Developing a strong core

Your core is very important. As we get older our core must stay strong to help us keep moving. Im going to jump right to muscles I think most people over look, the upper and lower back. I would like to share a personal experience. I train every day, and at one point I was getting very bad headaches and my upper back was really hurting. A physical therapist told me to think about what I was doing all the time. Everything I did was pushing forward, all my kicks, punches, punching the bag, push ups....... But I never worked on the opposite muscle groups which were my upper back. So my upper back was weak and it was trying to compete against my chest and abs and it was getting fatigued and knotting up. So I strengthened my upper back and over time my headaches went away and the pain did to. Think about sitting up straight in your chair, I don't know about you but after a while my back starts to get tired. That is because your muscles are weak. Think about this, how do you stand up straight? What muscles make you stand up straight? Your back. So for that reason I like to incorporate lower and upper back exercises into my kickboxing class. We are not lifting a ton a weight, we mainly just use resistances bands, but it is just to get the point across that this is important to   focus on.