Learn to brace your core using diaphragmatic breathing to stabilize your spine during lifts. Breathe into your stomach, not your chest, before you move. Hold the pressure through the descent, exhale on the way up.
All right, what is going on? In this video, I'm going to cover the concept of bracing your core and what I mean when I say brace your core. Okay, so what I want you to do is lay on your back, have your back flat, feet flat, everything flat. Put one hand on your stomach and put one hand on your chest. Okay, from here, I want you to take one big deep breath. Okay, so just like that. What I want you to realize is which hand moves, whether the hand on your chest moves or the hand on your stomach moves. Because what is going to happen with 99.9% of people is they take a big breath and they breathe through their chest, their hand on their chest comes up as opposed to the hand on their stomach. So what I want you to do is think about taking that big deep breath and pushing that air down into your stomach. So this hand moves. And not this hand. Watch me. You see how my hand on my chest did not move, but the hand on my stomach did move. Okay, so that is the first concept of bracing your core. Because what you want to think about is when you breathe into your stomach, you create this intra-abdominal pressure. And basically what this means is You're going to protect your— you're going to brace your core, but you're going to protect your lower back and your spine. What I want you to think about is an unopened soda can, right? If you have an unopened soda can and you tap the outside, you're not going to dent it because all that pressure inside is built up. That's exactly what I want you to think about with your core. If you take that big deep breath and you hold that when you lift, there's so much pressure inside your stomach that you're going to protect yourself. You're going to tap on it, right? You can even do it. I'll go over this in a second, but when you do this— let's take a big, deep breath. Punch yourself in your stomach. Your stomach should be hard. There should be pressure. You should be bracing your core, right? This is what I mean when I say brace your core. You're going to take a big, deep breath into your stomach and then push your stomach out. You're already pushing your stomach out because you've taken a big, deep breath, Once you do this, brace by pushing your stomach out, right? And then you should be able to punch yourself, poke yourself and see like, is it braced or is my hand going in? And I don't care how much fat you do or don't have, you should still be able to feel that your core is getting braced, right? So that is the very first most important part of core bracing, learning how to breathe. You should not be breathing through your chest, you should be breathing through your stomach. Okay, so let's take this into A goblet squat. Okay, I'm going to fix the angle very quickly because I am taller than most. Cool. All right, so let's take this into a goblet squat, for example, right? I'm going to grab a weight. What I want you to think about is when you have this goblet squat up here, you're going to brace your core. Now, what does that look like again? So you've already gotten your feet set up, everything's set up, you get the weight here. From here, take the big deep breath into your belly and push your stomach out. So watch. One more time. Okay. Also notice my breathing there. I wasn't— as I was going down, I wasn't trying to get my breath. I took that big deep breath before I did the movement, right? So it's brace, exhale when you come back up. Because if you do not— if you're trying to take this breath as you go down, your back's not stable, you're losing power, you're losing strength, as opposed to— Filling up that soda can beforehand, bracing it, keeping it, and letting it out when you come up, the weight is going to feel lighter. You're going to protect your back. You're going to be stronger. So this concept of bracing your core is really, really important. Now let's take it into a deadlift. Same thing applies for a deadlift, right? And let me go over the goblet squat again very quickly. If you are not bracing your core, what's going to happen is you're going to find your back rounding at the bottom and then bouncing back up. That is no good for lower back pain. Okay? So that's why you have to brace your core. Same thing with the deadlift. If we're doing a deadlift, take the big deep breath, brace your core. You see how I reset every single time? I took the big deep breath every single time and braced my abs. Okay, I'm bracing my core. I'm not trying to get the weight and get the breath as I come up. The breath is already there. It's already in place. You're keeping that breath. Notice how I don't get it. Not doing that, right? I'm going, keeping it. Got it. So guys, that's the concept of core bracing. And that is what I mean, you really have to take that big deep breath into your stomach. Push your stomach out, not suck it in, push your stomach out, brace your core like I'm going to punch you. Then from there you will be stronger, protect your lower back, prevent injury, be stronger, all great things. Let me know if this helps, guys.
