The wood-chop exercise is an amazing way to improve core strength and rotational power as seen in sports like golf and tennis. However, its value is not limited to those who play sports, for rotational movement is a critical part of daily life and something we should be trying to maintain and improve. Learning rotational exercises can be difficult for it is one of the movements that must be trained at a relatively high speed in order to get it right, and with so many moving parts it is easy to make a real mess of it. In this article, I show you how to break this down with very easy exercises and gradually build up to the more complex and functional exercises that produce great results.
Is Twisting & Rotational Exercise Bad For Your Back?
This is an interesting question for the answer is both yes and no! Twisting of the lumbar spine is very dangerous and is linked to many painful back injuries with the most common being a disc tear, but rotation of the thoracic spine and the hips is not, and is actually what the body needs. Twisting of the spine is another form of a herniated disc which is usually caused from bending poorly, whereas this is caused from repetitive poor rotation movements. If you think of the disc like an onion with several layers protecting a core in the middle. The outer disc is made of small rings of collagen, and these layers can separate from repetitively twisting the spine allowing the nucleus gel from the middle of the disc to find it’s way into the opening between the two layers causing extreme pain and a very lengthy rehabilitation plan. But does this mean we should stop all twisting for fear of this injury? Many experts will tell you yes. But if this were true you would see no tennis players, golfers, baseball and hockey players and we would never be able to vacuum our floor! What this really means is you need to stop twisting the lumbar spine and learn how to use the thoracic spine and hips to do the work. Trying to stop yourself using any rotational movement is pure stupidity and to be honest almost impossible, even walking uses rotation. You will have to stiffen up like a robot to stop any type of twisting. What you need to learn is how to rotate correctly and what movements and exercises to avoid. In this article, we will show you how to do this and provide you with a series of movements from easiest to hardest to.