Best beginners core exercises | Why to practice core exercises

Strong core muscles support your spine and relieve stress from lower back muscles.

This post introduces some easy-to-start core exercises to strengthen your core.

The beginners core exercises not only develop your core muscles but also enhances overall body strength.

Moreover, regular practice of these exercises helps us perform our everyday tasks easier. 

Besides, when everyone spends long hours sitting at a desk, this long time inactivity weakens our muscles and core. 

Therefore, we should incorporate such healthy exercises in routine to reacquire body fitness.

Why practice core exercises?

Core muscles play a vital role in movement and balancing the weight, whether simply walking or heavy weight lifting. Besides, these core muscles help us with our postures, say simply standing or performing any different yoga poses.

Reasons to start core exercises:

• Faulty Posture:- Core muscles contribute to supporting our postures. Weak core muscles are incapable of supporting your weight (except you are too obese). Even lack of use can make your muscles fragile. Further, these improper postures tend one part of the muscles to work harder than the others, which causes frequent pain and fatigue.
• Difficulty in balancing:- Balancing problems could be due to weak core muscles. The core muscles support your weight and balance it. Feeble support not only leads to imbalances puts you at risk of injury as well. For instance, imbalance while walking, playing. Thus, core strengthening can improve your balancing problems.
• Body weakness:– As the center of your body, your core connects to several body parts. Thus, weak core muscles also impact the functioning of the body parts. For instance, weak core muscles can cause excessive fatigue while only standing. However, there could be other reasons, like injury, burnout, improper blood circulation.
• Frail breaths:- Lack of core strength lead to front bend of shoulders or forward inclination. It may produce difficulty breathing due to insufficient space for the lungs to expand results in shortness of breath. The core muscles bear the weight of your body parts and support the diaphragm for proper inhale and exhales. 
• Reduced endurance:- Our whole body rests on our core muscles. Therefore, it is the center of the body. A weak core implies weak strength and endurance. Low stamina may affect your everyday task too. Thus, core strengthening exercises are a must to meet your day-to-day tasks.

Beginners core exercises

Practicing some 15 minutes core strengthening exercises will help you improve your fitness for the long run.

Here are some simple core exercises that you can follow as warming up or cool down exercises:

1) Superman 

This beginners core exercise works on your back muscles that play a crucial role in balancing. The lower back muscles, in addition to core muscles, support our body weight, developing body stability. You might find it challenging at the beginning. But as you practice, these movements become more natural to you.

Step-1: Lie on your stomach with your legs and hands extended. 

Step-2: Now, raise your head along with your left arm and right leg off the floor. 

Step-3: Hold the position for few seconds. 

Step-4: Repeat it for the left leg and right arm as well, 4-5 times. As you practice, increase the rep up to 10-12 times for each side.

2) Plank 

This static core exercise is quite powerful for your core muscles. While practicing plank exercises, we let our core muscles hold the body that improves its strength. Fortunately, there are several variants of the plank to include other body parts too. They helpfully provide a whole body workout. 

Step-1: Lie on your stomach with feet close together. 

Step-2: Keep your hands below shoulders, maintaining the distance. 

Step-3: Now, raise your body off the floor, resting your body weight on hands and toes.

Step-4: Keep your back, hip, and legs in a straight line. Let your core muscles balance your body weight, keeping them off the ground. 

Step-5: Hold the position a minute or a few seconds as you can handle.

Step-6: If holding the stance for a minute is easy, you can repeat it 3-4 times.

3) Hip bridge 

Bridges help the movement of glute muscles vital to stability, postures, and strength. Since long hours of sitting make these muscles ineffective, a little core exercise can restore their stamina to bear weight.

Step-1: Lie flat on your stomach, bending your knees and feet flat on the ground.

Step-2: Now, tighten your core and glute muscles, keeping your upper body flat on the floor. 

Step-3: Then, raise the hips such that they align with your knees and shoulders.

Step-4: Hold the position for few seconds, then slowly come to the ground and relax. Repeat the task 4-5 times as a beginner and raise the rep as you practice.

4) Boat or Naukasana 

This is another static exercise or yoga asana to strengthen your abdominal muscles. It includes balancing your body weight on the core, lower back, and glute muscles.

Step-1: Sit with your back straight and legs extended at your front. 

Step-2: Strengthen your core and raise your feet off the floor. Let your legs make 45 degrees with the floor. 

Step-3: Also, as a response, bend your upper body backward, keeping your back and neck aligned. 

Step-4: Then, extend your hands in front to create a sense of boat. 

Step-5: Hold the position for a few seconds as much as you can (up to a minute) and relax. 

Step-6: Repeat the exercise 2-3 times. Keep a gap of 1 min rest between each round.

5) Elbow-to-knee Crunches 

This all-rounding core exercise helps you strengthen the abdominal muscles with a wide range of movement.

Step-1: Lie on your back with knees bent and hands touching the sides of your head.

Step-2: Raise your head off the ground. Now, bring your left knee towards the chest and your right elbow to meet both joints. 

Step-3: Repeat it for the other side too. Here, one rep of each side completes.

Step-4: Practice the rep on each side for a minute. 

6) Leg raise 

This beginners core exercise also works on lower abs to provide you with complete abdominal training for six-packs. It is one easy workout to practice that builds endurance or seems hard after some repetitions. If you also spend long hours sitting at a desk, this core strengthening exercise is for you. Its practice improves the flexibility and strength of the core, lower back, and glute muscles.

Step-1: Lie on your back. Keep your legs and back straight in a line and your arms at either side.

Step-2: Take a deep breath, tighten your core muscles. 

Step-3: Raise your legs off the floor. Try to hold them straight at 90 degrees with your core, facing the ceiling.

Step-4: After a tiny pause, lower them down again with the same pace as you raised them. 

Step-5: Do not touch it to the ground. Instead, let them hover over the floor. And again, raise them at 90 degrees with the upper body.

Step-6: Repeat the process 4-5 times in the beginning. And as you practice, increase the rep up to 10 times.

Tips to excel beginners core exercises

• Always practice some warm-up to avert injuries or muscle pain. Move your hands and legs before performing core exercises.
• Focus on your form. A proper posture is the foundation of any workout. If you lack the body posture required during the practice, there are chances of injury also.
• If you are new to exercises, then do not focus on repetitions. You can analyze the tasks first. 
• Stop if you feel pain. Also, do not practice core exercises if you have undergone any health condition recently. They are hard on your core, and therefore, your body as well.
• While practicing core strengthening exercises, tighten your core muscles before starting any. In other words, tuck in your navel to ensure your core engagement during the workout.
• Also, if you feel it too challenging, focus on the stability of forms. Everything comes after! You can increase the tasks or add variants as your core strengthens.

Conclusion

Beginners core strengthening exercises are beneficial in several ways, from balancing to weight lifting. 

These core muscles can become ineffective or stiff after a long time of inactivity. Thus, the core exercises help them regain their flexibility and strength.

However, you still may require some warm-up to induce muscle flexibility to prevent injury or burnout. 

Many of these core exercises serve as cardio exercises as they include whole-body movements.

Besides, it is good to consult an expert before heading to any core strength training as they are hard on your core and other body parts.