3 Essential Tips for Activating Your Core During Workouts

Fitness, Postpartum, Pregnancy

Welcome to the MamasteFit Blog! If you’ve ever struggled to feel your core engage during your workouts, you’re not alone. Many people wonder how to “turn on” their core and make it work for them during exercise. In this post, I’ll share three key techniques to make your core workouts more effective: diaphragmatic breathing, strong exhalation, and visual cues. Learn how to engage your deep core system to improve spinal stability and manage abdominal pressure.

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1. Diaphragmatic Breathing: The Key to Engaging Your Deep Core

One of the most powerful tools to activate your core is diaphragmatic breathing. This technique integrates the deep core system, helping you manage the pressure within your abdominal cavity. When you breathe diaphragmatically, the diaphragm moves down as the pelvic floor also moves down. This allows the muscles surrounding your core—such as the transverse abdominus (your “corset abs”) and the multifidi (along your spine)—to engage, providing stability and helping you feel your core turn on.

Here’s how you can practice diaphragmatic breathing:

Start by lying on your back: Focus on expanding your rib cage as you inhale and feel your back press into the floor.
Exhale and engage: On the exhale, think of pulling your belly button toward your spine and lifting the front half of your pelvic floor.

Once you’ve mastered this technique on the floor, try it in a seated position, or even standing. As your body moves into more active positions, you’ll likely feel a stronger engagement in your core.

2. Enhance Activation with a Strong Exhale

While diaphragmatic breathing is key, it’s important to focus on your exhalation. When you exhale forcefully (think of making a “shhh” sound), you create a stronger engagement of your core muscles. If you’re still not feeling it, consider emphasizing your inhale too. A big inhale into your back will bring more length to your core, allowing you to create more power during the exhalation.

Here’s a quick tip: Try to make your inhale just as strong as your exhale. This allows your body to expand, giving you more room to contract on the exhale. You’ll find that when you exhale strongly after a big inhale, your core engages much more effectively.

Went into spontaneous labor at 38 wks with baby #1 last night (born this morning) and was able to push through a very fast and intense labor (8 hrs active, 4 hrs of contractions with basically NO BREAK in between that got me from 1cm dilated to fully 😵‍💫) unmedicated! Pushed for an hr! I thank you both, your prenatal fitness program, and prepping pelvic floor fit birth for how much I rocked this delivery. THANK YOU!!!

I just wanted to leave a review for you, I took your prenatal bundle with the birth course, fitness app, and pelvic floor prep. I can't say enough good things about it, my only regret was not enrolling sooner! After having some nagging SI and pelvic pain, at 22 weeks I enrolled in your program and started the workouts on the app. After a few weeks,my pain was minimal except for the days I missed a workout or getting in movement. The birth course was very informative and I felt confident and excited about giving birth. While I did need to be induced at 39 weeks, I felt confident and understood my options. I had a great and speedy delivery with just a minor tear. I attribute this to the strategic movements I learned in the course throughout my labor and breathing during pushing, along with wonderful hospital staff. We were blessed with a healthy baby girl Ellie Jo. I look forward to using the fitness program again in the future and other courses you have! Thank you for all the time you put into creating such thorough content!

For what it's worth, I'm a PT myself (not a pelvic floor specialist), but am going to a PFPT. I also took a CEU course for my license and my own learning on pelvic floor health in pregnancy. With that background, I am utterly impressed with the content of your course so far. I was wondering if it'd be repetitive at all from the CEUs I recently took, but it hasn't been. It's so informative, thorough, and covers way more topics than I ever expected. Thank you!!

3. Visual Cues to Boost Core Activation

Sometimes it helps to add a little visualization to the mix. Here are a couple of cues to try during your core workouts:

Pull your hip bones together: As you exhale, think about pulling your hip bones toward each other. This helps activate the muscles around your waist and lower abdomen.
Zipper up your belly: Another visual cue is to imagine zipping up the center of your belly from the bottom up as you exhale. This will help engage your deep core muscles more thoroughly.

You can combine these visual cues with your diaphragmatic breathing to deepen the core activation, giving you more control and focus during your movements.

Bonus Tip: Increase the Challenge

If you’re still struggling to feel your core, the issue might not be with your technique—it could be that the exercise itself is too easy. If you’re doing a movement like a bird dog and aren’t feeling your core activate, try increasing the challenge. You could:

Alternate sides: Switching from side to side increases the stability demand, engaging your core more intensely.
Add load: Incorporating resistance, like rowing while extending your leg, can ramp up the challenge.
Move to an upright position: Exercises like farmer’s carries, palof presses, or rotational movements with weights offer great opportunities to engage your core in a more functional, standing position.

Remember, if an exercise feels too easy, it might be time to take it to the next level to keep your core engaged and challenged.

If you want more daily workouts to support a strong pregnancy as you prepare for birth, join our online prenatal fitness programs!

MamasteFit is unique in that we are one of the ONLY prenatal/postnatal training facilities in the United States. We develop our workout programs from our experience of working with in-person pre/postnatal fitness clients and work closely with physical therapists to refine our programming. In addition, we are birth workers, so we combine our experience as perinatal fitness trainers and birth professionals to ensure that our programs actually support your birth preparation and recovery!

Our prenatal fitness programs are offered in several formats:

40-Week Prenatal Strength Program in the Teambuildr App:
- This program is a self-paced workout with shorter demo videos. This is ideal if you like to workout in a gym setting and prefer a traditional workout delivery format.
- This program syncs to your current week of pregnancy, so you can start anytime, with one-time payment or month-to-month payment options.
- This program has a full and mini version, depending on how much time you have to dedicate to workouts!
Prenatal On-Demand Fitness Program:
- If you prefer to follow a video as you workout at the same time, this workout program will be the best option!
- This program syncs to your current trimester, so you can grab the trimesters you need!
Birth Prep Workout Program:
- If you already have a workout routine or you only want birth prep-focused workouts, check out this program!
- This program includes full-length workout videos to follow as you workout at the same time.
Prenatal Yoga Classes:
- If you want prenatal yoga, join our prenatal yoga program! This also syncs to your current trimester.

Why Core Activation Matters

Core training is an essential part of prenatal and postpartum fitness. During pregnancy, maintaining a strong core helps support your baby’s position, assists with comfort, and prepares you for labor. Postpartum, core training aids in rebuilding strength after childbirth, allowing you to feel more capable and confident as you step into motherhood.

By focusing on diaphragmatic breathing, adding a stronger exhale, using visual cues, and increasing the challenge when necessary, you’ll be well on your way to feeling your core in your workouts. These simple tips can transform how you train your core and help you feel more connected to your body during every movement.

If you’re looking to take your core training further, check out our prenatal and postpartum fitness programs. From app-based exercises to full-length on-demand videos, our programs are designed to support you at every stage of your journey!

Gina Conley, MS