The core is the foundation of our body’s strength and stability. A strong core is not about having the coveted, and mostly unattainable, set of six-pack abs; it’s about having a stable foundation that supports your body in every movement you are doing. Whether you’re a fitness enthusiast, a person looking to start a movement practice or someone looking to improve their posture and overall well-being, activating and strengthening your core is essential. In this blog post, we’ll explore tips to help you effectively activate your core muscles and build strength from within.
Understanding the Core
First and foremost, it’s crucial to understand what the core actually is. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not just about the rectus abdominis muscles, better know as the six-pack abs. The core is also not a place that you will find in anatomy books, it’s just a name invented in the fitness world and now used everywhere.
The core is comprised of many muscles that stabilize the spine, pelvis, and shoulders, providing a foundation for movement and strength. The core includes muscles such as the transverse abdominis (the deepest ab muscles), internal and external obliques (AKA your side abs), multifidus and erector spinae, (muscles along the spine), pelvic floor muscles, diaphragm and even muscles of your hips. Together, these muscles work in harmony to provide stability and support during your movement, whether you’re lifting weights, running, or simply bending down to tie your shoes.
Additionally, the core transfers force from your legs through your trunk to your arms. An easy way to think of this is think of the sports ball game baseball. The batter doesn’t just hit the ball with their arms. They are pushing through their back foot, exerting force into the ground as their body starts to rotate, that transfers the force up through their engaged core to power the swing to hit the ball as far as they can. Sure their arms are doing some of the work, but their core is hitting the ball and transferring the force from the ground to the bat.
Mind-Body Connection
Activating you core isn’t just about engaging the muscles; it’s about establishing a mind-body connection. This is something we talk about a lot in our first private training session with new folks at the gym. We begin with foam rolling and breathing exercises because this gives us a chance to slow down and go internal with our body and see how we are really feeling. We are asking you, and giving you permission, to slow down. Life is so hectic in a capitalistic society and it’s always pulling you out of your body and wanting you distracted. Here we’re inviting you to go internal and be with your breath and body.
In our breathing exercise and other warm-up exercises we discuss the important of the breath, especially its role in core activation. We also discuss when to breathe and how to breathe in each exercise, thus giving you an opportunity to create mindful movement while we warm up and exercise.
Mindful movement allows us to tune into our bodies, notice imbalances, and make adjustments as needed. By practicing mindfulness during core activation exercises, we can enhance proprioception and deepen our understanding of our body’s capabilities.
Common Misconceptions
Activating your abs and engaging your core can be a somewhat tricky thing. Common misconceptions include.
- Sucking in your abs/drawing your belly button to your spine. These are great for getting into a tight pair of pants, but not for supporting your spine while picking up heavier items.
- Pushing your abs out or baring down (like you might if straining on the toilet). Both of these scenarios generally mean you are holding your breath, which isn’t needed in general fitness or in every day life scenarios. Baring down also can be really hard on your pelvic floor muscles and may cause some pelvic floor dysfunction e.g. leaking.
- Holding your breath is a strategy some people try to use to activate their cores, but this is also not helpful and it doesn’t actually strengthen the core, it by passes it. Holding your breath is trying to use the diaphragm, your breathing muscle, to stabilize the spine. The diaphragm is part of your core, but it needs to be used in harmony with your other core muscles. Also holding your breath can put a lot of downward pressure on the pelvic floor which isn’t good for those muscles.
- Only using your rectus abs (those six-pack abs)/only tucking your butt under. Contracting your rectus abs will also tuck your butt under, but only contracting the rectus abs doesn’t really support the spine, because those muscles only flex the spine and don’t create a column of support around the spine. Tucking the butt, depending on the person, can be used to help align the core, but just tucking the butt doesn’t engaged the core.
Tips for Activating and Engaging Your Core
As stated above the core musculature is made up of your transverse abs, inner and outer obliques, diaphragm, pelvic floor muscles as well as some other stabilizers in your back and hips. We think of the core as a soup can with the diaphragm being the top, the transverse ab and inner and outer obliques that wrap around your torso and waist as the sides of your the can and the pelvis floor muscles as the bottom of the can. We’re looking for our soup can to not have any dents (arching in the back) in it.
Activating the abs and engaging the this musculature comes with breath and the mind-body connection. And with a lot of practice.
We cue the oblique engagement with an exhale and knitting the ribs together. As you can see in the photo above the oblique muscles are oriented in a diagonal manner and help pull your opposite rib to your opposite hip-this is the knitting. This knitting helps draw the ribs together and down, activates the abs (you should feel some resistance in your ab if you were to poke your sides) and aligns your ribs over your pelvis. Yay soup can positioning!
See the video below for a guide on activating the obliques to knit or depress the ribs.
Why is the exhale so important? When we exhale the ribs naturally shift down more into the position we are looking for, our pelvic floor muscles naturally contract (lifting up) to support us from below and this also get the transverse abs (the deep inner abs) to contract to support the spine. This is why the breath is so important. This is also why exhaling on effort is important and why exhaling when reaching away is important in maintaining core engagement and alignment.
A little extra tip I give folks when they are having a hard time figuring out how to contract the core, especially if they are trying the floor slides in our warm up is to cough or laugh as they reach overhead. Our abs involuntarily engage when we cough or laugh. Now we need to create that mind-body connection to do it consciously.
Activating the core involves engaging all of the muscles in a coordinated manner with your breath to provide stability and support to the spine and pelvis. When done correctly, core activation can improve posture, reduce the risk of injury, improve functionality and daily living and enhance overall strength and performance.
As always I hope this blog post was helpful for understanding how to activate the core effectively and has you feeling more informed and ready to go for your next workout or your next 17 grocery bags in one trip!
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