You hear it all the time on exercise videos or in exercise classes to “engage your core muscles”, but what exactly does it mean?

As I’ve shared before, I’ve been working with a personal trainer for about 3 years and she would always tell me that I’m not engaging my ab muscles right.  I had no idea what she meant and even when I asked her, I still didn’t understand because I couldn’t envision it even though she showed me.

When I had abdominal surgery, I hardly used my core muscles because it was associated with my post-op pain.  So relearning how to use those muscles again after they’ve atrophied was tough and I knew I had to strengthen and rely on them again, but I didn’t know how.

Why Core Engagement is Important

Properly tightening up your abs not only gives you good posture, but it also relieves a lot of pressure from your back.  Having good posture is really important because it’ll save you from so many back problems in the future and it’ll also help you with your workouts when you lift weights, practice balancing and cardio.

A common misperception of good posture is to have your butt stick out like a lot of the female celebs do.  That sort of posture is very damaging to your back and it’s difficult to keep your abs engaged like that.

Seeing is Understanding

Here are two videos I found that helped me understand what we should be doing with our abs at all times.

Video #1: This first video asks his partner to cough and also uses a blood pressure cuff to demonstrate what you should feel:

Try it out by simply coughing.  The tightness you feel in your abs is what it should feel like when everything is engaged.

To engage the muscles, the video host puts a blood pressure cuff under his partner’s back; the part that usually curves in your spine so that your butt sticks out. 

Imagine trying to push out the air with your back.  Feel your abs tighten now?  You’re engaging your core muscles now!

Video #2: This woman’s video really shows what a relaxed core and an engaged core looks like and it helped me understand that in most of the fitness photos and videos we see, the people have their cores engaged. 

What I learned is to not just suck in and tighten your abs, but to curl in your pelvis and lower back – much like a cat in a “cat cow” stretch, but not overly so.  In a way, you’re kind of doing a slight pelvic thrust and keeping it thrusted which will engage your core muscles.

Video #3: This is by the same woman in video #2 and she goes more in-depth about what she talked about in the video above.  In this video, she demonstrates how to keep your core engaged while doing exercises.

I like this video because she looks really fit and trim, but also admits to also sometimes being lazy and having a belly like I do when I don’t have my abs engaged (haha!).

When You Engage Your Core

When I started being more mindful of my ab engagement, my back hurt a lot less and I felt like I had more control when I was lifting weights or bending over.  It takes a long time to get used to and I forget quite often to remember to curve my back inward, but when I do, I can really feel the difference!

Now if my back hurts or is sore, I know that I haven’t been engaging my core muscles and have been relying on my back too much and I can curve it in to relieve my back pressure.  It’s great learning something new about my body.