Core strength is important for both ends of the leash — so for this episode, Liz and Kelly both joined me to talk about their relative expertise... Kelly shared what to consider and why it matters for our four-legged teammates, and Liz talked about fitness for the human-half of the team! 

 Transcription

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I have Liz Joyce, and Kelly Daniel here with me to talk about core fitness concepts for both ends of the leash. Hey, ladies. Welcome to the podcast!

Liz & Kelly: Hi. Thanks for having us.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. So, to start us out, I want to give listeners a little bit of a heads up reminder of kind of who you guys are and maybe who your current canine crew is and give them kind of a chance to say, this is so and so's voice. And this is so and so's voice. Kelly, you want to go first?

Kelly Daniel: Yep. I'm Kelly. I'm from New Zealand. I currently have, in my crazy household, five dogs of my own and two cats and a tiny human. And then I've got a somewhat tolerant partner who has two dogs of his own that are very untrained and naughty. So it's a lot, a lot.

Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Liz?

Liz Joyce: I didn't know you had so much going on at your house. Kelly, that's admirable. I'm Liz, and I do the handler fitness through Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.

And right now I have a three year old german shepherd named Levi. And our primary sport is tracking, which he is just killing right now. We're, like, on the cusp of getting our TDX title. So we have our TD and our UTD, and we are just minutes away from getting those X titles. And I can't wait. It's been really fun.

Melissa Breau: That's awesome. All right, so we're going to talk about the core today. So let's start about just kind of explaining what we mean when we say the core. So what. What muscle groups are we talking about? And I'll let you kind of talk to your respective expertise ends of the leash, Kelly?

Kelly Daniel: Well, it's pretty similar in terms of the types of muscles and the locations between the dogs and the humans. Just because dogs are quadruped, some of the lengths of the muscles and their specific locations are a tiny bit different.

But in terms of the dog, the core musculature is basically the whole, the whole body and abdomen of the dog. So it's a complex layer of muscles that crisscross in lots of different directions, and it covers the dog's entire back and stomach and sides. That's sort of the main primary core musculature. And then there's secondary core musculature that extends from the trunk and covers where the limbs attach to the body. So basically, the core musculature is the core muscles of the entire body. The torso, yeah. Yep. Yeah, the whole torso. Cover the whole torso. And where the limbs attached to the torso.

Melissa Breau: Liz?

Liz Joyce: It's so cool hearing your explanation, Kelly, because all I'm picturing is, like, a sling, like, you know, like. Like a harness, kind of like that, sort of, yeah, super cool. Um, yeah. So, obviously, we're gonna, I'm gonna be working on the human aspect of core, and I want to explain a little bit what's unique about what we're going to be doing, because I think a lot of core workouts that people will just find have a lot of crunching or planking without a lot of intentional strengthening of the inner layers of the abdominal muscle. So I'm going to just explain that super quick. But if you could picture, like, a soup can, how you have the structural metal aspect of it and the bottom part and then the pretty paper on the outside your abdomen is kind of the same, where the metal structure of the can and the bottoms, the bottom of the can be your pelvic floor, and the metal structure would be your transverse abdominis.

And then the pretty paper are those six pack abs that we see in magazines. We're going to be doing a lot of preliminary pelvic floor work. We're also going to be working on building strength and recruitment patterns with your transverse abdominis and then bringing it into movement, which I'm really excited about. We're also going to be talking a lot about how the pelvis sits and how that affects your abdominal engagement. We're also going to be talking about breathing and pairing breathing with muscle engagement so you can really optimize your movements. So I'm looking forward to working with the students that are going to be in our class.

Melissa Breau: It's going to be fun.

Kelly Daniel: I think that's quite an important note, Liz. Like, for you, for the humans, the fact that the core musculature extends with that pelvis musculature, because that's probably the main point of difference with humans compared to dogs, because we're upright and all that pelvis musculature is like supporting the abdominal organs.

Liz Joyce: And I know that's what I've been studying, so that's probably quite an important note in terms of core musculature for humans. I think that is important. And last year, well, actually, this year, I had a very major surgery and had about a four inch incision through my entire pelvic floor right at the bottom. So I learned and worked a ton on building that back this year. So it's been really cool, and I'm really excited to learn all the stuff that I went through. Obviously, it's not going to directly apply to everybody, but the concept, so it's going to be cool.

Melissa Breau: Fantastic. So why the core? Why are we looking at that? Why is it important for dog sports teams? How does having a strong core enable better actual competition performance for the dogs?

Kelly Daniel: I think sometimes we forget that muscles do more than just move dogs, and the core musculature in particular is responsible for a range of body functions, not just movement.

A lot of the core musculature, particularly in the thorax or the area around the chest in your dog, it controls breathing. And if your dog doesn't breathe, then they can't do exercise. If they can't control their breathing rates, then their cardiovascular fitness will be impacted. That's the first function to think about with the core musculature, is that it's what controls your dog's breathing. The second one is the core musculature is involved in movements, but it's also involved in posture.

So that's the ability to hold a position for a period of time. And all dogs need that in life, but especially in sports as well. They need to control their body and how it is still, as well as how it's moving. That's super important. And those muscles that hold the body still in postural positions are usually the first to fatigue. So that's gonna impact hugely, especially sports with obedience that have, like, changes of positions and distance control and more prolonged positional exercises.

And then, of course, the third reason is that that core musculature also relates to every single movement that your dog does. It controls weight shift forwards and backwards, which is primarily how the movements start, but it also links into all of the limbs that move to enable your dog to move in different directions. So basically, the core musculature is essential for, like, everything that your dog does.

Melissa Breau: So all the things?

Kelly Daniel: All the things, yeah.

Liz Joyce: When we're thinking about people, I think this is an important thing, because almost every time I start with somebody, core is like the first thing that we look at. How are you able to control your pelvis when you're strengthening your body? And that's so important for dog sports teams, because when you are stronger, everything that you do takes less effort.

So you can also read that into you having more stamina throughout the day. You could also think about that as having more stamina during a specific agility run. Handlers use it a lot, too, when leash handling. If you're into bite work or tugging, I think about cores being protective and also controlling movement, too. So in agility, when you're running really fast and need to slow down or change directions, your core is going to kick in to make sure that you have control of your body, and that will help you make those adjustments faster and safer.

I also think a lot about it as being a protector for your mid, your mid back, low back, neck, hips, knees, all of that stuff. So I think about it from those two lenses also, having a strong core will allow you to stand up taller longer, which will affect your ability to hold your body in the posture and communicate more clearly to your dog what it is that you're looking for.

Melissa Breau: Sweet. Definitely lots of key pieces there for our dog sports folks. Liz sort of started this one on us, but I was going to ask you about specifically injury prevention. Core strength is definitely partially about performance. Can you guys talk a little bit more about the injury prevention piece of it for dogs in particular?

Kelly Daniel: Because that core musculature controls both posture and movement, and also because the fact that the postural muscles, particularly the ones in sort of the upper back of the first, to fatigue, if those muscles aren't holding correct posture and controlling movement correctly, that's going to lead to incorrect form and incorrect movements, which will lead to compensations in the muscles.

So soreness, but also potentially injuries. So that's why the core being strong, and not only being strong, but having endurance and being able to have a longer period of time before those muscles fatigue is really, really important. And then in terms of, like, if something does occur, the first thing that any rehab person is going to do is ensure that your dog can hold postural positions, which is all core engagement.

So not only is having a strong core potentially going to help reduce the chance of injury, but if injury occurs, having a strong core to start with is going to make that rehab process heaps easier and faster for your dog. So, which we don't want to think about because we don't want to think about our dogs being injured. But in dog sports, it happens sometimes, unfortunately.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. What about on the human end?

Liz Joyce: Yeah, well, so when people have poor posture, when I think about that as like, weak abdominal muscles and also holding yourself out of alignment and other things that can contribute to having a weak abdominal, like having babies or abdominal surgery or injuries, that those things will contribute to your postural core muscles being less effective and create a lot of imbalances in your body. So if your core is not able to do the work, opposing muscle groups will tighten up to make sure that you're as stable as you can be, which is a great strategy.

And also, there's a lot of follow up that comes with that. So from an injury standpoint, injury prevention standpoint, having a really strong core and being able to hold yourself in good alignment is so helpful for the overall function of your body and reducing injuries, literally head to toe. When I think about abdominal, when I think about having a strong core specific, like, to agility, for example. Maybe.

Let me just back up for a sec, because people get injured a lot of the time when they ask, the ask is too much. And a lot of that can happen by asking for range of motion without having control or strengthen range of motion. And so having a strong abdominal, having strong abdominals will help you explore longer ranges of motion and give you a better movement library to pull from so that you're prepared for whatever comes your way.

Melissa Breau: Okay, so what about when we're talking about a deficit here, right? Like, what signs or symptoms might exist if somebody or a dog has a weak core? Right. Can you talk a bit about how handlers maybe can assess both their own and their dog's current core strength?

Kelly Daniel: Yeah. In dogs, it's primarily looking, first of all, at posture and then looking at movement patterns. So in a weak core will generally result as hard with dogs, because structure. So the bones does relate to how a dog can stand and what they look like, but the muscles have to hold those bones in positions. So primarily, we're going to assess their ability to hold themselves in good form, so their posture in terms of that isometric contraction, so that core engagement to hold posture. And then secondarily, we can also look at the way that they move and how long they can move for.

In terms of assessing the core strength, there's a huge. It's not a one sort of a one thing to test core strength. There's a lot of different things that you can do, and it does depend on your goals for your dog. So, like, if mobility, like Liz was talking about, the ability to move and engage those muscles is important, then we can test that in a different way to if it's just postural strength that you're primarily aiming for, or if it's that endurance and moving type, core engagement.

But primarily, the way that we're going to check your dog's posture is if we ask them to stand, can they hold a stand and do it in good form? If we ask them to sit. Can they hold a sit? Can they do it in good form? Or do they relax and slop their body and get, like, a sloppy sit with their butt moving out sideways? So, yeah, which happens a lot. So, yeah, primarily with dogs, we're going to look at ability to hold positions in terms of an assessment of core strength.

Melissa Breau: Just a follow up there for you, Kelly, not to put you on the spot, but, like, what is a healthy amount of time to be? Obviously, we all fatigue eventually, right? So, like, what's a healthy period of time that we're talking about here?

Kelly Daniel: So I'm always aiming for two minutes. So can my dog hold when they're asked to? With help, I can reinforce them. I can do a chin rest. I can do a nose target. Can they hold a position without fatiguing for two minutes? That's always my goal. It's a little bit hard sometimes with sports dogs because we often do a lot of movement and fun and, like, woohoo. And offer some behaviors and throw yourselves around.

So sometimes the ability to stand still for two minutes can be behavioral and a learning exercise, as well as a strength and a postural exercise. And that's why dogs are so fun, because we can't just look at one thing. We have to assess all the different aspects of a certain behavior. Is it primarily strength, or is it behavior and understanding as well? But that's my goal in the stand, is can they hold a good position for two minutes?

Melissa Breau: Two minutes. Got it. All right, Liz, what about the human half?

Liz Joyce: I think the primary symptom of poor core strength that I get when people come to work with me is pain, lower back pain, specifically. So I would say that is a pretty good sign. Your core is also involved in balance. So it is a huge balance driver in your body. So I would say if your balance, if you've noticed it, getting progressively harder to do or you're finding yourself tripping more or falling more, that can be another indication of having poor core strength and testing it, like Kelly's saying, too, it really depends on your goals. But I think very simple test that anyone can do is to just hold a front plank from your elbows and from your toes. And I do have some times for you, Melissa.

Melissa Breau: Go for it. I want to hear.

Liz Joyce: So you would consider someone who's able to hold a plank from their elbows and their toes for less than 15 seconds to be in a very poor core strength category. 15 to 30, we would say. I feel so bad using these words. It's like a little, you know, it's not quite there. It's not what we want. 30 to 60 is a little below average. One to two minutes is average. Two to four minutes is above average. And, like, very, very good is four. Six minutes. And listen, y'all, if you're wanting to plank longer than six minutes, you need to add some variety to those movements.

That is a really long time to sit still. Just do it the whole time. The commercials are playing the whole time. Yeah, this is like, find another hobby. There's other things you can do to make this hard.

Kelly Daniel: Planking is so hard. So I've been doing classes with Liz for her last couple of classes, like, in her terms, and the reason I started was because I had a baby and my poor core strength got even poorer.

But when I have time, I'm doing little bits and pieces of the workouts from her classes, and I can still only hold my plank for, like, 20 seconds. So it's freaking hard doing the planking for the core strength. It's not an easy thing. So if you're getting past a minute, then bravo, because that's impressive. Super. Bravo. I know.

Liz Joyce: Yeah. No, it's true. It's very true. You've been kicking a lot of butt at those workouts, by the way.

Kelly Daniel: Oh, when I can fit them in, if only I could get more in, then I'd probably have more improvement, but, you know, life is crazy. So, hey, I'm sure. I'm sure nobody listening can empathize with that, guys.

Melissa Breau: All right, so let's talk a little more about the class itself. So can you guys each talk a little more about kind of what you're covering in the class specifically and maybe a little bit about how the class will work? Right, because you've got both handler and dog elements here and two different instructors, and you guys could talk to that. That would be great.

Kelly Daniel: Yep. Well, obviously, like, we're still figuring it out, so we will go with the flow and see how it works. But at the moment, the plan is we're following the same sort of topics through the weeks, and then we're going to have some discussions that are sort of linked together on similar concepts.

But the basic structure will be we're going to, in the first week, talk about what core strength is and how we're going to assess it. So you're going to have a baseline assessment for both your dog and the handler, and then each week, we've got a different focus on a different aspect of core strength, and I'm going to provide a range of different canine specific fitness exercises to choose from.

And then as we go through. So each week I'll be providing specific canine exercises. And obviously, if the working students are submitting videos of their dogs, then I will give them feedback on that. And then as we do in most of my classes towards the end, we're going to talk about this sort of big picture and how core is a big part of the larger picture of fitness and workouts.

And then hopefully do another assessment so you can see the awesome progress that your dogs have made. So that's kind of. And I'm also going to try really hard as well to give what I like to do some functional examples of core strength for your dogs as we go through those different core strength. Because for me, that really helps my brain link the importance of the exercises that we're doing. So hopefully it helps other people sort of see the relevance and then also watch categories of those are the most important for their dog's needs and sports.

Melissa Breau: Liz, what about the other half?

Liz Joyce: I love this question so much. Okay, so I'm super excited about it. Like Kelly said, every week we're going to have a different topic that we're working on. And from the handler side, we're going to be working on, like, all of like, from the bottom up, how breathing impacts core function, how to improve your pelvic floor strength and function, how to engage your transverse abdominis, how to find both of those engagements and hold them when you're doing other core work.

I love that we are going to be bringing in examples that are specific to handling. So I think it's really important for handlers also to be able to visualize how they're going to use that movement in practice. It makes the movement more relevant and also builds better recruitment patterns. And they're actually doing the thing in addition to that stuff, each week I'm going to have beginner and intermediate level follow along core workouts that they are able to progress through. They're going to start with baseline. How long can you hold that awful, dreaded plank for, with an option to, like, do it from your knees also? Right. So every week we're going to have, how long can you hold your front and your side planks on each side? And then we'll be able to track progress that way. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

Melissa Breau: I think so. I think that tells me all about kind of what you guys are going to cover. And I just want to make sure I had a couple pieces to that question. I want to make sure you cover it all. So what was in the class and a bit about kind of how the class will work. Right. So you'll both kind of be judging. Liz will handle the people and Kelly will handle the dog end. Is that?

Liz Joyce: Yeah, totally.

Kelly Daniel: And we both do it the same way in that, like, at the start of the week, all the lectures will be released so that handlers can pick and choose because there's going to be a lot of content with having canine specific and handler specific exercises. So for that week, class participants can really pick and choose what's the most important for them and their dogs over that week.

Melissa Breau: Fantastic. All right, who should consider joining you? So are there prerequisites? Is there, like, an ideal level of fitness either on the dog side or the human side? Are there other things that should be considered about age or ability or any of that? Yeah. Who should join you?

Kelly Daniel: So for dogs, everyone should join us because core strength is the most important thing. And the thing we're starting with is really helping handlers understand form and get really good form in their dogs. So this is the perfect class for people that haven't done fitness before that are starting out with their dogs. Perfect class for young dogs that are starting. We can easily modify for young dogs that haven't finished growing yet.

These exercises will be perfect ones to start with as being appropriate and safe. The one thing to consider with the dogs in particular is if your dog has had a surgery or an illness or an injury relatively recently, then you'd need to talk to your main healthcare provider for your dog to make sure that doing fitness exercises isn't okay. I have that on all of my classes that just making sure. And if you're not sure if it's appropriate for your class, you can just flick me a message and I'll let you know.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Liz?

Liz Joyce: I think from the handler perspective, the class is going to be appropriate for people that would consider themselves to be at like an intermediate or lower level of core fitness. And you've got that nifty little guide to use as a benchmark, the mean guide. So that would be. That is the demographic age. No anybody can join. I think people, too, that are wanting to dial in and optimize their body function will get a lot out of this course, too. So if you're starting to lift weights or maybe you're in group class situations, or maybe you're learning from someone doing online workouts, something like that, or maybe you're not getting the full picture.

This is going to be like top down, in and out, full, full on info. So that's who I'm picturing joining me. And the only thing like Kelly's saying, too, is like, if you have maybe like a back injury or a frozen shoulder and you can't support weight, if you're unsure about any of those things, also do just send me a message and I'll let you know if it's appropriate for you or not. If you have any questions, you know, ask your doctor about that, if you have genuine concerns about those things. And yeah, that's who I'm picturing joining us.

Melissa Breau: So not the person who can do the six minute plank already?

Liz Joyce: No, no, not that person. Well, unless that person's never done fitness with their dogs and then maybe that person should join the class. But I. We're not only going to be planking, okay. There's just one of the things that is not. This is really going to be like a small portion of the workouts.

Kelly Daniel: I think another point that might be of interest to Fenzi people is because I know how busy we all are and I know that we all do lots of different sports. So this might be a really nice class if you're a little bit time poor, because you can do a little bit of work on you and a little bit of work on your dog that will apply across to all of the sports and activities that you do.

So it would be a really nice class if you're like, I just want to do something this term, but I don't have a huge amount of time because I know, in particular the canine fitness workouts, and I know what Liz's workouts are like. Like, you can have a really big impact with the canine workouts with just doing two or three workouts a week in like longer than 15 minutes.

So I think it'd be a great class for a time poor person who just wants to do a little bit and feel like they're doing stuff for them and their dogs.

Liz Joyce: Can I add to that? Because I totally agree with you. I think my workouts, I'm planning on keeping them like seven minutes or less. And I can't even begin to tell you, like, if I had a dime for every time someone asked me for a workout they can do with their dog, like weeping grace girls.

Kelly Daniel: So I love that this class is something because I think one thing that happens a lot with handlers is that they work so much with their dogs, it's hard to find time for themselves. So it's really cool that they're gonna be able to do the two things at once. Like, it's just awesome. Or just especially as well because they can do it like, physically in the same space.

And like, like, I do my fitness workouts on my setup that I do my canine workouts because I have the mat and I have everything down. So yeah, it should work quite well. And like, I've been doing some of Liz's, like, all I do is Liz's core strength stuff when I don't have time. And it's definitely going to work well for time poor people. So it should be good fun.

Melissa Breau: Fantastic. Just all of us. I feel like that's all of us. Any final thoughts that anybody wants to kind of add to what we were talking about or about the class or about equipment or any of that you guys want to talk about?

Kelly Daniel: I guess just if you're worried about the canine specific equipment, it's going to be. I'm super flexible. I can always suggest alternative suggestions, but generally we start with pretty basic equipment.

So a couple of cones, a long platform, and two smaller, stable platforms. We will do some cavaletti work as well. But don't let equipment hold you back from class because we can use books, we can use blocks, we can use offcuts of wood. I literally have got a really cool example of making cavaletti poles from some cans of fizzy drink and some, like, bamboo stakes for your garden.

So it's not going to be super fancy. And for people, you know, I'm doing no equipment at all. So if you've got a mat, you're good to go or carpet or whatever. So just like bring yourself, bring some water. It's going to be a fun time.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, thank you both so much for doing this. Thanks so much for having us. Good to see you girls.

Liz & Kelly: Likewise.

Melissa Breau: And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Irith Bloom to talk about building confidence and calm for anxious dogs. If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.

Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by Bensounnd.com. A track featured here is called Buddy Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.

 Credits

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!