www.EricWongMMA.com Training the core is all about function – what you want to do and why. One of the most important concepts to understand and train is your ability to activate your hip flexors (psoas while maintaining core stability. This becomes especially important when you’re throwing knees or kicks. If you’re like most people I work with, whenever you fire your hip flexors, your abs automatically crunch and your pelvis tilts under (posterior tilt). This is NOT beneficial because you lose the ability to rotate through the hips when it’s not in neutral position, decreasing the amount of rotation you get when you throw a roundhouse or big knee, thus decreasing it’s power. Also, doing this brings your face closer to your opponent, so you’re head is more in range of your opponents counter-attacks – not good unless you enjoy getting KTFO! So the video below will show you a simple exercise progression you can use to train this extremely important quality to improve the power of your kicks by increasing the strength of your hip flexors and improving your ability to stabilize your core when your hip flexors fire. Work your way up to 15 repetitions of each progression in PERFECT FORM before moving on to the next progression.