Stronger Than Your Boyfriend
Stronger Than Your Boyfriend
How Often Should You Train Your Core
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Are you doing 1,000 crunches a day? This week, we go over how much you actually need to train the core. The answer is – not every day. We give our advice on what training your core should actually look like, give you a routine you can do today, and dispel some myths around corework magically shaving fat off your stomach.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why Core Training Is Important
- Benefits of a Strong Core
- How Often You Should Train Your Core
- Do Daily Micro-Core Sessions Work?
- Core Training Mistakes to Avoid
- Core Training Routine for Beginners
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Welcome to the Stronger Than Your Boyfriend Podcast, a podcast for anyone into fitness.
SPEAKER_00Especially for those of you who are doing a thousand crunches every single day.
SPEAKER_01We are Heather and Katie, owners of Barpath Fitness, here to help you sip through the bullshit and toxic misinformation that permeates the fitness industry. Today, we are talking about how often should you train core? Abs. Yes, abs. Abs is probably what most people are asking. But we are gonna talk about a lot of things, including all of the core. And I think the first part of this is what do we mean by the core? We're gonna talk mostly about abs because that's what most people think about when they're like, hey, how often should I train my abs? But the core, I've seen a few different definitions, honestly. And there are people that think it is, you know, everything from, and I would agree with this, from like your hip to your shoulders. So it's like anything except for your external, like your arms and legs, right? It's like everything from hip to shoulder. So your core really involves the pelvic floor. It involves your uh upper back. Like there's a lot of core that we could be talking about. Um but I think when most people ask these questions, they're asking about abs specifically. And there are different abs, right? There's there's the um obliques, the internal and external, there's the transverse abdominals, um, and then we have the rectus abdominis, which is the one that most people are thinking about uh when they when they ask about their abs. That's the one that, you know, flexion, an extension, flexion for crunches. Um, and then you also have an extension, your low back, and all your extensors, which we won't um go into all of the muscles, but those are kind of the sets of core muscles we're talking about today, I think. More yeah.
SPEAKER_00I do agree with that definition. I just think it's in your entire torso, it's in your entire trunk.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, your trunk, yes. I think that's a great term.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. But you know, we have other movements that we do to hit the muscles at the top of the trunk and at the lower part of the trunk. I think we should definitely extend this to the pelvic or to the pelvis. Yeah. Because it's well, one, it's not being talked about more, but I think that there's a that's obviously super important. So you know, yeah, what we're talking about today, we're as far as training the specific muscles. We're talking about those four that you just said. Yeah. But, you know, when you're thinking about even all the way up to the upper back, your upper back can dictate what your pelvic position does, which therefore dictates are you able to engage your core or not? Or, you know, so it I will say that your core slash trunk is is one entity, but different sections, I guess you could say. So we're talking about training your core, though. We're talking about training the area that everyone wants to train, and everyone wants to feel the burn because they think it'll just burn their belly fat, even though they know it won't. It's still a thing. I even have clients who like they know, but they'll they'll just be like, ah, my abs are sore. You would think I'd be skinny now. And I'm like, that's a silly statement for many, many reasons. But yeah, it's just it's just so funny. Everyone loves to feel a nice little ab burn or ab soreness. But here, okay, how often should you train your core? Not every single fucking day. If you can train your core every day, you're not training it hard enough when you're actually training it. So if you can, you know, at the end of the day, lie on the floor and do, you know, 50 reps of crunches and shit, that's not really doing anything for you. Maybe at first, if you've done nothing for your core, but it's it's not doing anything for you. You know, you have to train them like any other muscle group. Again, we've talked about this countless, you know, countless times in the past. The optimal amount of volume per muscle group is 10 to 30 sets per week. However, you have to remember when you were doing compound movements like squats, deadlifts, even bench press, hip thrust, et cetera, your core is getting some training there. So that counts, but we're talking about direct training. You have to take that into account when you're programming your extra, I would even call it like your extra core work, right? I will say core muscles tend to recover a bit faster because you do use them a lot with all your other movements. But again, we're not talking about daily micro sessions and daily, your daily thousand rep training. Like that's just it's just a waste of time. You're feeling the burn. It's junk volume. We just had an episode come out about junk volume. It's just a bunch of junk volume for your abs that you can pretty much do anywhere because most people just do a bunch of fucking crunches, right? So, like I said, if you train them hard enough when you're actually when they're in your program, then you won't need slash want to do them daily because they will be tired, they will be fatigued, you will feel like you need to recover. Okay. Your abs are burning, that doesn't mean you're burning the belly fat. Spot reduction isn't a thing. Do we need to say this again? We will continue to say it until I stop hearing those phrases from my clients that my abs are sore, you would think I wouldn't have butt belly fat here. That's not a thing.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yes. Now I do want to say just by telling you that you are performing core work while you're doing heavy compound movements, we're not saying to avoid. Yes, we're not those bros. Right. We are saying that you can be thoughtful about including some of that in mostly the transverse abdominal impact. So if you're doing, you know, if you're like, okay, I want to make sure that I do some transverse abdominal work, anti-rotation is your best friend here. Um that is a great form of an additional core work that is a little different than what you're doing when you're, you know, loading your spine on a heavy squat. Right. Anti-rotation will help a ton to add to that program. Um weighted planks, sure, you know, things like that. But anything where you're, you know, obviously in your warmup, you should be doing some stuff too, like dead bugs, burnt dogs, those are very core heavy movements, right? Yes. Um, hollow holds are another really good example. Um, these are really great to add into your sessions. And yes, we are just also saying think about the amount of volume you're doing for these because you're also doing weighted squats. If if you're also doing, you know, heavy deadlifts, heavy overhead press, heavy squats, things like that. Yeah. Just keep in mind that you don't want to overly fatigue these muscles because you're doing those as well. But you do need those accessories too.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. Yes. I would I would agree with that. It's more so the transverse abdominus. So do you, you know, ask yourself, do you need that extra set of planks? If you just did, you know, it's your third workout of the week, you did squats, you know, four sets of squats, one workout, four sets of deadlifts, the other workout. Do you need that extra set of planks or your even whatever's programmed? Or maybe you do some spinal flexion instead or spinal extension, you know, work other parts of the core because you know, we're we're the core, the muscles that we talked about, think of it as you know, one entity, but you still need to split them up because you know, for specific, you know, different movements, you're gonna hit different parts of the core. So you could be fatiguing one part of the core and not necessarily getting enough volume and attention to another part.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yes. I think it's important that if you are in the camp of there's two camps, right? There's always freaking two camps. It's always always two. Everything's fucking binary. There's the camp of I don't need core training because I'm squatting heavy. And then there's the camp of I'm gonna do core every day. Okay. None of you are right. So you're both wrong. You both need to meet up, go on a date, and put your brains together because you both have a little bit of something that the other person needs. Yeah, exactly. Meet in the middle. Yeah, meet in the middle. So if you are doing heavy squats, etc., yes, you probably should still train your transverse abdominal to a point, but it's probably more about timing and breath retention and honestly pelvic floor than anything. So I don't know that your weighted plank is your best exercise here, right? Right. That's why anti-rotation and working on your pelvic floor is gonna be key for you guys. Whereas if you're just doing a million gazillion crunches a day, okay, add in some of these other like heavy, uh like challenging things for your core that are not directly associated. Now, both of you should probably be doing what Katie's talking about, which is flexion, extension, rotation, um, you know, lateral flexion, all that all of the things that work your obliques and your rectus abdominis and your spinal extensors. Those are different than your transverse abdominals. And yes, they all kind of work at the same time sometimes, but we need direct work for the obliques. We need some rotation, right? We need in in all the like we need internal and external obliques there, and we need flexion and extension of the spine. So it's important to tie all of these things in instead of just doing a bunch of crunches or saying, I don't need abs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think people just default to, I mean, either doing planks or some sort of crunch. I think the obliques are very, very overlooked. Yeah. Or they're very neglected. Yep. And because, you know, there's not it, there's not like the one move that everyone knows, like crunches, right? Like I could use some form of a crunch, you know, everyone knows that. Or like sit-up or something. So, and people never ever train their low back extensors because one, everyone thinks it's wrong if they feel their lower back. So I think people think, well, why would I work it directly? You still need to work it directly. You need to train all of your muscles. Yeah. So, you know, we're not trying to get you to think super, super hard about this, but it's more about smart programming. Yes. Right. So, again, like we were saying, do you need that weighted plank? Or, you know, when Heather's talking about anti-rotation, you know, people probably don't even know what that is. So, like a payload press, you know, or that's an example. So you're just kind of pressing out the cable or band in front of you and trying to keep your hips and shoulders square. You know, we've talked about that before, but movements like that, you know, and you don't have to do the same movement every time, but I think it's more so find your weakness and maybe add in more exercises to build that part of your core up. And a lot of times I find that's obliques for people. Not all the time, but most of the time. It's that rotation and you know, lateral, lateral flexion.
SPEAKER_01I found that, so I I mean I love anti-rotation, and people are always like, okay, we've done payload press, we've done plank kettlebell drags is the other one that I do a lot. I've also found that teaching people pelvic control and then putting the two together is huge. So kind of an example of that would be doing a bridge uh by a cable machine and then adding some sort of like payload press in a bridge. So you like first you do the pelvic floor work and you lift into a bridge and then you have your cable. It's kind of hard to explain on a podcast, but we can make a video and then you press out while you're in the bridge. Um, also like kneeling payloff presses. Like there's a lot of different anti-rotation things you can do in within your pelvis is in a different position. And you have to kind of time that. I think that is like something I I've been doing that a lot with my clients who finally have mastered some of the pelvic control a little bit. And now we're like, okay, let's time this with core control, uh, what you think of as core, and let's get it all working together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I like that. That's a good that's a good one. I want to add that one in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's been it's been pretty it's been pretty good. So mistakes to avoid if you're training core is doing sessions daily, just crunchy, crunch, crunch. Uh I would say anything on TikTok pretty much. Yeah. Avoid those trending ones. Yeah. Um, only doing super high reps, right? Like, yes, you can you're you probably have more endurance in your course. You can probably do a little bit more as far as repetitions or you know, things like that versus a lot of weight. It's kind of hard to do high weight. Yeah. But what is with that?
SPEAKER_00Huh? Why does that why does when when people train core, all of a sudden everything they know about programming goes out the window and they're like a thousand crunches, yes. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I don't get that.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I think it has to do with our core ability to have a lot of endurance. And I think they're trying to like capitalize on that, but I'm not sure. Um, but it has to have a lot of endurance because you use it for everything.
SPEAKER_00And that's the thing. It's not like it it the core muscles, all you know, every every muscle or every part of the core we talked about doesn't lend itself well to doing, you know, like one to three rep ranges. So I would say like no less than six, but you know, you don't need to do a thousand, right? All of a sudden your core is the only muscle group that needs a hundred reps each set. Right. So, anywho. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01All right. Another mistake to avoid is holding your breath, depending on what you're doing, right? We have strategic breath holding for specific movements, like you know, heavy, heavy squats and things like that. There are times to use your breath for intra abdominal pressure, but for the most part, if you're doing things, don't hold your breath during a plank. Don't do that. You actually want to learn to breathe while bracing. That is like super important. Oh, I mean, I would even put another bullet here of not adding breath work into core because they are so integrated and so important and they should be going together. Um, anytime that I have a client doing any sort of core, I mean, I talk about breath all the time when we're lifting, but core is when I get really, really into breath. And I make sure that the breaths are diaphragmatic. I make sure that we're able to both flex a muscle and uh lengthen a muscle at certain points of the breath. And it's very interesting to see where people have limitations, especially in the hips and glutes with breathing in versus breathing out versus, yeah, there's a lot there. So don't neglect the breath. There is a lot that you can be doing with it during core training. And then lastly, um, well, not lastly, but second to lastly, don't arch your lower back. Um, most movements need a posterior pelvic tilt. Okay, and this is for most, like like a plank, right? If you're doing a plank, yeah, the biggest mistake I see in people doing a plank is they're not doing a posterior pelvic tilt. You should be, oh, what was I heard a really good cue the other day and I cannot remember what it was. It was in a yoga class, actually. It was wonderful. And she, we were actually doing the plank on her hands because we were about to start chaturanga. So if you're a yoga person, listen up because this is also for you. Before you go into that chaturanga or that, you know, elbows by your sides kind of dive down with your chest. You should be pushing the floor away. And you want to think about pulling your mid-back. I think she said pull your mid-back toward the ceiling, which was an interesting thought because and it did exactly what we needed to do because it pushed through your pelvic back to the right now. Yeah. Yeah, that's because if you're protracting, you're gonna tuck your pelvis posteriorly. So if you're pulling your mid-back to the ceiling, then both your pelvis and your shoulders are doing the right movement. So that was cool. So you you may be like, wait, then my butt's in the air. No, we're not saying your butt's in the air, we're saying your mid-back. Think about that. Think about what that looks like if you pull the middle of your spine toward the ceiling. Think about what happens to your glutes, think about what happens to your shoulders. That is kind of the tuck position that we need when we're doing planks, when we're doing hollow holds, um, and when you're doing chaturanga.
SPEAKER_00Just think of the top part, the top of a crunch. What does your spine look like? If you're really feeling it, your spine's gonna be flexed. So hold that. Again, there's more to the pelvis than just cueing yourself that. But if you can't quite figure it out, just think hold that top part of that crunch in the plank position. And then, you know, if you're able to squeeze your glutes, you're probably doing it correctly, or you're better than you were before. Because there's no world you're you're going to posteriorly tilt tuck your pelvis and not squeeze your glutes. They go hand in hand.
SPEAKER_01So another yoga example, I just love when would people like it's interesting because some people do yoga and strength doesn't quite click. But if you're a yoga person and you're trying to get into strength training, this is another good example. When you're going from down dog into the lunge, so if you're in a downward dog position, the whole point of that is to extend your spine. Your spine is lengthened, right? Then you bring your knee to your nose and you ripple forward and you tuck your pelvis so that your knee can come into your nose and you round your spine like an angry cat. So that you can have the length and not the length, the space under your body to place your foot into that lunge. That position where you're rounding your and you're like moving, tucking your pelvis under to ripple forward, that's what we're talking about. That is where your plank should be, that is where your hollow holds should be. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And then the last core training mistake is obviously only doing crunches. Or like, honestly, only doing like stuff on your back, I would even say. Yeah. You can do a lot on your back if you're implementing uh dead bugs and hollow holds and things like bridges and things like that. But I would say if you're not doing like if you're not trying to train your core in other positions like standing or hanging, like you're really doing yourself an injustice here.
SPEAKER_00Hanging is my favorite way to do spinal flexion. So like the crunchy part. Yep. Crunchy, crunch, crunch. So which I'll back up and talk about, okay, well, where should you add core in your training? You know, we've talked about before, we like for most people to do the full body part split. So that means you're doing about three sessions per week. So I'll kind of go over that type of split. And if you're doing a different kind of split, you can take these movements and add them into whatever day that makes sense. But if we're talking about three full body sessions a week, first day, you know, and again, this isn't, you don't have to, you could do this on whatever day, but if we're talking like day one, here's an example. If we're doing spinal collection, we're training, we're trying to train the rectus abdominis, right? So the crunchy de crunch crunch, hanging knee raises. And these are these are hard. These are very hard for people. So you this is not a beginner movement. This is at least an intermediate movement. You have to be able to one hang from a bar and hold yourself there as you're doing the knee raises. But you know, if you can't do it, I'm not the biggest fan of resting on the, you know, the uh like the back supported knee raise thing. I'm not the biggest fan, but I would do it. Yeah, like a Roman chair. Yeah, the Roman chair, that's what it's called. I mean, you can do it. I would actually rather put someone on a f on the floor and have them like hold on to a heavy kettlebell and then work on articulating that spinal position. Yeah. And then work on their grip strength otherwise, right? Like work on the hanging outside of that.
SPEAKER_01I agree. I think the Roman chair takes a ton of scapular control. Yeah. In that steady position and your shoulders down and away from your ears, then there's no way you're doing that exercise. Exactly. It's better to just do a different one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's why I put people on the floor, and we're gonna either start with like a reverse crunch or something, just to learn how to articulate the pelvis as they're driving their knees up towards their chest. Yeah. You should think about, you know, pretty much at the at the top of the movement, you know, when your knees are at the top part, your spine should be rounded, right? Should be fully rounded. Like you should look really hunched over if I were to stand you up and look at you from the side. That's what we want, right? And again, this also trains a lot of uh a grip and hip flexor strength too. Yeah. I mean, obviously we want to get more of the core, but it's it's a really good, it's a very, dare I say it, functional movement. I think you should work to be able to do hanging knee hanging knee raises. You know, and again, if you do these properly, you're not really gonna do be able to do more than like 10 to 12 reps. So there's where, you know, the hundred reps of crunches doesn't really make any sense. Like this is a really good movement, and you can take your your your core through a full range of motion on that as far as talking spinal flexion. So try that one. You can try the regression on the floor if needed. If you have a question about how that looks, hit up, hit us up in the Facebook group. I can like post a video. But okay, second day, we're gonna work the obliques. I I have been really crushing my clients with Copenhagen raises slash planks. Do you know what they are?
SPEAKER_01So it's well, I know Copenhagen planks.
SPEAKER_00Is that the same thing where you're yeah, you could do a raise too. So you could do in what I have my clients doing, they love it. I start with raises and I'll make them hold on the last one. So the raise is, and a lot of times I'll have people do this to start in like a bent knee position. Yeah, I was gonna say the knee is the hardest part. Yeah, because the knee, sometimes people are like, My knee's gonna give out. Yeah. So start in the bent knee position. And these, these, these work your adductors too, but we're they mostly work your obliques. You kind of just dip that bottom, the so the leg that's not on the bench, you dip that that down leg towards the floor, kind of tap your hip and then go back up, and then tap your hip and then go back up. So you're kind. Of flexing your obliques and then we're gonna hold. So now we're gonna work on the that isometric hold at the top. That's a really good one. If that's too much, you could just do this in a side plank. You could just do a side plank hip dip, you know. So same thing, set yourself up in a side plank, and then you're just dipping your hip down to the floor and back up, and then you can do a hold. So that's a more I wouldn't say regressed version. I still have my clients do that too. But if they can do that Copenhagen raise, they're doing it because it sucks and it's good, it's real good. But when you were talking about doing more standing movements, I've been also loving the the lateral flexion holding a weight. So I think people call them like side bends or something. I don't really like that word, or I don't like that name for it for some reason. It just seems like you're just bending over, right? But you're holding a kettlebell or dumbbell on one side, put the other, the opposite hand on your head, and then you actually lean down towards the weight. So the side that's holding the weight, lean that way, but you're working the opposite side. So that's the resistance, right? So people don't understand this one. Yeah. Yeah. You're lowering into the resistance piece. So you have to lower down first so that way when you flex towards the other side and rotate, you know, flex laterally, there's the resistance because you're holding, you know, the You know, you know how I like to do these?
SPEAKER_01Okay. With the same, because the same concept is on a um, it's kind of uncomfortable, so you have to have the right one, but a low back uh extent, what's it called? Low back extension. What is that? Oh, GHD? Not a G H D. The one that's like Oh, the low back, yeah, yeah. The 45 degree angle. You can turn sideways on that machine. Sometimes you can't, sometimes you can't, it depends on how the pads are set up. Um, and put like one foot in front of the other, like stagger your feet and turn sideways. Then you hold the weight in, let's say you're on your right side, you hold the weight in your right hand and you flex towards it. That's not the work. The work is coming back to neutral, right? Exactly. Yeah, and that's yes, that's how I like to do those, because that is then against gravity, but it's really hard to find the right setup.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you are, yeah. That one, the either on that, which I don't have a low back extension.
SPEAKER_01I want one though. We have we have like a tiny, someone put one in the condo gym. It's like a home, it's not like a commercial version, it's pretty wobbly. So I also think but I'll take it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so yeah, and that's a good point. The movement isn't over after you like flex laterally to the side. You have to also go slow, control, stabilize back to neutral, like neutral standing position. But oh, I would love a janky little.
SPEAKER_01It's kind of somebody just like donated it to the community gym here. It's nice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's cool. Okay, so back to you know, on the third, the third day, the third training day, this is where you can work the TVA and or the low back extensors. So I would say if you're feeling pretty fatigued from your squats or deadlifts, maybe you're not doing the hollow holds or planks. Maybe we're gonna lurk work the lower back. So maybe on that same machine, well now we're doing actual low back extensions, right? So, I mean, you could do it on the 45-degree angle machine thing. You can do super superwoman's on the floor. That's really overlooked. I think that's that's a really good one. You could do that on a GHD machine if you have one, then you're getting a really big range of motion. But you know, there are there are a ton of ways to work your lower back. Totally. So but I you know, you could if you don't really know if you're if you need the hollow holder plank, just do pick one, do it for that phase, or you can just add in another another exercise with a low back movement too. That way you know you're hitting all of your you know all parts of your core. And also you can take these three movements or four movements, what what I said, you know, but we you could do other movements too, add in different variations. So honorable mentions. I like if we're talking about uh spinal flexion, this isn't as quote functional, but a GHD, if you do have a access to a GHD, a crunch on there with a full range of motion, those are really, really good because it also I can tell it really helps teach people how to articulate extending, so spinal extension at the bottom, and then really you have to really focus on spinal flexion at the top. Whereas if you're doing a crunch on the floor, it's really hard to get that full range of motion in that spinal extension part. The more spinal extension you have going into a crunch, the crunch part, the more tension you're gonna get on your abs. So that's a big factor too. So you'll be able to load your abs more. Any side plank variation? I also really love oblique twists. So on a cable, so you pretty much stand facing and shoulder facing the cable and arm straight, and then you're just rotating to the towards the opposite side. You could also do kind of like a wood chop. You could do it from high to low. That's fine. You can do it from low to high. So those are different variations you can do. But I think what most people should focus on, especially if you're a beginner, is perfection of the plank in articulating your pelvis and your breathing and the side plank too. And then again, you should probably be doing these more, you know, maybe in your warmup, maybe not, depending on how conditioned you are. Bird dogs, dead bugs. Those are great core movements. For people in general, should be doing them because I think people, if they think, oh, I'm strong, I don't need to do any of that, they just never do them. It's always good for you to do them and add them in. And maybe you can, you know, progress them somehow so that they are a little bit more challenging for you. But I think those are those are key. And they're key for everyone. Totally. So okay, yeah. Awesome. Okay. Hopefully we've convinced you to stop doing your thousand rep ab workout at the end of the day every day. Hopefully. Yeah. I mean, you can't really get an ab pump. Like, do you ever get an ab pump? Like, is that a thing, or do you just feel the burn and then it goes away?
SPEAKER_01I don't know if a pump is the right word. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like you're not gonna get pump. Yeah. But it's like the burn that everyone likes. Yeah, totally. Totally. But yes, train your core like a smart person.
SPEAKER_01Hopefully.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And one last note is it you probab you don't need an entire core session. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you don't need to do an extra training day of just core movements. So if you're doing that, you can probably get away. You're probably doing junk volume, is what we're trying to say. Or adding in junk volume to your routine. So, yeah. Alright. Cool. What are your favorite core movements? Hit us up in our Facebook group. Charlie Boyfriend. Alright.