Core strength for field athletes is worth training, and almost none of it looks like ab work. The trunk's job during a sprint or a cut is to refuse to move, so what you want is the ability to resist rotation, resist extension and resist side bend under load. Crunches train the opposite. They teach the spine to flex, which is the one thing you do not want it doing when a defender hits you mid stride.
Updated October 2026.
We get asked about this most often by a parent who has been told their kid needs a stronger core and has no idea what that means in practice. Fair. The phrase gets used for everything from planks to crunches to whatever the ab machine at the gym is called, and most of what gets prescribed does not show up on a field.
What the trunk is actually doing out there
Watch a sprinter from the side. Every time a foot hits the ground, force goes up the leg and into the hips, and the trunk either transmits it forward or it leaks. A trunk that gives up a few degrees on each step is bleeding force into rotation that nobody asked for. Over 40 yards, that adds up.
A change of direction is the same problem with the dial turned up. To plant and cut, you have to stop the body from continuing in the direction it was already going, and the trunk is the link holding the plant leg and the shoulders on the same plan. Athletes who get knocked off a cut often do not have a leg strength problem at all. They have a trunk that let the shoulders arrive late.
That is why we treat trunk work as a strength quality rather than a finisher. It is the same argument we make one joint up in being strong and still slow: force that does not get out of the body does not count.
What actually trains it
Three categories cover most of what a field athlete needs, and all three are loaded rather than endless.
- Anti-rotation. Pallof presses and their variations, single-arm carries, anything where a load is trying to turn you and your job is to not turn. This is the closest thing in the weight room to what a cut demands.
- Anti-extension. Hard planks with real tension, rollouts, dead bugs done properly. The test is whether the ribs stay down and the low back stays flat. A 3 minute plank with a sagging middle trains nothing but patience.
- Anti-lateral flexion. Suitcase carries with one heavy handle. Simple, miserable, and it transfers.
Loaded carries are the most underused of the lot for an athlete in a field sport. A heavy walk with the trunk braced is both the training and the test, because the first thing that fails is posture and you can see it from across the room.
The other thing that trains the trunk, and gets forgotten, is the main lifts. A front squat and a heavy single arm press are trunk exercises whether or not anybody calls them that. An athlete already squatting and pressing with a braced trunk is getting a dose of this before any dedicated work starts.
How much a real week can absorb
Not much, and that is the point. An athlete in season is already practicing four or five days, playing on the weekend, and lifting whatever is left. Adding 20 minutes of ab circuits to that is how you get a tired athlete rather than a stiffer one.
Two short doses a week attached to the end of a lift is usually plenty: one anti-rotation movement, one carry, a handful of hard sets rather than a burn-out. If an athlete can hold a position for 2 minutes, the answer is to make it heavier, not longer. Endurance in a plank stops transferring to anything well before the 2 minute mark.
The scheduling logic is the same one in how we build a week, and it is also why nothing here is a standalone core day. A field athlete does not need one.
What does not transfer
High-rep crunches and sit-ups train spinal flexion under fatigue, which is neither what the sport asks for nor kind to a back that already takes a beating. Russian twists done fast with a plate are mostly momentum and a lot of lumbar rotation. The ab machine with the pads is training a movement that does not exist on a field.
Sprinting, cutting and tackling are things the trunk does at speed, against something, while bracing. Train it that way and it shows up. Train it lying on a mat chasing a rep count and it stays on the mat.
If you want to see where trunk work sits inside a full programme, that is what our performance training is built around, and the easiest way to work out what an athlete actually needs is to come in and get looked at rather than guess from a list.