What is my “deep core” and should I be strengthening it?
My phone keeps tabs on the amount of time I spend scrolling on Instagram. It’s a bit annoying because to be fair, I get a lot of inspiration and great programming ideas from watching Pilates videos on the ‘Gram, but I also spend way too much time looking at capsule wardrobes and searching for the best one pot dinner recipes. During my allotted screen time, I started to see a trend of Pilates influencers referring to their “deep core”. To be perfectly honest, at first I thought it was just a made up term from people who hadn’t spent much time in anatomy class. But then I started to wonder if I was missing something, so I Googled the definition. There’s a bit of conflicting information online–surprise, surprise!–but basically deep core refers to a group of muscles that you’ve likely heard us reference during classes: the transversus abdominus, the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, and the multifidus. This group of muscles pretty much wraps your lower torso in a 360 degree blanket and helps stabilize and support mostly your front and side body during movement.
Your transversus abdominis is your lowest layer of abdominal muscles. Multifidi are the muscles on your back that help stabilize your spine. Your diaphragm is the large, dome-shaped muscle that sits below your lungs and assists with breathing. And the muscles that make up your pelvic floor (the pubococcygeus, iliococcygeus, coccygeus, and puborectalis muscles) support your bladder, uterus (in females), small intestine, and rectum–they help control the flow of urine and other bodily functions.
When you’ve gone through a physically demanding experience like pregnancy and childbirth, or are deconditioned for any number of reasons (illness, lifestyle, etc.), weakness in your deep core muscles can lead to issues like back pain, incontinence, or functional limitations. Now that we know what the deep core is, the answer is YES, we SHOULD be strengthening it! And Pilates can help!
Pilates movement principles incorporate a 360 degree breath, sometimes referred to as lateral breathing. We are encouraged to breathe not only into the front of the body, but the sides and the back body, too, expanding the lungs and the rib cage in all directions as we inhale. Breathing deeply engages the diaphragm, as well as all the little muscles that help expand and contract the ribs and mobilize the spine.
Multifidus is a group of short triangular muscles (multifidi) along the spine that help stabilize the spine during movement–for example, they allow you to raise and lower your arms without arching and flexing your lower back. Weak multifidus is often associated with low back pain. Because many Pilates movements are isolated, they are ideal for strengthening the multifidus–picture your supine arms or midback series, for example, where we keep the legs in table top and the body still while moving the arms. Or a bird dog or swimming prep exercise on all fours, where we reach opposite arms and legs away from the body while trying to minimize the movement in the spine and torso.
The transversus abdominus can be harder to feel engaging than the top layer of abdominal muscles, the rectus abdominus, but when you hear me say, “float your legs into table top”, or you find yourself doing toe taps, you know your TA is getting a workout! And while we don’t always focus as much on isolating the pelvic floor muscles in individual exercises–this can sometimes lead to over engagement–Pilates can definitely help create awareness of when and how we activate the pelvic floor. Footwork, for example, is an exercise that involuntarily contracts and releases the pelvic floor muscles.
This month, Retrofit Pilates is focused on strengthening your deep core! How can Pilates help strengthen your diaphragm, mutifidus, pelvic floor and transversus abdominus? Follow us at @retrofitpilates for exercises, tips and information–let’s go deep this April!
Pam Ferguson
Retrofit Master Instructor
Lead Instructor/Operations Associate