The Concept of Core training: Starting from scratch. A Case Study

I am continually amazed at how difficult core training actually is.  It also amazes me that there are so many ways of coaching/teaching core training.  Unfortunately there is no "cookie cutter" method to give to everyone.  I've found with my own training, I am learning and improving daily with subtle changes.


Training core is a lot more than doing sit ups, planks, bridging etc.  It is a bit like teaching someone to throw a ball, or to play a musical instrument.  For some people, the aforementioned tasks may be challenging, and it requires a lot of time to learn and expand on the basic skills.  For others, it is almost an innate ability, but even these people can continue to practice skills and improve on performance.

Recently, I was working with a tremendous multi-sport athlete who had an innate ability to to perform on the field.  However, due to medical procedures that were performed years ago, he was finding that his performance training in the gym was suffering, and he felt it was limiting his on-field performance.  He told me his goals were to improve his strength in the gym and to be able to do at least one pull up.  When I assessed him, I was shocked to find that despite being an incredible athlete, he was unable to properly activate his core in a timely manner to perform his lifts in the gym (imagine trying to "crack a whip" but not being able to get the "crack"  This is an example of poor timing).  I was also stunned to find that despite appearing quite strong, he was unable to perform a single pull up.

He agreed to work with me for 8 weeks, so we started our first few sessions without any weights.  We spent most of the time working on identifying what the core muscles are, how to activate them, and when to tune them UP (and even more importantly, when to tune them DOWN).  After 2 weeks of no weights, we started some resistance training.  We focused on quality over quantity.  I would let him do as many reps as he could do while maintaining his core.  As soon as his core would fail, I would end the set and offer enough rest so he could perform another set.  We worked for a number of weeks on quality of movement.  Sometimes we had poor sessions, sometimes we had great sessions.  I always let his performance dictate what we could accomplish. 

I will never forget getting a text from this him late one evening; "JUST DID MY FIRST F#*@ING PULL UP!  SO STOKED! Thanks for your help!"

I still find it hard to believe that some people have trouble tuning their core, but have an innate ability to perform on the field.  Is it possible that there potential on the field is limited by weakness?  Or am I playing with fire and changing movement patterns that maybe should not be changed?