Core Exercise Assessments And Relationships With Past Injury History

Core assessments are used to examine the strength and stability of the core musculature. Planks, dead bugs, bird dogs, and hip bridges held to maximum effort can assess the muscular endurance of the core and surrounding muscle groups. Depending on an individual's injury history, core musculature endurance may also vary between individuals. PURPOSE: To determine the relationships between different core endurance exercise assessments and number of injured body parts within past injury history. METHODS: Thirty-six individuals (Height: 169.26 ± 8.32 cm, Weight:73.20 ± 16.61 kg, Body Mass Index (BMI): 25.41 ± 4.79, 12 M, 24F) participated in this study. Individuals completed an injury history questionnaire and a series of core assessments. Participants were instructed on how to perform the exercise with proper technique. The assessor timed each participant for their maximum hold time with correct technique for a prone bridge plank (PBP), dead bug, bird dog, bilateral hip bridge (BHB), right unilateral hip bridge (RUHB) and left unilateral hip bridge (LUHB). Participants completed the series of core assessments twice in one day, then completed the series two more times on a separate day, for a total of four maximum hold times for each core assessment. The best hold time in seconds for each assessment was used in this analysis. Spearman’s rho correlation coefficients were used to determine relationships between the number of injured body parts from the injury history questionnaire and the core endurance exercise hold times. Alpha was set to 0.5 a-priori. RESULTS: Significant correlations were found for the number of injured body parts with maximum hold times for RUHB (rho = .398; p = .016) and LUHB (rho = .360; p = 031). There were no significant correlations between the number of injured body parts with maximum hold times for PBP (rho = .150; p = .384), dead bug (rho = .163; p = .343), bird dog (rho = .129; p = .455), or BHB (rho = .107; p = .534) exercises. CONCLUSIONS: The number of injured body parts due to injury related muscle weaknesses may play an important role in the maximum hold times for unilateral core assessments. Injury history should be taken into consideration before the assessment of unilateral core assessments and used as a tool to adjust assessment findings, improve training goals, and develop injury prevention strategies.