Core Strength and Armor

When we speak of “core strength” do we all mean the same thing? I recently experienced a very different version with a client.

Core strength is a current buzzword, with therapists and trainers giving tips on how to develop core, keep core, activate core, etc. as a panacea for injuries and prevention.

I recently read Erik Dalton’s most recent explanation of different cores and massage, with “medium core” as splinting in the quadratus lumborem and obliques to shore up lack of spinal muscular core.

I’ve also been in those martial arts classes when they instruct students to make their surface areas “hard” (external core!) to deflect the blows of others.

My experience with a client recently was a bit different “core” in terms of protecting oneself from assault. This client has been dealing with a very difficult time in life. Her mother has to be in a nursing home because she can no longer keep track of her meals and medications, along with dementia and a terminal illness.

The family first tried to care for her themselves, and then brought in elder helpers, but those solutions did not work.

Now mother is in a home, she has been scheming day and night to find a way to get out, including engineering her escape through a naïve relative.

The bottom line here is that mother has always gotten her way, no matter what, and the penalties for not going along are very, very high. While the positive side of that energy is that mother always got things done, the icky side is that a lot of mean things come out of her mouth when she does not get her way, and the abuse escalates until she wins.

This client prepared herself, rehearsing in the mirror and coming up with answers to her mom’s presumed objections ahead of time.

The next time Mom started to protest her living situation, she was ready.

“I really am trying my best to make sure you are well-cared for, and when you say mean things it stabs me right in the heart,” she told her.

Did it help? “I feel a lot better that I was finally able to say something,” my client said.

The affected muscles?

I massaged her masseter and other jaw muscles, rubbed her tummy to restore diaphragm breathing and also worked with the thoracic spine to release the erectors and neural supply to the diaphragm.

She felt better to the core. But was it core? Or a girding of the loins?