Stabilizer Muscles Are More Than Just Injury Prevention

Stabilizer Muscles Are More Than Just Injury Prevention

Many gym goers are focusing on flatten stomach, tone arms and legs or maybe trying to improve their sports performance with strength training. Unfortunately, most fitness enthusiasts and athletes pay too little attention to the structure, stability and alignment of their body. It’s not cool to have six-pack abs with back pain or other injuries that are causes by muscle imbalances. Many people are training mirror muscles but don’t understand importance of stabilizing muscles and injury prevention. They will wake up only when injuries happen.

Your body has two types of muscles - movers and stabilizers. The primary role of movers is to produce the movement while the role of stabilizers is to stabilize the joints and the spine during a movement. So, stabilizing muscles give support to the trunk and joints’ function by controlling and limiting extra movement. The movers are most prominent muscles in your body, but they cannot function well if the stabilizing muscles are weak. Too much movement (called instability) in the spine or joints (such as hips or shoulders) can cause pain, degeneration and poor biomechanics. When you move with good muscle recruitment, and stabilizing muscles are working well, there will be minimal wear and tear in your joints. However, stabilizer muscles are more than just injury prevention. They are reducing the waste of energy and muscles are working together more efficiently and more ergonomically. In the athlete’s world that means better balance, co-ordination, power and speed - they all need a good stabilizer muscles to produce superior performance.

Core Stabilization

Core stability means an ability to contract the deep abdominal and back muscles - transverse abdominus and multifidus muscles. These muscles are responsible for stabilizing your spinal segments to help support your trunk in dynamic and static positions. The core is your “powerhouse”, the center of power. Core muscles’ strength and stability are important components to prevent injuries and back pain. Good core stability corrects posture and ensure more efficient and functional movement patterns of your other muscles and joints. 

Hip & Knee Joints Stabilization

The gluteus medius and maximus muscles stabilize your hip joint and pelvic. By strengthening gluteus medius muscles will also help prevent knee injuries. When weak hip stabilizers exists, the iliotibial band gets overworked which can lead knee pain, iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS) or trochanteric bursitis.

Knee joint stabilizers are more ligaments than muscles, but there are still quadriceps and hamstrings muscles that help stabilize the knee joint. Quadriceps include four muscles and two of them are more important to stabilize the knee joint - vatsus lateralis and vastus medialis. The iliotibial band also affects knee stability.

Shoulder And Shoulder Girdle Stabilization

The shoulder joint is most mobile joint in your body and needs a lot of stability to function correctly and prevent injuries. Prime stabilizer in your shoulder joint are the rotator cuff muscles: supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor and subscapularis. These muscles are holding the ball of your shoulder joint tightly against the socket when shoulder is moving. Weak or fatigued rotator cuff muscles can lead to soft tissue injuries, like shoulder tendonitis and bursitis.

The muscles that move the shoulder blade also play a role in stabilizing the shoulder joint. The muscles that attach on the inside of your shoulder blade (scapula) are the key muscles for scapular stabilization. These include the middle and lower trapezius, rhomboid major and minor, and serratus anterior. The scapular stabilization is essential in preventing shoulder injuries.

Pilates Trains Your Stabilizer Muscles

Pilates is a good lumbar spine and joints stabilization exercise method, its’ foundation is strengthening stabilizer muscles. The main focus is on keeping your pelvic and spine stable while other parts of body are moving. You are contracting the deep stabilizing muscles, transverses abdominis and multifidus so that  superficial muscles (movers) of the extremities have optimal coordination and motion. The core stabilizers are present in all Pilates movements but it also strengthens your shoulders, shoulder blade and hip and knee stabilizers. Pilates help achieve and increase quality of movements and functions of all joints and muscles, from head to toe, by creating body awareness, co-ordination and endurance. Pilates is a good exercise for injury prevention as well as to improve your optimal sport performance.