The therapeutic and fitness training worlds still seem to place a heavy 
emphasis on an isolationist approach to physical testing and conditioning, 
without carefully identifying the situational limitations and scope whenever 
such as approach is used.  

Attempts are made to test and train muscles individually.  Few days pass 
without comments being made on isolating the upper or lower abdominals for 
training,  selectively training the core of the body, activating transversus 
abdominis to 'stabilise the trunk', testing for weaknesses or imbalances in 
certain muscle groups or explaining poor performance or injury on the basis 
of imbalance in some isolated system of the body.

The body constitutes a linked system and, unless the scope and limitations of 
any given isolationist approach is meticulously identified, it is misleading 
and unwarranted to use and extrapolate findings based on isolationist 
methods.  If one unquestioningly applies isolationist methods, then it is 
being assumed that the isolated area concerned constitutes a closed system.  
This implies further that this isolated system is not affected by or does not 
affect what happens in adjacent or other linked systems, or at least that any 
such interaction with other systems is insignificant.

The trunk, abdominals, lower extremity, knee and so forth are not closed 
systems and any action involving these subsystems influences what is 
happening in all parts of the body and the body as a whole.  It is vital that 
the body be regarded in terms of a systems theoretical approach, rather than 
one which makes very tenuous  assumptions about the closedness of 
conveniently isolated subsystems whose apparent isolation from other systems 
invariably is based entirely on convenience or convenience.

Even if one attempts to apply a systems theoretical approach, it may still be 
inadequate to regard the entire body as the superordinate closed system, as 
is implied, for instance, by the current somewhat simplistic emphasis on 
so-called "core training".  The limitations of the latter concept may readily 
be noticed if one observes that it is very rare in land-based sport for core 
stability to be manifested in the absence of contact with the ground or 
external objects.  Peripheral stability, which usually is reliant on solid 
contact between the extremities of the body with some surface, is essential 
before core stability becomes implicated in a given sporting action on land.  

Without adequate peripheral stabilisation, the functional capabilities of the 
"core" are meaningless. The entire body or the body-surface constitutes the 
appropriate closed system for our attention.  Thus, if terms such as "core 
stabilisation" are to be used, then they need to be carefully applied within 
the appropriate context.

This is not to negate the value of approaches that use isolationist 
approaches for valid therapeutic or analytical reasons, such as those 
involving EMG mediated biofeedback, "Kegel" exercises, and post surgical 
respiratory exercises, but it is to stress that the unqualified application 
of isolationist approaches to sports conditioning needs to be viewed with 
careful circumspection.

If we do so, then we may also become far more careful to avoid referring 
rigidly to certain muscles as stabilisers, movers, agonist, antagonists, 
flexors, adductors and so on, instead choosing to refer to the stabilising, 
moving, agonistic, antagonistic, flexor and adduction roles of a muscle 
during any given phase of a specific motor action.

Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
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