9 Essential Core Exercises for Jumpers & Track Athletes

Core work goes far beyond sit-ups and planks. These core exercises for track athletes (and other athletes too) will help your body handle the demands of sprinting, jumping, and competing at a high level.

The forces we produce with every single step require the entire muscular & nervous systems to coordinate and stabilize our whole body. This is why blasting through 1000 sit ups a day may give you a 6 pack, but will do next to nothing in terms of making you a better athlete. You need to do exercises that are functionally appropriate to the movements you produce in training and competition.

Here are just a few of my favorite core exercises for track athletes that I’ve been doing for some years now. The main purpose of each is to stabilize through multiple joints in the body simultaneously, just like you’d be doing when running/sprinting/jumping/throwing, etc.

And don’t think that because some of the exercises are done on the ground that they’re any easier or less important. The ground exercises are vital for developing the deep abdominal and back muscles that help stabilize the hip joint and prevent lower back pain and other injuries.

The standing medicine ball movements, like the overhead raise and zombie march, will challenge your ability to keep your trunk (another word for “torso”) stable and require your glutes to wake up and go to work also.

HOW TO USE THESE EXERCISES IN A WORKOUT:

Go through each exercise 1 by 1 for the prescribed reps. Once you’ve gone through each exercise, that’s a set. Complete 1-3 sets depending on your ability level, and make sure that every single rep is done with quality. If your technique begins to fall apart, stop at that point.

The key to success with core work is quality over quantity — if you train in bad habits with your core work, it won't make you a better athlete, and could even get you hurt.


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Instrumental by Chuki Beats