Want More Core Strength? Get to squatting and deadlifting!

The Core Training Craze

Fortunes have been acquired and empires built on the concept of “the core” and how to “build and strengthen the core.” Has any fitness-related topic in recent memory created as much interest or generated as much discussion as core training? To me this is strange. Think about it: it is not as if serious fitness types have not been training the muscles of the core all along. I have been knocking the hell out of my core muscles for decades. My core muscles are not weak and do not need strengthening.

Core advocates speak as if they had discovered some undiscovered constellation of muscles that no one had ever seen or trained. The novelty that set core training apart from the rest of the fitness universe was this idea of viewing a circular sheath of muscles surrounding the torso as some sort of unique and contiguous unit, which I suppose in certain instances it is: perhaps pitching a baseball, cutting wood, or swinging a heavy sledgehammer. But by and large, we attack herculean physical tasks with the entire body.

Why Strong Legs Matter to Core Strength

Unless you are sitting down when exercising, legs are important, if not critical. As the old saying goes, you don’t fire a cannon from a canoe. Exercises that do not directly involve the legs benefit from strong legs. Core exercises done standing benefit from strong quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves. When flexed, the leg and haunch muscles provide rock-solid stability that optimizes performance.

What Marty Means by the Core

I would define the core as all the muscles of the torso from under the arms down through the pelvis, excluding the glutes. Core implies circular and thus would include the pecs, upper, middle and lower abs, the jewel-like serratus / intercostal muscles and the side oblique muscles. The back of the core would consist of the lower traps, lats, teres, rhomboids, and spinal erectors.

The prescription for improving the core, in many circles, seems to be to create a never-ending series of isolation exercises that attack the individual muscles of the core individually or partially.

Books, columns, websites, Facebook pages and articles in major newspapers tout core training to such a degree that I was made to wonder if I was missing the boat. Despite being in hardcore athletics for 40 years, I had never heard the term “core” or core training. I certainly missed the core crisis that had apparently been happening right under my nose. I thought I had my ear to the ground insofar as cutting-edge tactics designed to take physique or performance to the next level, but I flat-out missed out on the core revolution.

It was mystifying to me to see the emergence and widespread acceptance of the core and core training. The core craze became a bona fide fitness phenomenon. What was equally mystifying was the core-strengthening prescriptions.

A 66-year-old lifter deadlifting over 500 pounds: a visual example of measurable core strength under a heavy barbell.

Measurable Core Training Needs a Report Card

There is no report card, insofar as quantifiably improving the core. If you drop your 40-yard dash time from 5.2 to 4.9, that is measurable progress. If you increase your deadlift by 50 pounds, that is measurable progress. Dropping 20 pounds of body fat in three months is measurable progress. Improving your core is not measured in the same simple way. When a thing is not measurable, chaos ensues.

When there is no benchmark, no report card, then all methods and strategies become equal. Measurable things sort things out: what works and what does not work. Fortunes are made in commercial arenas where things are not measurable.

Squat and Deadlift: The Two-Exercise Core Prescription

Having said all that, I have a two-exercise prescription / solution that will give you the core you seek. However, there are stringent technical provisos associated with each of these two core-corrective exercises.

• Squat
• Deadlift

My premise is that a 200-pound lifter with a 300-pound below-parallel squat and a 400-pound technically sound deadlift has a level of core strength that no collection of mild isolation drills can easily match. Further, were there some sort of core-strength report card, I am quite confident that this barbell-inflicted core stress would create more useful core strength than the complicated, complex and time-consuming strategies that champion a never-ending barrage of dinky core exercises.

Why the Deadlift Is a Reverse Sit-Up

People don’t grok that a proper deadlift is also a reverse sit-up. This uncoiling of the torso, encumbered by a limit deadlift poundage, is a tremendous core exercise. The sheer poundage handled inflicts a degree of core stress that no plank or stability-ball exercise could ever match in Marty’s strength-world view.

If there were objective core benchmarks, deadlifts, and squats would trump. But there usually are not, so all strategies are treated as equal and chaos reigns.

The physiological shock inflicted on the muscles of the core by a limit set of barbell squats is massive. Mastery of squats and deadlifts not only gives you herculean legs and a powerhouse back, squat-dead mastery means you can optimize core strength without resorting to the “death of a thousand cuts,” the endless stream of exercises that comprises mainstream core training.

A Three-Level Core Strength Benchmark

The gold-standard strength benchmark presented here is not medical testing, rehabilitation testing, or a universal requirement. It is Marty’s lifting report card: a simple way to connect core strength to measurable squat and deadlift performance.

Ergo, a 200-pound lifter would need to hit the following benchmarks:

These benchmarks are Marty’s strength-world report card for measurable core strength. They are not medical, rehabilitation, or beginner standards. A lifter should build toward them gradually with sound technique, appropriate loading, recovery, safe equipment, and qualified coaching when needed.

Safety Note for Squats, Deadlifts, and Core Strength

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW perspective on core strength, squatting, deadlifting, and measurable barbell performance. It is not individualized medical, rehabilitation, physical-therapy, powerlifting, bodybuilding, or programming advice.

Heavy squats, deadlifts, below-parallel squatting, beltless lifting, limit sets, bracing, and aggressive strength benchmarks are not automatically appropriate for every lifter. Age, injury history, back health, hip health, knee health, shoulder mobility, blood pressure, cardiovascular status, medications, coaching, recovery capacity, training history, and technical skill all matter.

Build gradually. Warm up thoroughly. Use safe equipment, appropriate flooring, secure collars, rack safeties, spotters, and a conservative progression. A weightlifting belt can be a useful tool for some lifters; beltless lifting should not be treated as mandatory or superior for everyone.

Stop or scale back for sharp pain, radiating pain, numbness, dizziness, chest pain, unusual shortness of breath, sudden weakness, uncontrolled bar path, repeated technical collapse, grip failure, severe fatigue, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for Squat and Deadlift Core Training

Equipment does not create core strength. The lifter’s technique, progressive loading, bracing, recovery, and patience create core strength. Equipment simply gives the lifter a safer, more measurable way to train.

For barbell-based core-strength work, readers and facilities can compare power cages and platform racks, Olympic weightlifting bars, weight plates, and weightlifting belts and head harnesses.

Specific options such as the TKO Defiant Strength power rack, CAP Barbell 7-foot chromed Olympic weight bar, IRON COMPANY premium rubber bumper plates, and the IRON COMPANY all-leather powerlifting belt may fit certain training spaces when the lifter, room, floor, rack setup, coaching, and intended use align.

The tool does not replace the report card. The squat and deadlift numbers are the report card.

Related Core Strength Reading

For a companion Marty Gallagher article on avoiding endless ab work, read Avoid Endless Ab Exercise.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of numerous books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.