• The importance of your core
  • Major core muscles
  • Beyond muscles
  • Why strengthen your core?
• Safety first
  • When to check with a doctor
  • 12 tips for exercising safely and effectively
  • The right (and wrong) way to do three classic core moves
• Posture, alignment, and angles: Striking the right pose
  • Posture checks
  • Stay neutral
  • Get the angle
• Getting started
  • How does core work fit into your exercise plans?
  • The right stuff: Choosing equipment for workouts
  • Using the workouts
• Special Bonus Section: Setting goals and motivating yourself
• Choose a goal
• Be SMART
• Motivate yourself
• Make your commitment
• Measuring gains
• Fit it in
  • Four short workouts
• Sports stars
• Standing core workout (vertical)
• Floor core workout (horizontal)
• Medicine ball workout
• Stability ball workout
• Bosu workout
• Mixed core workout
• Resources
• Glossary

Posture, alignment, and angles: Striking the right pose

Posture counts a lot when you’re exercising. Aligning your body properly is the key to good form, which nets you greater gains and fewer injuries. In fact, good posture helps anytime you’re moving. If one foot is always turned slightly inward, for example, it impedes power whether you’re walking, going upstairs, jogging, or playing sports. Worse, it paves the way for injuries to the ankle, knee, hip, and beyond, since the effects of this physical quirk can zigzag their way up your body.

Similarly, sitting up straight and comfortably aligned in a chair can make desk work feel less tiresome. Hours of computer and desk work tend to make your shoulders hunch and your head and neck jut forward uncomfortably.

Committing to core work will do much to improve your posture whether you’re sitting, standing, or moving. A balance of core exercises, such as those selected for our workouts, is best. If you only pour your efforts into strengthening abs, your back muscles will grow weaker by comparison. Instead of standing up straight, your body will curve forward. Likewise, posture is thrown out of kilter when muscles lose flexibility, becoming tighter and eventually shortening so that your range of motion is increasingly limited. Among other problems, this can cause back pain.

Our workouts are designed to build strength and flexibility in all your major core muscles. Doing any of our full workouts, or the four great moves in our short workouts, can help you avoid such problems.

Posture checks

Quick posture checks before and during exercise can also help you avoid injury and squeeze the most benefit from your workout. If possible, look in a mirror when exercising. Try to take a few moments each day to practice better posture, too.

When exercise instructions in our workouts ask you to stand up straight, that means

• chin parallel to the floor
• shoulders even (roll them up, back, and down to help achieve this)
• arms at your sides, elbows relaxed and even
• abdominal muscles pulled in
• hips even
• knees even and pointing straight ahead
• feet pointing straight ahead
• body weight evenly distributed on both feet.

Stay neutral

Whether you’re standing or seated, neutral posture requires you to keep your chin parallel to the floor; your shoulders, hips, and knees at even heights; and your knees and feet pointing straight ahead. A neutral spine takes into account the slight natural curves of the spine — it’s not flexed or arched to overemphasize the curve of the lower back. One way to find neutral is to tip your pelvis forward as far as is comfortable, then tip it backward as far as is comfortable. The spot approximately in the middle should be neutral. If you’re not used to standing or sitting up straight, it may take a while for this to feel natural.

A neutral wrist is firm and straight, not bent upward or downward. And neutral alignment means keeping your body in a straight line from head to toe except for the slight natural curves of the spine.

Get the angle

When angles appear in exercise instructions, try visualizing a 90-degree angle as an L or two adjacent sides of a square. To visualize a 30-degree angle, mentally slice the 90-degree angle into thirds, or picture the distance between the minute hand and hour hand of a clock at one o’clock.

The following reviews have been left for this report. Log in and leave a review of your own.

Good background and explanations. Not enough diagrams showing the movements for each exercise.

Excellent resource for both the beginner and already very active people. Very clear illustrations and instructions for each exercise as well as tips for making it easier or harder. I also like the variety of exercises, those without equipment, and those with the Bose, fitness ball, etc. A good purchase

Very good elementary exercises. Improvements already in just a few days!

I found this book to be very detailed in descriptions of core muscle anatomy and many variations of exercises both with and without weights. I am particularly interested in the exercises to support my golf swing, and these are quite good. Interesting factoid: Ben Crane, a PGA golfer competing in the British Open, was performing planks while waiting to tee off on a hole during the tournament, much to the amazement of the British commentators. (:>)

Clearly written and with plenty of background for those that want it. I would have liked there to have been more photographs so that I could see each stage of each exercise - or even access to a video.

The Core Exercises book has helped me jump-start (again!) my workout routine. Even my husband, who is physically fit and self-disciplined, has found some of the exercises worth adding to his routine.

Excellent written and visual descriptions of exercises from the beginner to those who are more fit and accomplished. The tips on what to concentrate on and what to avoid help

I am still working my way through this book but have been very impressed so far. I am having to adapt some of the exercises, as I lost most of my right leg to cancer several years ago, but so far, this has been do-able.

detailed, comprehensive, includes instructions for novices as well as experienced athletes, on appropriate workouts and challenges.