The Best Workouts for Your Core

Your core muscles are the muscles in your midsection. Having a strong core is important because your core supports your entire body and it facilitates better movement. While exercising, it’s important to include workouts that will strengthen your core.

Sit Ups

One of the most obvious places to start is with doing sit ups. When you do sit ups, you lay on your back with your knees bent. You can rest your arms by your side or behind your head and then you lift yourself up until you’re sitting up. With this exercise, you are using only your core muscles in order to sit up. Doing this exercise repeatedly will strengthen these muscles and the exercise will become easier over time. When doing sit ups, it’s essential that you are using proper form. This will help you avoid any injuries.

Swimming

When you swim, you use your entire body, but you are also working on strengthening your core muscles. Moving your arms and legs forces your abdominal muscles to do more work. These muscles support the entire body’s movement and as you swim, you improve these muscles. While swimming as a whole works on your core, there are also specific movements you can do to work on this muscle group. Dolphin kicks and flutter kicks help you to target your core muscles. You can also try treading water. This engages your entire body and can help you tone your muscles as a whole.

Planking

Another popular exercise is planking. Much like swimming, planking works your entire body but it specifically works your core. To plank, you begin in a pushup position and keep your entire body in a straight line from your head to your feet. If you choose, you can stay up on your hands, but most people will move down to their forearms. Next, you hold the plank position for as long as you can. It’s helpful to try to aim for about 60 seconds and you can also do several sets of 60 seconds to help strengthen your muscles. Try planking every day and see how you improve over time.

Exercising is an important activity because it helps to keep your body healthy and functioning well. While you exercise, make sure you target your core because if your core is strong then the rest of your body can be strong as well.

Check out this article on how to build muscle by doing yoga!