How to Engage Your Core During Workouts

Engaging your core is the most common piece of fitness advice, yet the most poorly explained. You've heard it a thousand times from trainers and influencers, but no one tells you what it's supposed to feel like. This guide will teach you how to engage your core during workouts with a simple, physical cue you can master in the next 5 minutes.

Key Takeaways

• To engage your core, you must brace, not hollow. Imagine you're about to take a punch to the stomach; that 360-degree tension is a proper brace.
• Sucking your stomach in (hollowing) creates instability and is the wrong technique for lifting heavy weights like squats and deadlifts.
• A proper core brace can increase your strength on major lifts by 10-15% by creating a more stable base for force transfer.
• You must learn to breathe while bracing. Inhale into your stomach and sides, then brace and exhale through pursed lips during the hardest part of the lift.
• Your core is a 360-degree cylinder, including your abs, obliques, and lower back muscles. Effective bracing engages all of them, not just your six-pack.
• Practice bracing with exercises like the dead bug and bird-dog before applying it to heavy compound movements.

What "Engage Your Core" Actually Means

To learn how to engage your core during workouts, you first have to forget the image of a six-pack. Your core isn't just the muscles you see in the mirror. It's a 360-degree cylinder of muscle that wraps around your entire midsection. Think of it as a natural weightlifting belt.

This cylinder includes:

• Rectus Abdominis: The "six-pack" muscles at the front.
• Obliques: The muscles on your sides.
• Transverse Abdominis: The deepest layer of ab muscle that wraps around you.
• Erector Spinae: The muscles running along your lower back.

When you "engage" your core correctly, you're contracting all of these muscles simultaneously to create pressure and stiffness around your spine. This is called creating intra-abdominal pressure (IAP).

Think of an unopened can of soda. It's incredibly strong and hard to crush. But once you open it and release the pressure, you can crush it with one hand. Your core works the same way. By creating internal pressure, you turn your torso into a rigid, uncrushable cylinder that protects your spine from dangerous movement under load.

This is why you feel your lower back during squats or deadlifts when your core isn't engaged. Your spine is bending and taking the load because the muscles around it aren't creating that protective stiffness. A proper brace transfers force through your stable torso, protecting your back and allowing you to lift more weight safely.

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Why "Sucking In" and Crunches Don't Work

The single biggest mistake people make is confusing "engaging the core" with "sucking in your stomach." This action, called abdominal hollowing, is the exact opposite of what you need for safe, powerful lifting.

When you suck your stomach in, you're pulling your navel toward your spine. This narrows your base of support and actually *de-stabilizes* your torso. It's like trying to build a house on a toothpick. This technique has some uses in very specific physical therapy settings, but it has no place in the weight room.

Bracing is the correct technique. Bracing involves pushing your stomach *out* slightly as you tense your entire midsection. You are actively creating pressure and expanding your core to make it as solid as possible. It's the difference between making your waist smaller (hollowing) and turning it into a stone pillar (bracing).

This is also why doing hundreds of crunches won't teach you how to brace. Crunches teach your abs to flex your spine (bend it forward). But during a squat, deadlift, or overhead press, you want to *prevent* your spine from flexing. You need your core to provide anti-flexion stability.

Doing crunches to learn core engagement for squats is like practicing folding a piece of paper to make it better at standing up on its edge. The skills are opposed. You need exercises that teach your core to resist movement, not create it.

The 3-Step Method to Brace Your Core

This is a skill. It will feel strange at first, but with a few minutes of practice, it will become second nature. You can practice this right now, sitting in your chair.

Step 1: Find Your Bracing Muscles (The Cough Trick)

Place your fingers on the muscles to the side of your belly button (your obliques) and on your lower back. Now, give a short, sharp cough. Feel that? The instantaneous, hard contraction of all the muscles under your fingers-front, sides, and back-is the feeling you're chasing. That is a brace. Do it again, but this time, try to hold that tension for 3-5 seconds after the cough.

Step 2: Create 360-Degree Tension (Brace for a Punch)

Now, let's do it without the cough. Stand up and take a normal breath in. Now, imagine a friend is about to playfully punch you in the stomach. What do you do? You don't suck in. You tense everything. Your abs, your sides, your back-they all harden in preparation for the impact. Your entire midsection becomes a solid block of muscle. That is a perfect core brace. Hold this tension for 10 seconds. You should be able to feel the muscles working all the way around your torso.

Step 3: Breathe Into Your Brace

This is the part that trips people up. You can't just hold your breath for an entire set. You need to breathe *while* maintaining the brace. The secret is to breathe into your stomach, not your chest.

1. Set the Brace: Start by creating that "brace for a punch" tension. About 20-30% of your maximum effort is enough for most exercises.
2. Diaphragmatic Breath: While holding that tension, take a breath in by pushing your stomach and sides *out* against the brace. Your chest should barely move. This fills the "soda can" with air, increasing IAP and making your brace even stronger.
3. Exhale Under Tension: As you perform the hardest part of the lift (e.g., pushing up from the bottom of a squat), exhale slowly through pursed lips, like you're blowing out a candle. Critically, you must keep the core muscles tensed as you exhale. Don't let everything go soft.

Practice this cycle: Brace -> Breathe into the brace -> Exhale while holding the brace. Do this 10 times. It's the fundamental rhythm of lifting safely.

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How to Apply Core Engagement to Your Workouts

Once you understand the feeling of a brace, you can apply it to any exercise. The rule is simple: if your spine could be put at risk, you need to brace. The amount of tension you use should match the load. A 300-pound deadlift requires a 100% brace. A 20-pound kettlebell swing might only need a 40% brace.

For Squats and Deadlifts

This is where bracing is most critical. Before you even unrack the bar or lift it from the floor, you set your brace.

1. Take a big breath into your stomach.
2. Brace your core as hard as you can, like you're about to be punched.
3. Perform the lift. For a squat, you hold that breath and brace on the way down. You begin exhaling forcefully through pursed lips as you drive back up.
4. At the top of the rep, you can reset your breath and brace for the next one. For a heavy single, you will hold your breath for the entire rep.

For Push-Ups and Planks

For bodyweight movements, the goal is to prevent your lower back from sagging. Before you start the push-up or get into your plank, lightly brace your core. A 20-30% brace is plenty. Think about keeping a straight line from your head to your heels. If you feel your hips dropping or your back arching, your brace has failed. Re-engage by thinking about the "cough trick" and squeezing your glutes.

For Overhead Presses

When you press a weight overhead, the natural tendency is to arch your lower back to help push the weight up. This is dangerous and inefficient. A proper core brace prevents this. Before you press, brace your abs and squeeze your glutes. This locks your ribcage and pelvis together, creating a stable platform to press from. You will feel weaker at first because you can't cheat, but you are building real, usable shoulder strength.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to keep my core engaged all the time?

No, and you shouldn't try. Your core muscles need to rest like any other muscle. You should only brace intentionally right before and during a lift or movement that challenges your spinal stability. Walking around with a 100% brace all day is exhausting and unnecessary.

Can I practice engaging my core outside the gym?

Yes. The best way is to practice the 3-step bracing and breathing method while sitting or standing. You can also practice with foundational exercises like the dead bug, bird-dog, and glute bridges. These teach your core to resist movement, which is its primary job during big lifts.

What's the difference between bracing and the Valsalva maneuver?

The Valsalva maneuver is the act of holding your breath against a closed glottis (the back of your throat) while bracing. This creates the absolute maximum intra-abdominal pressure and is a technique used by powerlifters for one-rep max attempts. For general fitness, a simpler brace while exhaling through pursed lips is safer and more than sufficient.

My lower back still hurts. What am I doing wrong?

First, ensure your form on the exercise itself is correct. Second, you may not be bracing hard enough, or you might be relaxing the brace mid-rep. Video yourself from the side. If you see your lower back rounding or arching at any point, that's where your brace is failing. Practice with lighter weight, focusing entirely on maintaining a rigid torso.

Conclusion

Learning to properly brace your core is the single most important skill for long-term lifting success and injury prevention. It transforms your torso from a weak link into a source of power. Practice the "brace for a punch" cue until it becomes an automatic reflex before every heavy lift.