Core Bracing
Core bracing is a concept used in sports, weight training and running. Core bracing can help improve strength and performance while protecting your spine. That is why it is so important for everyone to learn how to use core bracing properly.
Core bracing allows you to maintain spinal integrity during heavy and explosive sporting movements. This type of bracing can also help reduce the stress on your spine, allowing you to stabilize your core, lift heavy weights, jump high, run fast and more. Core bracing also increases co-activation of many different muscles that surround your spine, increasing resilience to injury. If these muscles did not work together to protect your spine, your spine would buckle under a load of just 20 pounds.
Muscles Involved in Core Bracing
These are the muscles primarily involved in core bracing.
- Rectus Abdominus
- Obliques
- QL Muscles
- TVA
- Spinal Bracing
When bracing, you don’t just stiffen and tighten the superficial muscles, but actually achieve coordinated contraction of deep muscles to enhance stability.
How do you Practice Core Bracing?
Before you begin bracing during heavy weight training and complicated movements, it’s important to learn how to brace in easier positions first.
I like to teach core bracing while lying down on the floor first.
How to Brace your Core
- Position yourself flat on your back with your knees bent and feet flat.
- Aim to first pull your ribcage down, pressing back flat into floor to achieve a neutral spine.
- Keep your pelvis in a neutral position.
- Position the plate on your stomach. Practice deep breathing, watching the plate rise and fall.
- Breathe in, making the plate rise, but also blow air into your obliques and lower back.
- Tighten the muscles in your abdomen, obliques and lower back and hold your breathe for 1-2 counts
- Exhale slowly, slowly releasing tension and letting your stomach fall.
- Repeat for 5 to 8 reps
When this position becomes easy, you can transition this to core bracing on your hands and knees.
With a neutral spine and pelvis, breathe in, expanding and tightening the abdominals, obliques, and lower back muscles. Slowly exhale. Repeat for 5 to 8 reps.
When these drills become easy, you can transition to using this bracing style when lifting, explosive movements and other exercises that demand structural integrity.
You can also start to use the concept of bracing with abdominal and core exercises. Using this style of bracing can enhance the strength and stability you gain from these exercises, and also strengthen your bracing position for more strength during more demanding activities.
Core Bracing Cues
Here is a cue I like to use to teach core bracing.
Aim to blow up a balloon in your core and apply pressure to all edges of that balloon by expanding your abdomen in all directions.
Commonly, athletes will easily learn how to breathe into the stomach, but forget about expanding the obliques and lower back muscles and creating tension in those areas.
This cue helps you learn how to brace properly.
Core Bracing Intensity
You will want to use a more forceful bracing strategy for more intense exercises.
In contrast, you can use a less forceful bracing intensity when using light weights or during activities of daily living.
For activities of daily living, you will naturally brace lightly to match the demands of the movement.
Abdominal Bracing Core Exercises
You can practice core bracing on these core exercises. Bracing your core can make the exercises more effective for core training.
- Dead Bug Exercise
- Bird Dog Exercise
- Planks
- Side Planks
- Farmer Walk
- Pallof Press
- Wood Chop
How do you Brace your Core when Lifting?
When lifting heavy weights, you want to put into practice the same bracing technique that you have practiced while lying on your back, in an all fours position, and with dedicated core work.
Brace before the start of the movement and hold your breath until you complete the hardest portion of the lift
For instance, brace before you sit down to squat, hold the breath in the middle, and exhale at the top.
With other structural lifts, you want to mimic the same pattern. For instance, on an overhead press, you can brace your core before beginning the press, press, and then exhale as you bring the weight back down to your starting position.
What is the Importance of Bracing the Core?
Bracing your core helps you to complete movements safely, keep a neutral spinal position and increase the strength and stability of each movement. Also, bracing helps reduce the risk of back injury.
How to Brace when Deadlifting
When deadlifting, you want to start bracing before you start the lift.
- Sit down to the bar in your starting position
- Pull the slack out of the bar
- Lift hips slightly
- Breathe in, tighten your core and brace
- Pull your deadlift
- Exhale at the top of the lift
- Control the bar to the floor and repeat
Abdominal Bracing vs. Hollowing
Atually, abdominal bracing is a different concept than hollowing.
With bracing, you bring your torso into a neutral position, breathing in to expand your core 360 degrees, and tighten up these muscles.
With abdominal hollowing, you simply pull the ribs down, navel towards the floor and chest into a concave position, creating the familiar hollow body position.
While the latter position may be used in many sports, it does not create the stability that bracing the core does.
What Exercises Should you Brace On?
You should brace on any structural exercises including squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, and weighted holds and farmer walks.
Bracing the Core During Running
While an intense brace is neither recommended nor optimal during running, runners can still use the concept of light bracing to enhance their running economy.
Keeping the core lightly braced during running can improve efficiency and reduce pain.
Core Bracing During Sports
Applying the concept of core bracing can also enhance stability and power during explosive movements and athletic activities.
Stabilizing the trunk can allow for greater expression of power through both the lower and upper body and can help to eliminate energy leaks during these movements.
Athletes who are jumping, pounding, hurdling, throwing and landing can focus on bracing during more complex movements.
Bracing the Core with a Weight Belt
Using a weight belt when lifting can help you to improve your core bracing.
While some wrongly believe that a belt is a safety aid or crutch, a belt helps you to brace better.
A belt is not a crutch and does not weaken the core. In fact, a belt increases intra-abdominal pressure without decreasing core activation.
You should use a weight belt for heavy lifts like barbell squat and deadlift when you are working with weights that are heavy for you.
Is Abdominal Bracing Dangerous?
Abdominal bracing or core bracing is not dangerous. However, you might want to avoid holding your breath during a lift if you have high blood pressure or you use beta blocker drugs.
Conclusions
Bracing your core can increase intra abdominal pressure and muscle activation during exercise, sports and lifting weights.
It can help you improve your performance while potentially enhancing the safety of your exercises, too.
While bracing might seem like an inconsequential detail, the truth is that it is a large component of effective movement.
Start paying more attention to your core bracing, and you are well on your way to getting stronger, faster and better in your chosen endeavor while also reducing your chances of back injury.
