A Different Way to Strengthen Your Core

All Things Core

The core’s main job is to stabilize the spine, which means protect it from injury while going about your life and participating in your activities.

The deeper core muscles are made up of your diaphragm, pelvic floor muscles, transverse abdominis (TVA) and multifidus muscles and the more superficial abdominal muscles: the inner and outer obliques and rectus abdominis.

I like to think of the deep core muscles like a soup can. The diaphragm is the top and the pelvic floor muscles are the bottom. While your TVA and Multifidus are the sides of the can.

The deeper core is often overlooked in many “core” exercises. Most core exercises are focusing on working those superficial muscles. You will usually “feel the burn” in these muscles, but not so much when trying to target your deeper core muscles. Most exercises for the deeper core muscles are more brainy than anything else and tend to feel less sexy because you’re not feeling the physical effort.

Let’s start with alignment and finding a strong and stable core position.

Core Positioning

In the simplest terms, core positioning is aligning your ribs over your pelvis to be able to optimally create tension in your core to stabilize your spine and keep it safe during movements.

How does finding this core positioning help you achieve better core tension? Because you’ve stacked your diaphragm over your pelvic floor muscles and all sides of the “soup can” (e.g. your TVA and multifidus) are now set to do their job to the best of their ability.

Sticking with the can metaphor, when we aren’t in this aligned core position, let’s say your back is a bit arched, your can now has a dent in the side. Structurally this dent is not as strong and stable as when the can’s sides are parallel to one another. When we can’t get into that optimal core positioning, we can’t create the core tension needed to effectively stabilize our spine and its puts us at an elevated risk of injury, especially if the load we are moving is more than we can handle.

Unlocking This Achievement

Let’s talk about applying the knowledge to your body while doing exercises and other activities.

There are a few cues I use here to help most people get their ribs over their hips. The first cue is “sad mime”. In Pilates we would say “knitting the ribs together” to find the same position.

Sad mime is used to describe the ribcage depression that will help align the ribs over your pelvis-or more appropriately align your diaphragm over your pelvic floor muscles for optimal core positioning. This cue feels like a slouch for many folks, but it is more than that. Slouching doesn’t require active participation; it just sort of happens. Whereas sad mime, is exhaling and knitting the ribs together using your diaphragm, TVA and your external obliques.

Here is a video of me explaining it:

The other cue I use is to “tuck the pelvis” slightly, like when a dog brings their tail between their legs. This cue isn’t for everyone, but more often than not it is. This helps to bring the pelvis out of an anterior pelvic tilt (APT). For some people they are in a little ATP and other folks have quite a bit, so the cuing varies, depending on the person. Again this is to bring the the pelvis/pelvic floor muscles aligned directly under the diaphragm/ribs.

During Activities

Start simple.

This will take some focused attention and probably a mirror while you practice these adjustments with movement.

Begin with a squat, or standing up and down out of a sturdy chair. Can you maintain your diaphragm and pelvic floor muscles inline with one another? Your torso will no longer be in a vertical configuration, because the nature of the squat: your knees going a little forward, your hips going a little back and then your chest going a little forward to counter-balance yourself. In the mirror you just want to make sure there is no arch in your back. This would look like a ramp for a ski jumper to ski down and take off into the air to perform tricks.

Then work on finding this alignment in a horizontal position. I suggest a bear crawl position. This position challenges you because it is more demand on your core while trying to find and maintain that core position. This may feel more difficult physically or brain wise or both. In general, this alignment may just feel really foreign. It will take some time and repeated application.

Here's the video of me talking you through it:

Give these exercises a try and see how they go. Can you incorporate the exhaling and knit the rib cage into that sad mine position? Can you maintain the ribs over the pelvis while squatting? How does the bear crawl position feel?

Practice and watch as you improve. But if it's still feeling hard, feel free to reach out, I train folks here in Medford at Reimagym.