You don’t need fancy exercises to build core strength. If your desire is to inspire the muscles around your spine and midsection to fire, squat.
A Kaplifestyle reader reached out to me to ask about a good core routine for beginners. Waltz into any fitness center and you’ll find folks twisting with cables, doing various forms of crunches with medicine balls, leg lifts and scissor kicks, and holding these all in the name of developing core strength. Whether you’re looking to develop these stabilizing muscles in the name of obtaining a 6 pack or looking to prevent injury, maintain flexibility, and increase your power, everyone is interested in a stronger core.
My answer isn’t going to come as a surprise. I’m an advocate of performing any training techniques consistently, so you won’t catch me slamming any form of exercise. However, if you mine true power and strength between your thighs and chest, the properly executed squat is the perfect exercise. From strong-athlete.com:
“One of the best ways to activate the core muscles is during squatting. When you squat, your bodies own natural weight belt kicks in, stabilizing and strengthening your core so that it doesn’t collapse into a pile of muscle and bone.”
Think about what occurs when you drop your hips and ass towards the floor while maintaining strong posture with hundreds of pounds resting on your shoulders. Your stabilizing muscles have no choice but to fire and contract. Our bodies are computers and remember what we just asked of them. The input is, “get strong and powerful, because I’m going to demand you support lots of weight.” Your system complies.
This is true independent of your goals.
Suppose your mission is to acquire abs. Maybe you simply want the muscles in your back to recover faster. In either scenario, hormones can help.
Squatting is a compound movement, meaning you use multiple joints and tons of different muscles to perform the action. Research shows that the more muscles you engage during training, the more hormones will be released in the body to stimulate growth and recovery. Your body naturally releases hormones such as testosterone and Human Growth Hormone during hard squatting sessions. These hormones will help the muscle fibers in your legs rebuild, recover, and grow bigger. However, the large release of hormones can also help to improve the recovery and growth of other muscles in your body that have been broken down from training.
Faster recovery often means less pain. It also means your body will be primed to train sooner meaning you’ll be ready to input more commands. You’ll feel better and get back into the gym. As a beginner, creating the consistent habit is more important than anything else. It’s a beautiful cycle.
If squats truly won’t work for you, and variety is your bag for core work, I won’t judge. You might like this product. If you need me, I’ll be in the corner under the bar.
Strong mind,
Kap
Gabe, my gym doesn’t have a squat rack except for a Smith machine, which is what I’ve been doing my 5×5 with. Should I find a new gym where I can squat freely (giggle)? I hate this gym, but it’s 1/3 the price of anywhere else. No room to make my own, I rent.
I would try incorporating dumbbell squats into your routine. If that gets too easy, then try single leg squats. Single leg squats are really challenging and can build muscle and strength at all training levels.
Thanks, Mark. I take a weekly kettlebell class and we do lots of squats with kettlebells, as well as single leg squats, etc. I’ve been doing Gabe’s 5×5 two other days of the week in addition.
Kap, when I am completing deadlifts does it matter if I use the shrug bar/hex bar or the barbell??
Hex bar deadlifts are sort of a hybrid of the squat and deadlift. They’re a great exercise and actually much safer for beginners to use because it is harder to mess up the form with the hex bar than the normal barbell deadlift. However, you can focus more on the hip hinge with the trap bar to make it work more of the hamstrings and posterior chain. Likewise, you can drop your hips more and focus on squatting the hex bar up to use more of the quads.
Although, since you are already doing squats, you may want to do the barbell deadlift to increase the variation in muscles used for a more complete workout, since the barbell deadlift will be better for working specifically the posterior chain strength than the hex bar deadlift.
Mark, makes a lot of sense. Thank you!! David
Truth. Since I started 5×5 about a year ago (have had to take a couple breaks and work back up), my fiancee has noticed my tighter abs and asked what ab exercises I’ve been doing. She still seems skeptical when I tell her that squats are the best ab exercises I’ve ever done.
Sometimes I switch it up. Take a 25 or 40 or whatever pound dumbbell in each hand, do a military press and hold the DBs overhead, then slowly squat. Maintain your arm position while you do your set.
Because my hips are titanium I have to work around this. Squats just put too much pressure on the mechanism. It may have been squats and leg presses that got me these fine new hips in the first place. So, I have to improvise. I have gotten a couple of good hints here and elsewhere. The best I found was when working on the smith machine — push outs and pull downs — to keep my back straight on the seat, not using the back of the seat to stabilize. This creates an incredible burn as the muscles are forced to fire at the same time I’m pushing weight out or pulling it down. I can only do it at the lighter weights now, which means I’ve got a lot of room to grow. The medicine ball also offers some good movement alternatives. I have noticed significantly more power in my swing as a result. In your mid-60s you can use all the core strength you can get. Love the simplicity of the squat, but had to give it up.
I tell my dance students all the time about doing squats and they often dislike the answer because they feel it’s not for them or it is a “manly” exercise. I will stick to doing mine twice a week.
Kelebek
What are your thoughts on lower weight squats to build core strength if you don’t have access to heavier weights to do 5 or 8 reps at max load? I had seen a website touting unbalanced squats- example a 15 pound weight held above the shoulder on one side and a 30 pound weight held low on the other. It requires core activation to keep balance.
Kap:
I have a torn meniscus. I got a shot of Cortizone, and now feel no pain. Do you suggest squats, or surgery?