In this instructional video, SOMA therapist and trainer Ekemba Sooh explains how a weak core contributes to a range of health problems—including back pain, spinal and visceral herniations, and chronic fatigue. He first expands the definition of the core beyond the rectus abdominis, describing four layers of abdominal muscles, three layers of erector spinae, serratus anterior/posterior, rhomboids, lats, intercostals, diaphragm, pecs, and related fascia. He then details the biomechanical mechanisms: inadequate core tension and fascia mobility cause improper spinal alignment, reduced disc hydration, and poor force dissipation, leading to back pain; weak core walls allow pressure to force internal organs through anatomical openings (Pascal’s law), causing herniations; and insufficient core stability forces larger muscles to constantly correct posture within a 4‑degree “gravity‑line cone,” resulting in fatigue. Sooh recommends a training hierarchy that starts with deep stabilizers—transversus abdominis (TVA), diaphragm, and transverse spinalis—to establish neuromuscular control before progressing to superficial muscles like obliques and rectus abdominis. He concludes with a call to action, offering a free diagnostic consultation and a free report on sustainable body training, and encourages viewers to subscribe for future mobility content.
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Do you have back pain? Do you have herniations, visceral problems? Are we fatigued all the time? Well, having a weak core can be a contributing factor to all these maladies. So I want to talk about in totality what the core is and how the different aspects of the core can lead to those back pains, herniations, visceral problems and fatigue. Greetings. If we haven't met, my name is Akimba. So. And I'm a SOMA therapist and a SOMA trainer. And I've used information such as this, along with the techniques and treatments associated with it, to not only help hundreds of clients, but also to use them on myself to cure my L4, L5 compression with sciatic pain. If you haven't subscribed yet, please go ahead and subscribe. Don't forget to click that bell so you're notified each time we bring out videos about balancing your body so you can live life on your terms. So let's start with one thing. First, is that your core is not just your ab muscles. On top of that is not just your rectus abdominis, which is what everybody trains. You have four layers of ab muscles, you have three layers of back erector muscles. You have your serratus anterior, your serratus posterior, superior, inferior. You have your rhomboids, your lats, your intercostals, your thoracic diaphragm, your pec, your lats. I may have forgotten something. I don't think I did. But you get the idea of what's going on is that all these soft tissues contribute to keeping my core, my thorax in a good place. If I keep my thorax in a good place, my spine stays in a good place. And I don't have all these maladies of back pain, herniations or visceral problems and or fatigue. So you want to make sure you have the proper tension, strength, compression and flexibility with these soft tissue muscles. So first, back pain. So back pain happens because your spine doesn't stay in the proper space, proper curves, and potentially has not enough space between the vertebral segments. Part of that is hydration. So you. So you want to make sure you're hydrated so that the disc inside your spine stay fluffy like shock absorbers. But your abs in relation to your core are the biggest part to help stabilize your spine. That starts deep with your TVA out to your internal, oblique, external oblique and rectus abdominis. They form with the back muscles and the different layers of fascia to help two things to stabilize your spine and to move your spine. And so if you don't have enough strength in those ab muscles and enough fluidity in those fascia muscles, you get back pain. Because your body should dissipate force as you move around. It shouldn't stay in one spot. If it stays in one spot, well, that's where you get that constant tension to cause injury and pain. If you were to cut yourself at L3 with a knife, the only thing that's protecting your body, hold your body in place is those ab muscles and more specifically, those layers of fascia. So you want to make sure you train the abs to help the fascia, to help keep yourself in a good spot so that you can control your body. Herniations. Herniation can be caused by a weak core, herniations at the spine we talked about before. But herniations can also happen in your thoracic cavity. If I have an opening, a space opening, my internal organs can come out of that space. You have a law called Pascal's law, which means when I exert force on an area, the force goes like a ball, the force goes omnidirectional, a bunch of different openings. Well, if the force is being exerted through my body and there's a hole in one of those areas, my internal organs couldn't go out of that hole. So you have a couple physiological holes, like your Jean Louis Petit and Quadrant Greenfeld. But you can have holes or openings because your core is weak. So keeping your core strong will help close these holes. So if I have a weak core, it's not flexible, can't do any effort, then it kind of like loosens up, it opens up. So that's the hole. And so if I'm the internal organs and I'm becoming this pressure exerted on me and I get pushed out, my contacts come out of that hole. The way to stop that is to train your core to stitch it back together through strengthening total range and then also internal range to make it so that hole closes. And when a force comes boop, it runs into a wall. That's why I called it an abdominal wall. Are you dealing with back pain, visceral problems, fatigue, herniations of some sort? Have you thought about using your abs in these different ways we're talking about? Give me a yes or no below in the comments and also add in, what have you been doing? Is it working or not working? Are you dealing with visceral problems? Visceral means like internal organs. So any type of issues of digestion or the stomach or the liver, the pancreas, anything like that. Well, your core could be a big factor as to why you're having those issues. As we talked about prior, your core, we can even talk about your abs. You want your core to be like a wall, so you want to have those walls. If I don't have a wall, then my internal organs will be kind of flowing or moving out of place because they're not being held. They're not being held in place. If they're not being held in place well, they can't do their job. It's like if I ask you to stand there and do some work, but then I push you off to the left, right? That's your right. I push you off to your right and I ask you to do a job that's over here, it's not going to work. You also want your core, so specifically a thoracic diaphragm, to be in place and be able to move properly. If that thoracic diaphragm, which is gigantic right around here, is in place, it can move as I breathe in and breathe out. Well, now it can hold a lot of these internal organs in place and also cause the proper tension and compression through just regular breathing to allow motility to happen in my internal organs. Motility is the ability for your little internal organs, their breathing process, their moving process, so they function properly. So keeping your core strong and in place, your structure and keeping the movement at your core proper will help these visceral problems, hopefully not be problems. Fatigue, your core can play a big part in why you're fatigued generally at the end of the day, but throughout the day. So you have something called a gravity line cone. It's a inverse cone 4 degrees around you. And there's a lot of factors that participate in keeping yourself in that cone, but your core is a big part of it. If I can't keep myself in my core and I'm always falling out of this 4 degree cone, then. And my bigger muscles have to always kind of pull myself back in place like a rein, like I have to pull myself back. Well, that takes a lot of effort throughout the day to keep yourself in place. If I have good posture via my core and good neuromuscular activation to my core, specifically transversus spinalis and TVA along with other things, then I can keep myself in that core, which means I expend less energy throughout the day. That's great because now you're not totally fatigued and your muscles aren't totally sore at the end of the day from doing work they shouldn't have to be doing. So there you go. Hopefully you got a better idea now of the importance your total core plays in stopping back pain, herniations, fatigue and intervisceral problems. And there's a lot that goes into the core, as we talked about at the beginning, there's a lot of core muscles. So where do you begin? So the general rule of thumb is you always want to start from the deeper muscles and work out. So if you want something to work on, work on your tva, work on your diaphragm and work on your transverse spinalis. By working deeper first, you start to increase how well I can keep my structure in place and also more importantly, the neuromuscular connection in my body. So if I have good deep muscles, they want to have a thought to move those muscles since they're activated and aware I move properly right away. Once I move properly right away, then you move on to more superficial muscles. Because now that proper movement is going to help when you train the more superficial, which is like the obliques and the rectus abdontis, the rector, stuff like that. So hope you guys get value from that. Go train your core. If you've been struggling for a while with a weak core and the consequences of a weak core, the back pain, the herniations, the visceral problems, the fatigue, and you want to figure it out, you want to feel better, then I want to help. So I've got a free diagnostic consultation that we can do. In the description below, you'll find a link. It's to a calendar. Choose a calendar, choose a time that works for you, and we'll hop on a call or on this call, we're going to find out what's going on with you, what you've been doing and where you want to go. I try and impart as much information as I can to you and show you how I can help. If you're not ready for a call, then that's okay. I've got a free report you can read first. It's on how to sustainably train your body so you can have a good life again. In the description below, you'll find that link. You click on a link, put your information in, and we'll send it right out to you. Don't miss this next video where I talk about how to stretch properly for mobility. Please subscribe and then please like and share this video so that others who might find this beneficial will get to see it. Remember, it is not just working out. It's building a foundation for a better life.
