What does tighten your core mean

As your shoulders get tired you may start arching your lower back which puts a dangerous strain on your spine and the muscles around it. By zipping up your abs and squeezing your glutes, your spine is more protected and you can move your shoulders through a safer range of motion. Practice engaging your core while doing my fast ab circuit! Also, engaging your core when performing abdominal exercises especially, ensures your abs are doing the work instead of recruiting other muscles to take over.

This will make those moves more effective. Since your core is the basis of almost every movement we make in our day to day lives, it is important to keep it strong. So how do you engage your core? Your abs should be tight and pulling in but you should be able to breathe and move normally.

It is NOT sucking in your stomach and holding your breath. You can practice engaging your core at any time by feeling your ribs expand to the sides while you inhale, then as you exhale contract and zip up your abs, thinking about pulling your navel up and in toward your spine.

Keep breathing normally while you continue to hold your abs in. Keeping your core engaged properly while exercising will help keep your core strong and reduce your risk of injury not only while working out, but also in your day to day activities.

Look for more great core exercises? Check out our staffs favorite ab workouts! Topics: LivRite News. The internal and external obliques are shaped in a criss-cross across the torso and help with twisting movements. The rectus abdominis, otherwise known as the six-pack, is the anterior section of abdominal muscles which helps the upper body to bend forward.

Become a Personal Trainer with OriGym! Your core is engaged when all 4 sections of abdominal muscle are braced together and working with the muscles that are connected to your spine to stabilise the torso.

When you know how to engage your core correctly, you will be able to stiffen your torso to support your spine whilst it bends and twists. Sucking in your stomach and holding your breath are the most common mistakes people make when told to engage their core.

Truthfully, this is pretty much the exact opposite of how to engage your corecorrectly. Rather than sucking your stomach in, you need to focus on pulling your navel up and in towards your spine.

When you do this, your abs should feel tightened but you should still be able to move and breath as normal. A good position for engaging your core is on all fours. In this position, pull your abs up and in towards your spine and keep your torso still whilst you exhale.

Focusing on your breathing is a really important part of how to engage your core correctly. The TVA engages naturally as you exhale, so you can use your breath to engage your core every time you exhale. If you pull your navel up and in during the exhale, the movement should naturally pull your stomach in and lift your torso.

Whilst breathing is an important part of engaging your core, it is important that you breathe normally to support your core. Deep belly breathing is not appropriate if you want to know how to engage your core while sitting, standing, walking or exercising in general. Now you know how to engage your core muscles, you might be wondering why you should do this. Your core is the basis of pretty much all of your movement, so a strong core benefits your athletic ability, flexibility, and overall strength.

In this sense, engaging your core makes your workout more effective which ultimately leads to quicker and better results. Having a strong core will benefit your progress when training other muscles too. An engaged core makes it easier to activate different muscles during exercise.

As well as increasing performance, another benefit of knowing how to engage your core correctly is that it helps to reduce the risk of injury. When the core muscles work together, they support the spine which keeps the back safe from strain.

Now, onto the directive. Essentially, you want to squeeze all of the muscles in your torso that you can, and hold them in that tightened position, all while still breathing normally. It also may help to think about it this way: Your core is what keeps your body stable as you do any sort of movement or exercise.

Activating it, or engaging it, means having the muscles contracted enough so that if someone were to come over and try to push you over, your core would resist them and help you stay upright.

Simply put, the core is the center of all your movement, says Stokes. Your core muscles are what allow you to rotate, resist rotation, stabilize your torso, maintain good posture, and keep your balance. That also ultimately means a lower risk of injury. One reason? Squeezing your glutes in particular will give you a slight posterior pelvic tilt, which just means your pelvis is tucked under a tad, so that your lower back is in a neutral position, says Stokes.

Engaging your core also helps you cut down on over-relying on other muscles to get the power you need to crush each exercise. Because she was not activating her core when she kicked, her hip flexors were taking on all that work, leading to overuse. Once he taught her to fire her core, she was able to cut her reliance on her hip flexors, reduce the strain to them, and kick a soccer ball with more power.