How to connect to your core without doing floor work
Go against a wall and put yourself against the wall so that your back is on the wall and you’re facing into the room, then bend your knees and walk your feet a little bit away. Press back into the wall with the back of your ribs and then draw that whole circular area around the navel, draw it together first and then back towards the wall. And if you find that to be challenging, take your hands and do that action with your hands so your fingers will pull in toward the navel, and then pull back. So you’re almost acting as your own corset with your hands. I would say do that many times a day to start that action of using the core without having to get down on the ground.
Then the idea is to take that feeling and incorporate it into your daily life. So come away from the wall and start to bend your knees. But then immediately hinge at your hips so you’re doing a squat. Come down so that your hips are still higher than your knees, but your torso starts to fold over like it would sit on your thighs. So it’s really keeping everything symmetric. Your hips go back, your knees bend, and then keeping the chin neutral, stay at a place where your belly isn’t on your thigh. Then do the same action you did on the wall, pull everything together from that solar plexus, from that circle, and then pull it into the back and hold it there.
So now you’re utilizing the core, you’re working the abs without being on the ground by stabilizing your spine as it starts to flex. You’re flexing at the hips, but the trunk is moving from a vertical position. So more gravitational forces are going to be pressing down on the spine. So your reaction is to pull up in the abdominals. The next stage from is to stay tilted like that but slide your right leg back beyond the right toes. So if you have shoes, take the shoes off if possible. So you’re now from that squat position where you’ve tipped, you’ve tilted forward, your hips are back, you’ve held your belly in there, and I would say try and hold it for a minute and work your squats up to two minutes, three minutes. Then you slide that right leg back.
So you’re in this crescent lunge, but a tilted crescent hill lunge. So your right leg is back, your left leg is forward and the abdominals are in. And then stay pulled in from the solar plexus, pull the belly into the back, and bring your hands at kind of the tops of your pelvis. So right where the jeans would sit, put the hands there and cinch the sides in as well. So you’re working the abdominals all the way down there. Then you could bring just your right arm forward by your right ear. And then bring your left arm back. So now you’re in this tilted crescent lunge where your right leg’s behind you, your left leg’s in front, your right leg is straight, you’re on your right toes. The right arm is by your ear. We’re working the abdominals because you’ve got gravity happening. You’re now moving your arms as well as trying to stabilize the grounding action of your legs.
And then you repeat all of that on the other side. So the right leg would be forward and the left foot back.
And for somebody who is someone’s grandmother, for example, I would give them an exercise like this but I would just have them hold on to the wall or a chair for the balance in that tilted crescent lunge. But no one is ever too old or too disabled in their movement patterns to start working more from their core.
Help break a world record
Come and join me on August 3 in New York City to break a world record for the most amount of handstands done simultaneously! Right now the current record is 399 and I want to smash that. You don’t need to know how to do a handstand. I’m going to take an hour and take you through a class that will give you the building blocks of how to get on your hands and get a little air time. We just need you to get off the ground briefly.
Resources:
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