Do you need a stronger core? Can you control your spine and move your legs, while keeping your spine and pelvis stable? Try our home exercise for core strength and spinal stability to help you transfer loads more efficiently for better performance.

Hi this is Dana Ranahan from Body Works Sports Physiotherapy and today I want to show you an abdominal core strength exercise which focuses on spinal stability.

If you want to become stronger and have better control for sports, you need to control your posture. So if your abdominals are not strong, often you’ll end up sort of swaying your back forward.

We’ve done a few other exercises like this on our website, where we’re working on breathing and activating our core. So you’ll need to have done those first

The Exercise

You can come down onto a mat, lying down on your back
We’re going to work on bringing both knees up, one at a time.
Breathing out, engaging my core, and now lifting one leg up while trying to keep the pelvis level and avoiding any twisting of the spine.
So breathe out, core on, lift the leg, and try to stabilize.
Maintain there trying to keep 90 degree angles
Now try to add the second leg. This is harder, so as I lift up I want to breathe out, engage my core, stabilize my spine against the ground and then lift up the second leg.

Now from this position, we call this a tabletop position, we really want to work to use our abdominals and maintain our spine. What often happens is, when you go to bring that second leg up, you’ll get a pop through your back and you’ll lose control through your core.

So come up into that double leg position, breathe out, core on, lift the leg, and then we work from here. Breathe out, core on, good, breathe in, come back, trying to maintain the spine neutral.

This is a higher level core exercise, but it’s a really great one to work on controlling your spinal position as you’re activating your core muscles.

Give that a go and let us know how you make out. If you have more questions give us a call 604-983-6616.