Many of us think of sit-ups when we think of training our core. It’s a bit more than just a sixpack. The core mainly exists of:
Rectus Abdominis
Transverse abdominis
The pelvic floor
Obliques
Diaphram
Lumbar Multifidus
Now that I’ve sprinkled some difficult words around, let me simplify what all those latin words mean to understand our bodies better!
Your diaphram basically keeps everything in place and is what makes the right breathing technique throughout your workout so important. Bracing is a technique that tightens the muscles around the spine (lumbar mulitifidus) and isolates the core muscles before putting pressure. Hence why you may have heard ‘if you want to train your core, you want to create a strong back, and to create a strong back, you wanna build a strong core’ before. (Spoiler alert, you’ll hear it in all my trainings at least once 😂)
The pelvic floor is such an important muscle to maintain strong and is often overlooked. Especially for women as we are birthing our children and generate force with this muscle (among many others). Small tip: that squeeze when you hold your pee? All pelvic floor muscle at work. A good cue to strengthen this muscle throughout a workout could be: imagine holding your pee and squeeze the muscle to the belly button.
Obliques gives your body that side armour and the transverse abs lie deeper and are trained as crossed abdominals.
The rectus abdominis is what’s most visible on the surface, together with the transverse abs.
And there you go, implementing a combination of the following workouts ensures you of a strong core, entirely (:
Written by Mazarine Henninger