When do core stability exercises help?
Why they so often weaken your core

The majority of core stability exercises out there are absolutely hopeless and you really shouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.

There are exceptions, though. Here is one of the better core stability exercises out there. This exercise was given to one of you “Back in Action” readers by her physiotherapist (who is also a Pilates teacher). Your fellow-reader explained the exercise very clearly on the forum. Here is what she wrote:–

The pelvic core stability exercise is really a simple one. Lie down on the bed with your knees bent and then as you inhale you tighten the muscles around the pelvic/lower abdominal area and hold gently and breathe in and out as long as you can and then let go. Even though it is a strengthening exercise, I find that when I do it, lots of other tight muscles let go.

Let’s analyse this exercise. It has four parts:–

1. While lying down with your knees bent you inhale as long as you can.
2. As you inhale, you tighten the muscles around the pelvic/lower abdominal area and hold gently.
3. You then exhale as long as you can.
4. As you exhale you let go of the muscles you tightened on the inhale.

Now what’s good about this exercise and what’s not so good about it?

What’s good about part 1

By lying down you free yourself from the way you normally tighten your back to hold yourself up. That frees your ribs to move more easily. By lying with your knees bent (and feet flat on the bed) you further stretch and expand your back muscles making it easier to breathe.

What’s bad about part 1

If you actively do anything at all to breathe in, you will always suck air in and tighten up to do it.

What’s good about part 2

What’s good is, as Sumi says, that you can begin to experience a lot of tight muscles letting go. Why does this happen?

The reason is quite simple. To inhale, you tighten your diaphragm muscle. (This happens automatically whether you breathe well or badly). The pressure on your belly from the tightening diaphragm will push your belly out if nothing prevents it. When you do prevent your tightening diaphragm muscle from pushing your belly out by doing this exercise, your diaphragm begins to pull your rib-cage up and out. As a result, you breathe more deeply and you stretch a lot of muscles that weren’t being stretched when you breathed more shallowly.

For the above to work properly depends on you not tightening the wrong “muscles around the pelvic/lower abdominal area”. That brings us to…

What’s bad about part 2

Many of the muscles in that area attach to your ribs, so, if you tighten them, you will be pulling and holding your ribs down. That would be rather counter-productive.

This pulling down on your ribs also drags your neck and shoulders down and makes the top of your back bend forward more than it already does. All that’s as well as limiting how deeply and easily you can breathe.

Part 3

The same comment I made about breathing in also applies to breathing out. If you actively do anything to breathe out, you will always tighten up to do it. You will be pushing air out instead of allowing it to just flow out easily as it should.

On to part 4.

What’s good about part 4

The holding of belly muscles that was necessary to support your diaphragm is not needed when you breathe out, so, if you release them again, well and good. That’s what’s meant to happen.

What’s bad about part 4

If you were tightening any wrong muscles in part 2, you’re unlikely to realise you’re not actually letting them go again as you breathe out.

How to make this exercise work as well as possible

You need to look at two things to make this exercise work as well as possible.

First, you need to make sure you don’t tighten any of the wrong muscles to support your in-breath.

Second, you need to not make any effort to breathe more deeply. Any effort will involve using inappropriate muscles. It will also cause you to suck air and force air out more than you already do.

The trick here is to stop making any effort at all to breathe, either in or out. Instead wait for the breath to take itself — and when it does, don’t help it along in any way. If you try this, you’ll see that doing this well is no simple exercise. It becomes instead a very demanding exercise in self-awareness and self-control.

If you try the exercise (and you succeed in resisting all temptation to suck air in or push air out) you will soon find yourself feeling like you are not getting enough air. The temptation to snatch a breath will become too great to resist.

This temptation comes because, breathing so much more slowly than you normally do, your habit will convince you that you must be slowly asphyxiating. In reality, if you succeeded in doing the exercise well, you will be breathing so much more air with each breath that the much slower rhythm that your body is dictating is entirely appropriate. To breathe that deeply would be to hyper-ventilate if you were breathing any faster.

How well did you do?

How well you do will depend on two things:

1. How good your core support already is.
2. How good your breathing already is.

Actually these two boil down to one thing: how well integrated your everyday overall co-ordination already is. In Alexander terminology, we refer to this integration of your basic overall co-ordination as your “use of your self” — “use” for short.

• Somebody with good use will experience no problem: they’re already using the right muscles at the right times.
• Somebody with average use will experience some benefit but probably not realise the extent to which they’re beginning to add extra unhelpful tension to their belly muscles.
• Somebody will poor use may well give up — and who can blame them? If they persist, they will get themselves into a much worse mess than they were in before.

“Surely, you can’t mean what you say here, Philip”?

Given the popularity of core strength exercises, many of you will find what I’m saying here hard to square with your previous understanding and experience.

You’ll need a bit of back and forth question and answer to really get what I’m saying. So get yourself on the forum at www.Repoise.com and I’ll help you. If you haven’t been before, you should know that the forum is getting very busy with lots of people asking burning questions, getting them answered — and discussing amongst themselves as well.

P.S. Here’s what you get with your Membership:–

1. It gives you a place to ask me as many questions you like, whenever you like. Every question will get answered.
2. When you go on the forum, you’ll also find there a fast-growing community of intelligent people, like yourself, discussing amongst themselves and learning how to apply what I’m writing to their own lives.
3. You also get access to all my back articles. You know how often I need to refer you to an older article. If you haven’t been around from the beginning, or haven’t kept all the weekly articles, you won’t be able to see them. Although I’ve published many on the website, there are many more that aren’t there.

Come and join us.

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