Vital Core Training

Vital Core Training is more than just another core training book; it is an indispensable resource with insights and strategies that will empower you to better assess clients’ needs, enhance program design, and implement core movement training that will yield results for individuals and groups of all ages and abilities.

Leslee Bender—the creator of the Bender Ball™, a former IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year, and a 40-year veteran in the fitness industry—will show you how to apply myofascial lengthening and release techniques, in combination with functional exercise, to help clients decrease pain, build strength, enhance mobility, boost flexibility, improve balance, and optimize everyday function. In Vital Core Training, she explains the how, why, and when of 78 exercises and stretches, most requiring no equipment other than a small ball, making them accessible and effective for strengthening the core while protecting the back. With step-by-step instructions and detailed photos, you’ll learn how to adjust techniques for various fitness levels and incorporate the exercises into client programming.

You will also find 11 workouts; each can be used as is or customized to specific needs or goals.

• Core essentials workouts for beginning, intermediate, and advanced clients
• Targeted workouts for maintaining everyday function, improving posture and back health, and addressing alignment dysfunctions
• Workouts for popular rotational sports: pickleball, tennis, and golf

Vital Core Training offers an evidence-based approach to core work that equips fitness professionals and movement specialists with the tools to help clients move efficiently, safely, and without pain.

Earn continuing education credits/units! A continuing education exam that uses this book is also available. It may be purchased separately or as part of a package that includes both the book and exam.

Audience

Fitness professionals who want to enhance their clients’ functional core training to reduce their pain and improve their strength; a reference for fitness enthusiasts.

Foreword by Keli Roberts

Part I. Foundations
Chapter 1. A New Functional Approach
Understand how small ball training provides spinal stability and increases mobility for all bodies.
Chapter 2. Core Essentials
Learn how the core muscles and fasciae function and move within the planes of motion.

Part II. Exercises
Chapter 3. Vertical Exercises
Use gravity and the planes of motion to enhance body awareness through movement.
Chapter 4. Kneeling Exercises
Improve balance while maintaining support to strengthen the upper body.
Chapter 5. Prone Exercises
Amplify hip and spine alignment with prone exercises.
Chapter 6. Side-Lying Exercises
Challenge the core and emphasize the obliques with side movements.
Chapter 7. Seated and Supine Exercises
Correct poor posture with exercises that support and strengthen the lower core muscles.
Chapter 8. Stretches
Learn to relax, boost mobility, and augment suppleness through stretching.

Part III. Workouts
Chapter 9. Create Workouts
Learn how to combine exercises to create three levels of core essential workouts.
Chapter 10. Workouts for Better Posture and a Healthy Back
Follow sample workouts that address alignment dysfunctions and build core functionality.
Chapter 11. Core Workouts for Rotational Sports
Follow three sample workouts to complement popular recreational activities.

Leslee Bender, ACSM, NASM, FAFS, FAI, NPCT, is a 40-year veteran in the fitness industry and recipient of the 2020 IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year award. She is the coauthor of I Am Ageless Now, the owner of Ageless Now Academy, and the creator of the Bender Method of training, using the Bender Ball™.

Bender has presented worldwide and has appeared on national television. She has filmed video content for many companies, including Savvier, IDEA, Reebok, SCW, Ageless Academy, and more. The creator of Barre Above Pilates training and cocreator of Barre Above through Savvier Fitness, she has certified and trained thousands of fitness professionals internationally.

Bender is the programming director at Sports West Athletic Club in Reno, Nevada, where she trains all levels of students, specializing in pre- and postrehabilitative modalities. When in Florida, she works with professional athletes who compete in sports that emphasize rotational core movement, such as tennis and golf. She has a passion and love for the fitness industry and continues to grow and evolve her craft.