Benefits of Core Exercises at Home

1. Accessibility

The best thing about training the core at home is how accessible it is. Getting a strong and healthy core can truly be achieved without any equipment at all or an expensive gym membership. The only bit of kit you might need is a yoga mat, but a carpet or rug will do for your next workout.

2. Effectiveness of Abdominal Training

Some of the core muscle exercises in this list are some of the most effective core variations there are to offer, meaning you don’t have to sacrifice effectiveness by training at home with zero equipment.

3. Options For All Abilities

Some people assume that training at home is only for beginners, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Here we have some of the easiest and approachable abs exercises and some of the most challenging exercises available to train the core for your abs workouts.

How To Use Core Exercises At Home

1. Pick The Right Exercises For You

Every exercise has a different ability level, make sure you take yours into consideration when you’re picking the exercises you’re going to use for your at home core workout. Picking exercises that are too hard or too easy will just result in ineffective training and frustration due to lack of results.

2. Add Difficulty Progressively to Muscles

Start at your level and make the exercises progressively harder as you adapt to the training. This is called progressive overload and will allow you to see great results over time. Difficulty can also be added through increase weight or reps. Here is an example of a progression you might use in your core workouts.

Deadbug —> Deadbug with Pause —> Deadbug with Legs Lowered.

3. Use Different Movement Patterns

Try not to focus on just “abs”, the core is built up of a variety of muscle groups including the obliques, pelvic floor, rectus abdominals, transverse abdominals and hip stabilising muscles. To target these different muscle groups you’ll need to use different movement patterns. These include four variations

Rotation movements are hard to incorporate with just bodyweight training but there are a few variations you can use.

Setting Up An At-Home Training Area

Training at home can be challenging, whether its training your abdominals and core muscle or doing some form of full-body resistance training with weights or bodyweight. Following a few simple but essential steps can help you train more consistently when training at home.

Remove Electronic Distractions

Having a TV on in your living room whilst trying to exercise will make training at home extremely difficult. The urge to stop your workout and relax will be even harder when you're distracted by technology. Put your phone on focus mode, turn off your laptop and TV and get to work.

Tell Others Your Intentions

Other Family members or housemates can be a huge distraction when trying to workout at home, that's why pre-warning them that your going to be working out, or better still, getting them to workout with you can be extremely beneficial. They will then stop themselves from interrupting you or asking you to do another fun thing that you don't want to miss out on. Training at the same time every day can also be helpful in this regard, people will know that it's your training time and will respect your space. I know this is extremely difficult for young children, but that's more of a childcare issue that you'll need to discuss with your partner.

Have A Plan and Stick To It

Not having a training plan can make a workout out impossible even if you have a gym membership. It adds a layer of complexity that prevents people from taking that first step. You either need to write your own plan or find one on the internet to help you move towards your goals.

Buy Some Equipment To Create Your Space

Making a specific area that is dedicated to a specific activity will drastically help you get in the mood for working out. If you are ritualistic, setting your space can be part of the training process where you take time setting up the environment you're going to use to work out. You don't need much, it could literally just be a training mat from amazon, something that says you have the intention of performing this behaviour.

Train At Regular Times

Doing activities at specific times makes them so much easier with much less limbic friction. This friction is what makes getting up and performing a behaviour a challenging process. If you can train at the same time, in the same place and create a habit around exercise this can be one of the most beneficial habits you can pick up for your physical health.

Make Training Fun

Training at home with minimal equipment can make it a little boring, especially if you don't use a variety of exercises to keep you challenged and engaged. So when writing your training plan or selecting one from the internet be sure to use one that you find interesting and fun all whilst moving towards your physical goals.

If you can take all these steps into account whilst remembering to use effective strength training or ab exercises, you’ll be sure to see great results with you physical efforts. If you can continue to perform these for an extended period of time you’ll be shocked at the service this will provide to your physical health.

Recommended Resources

Eric Cressey has discussed at length how to add core training into your workouts, especially dynamic core exercises . There are many different factors that go into choosing which core exercises that go into your training programme that you can read about here . All of these are taken into consideration in our Programme Application.