles.

Some muscles involved in breathing are also involved in ‘core’ stability and vice versa.

Which leads to the question:

if the core muscles get fatigued during running, will this effect running performance because breathing will also be effected?

The reverse of this question is also relevant.

To put this to the test:

1. The participants core muscle strength was tested after a run. They had to run to voluntary exhaustion on a treadmill. They then did a specific plank test to test their core muscles, their inspiration strength was tested and so was grip strength to see if fatigue and weakness we global or just in the core muscles.

2. The participants running performance was measured after doing an exercise routine to fatigue the core muscles. The participants did a bout of HIIT type training which challenged the core muscles and then had to run on a treadmill to voluntary exhaustion. Breathing and perception were recorded.

Running was found to lead to core muscle fatigue and already fatigued core muscles impaired running performance.

So what can we learn from this research?

As with any piece of research there are always limitations and further questions.

But what we can take away is that running intensely, leads to ‘core’ muscle fatigue.

This muscle fatigue could be due to the fact that some of the same muscles are being used for breathing and running and that running requires a increased rate and depth of breathing.

This reduction of ‘core’ muscle function may lead to reduced performance of running.

To conclude:

There is a strong argument to train the ‘core’ muscles as part of a comprehensive running training programme.

The following research informed this blog post:

Tomas K. Tong, Shing Wu , Jinlei Nie , Julien S. Baker and Hua Lin, The Occurrence of Core Muscle Fatigue During High-Intensity Running Exercise and its Limitation to Performance: The Role of Respiratory Work Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2014) 13, 244-251

The content of this blog post is copyright of Holly Elliott, registered osteopath (GOsC 9607) trading as Helping Hands Health. 15a Clayton Road, Jesmond, Newcaslte upon Tyne, NE2 4RP.