How to easily strengthen your core

In our practice we repeatedly hear clients talk about wanting to strengthen their ‘core’. While most people understand why they’d want to improve this area, there appears to be huge confusion around exactly how to do this.

The anatomy

The inner unit (core) is actually comprised of four main muscle groups and these muscles work in unison, to provide a powerful stabilising system for the torso.

Your abdominal cavity is filled with organs and needs to be supported by other structures. Think of this cavity and the supporting structures as a drum. Your diaphragm is the top (lid) of the drum and is situated just under the base of your ribcage. The muscles making up the pelvic floor are situated at the base of your abdominal cavity and form the base of the drum.

Your transversus abdominis (TVA) wraps around your middle, like the sides of the drum. Think of this muscle as your natural corset, tightening around your middle when it contracts. Lastly, the multifidus provide stability to each segment of the spine. Imagine a column of glasses stacked one inside the next. If you took that stack and turned it on its side, the entire column would come apart. If we stuck the glasses together, the column – when turned on its side – would stay straight.

This is effectively what your multifidus do.

Since your waist bends in all directions, your core (the drum) is required to stabilise your torso in all directions. The TVA, multifidus and pelvic floor are on the same neurological loop (when you use one, the others should be working too), so if one of these muscles is not working properly, the core won’t function correctly.

So, in order to strengthen the core effectively, you should engage the pelvic floor, TVA and multifidus in the same exercise.

The importance of breathing correctly

The first thing you need to check is your breathing pattern. On inhalation, your belly should relax and expand outwards (like a balloon filling) and you should see outward expansion of the ribcage, as opposed to an upward lift. If you hold your abdominals tight as you breathe in, then you (like most people) tend to breathe into your chest, without fully engaging your diaphragm.

The following exercise will help you to both breathe diaphragmatically and strengthen the core as a whole, including the pelvic floor.

4 point kneeling

First practice breathing while kneeling on all fours, placing your wrists directly below your shoulders and your knees directly below your hips. Point elbows towards the thighs and fingers forward.

Place a broomstick along your spine ensuring the stick has contact with the back of your head, the space between your shoulder blades and your tailbone (the space between your lower back and the stick should be the thickness of your flat hand). Your neck and head should follow the natural line of your spine.

Keep the broomstick parallel to the floor at all times. On your breath in, relax fully through your abdominals and allow your belly button to hang towards the floor. Draw your belly button towards your spine on your breath out. When you can do this comfortably, try holding your belly button in for 10 – 30 seconds.

As you get more proficient at holding your tummy in, try the next stage of the exercise. On your breath out, draw your navel in towards your spine, then slowly take the weight off one hand and then the opposite knee (just enough so you could slip a piece of paper under it.) Don’t shift your weight off-centre. This movement tricks your brain into thinking your spine is going to twist, which forces the stabilisers to work, this controls the movement and stabilises the spine.

Hold for 10 seconds then alternate. Aim to do 2 – 6 holds each side.

Managing back pain and athletic potential

The above is, of course, just one of many exercises that can start to stimulate core strength. If you want to eliminate or manage back pain, or you have a desire to improve your sporting performance, we’d strongly suggest that you allow us to both assess your core strength and design a personalised programme that will help you meet your goal.

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Tanya Wyatt

Owner at The Happy Body

Tanya started out as a professional ballet dancer. Swopping her pointe shoes for takkies, she decided being a hip hop dancer was way cooler, so chopped off her bun and joined a street dance company. For many years, she also taught dance and fitness classes in Cape Town before deciding that nutrition and lifestyle coaching was the way to help people change their state of health for the better. So, while writing two health and fitness books, she moved to London to study and began her ‘real life’ – that as a health and lifestyle coach. She’s been in private practice for 10 years now, is a mom of a 7-year old pig-tailed ball of energy, writes for various national and local health publications and is a health presenter when the occasion arises. Oh – and once a dancer, always a dancer – she’s also taken up ballet pole dancing 🙂 Click here to contact Tanya.

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