Jessie Duppler explains why squats are a core exercise: your abs and back muscles stabilize your trunk so your legs can generate force. She uses the image of shooting a cannonball from a canoe to show what happens when your core is unstable. The cue is a subtle rib cage tuck during the squat to protect your spine and support leg drive.
What's my favorite core exercise? It's a squat. Let's talk about why. In order to squat effectively, our abs and our back muscles have to work efficiently to stabilize our trunk. Otherwise, it's like trying to shoot a cannonball out of a canoe. Your legs have no ability to generate force, which means you should be feeling your abs doing some work when you squat. One tip for you is to think about ever so slightly tucking your rib cage down or rotating your pelvis underneath you. It doesn't mean you're going to brace and do this as you go into your squat, but it does mean you should feel a little bit of work through through here to support your spine and your legs. The legs can only push as efficiently as the trunk allows it to. So let's train our core in a more functional manner by doing the stuff that we do all day long and then load the crap out of it.
