Newsflash: Even if you train your abs, the strength of your deep core may be lacking.
"Sometimes people confuse a visible abdominal six-pack with core strength," says Eloise Skinner, a personal trainer and Pilates instructor. "Those two things are correlated, but there's not necessarily a direct link between them."
"Just because you have a six-pack, that doesn't mean you have core strength to the same degree that you would if you'd worked on the whole of the core."
That's because the core is made up of a surprising number of muscles, including your pelvic floor, glutes and hip muscles.
Thankfully, you don't need individual exercises to train each core muscle in isolation, and there's one form of exercise Skinner recommends: "mat work in Pilates is really good for the core," she says.
To get you started, here are three mat-based Pilates exercises. Try them a couple of times a week to begin building strength in your deep core.
1. Pelvic tilt
Reps: 8
- Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Keep your spine in a neutral position.
- Contract and tighten your abdominal and buttock muscles to push your lower back into the mat, lifting the bottom of your pelvis.
- Hold for a breath, then slowly return to the starting position.
2. High plank
Time: 30sec
- Get on your hands and knees.
- Engage your core.
- Step one foot back at a time so your body is in a straight line from head to heels.
- Hold the position while breathing steadily.
3. Seated roll down
Reps: 5
- Sit up with your feet hip-width apart and your feet flat on the floor, with your arms extended in front of you.
- Engage your core.
- Slowly lower your torso back, as if being pulled down through the back of your belly button one vertebrae at a time, until you are lying on your back, keeping your feet flat on the floor and arms extended forward throughout.
- Inhale, and then slowly reverse the movement back to the start.