Ask most OCR athletes about their core training and you’ll get one of two answers: either they do planks and sit-ups, or they assume that carrying heavy things and hanging from obstacles covers it. Both answers are partially right and mostly incomplete. The specific quality that gets tested on course — the ability to resist unwanted rotation, maintain position under asymmetric load, and stabilize laterally while fatigued — is something most athletes never actually train for directly.
That gap is costing them. Not in a dramatic, injury-crisis way. In a quieter, cumulative way: wasted energy through inefficient movement, positions that break down under fatigue, and obstacles that feel harder than they should because the body is working against itself.
What the Course Is Actually Asking Your Core to Do
When people say “core training,” they usually mean anterior chain work — crunches, planks, some leg raises. That targets trunk flexion and static endurance, which are real qualities. But the OCR course stresses the core in directions that anterior chain work barely touches.
Consider what happens during a bucket carry: you’re moving forward under axial load, trying to keep your torso from collapsing to one side. Or a suitcase carry drill: the uneven load is pulling you into lateral flexion with every step. On a traverse wall, your core is resisting rotational forces while your arms work dynamically and your feet push off holds. On a rope climb, every pull initiates a rotational demand that runs straight through your trunk. On a rig with ring transitions, the swing mechanics require rapid stabilization in multiple planes simultaneously.
None of that is a plank. And yet planks are what most athletes train when they think they’re preparing for it.
The functional demand on course is primarily anti-rotation, anti-lateral flexion, and dynamic stabilization under changing loads. Training specifically for those qualities produces different exercises than the standard core circuit — and the gap between what most athletes train and what the course demands is real and measurable.
The Anti-Rotation Basics: What to Build On
Anti-rotation training teaches the core to resist rotational force rather than produce it. The foundational movement pattern is the Pallof press: attach a band or cable to an anchor point at chest height, stand perpendicular to the anchor, and press the handle straight out from your chest. The load is trying to pull you toward the anchor and rotate your trunk. Your job is to stop it.
It’s a deceptively simple exercise, and it’s one of the most underused movements in OCR athlete training. The position you hold during the extended phase directly mirrors what your core is doing during rope climbs, rig transitions, and loaded carries. Progress it by increasing the band tension, moving further from the anchor, or adding a half-kneeling or split-stance position to increase the demand.
Beyond the Pallof press, the anti-rotation toolkit includes:
- Dead bug variations. The classic dead bug — lying on your back, extending opposite arm and leg while keeping your lower back flat — trains the anterior core to stabilize while limbs move. The key is treating it as a true anti-extension exercise, not just a movement drill. If your lower back is lifting off the floor at any point, you’re not getting the training effect you think you are.
- Bird dog. From quadruped position, extending opposite arm and leg while maintaining a neutral spine. Simple in concept, demanding in execution when done with real control. Add a small pause at full extension. The goal is a straight line from extended heel through hip through opposite shoulder, with zero rotation in the pelvis.
- Renegade rows. A plank with a row — arguably the most OCR-specific core exercise you can do in a gym. Holding the plank position while performing a unilateral pull exactly replicates the stabilization demand of pulling yourself up a rope or through a rig. Load it progressively and treat the plank quality as the primary goal, not the row weight.
- Half-kneeling chops and lifts. Using a band or cable, performing diagonal press or pull patterns from a half-kneeling position. These develop the rotational control in a tall-kneeling pattern that maps directly to load carry mechanics and transitions.
Lateral Stability: The Other Half That Gets Ignored
Anti-rotation addresses the sagittal-plane rotational demand. But the OCR course also stresses lateral stability — resisting side-bending under load, maintaining trunk position during single-leg movements on uneven terrain, and not collapsing laterally during heavy carries.
The suitcase carry is the most practical tool for this. Load a heavy kettlebell or dumbbell in one hand, hang it at your side, and walk. The uneven load will pull you into lateral flexion on every step. Your obliques and quadratus lumborum on the opposite side are working hard to keep you upright. It directly trains the demand of single-arm carries and irregular terrain navigation.
Progress the suitcase carry with:
- Heavier load over shorter distances before extending distance
- Alternating sides without rest between sets to train the transition
- Carrying over uneven terrain — grass, gravel, slight incline — to add the terrain variable that the gym floor removes
Lateral band walks and Copenhagen planks address the hip abductor contribution to lateral stability, which connects to how well you hold your trunk position during single-leg stance on technical terrain. These aren’t glamorous exercises. They’re also the exercises that the athletes who don’t blow up their hip flexors doing repeated step-ups on a bucket carry tend to have in their programs.
The honest caveat on lateral stability work: it has a diminishing returns curve that most athletes hit faster than they expect. If your lateral stability is severely undertrained, adding suitcase carries and Copenhagen planks will produce noticeable improvements within weeks. If you’re already reasonably stable, the marginal gains are smaller and slower. That’s not an argument against doing this work — it’s an argument for adding it early rather than late, because the gains compound into everything else you train.
Programming It Into Your Off-Season Block
The off-season is the right time to address structural deficiencies that get masked during race season by adrenaline and competitive drive. Anti-rotation and lateral stability work belongs at the beginning of a strength session, not the end. When you program it as an afterthought — a few sets of Pallof presses after the main lifts when you’re already fatigued and running short on time — it doesn’t get the attention it needs to produce adaptation.
A simple approach: pick one anti-rotation movement and one lateral stability movement, program them as a superset for three to four sets at the beginning of two of your weekly sessions, and treat them with the same intentionality you give your main compound lifts. That’s fifteen minutes of focused work per session. Over a twelve-week off-season block, the cumulative effect on your obstacle performance is not trivial.
Keep the reps controlled. Anti-rotation and lateral stability work is about quality of position, not metabolic output. If you’re rushing through these movements to get to the exercises that feel harder, you’re almost certainly missing the adaptation. Slow, controlled, deliberate. Three to four sets of eight to ten reps with genuine attention to position is more valuable than four sets of fifteen done fast.
The Bottom Line
The core the course actually tests isn’t the core most athletes train. Anti-rotation, anti-lateral flexion, and dynamic stabilization under load are the qualities that determine how efficiently you move through rope climbs, rigs, carries, and terrain transitions — and they’re undertrained in most OCR programs. Pallof presses, dead bugs, renegade rows, suitcase carries, and lateral stability work aren’t exciting additions to a training block. They’re foundational. The athletes who build that foundation carry it into every other training quality and onto every obstacle — usually without being entirely sure why things suddenly feel easier.
This article was researched with the help of AI tools and reviewed and edited by Hilton Campbell. Original reporting and quotes are our own.