The Biggest Misconceptions About Core Work
The fitness world has spent decades conflating core work with ab exercises, and I spend a significant amount of my time undoing that.
Crunches, planks, six-pack training- these are what most people picture when they hear the word core, and that framing is doing a lot of damage. Because the goal was never just core strength. The goal is core connection, and those are two very different things.
What Your Core Actually Consists Of
Your six-pack and your obliques do not = your core, at least that's not the whole picture. The core is a system that relies on five deep parts to be truly functional. These parts are your Pelvic floor, Psoas, Transverse Abdominus, Diaphragm and Multifidus.
These lie below your obliques and rectus abdominus (six pack muscle).
I find it is most useful to walk through this visually because the moment people understand the full structure, the way they train shifts immediately. The deepest layers of this system are not the ones you can see or feel burning at the end of a set. They are far more subtle than that, and they are the ones that matter most.
Every Move Is Already a Core Move
Every breath initiates movement and stability at your center - inhale and your diaphragm and pelvic floor descend and flatten out a bit which creates internal pressure to stabilize your spine. Exhale, they gather and lift creating power. Cough and your TA stabilizes your spine.
This all happens without even thinking about it, but there’s magic to be had when you tie core connection - and intention - to your exercise. Every exercise becomes a core exercise.
Every single action, every movement you take is stabilized, supported, and driven by the core when the system is working the way it should.
A bicep curl becomes a core exercise. Your left waistline is stabilizing your right shoulder the entire time. The jump board looks like a leg exercise but in reality is also a core exercise because your deep belly is holding the weight of your legs as they float in free space over the springs. Step-ups on the chair look like a leg and glute move, and with a surface level approach they are, but with proper alignment and the right spring support the work shifts into a full-body experience that includes the inner thighs working with your core in a way most people have never felt before.
This is not a reframe for the sake of it. It is what actually happens in the body when the deep system is online. The work looks the same from the outside. The experience from the inside is completely different.
How to Find It
Props are one of the most effective ways to make deep core connection tangible. Placing a WundaCore resistance ring between your inner thighs during a squat, a movement almost everyone files under legs and glutes, will wake your inner thighs and center into deep abdominal work in a way that is immediate and hard to miss. Putting curved blocks under your hands during a plank changes the entire nature of the exercise from bracing at the surface to working in every direction at once - lighting up your shoulders, mid back and belly.
Last week I had a client approach me after class so excited because she felt her low belly (something she often has trouble finding) using the blocks curved side down under her knees. These tools aren’t for show - they’re for real connection. For real results.
Beyond props, it comes down to breath and alignment. Those are the two things that actually connect movement to the core, which is why we cue them in every exercise.
Once you know how to find that connection, it is available to you in everything you do.
The Shift Worth Making
Core strength is not the only goal. Core connection is just as, or in my opinion, more important.
Once you understand the internal pressure system you actually have, everything changes.
WundaLove,
Amy