Relieve Low Back Pain | Reduce Low Back Pain | Canada's Leading Authority in Human Movement | Dev Chengkalath

In keeping with the theme of body weight exercises, I just wanted to touch on what I consider one of the best tools to enhance your core: The Ab Wheel. 

I’m sure many of you are familiar with this simple yet powerful piece of exercise equipment.

It’s pretty much a wheel with small handles poking out of each side. 

Marvel of modern engineering

This elegant design allows the ab wheel to outperform all those fancy ab-training devices that you may have been tempted to buy during those nights where your insomnia met those compelling fitness infomercials.

Now you’re probably wondering why the ab wheel is so special?

Well, for starters, this little device lets you target the core appropriately.

The core, as I’ve written about before on this blog, is not specifically designed to flex the torso as most people think.

If it were, the muscles would look a lot different than they do.

This is one of the reasons why exercises like sit-ups and crunches are not the best types of core exercises to prevent or relieve low back pain.

In fact, if the main purpose of the abs were to flex the torso, the stomach muscles would look more like the hamstrings and not the typical six-pack.

Hamstrings: long, straight bands of muscle

Abdominals: sectioned and multidirectional

Looking at functional anatomy, the core is designed to resist movement and to act as an energy transfer link between the upper and lower body. It essentially acts like your body’s own internal corset which protects your spine and keeps your back healthy.

And that’s just what the ab wheel does.

It forces you to hold your core tight and neutral while moving through the hips. As an added bonus, you’ll work on your shoulder stability and control as well.

In my experience as a physical therapist, shoulder injuries are the second most common type of injury I see at the clinic. 

So why not do yourself a favour and protect the two most often injured areas at once?

If you don’t already have one of these marvels of modern fitness engineering at home, you can pick one up HERE.

In my next post, I’ll go over a few of the top ab roller movements and give you beginner to more advanced exercises. 

To your abdominal rolling.

Dev Chengkalath