Core Strength Myths & Cues with Lauren Ohayon

Teaching Movement Patterns vs. Muscle Names

Shannon Crow: And we do get super specific with this, don’t we? Like some of us – raising my hand here, even though we’re just audio – geek out on the anatomy part of it, get really excited about it. And then also, I think sometimes we make things a little more black and white than variations of gray.

Lauren Ohayon: And I think it’s important to have body intelligence as a teacher. So to know where to be specific and to understand the workings. But I think it’s important as a teacher, also – our clients don’t care about their multifidus. Like, you know what I mean? Like we have to know also how to present this information in a way where it’s digestible and interesting, because ultimately, what we want is for them to be on a healing journey. But we also want to be successful teachers, and people won’t come back to us if all we do is kind of go on and on about this body part and that body part. Does that make sense?

Shannon Crow: That makes total sense. Yes. And so I can see where this language would come in about this core system and the back of the core, the front of the core, the top, the bottom. And that we don’t need to – I mean, some students will like to go into the anatomy piece of it, but for others, you’re right, they don’t really want to go into this.

Seeing the Body in Patterns

Lauren Ohayon: And I can say as someone – I’ve spent years studying and teaching anatomy and biomechanics, and I can say that I forget muscle names the second it comes in, it comes out. Right before I teach an anatomy class, I go and do a refresher in my own mind because I forget it. And the way I look at the body personally is patterns.

So I see the body in terms of patterns, and I teach teacher trainings in terms of patterns. In my teacher training manual, I have the muscles outlined. However, when I’m teaching, a lot of my training is about learning to see the body – learning to assess, to get a visual, a really strong, powerful visual assessment of who’s in front of you.

I don’t use muscle names for that, but it’s just a pattern. In which way is their hip shifted? Which way is their spine going? Do they prefer flexion? Do they prefer extension? Where are they more extended or are they more – you know what’s happening in the sagittal, the coronal and the transverse planes? Are they dominating in one plane more than the other? Oh, this shoulder is hanging out more in the coronal plane to the left. Do you know what I mean?

So it’s more about a pattern. And I have been able to help a lot of my clients heal from their injuries just by helping them find center by utilizing these patterns as opposed to ever needing to name one muscle.

Shannon Crow: Oh, that’s so amazing. I was just working with a woman yesterday, and I just said to her, like, let’s just take a look at one hand versus the other hand for a moment. And that’s exactly – this building this awareness, me taking a look at the way her hands were. And I don’t even need to share my observations. I wanted her to really see and feel it in the same way. That’s great.

Lauren Ohayon: Yeah.

The Problem with “Engage Your Core” as a Cue

Shannon Crow: So I want to dig into – because I’ve been to many classes, not just yoga. I’m not going to just pick on yoga, although I don’t go to a lot of fitness classes, but I’ve been to a lot of classes where someone told me to engage my core. So I want to get into this cue because you had sent me a thing that said, you know what? Not all the time is this phrase helpful. And sometimes it can be limiting to function. So do you want to dig into that a little bit?

Lauren Ohayon: Yeah. So I think there’s this idea of – yeah. Well we hear it all the time and I actually don’t do a lot of yoga anymore. I do a lot of fitness. So I swing the other way. I was very deeply into yoga. Now I’m really into fitness. But no matter where I go, I hear that catchphrase: engage your core, engage your core.

And I think that means different things to different people. But I think what a lot of people are doing when they engage their core is just pulling their stomach in. So if you were to put your hand on your belly right now, like maybe your belly button, and just very strongly pull that in as strong as you can, just pull it away from your hand – I think that’s what a lot of people do when they hear the phrase “engage your core.” I think they tighten it right there.

And there’s nothing wrong with that because you’re tightening. However, what I like to train – what I’m training for in my programs is a functional core, right? So not how something looks, you know, not getting you a six-pack core, but how is it functioning as a system because it has a job to do within your body.

The Core Should Be Reflexive and Automated

Lauren Ohayon: So in core function, one of the main elements of core function is that our core is designed like any other muscle in our body to be reflexive, automated. When I go to open a door, I don’t tell my bicep to engage to pull the door open. I don’t tell my tricep to engage to shut the door. Why are we constantly cueing the core? Very interesting.

I don’t cue any other muscle really in the body except for sometimes people cue “squeeze your glutes.” It’s another one that drives me crazy. Like if you’re in hip extension, your glutes are going to ideally be functioning. And if they’re not, you squeezing them is not going to bring about function, in my opinion. And the same goes for the core.

If the core is not functioning, if it’s not turning on to do a move – which, by the way, muscles are never on and off, so take that with a grain of salt. No muscle in your body is ever on or off – but if your core is not kicking in, you know, as quick to the moment, doing its job, supporting you, whatever it’s not doing, other muscles are compensating, right?

Tightening it is not going to teach it to get there, in my opinion. Just like engaging your tricep – yeah, the door would get shut, but you’re not really – there’s not a teachable moment happening here.

The Candles Breath: A Better Way to Engage the Core

Lauren Ohayon: So I don’t mind the cue “engage your core.” I like when people understand that to build a reflexive, automated core – the way every other muscle in our body is automated – you want to train it within the system that it lives. And it lives very much dependent on the breath system. You’ll see that in the breathing system.

So for me, “engage your core” means to do a very specific type of breath. Your core will naturally pull in with that. And then if you want to give it a little bit of extra oomph, then you can add some extra muscular tension to it. Like you can tighten it more. But the first step is getting your breath to automate your core because they work together as a system.

Shannon Crow: Could you lead us through that breath? How you might?

Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, yeah. So easy. We do it all the time. So imagine you have a birthday cake with 100 candles on it, and it’s in front of your face, and you take an inhale. And actually put your hand on your belly as you do this right there where we were before. Hand on your belly button, if that’s fine.

And as you exhale and blow out those candles really long and really slow, you can even hiss it out as you hiss – you ideally would feel that your core pulls in away from your hand. It does the exact same thing we did before when I said to you, pull your core and tighten it. Does yours do that, Shannon?

Shannon Crow: Yes. Yeah, I’m noticing it. And I like this as the breath. In things that I teach. So I’m so curious – why does that work? Why, when I make this hissing sound or blowing out all these hundred candles, slowly through pursed lips, why does my core engage?

Understanding Compression and the Transversus Abdominis

Lauren Ohayon: So, wow. How do I explain this in a simple way? The core is a compressive muscle. What you’re really feeling happening is your deep core, right? So we’re not doing a crunch. So the rectus abdominis is not very active right now, and we’re not really doing a side bend here. We’re not rotating. We’re really still.

So the muscle that would be dominant here would be your compressive muscle. And the transversus abdominis wraps from the front to the back like a corset. And as you exhale, you decrease – well when you do the exhale this way, in this specific way, you are decreasing volume. And you’re decreasing volume. The muscles that create that compression are your deep – the transversus – six-pack muscles compress, which is where you often hear them referred to as a corset.

I don’t know if you’ve heard that, but like tighten your corset or – if you look at what they look like, they’re shaped like a corset and they wrap around and attach to your spine via your thoracolumbar fascia. So they’re really like the corset of the midline. And as you do that exhale, you’re decreasing space, decreasing volume, decreasing volume. You are compressing so your compressor muscles are working.

Shannon Crow: That’s amazing. So we could instead of saying engage your core, we can ask everyone like, blow out all these candles on the birthday cake or make this hissing sound breath. You’re so correct.

The Danger of Bracing: Increasing Intra-Abdominal Pressure

Lauren Ohayon: But here’s what happens in the ideal world, yes. However, a lot of us, what we do when we engage our core is we actually brace our core. So I’m going to have you feel that now. Put your hand on your stomach and imagine that someone is about to – this is kind of awful, but just imagine it – someone’s about to punch you or kick you in the stomach. What would you do? You would probably brace, meaning do a push out. You would probably tighten and push your stomach out.

Shannon Crow: Oh, right. Oh, that’s a very different thing then.

Lauren Ohayon: Now what you just did there was you increased intra-abdominal pressure. And abdominal pressure is not a bad thing. However, excessive abdominal pressure can lead to core and pelvic floor dysfunction. And what we do know is that for people who already have core and pelvic floor dysfunction, we want to decrease pressure a lot. So strategy is really important.

How you blow your candles out matters. And I can show you how you would also – doing the breath that way increases pressure and you actually overuse your obliques and your six-pack for that. So remember I said they’re not villains? In that kind of a breath, they’re kind of the villain.

So if you go back and you do that long slow exhale, and as you do that long slow blowing out the candles or as you call it, I think you said the S – the S breath – you want to think about your lower abdominals specifically drawing backward in and in and up. I say up, but some people struggle with the up. So drawing your lower abdominals to the back wall. And that ideally would not have you braced or increase that abdominal and internal pelvic floor pressure.

The Tampon Test: Demonstrating Pelvic Floor Pressure

Lauren Ohayon: So you like pelvic health. This might be of interest to you. I have clients – I hope this is not TMI, but I have some clients place a tampon at the entrance to their vagina, and they have them do exactly what I just said. Do a long, slow breath where they are being kicked in the stomach in slow motion – that slow push your core out into your hands move. And 100% of the time the tampon falls out.

Shannon Crow: Right? Because of the pressure.

Lauren Ohayon: Pushing down there. Which, as you can imagine, since you know so much about pelvic floor health, that is not ideal on the pelvic floor, that bearing down aspect. We should do that when we push a baby out or we defecate or even fart, or cough, sneeze and laugh to some degree. However, it’s not what we should do when we take an exhale and engage our core. And a lot of our clients are misinterpreting the cue “engage your core,” and they are increasing pressure in both their core and their pelvic floor. Does that make sense and is that helpful?

Shannon Crow: Makes total sense. What I might add here is that sometimes people think, well, if I have pelvic floor dysfunction, that must mean I need to pull my pelvic floor up. And same thing – there’s just a lot happening there. And I love how you – let’s bring it back to you said we’re not telling our arm like engage the bicep, do this in the arm. We just do it. No one’s telling us how to open the door. Do you have some idea then why we’re getting so off track in terms of the breath and how this core is working? Like, why? Why is it even going the other way?

Why We Lose Core Function: Sedentary Lifestyle Theory

Lauren Ohayon: You know, it’s so easy to speculate. And there are so many theories. One prevailing theory that I like, but I’m careful with – I’ll kind of explain. The theory is that we become very sedentary by age five, right? And so we go to kindergarten and we sit all day and we stop using our bodies dynamically. We stop using our bodies three-dimensionally.

Our core is very responsive because it encompasses both the appendicular and the axial body. So it’s both about the arms, the legs – this is the whole body. So our core is very responsive to our movements. And when we start spending more time in sitting, just the same positions all the time, for years and years, our core doesn’t get that input anymore. Everything changes. And so we just use our bodies in a less varied way is one way of saying it.

What I don’t like about this theory – so I do love the theory, and I do believe that we just become very stuck in our movement patterns. What I don’t like about this theory is I hate blaming people for their issues. I hate making people feel bad, right?

Shannon Crow: Right. Because age five, we’re pretty – we have to follow along with the system of society. Yeah, that’s right. It makes me want to go back and enroll my kids in Forest School.

Movement Variety Throughout the Day

Lauren Ohayon: And that’s what a lot of my colleagues do for sure. I agree. And I raised my three daughters knowing all of this. And they’re going to very traditional – but it is what it is. I tend to think that we won’t be that affected by our choices. Do you know what I mean? Like, they’ll be fine and they’ll figure it out and it’ll all be okay.

But so I think that maybe our movement history has something to do with it. And then when we do work out or we start hitting the gym – most of us hit the gym in our 20s – then I think we’re doing it like an hour a day in this very specific environment. Again, there’s no reflexive anything being taught for the most part. So it’s very confining. It’s like you’re just doing it an hour a day, but the rest of the day you’re going and sitting. So again, your body is not getting that.

Maybe it’s great. Working out is great. I love it, but I do encourage people to maybe add variety – sit on the floor more, change up their workstations, maybe sit to stand more, change their positions throughout the day, use their body more. Park far away if you go to Target. Maybe carry more things in your arms and use less bags. Just a variety of ways that your daily movement can become more dynamic.

Shannon Crow: This is good. I mean, we hear people talk about this all of the time – to find variety in the movement and to not get stuck in that pattern. And we definitely can do this in a yoga class or in a fitness class or at the gym, like you said, or in the movements that we do just for our daily life, like how we walk, or maybe we’re always walking on really even surfaces. So yeah.

The Porta Potty Analogy: Stress and Body Holding Patterns

Lauren Ohayon: Right. Yeah. And there’s an interesting analogy that I use, that I learned from one of my teachers, Leslie Kaminoff, and it’s this idea that if you walk into a porta potty, it will likely smell really bad, and you hold your breath in response to that, right? So you don’t think about it. You don’t say to yourself, Shannon, now you’re going to hold your breath for the next 50 seconds and then you’ll be fine. You just hold your breath.

And when stuff stinks in our daily life, we also hold our breath. We also change the way we use our bodies, especially going through puberty, in teenage years. We make these postural changes to accommodate whatever it is that’s happening in our life.

Shannon Crow: Oh, right.

Lauren Ohayon: So when the porta potty is our life, we can sometimes change how we relate to it without realizing it. So I have a lot of clients who have a lot of core and pelvic floor dysfunction and they are chronic belly grippers and pelvic floor grippers. And the work that we do is to, A, become aware that – for them to become aware of that – and then B, to start to create new, healthy patterns.

Shannon Crow: Oh, I love this. I felt this for a long time before I found yoga. Well, I didn’t know – I wasn’t aware of it until I started doing yoga of the tension that I was holding in my abdomen. So I love this. Our life as a teenager is not always supportive. Not always, but often. Always in the pretty rocky times.

Lauren Ohayon: It can be. And so we have to have a lot of compassion for ourselves, for life. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. I tell my clients it just doesn’t matter. A lot of my clients will say, oh, my pregnancy did me in. And it doesn’t matter. I mean, we can focus on the past or we can just kind of be in the present and see what we can do to resolve things or make them better.

Core Strengthening Exercises and Modifications

Shannon Crow: So what are some of your favorite core strengthening poses or movements? What are some of your go-tos to share with people who might be new to doing something with the core?

Lauren Ohayon: So are we talking about a population of clients who have a core and pelvic floor issue, or are we talking about any – like a yoga class with no injuries, for example?

Shannon Crow: Could you do an example of both?

For People with Core and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Lauren Ohayon: Yes. So with clients who have a core and pelvic floor issue, we are really looking to reduce intra-abdominal pressure. That pressure I just went through a few minutes ago where you tighten your core by pushing it down and out. And to help them, whatever exercises they are doing, to make sure they’re not – and I call this the ribs, the bulging, the bearing down and the breath holding.

So whatever, if somebody is injured, I’m putting them through very rudimentary poses, starting with the candles exercise and then progressing into even poses on their hands and knees, like lifting one arm up, one knee up, lifting up the opposite arm and knee, finding that axial stability, finding that they can do that with the candles breath.

Plank is a really hard move. A lot of people do that by bearing down and bulging their abdominals. So building up to a pose like plank, which requires a lot of core strength and stability. And poses on their back, even something simple like sliding one leg away – lying on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor and sliding one foot away, like a heel slide, sliding one foot away and dragging it back. And it’s kind of more of a Pilates move, but can be really valuable.

It’s so easy to do that by cheating, by arching your back up and down, by pushing into the floor, by even flattening your back to the floor. I hear that cue a lot in classes – to flatten your back to the floor, which I don’t agree with that cue. So, you know, maintaining that neutral spine, letting your leg be really heavy and then seeing if you can just get your leg in and out without anything else being affected, will require deep core stability, that compression. Again, we want to kind of compress as we do that. So using the S breath, the candles breath – those are really basic moves that I start my clients off with.

Standing Poses and What to Avoid

Lauren Ohayon: If they can do that, they can do a lot of the yoga moves, like standing poses are great. The Warriors and the Triangle – those poses are great for people with pelvic floor dysfunction. We want to avoid big, deep backbends, for example, and poses that will put a lot of strain on the front wall of the abdominals.

For People Without Dysfunction

Lauren Ohayon: And then as far as core exercises for people who do not present with core and pelvic floor dysfunction, I’m not a big fan of an excessive amount of six-pack exercise. Navasana can be really six-pack – really recruiting these external abs, although it can be done in a way where you don’t. So I like to play around with challenging poses to see – even like a kettlebell swing which is not a yoga pose, but like something intense like that – to see can you recruit your abs in a healthy way? Well, healthy is subjective, but in a functional way, right?