Squat University - The 3 Best Core Exercises [Do These Every Day]

Alright guys, so today we're going to talk about the three core stability exercises you should do every day. Now, if you heard that one word in that phrase, it was stability. I'm not going to talk to you guys about the three dynamic core exercises to work your abs. This is a stability video, meaning the emphasis is on limiting excessive or unwanted motion at our spine so that we can have awesome carryover to the exercises that we're looking to perform in the gym, like your squat, your deadlift, your bench, your clean, and snatch. If you do these exercises, I promise you will feel much more powerful in each one of those movements.

So let's talk about what the exercise grouping is called: the McGill Big Three. These are based off of the research from renowned back expert Dr. Stuart McGill. Dr. McGill has spent his entire life working on how to stabilize the spine and understand how the way in which we use our spine leads to certain types of injuries. Whenever we're trying to keep our spine resilient to injury under load, we want to brace it, lock it into place, and then move about our hips. The different exercises that we do today, starting off with the curl-up, are going to emphasize that.

Now, when a lot of people work the front of their core, what do they do? They do crunches. They move their spine. Look at my spine right now: it is flexing up and back down. Well, that's not a bad exercise for working the front of your core through movement to strengthen your rectus abdominis, or six-pack muscles. I want to emphasize stability. I want to limit any motion at my spine. So what am I going to do? Drop one foot. Now, if you're not in pain, it doesn't matter which one. You're going to have your hands underneath your low back. These hands are pressure sensors. They're going to pick up if you round your back, so keep your hands here to feel for whether or not that happens. What you're going to do is brace your core. You're going to turn all those muscles on, and then you're going to pick your head up just slightly off the floor and hold for 10 seconds. The hold is the most important part of this. We're not just moving our spine; we're trying to emphasize stability by getting those muscles to kick on, and that's fine in place. So this is what it's going to look like: brace, pick the head up slightly, hold for ten seconds, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and then back down.

If you're feeling your neck is a little turned on and maybe just a little bit stiff while you're doing this, all you're going to do is tuck your chin first. So just tuck your chin a little bit and then pick up, and that may help a lot as far as taking some tension off the front of your neck. But again, this is a slight pick up of the head. What I don't want to see is this: don't pick your head up this high. All you have to do is pick it up slightly, and by holding it here and keeping your core braced, all these muscles on the front of your spine, like your rectus abdominis and your transverse abdominis, are turning on, which really stiffens the spine. Now back down. Do six reps in a row, and I promise you'll feel those muscles working.

What is that exercise doing? Like I said, it's working the front of our spine. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to hitting all the parts of your spine, because there are a lot of muscles that surround it and make up the core, so we need a different barrage of exercises to really hit all parts. The next one: how do we hit the sides? The side plank. You're going to get down on your side from your elbows. The modified version is usually one of the easiest go-to exercises. You're just going to pick up and hold in this position. This is a great exercise for hitting that downside part of your core and your lateral hip, your glute medius. If you have a very weak or poorly coordinated glute medius, the lateral hip muscles, you'll feel this work in there too. Again, ten seconds, and then back down. Something like this: six reps on each side. Now, if this is really easy, how do you modify it? Let's go to a full plank from here. You put your hands here. It's step one. If that's too easy, put your hands here. Again, we're holding for ten seconds. We're turning on those muscles of the spine, we're limiting excessive unwanted motion, and I want that spine here and I don't want to twist. We're limiting excessive or unwanted motion to the spine, stabilizing and locking in. So again, six reps each side, ten seconds.

Now we're going to go to the last part. We've hit the front, we've hit the sides, let's hit the back. When most people think, how do I work the back, what do they do? They're trying to work back extensions, Supermans, things like that. You're again moving your spine into an overarch, into extension. What do we want to do? We want to limit excessive or unwanted motion to the spine, locking in place in a neutral position and stabilizing around that. The bird dog is a great exercise for that: very low load on the spine but working the erectors of your spine very well. This is what you're going to do. Get on all fours. Again, find that neutral position, so you're not rounded and you're not overarched. Find that middle position. From right here, you're going to brace your core, and you're going to go opposites: right hand extension, left leg kick out. We're going to go out and hold it for 10 full seconds. After that 10 seconds, keep the spine braced. This is the part where a lot of people mess up: we're going to slowly come back, not move our spine, touch back, out, and hold for another 10 seconds. We're sweeping under our body. If you think about what's happening at my hips, there's a flexion, and then back. This is like a squat as far as the motion. The back stays flat, with no motion at the spine, only motion at the hips. I don't want this, because what just happened is I lost my neutral spine. So as you go out, you're holding, keeping that core braced, hold, touch, and then back out.

Common mistakes I see with this exercise: first, kicking the leg too high. Now watch my back while this happens. I'll just do the leg movement, but people do this, and what happens to their back? It overarches, it extends. I want that foot only a couple inches off the ground. Watch the difference. Overarch, and I'm going to keep it just a couple inches off the ground. You see the difference? We're able to keep that core in a better position because we're keeping our hips moving as they should, since the hips directly affect the spine. Next thing I want you to think about is really making a fist as hard as you can with your arm. When you do that, you're going to light up some of those muscles of your upper back as well. If you do the bird dog correctly and create as much tension from fist to foot, this is going to be tough. You should be sweating by the time you're done. Watch how I do that, with a lot of emphasis and a lot of tension in my fist. So we're here: brace, fist out, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, tap back out, and again ten seconds.

If that is too tough for you and you're wobbling all over, how do you regress? You can do it with only the hips. Just be here and extend the leg, hold that for ten seconds, and back. If that's even too tough, you can do it where you're just moving your arms. But again, the end goal is going all the way out and holding in a way that you can progress. If you want to add a bit more dynamic movement, move your arms out and draw some squares, again emphasizing core stability while the extremities are moving. That's the end carryover we're looking for in our core stability work, because it's applicable to the way you move in the gym: stable core, moving extremities.

I have been doing the McGill Big Three personally before every single workout for the past year, and I've seen crazy carryover into how well and how powerfully I'm moving during my workouts. On my off days I still do this. I do a set of six, for 10 seconds of each exercise, if I don't have a lot of time. If I have time, I do a descending rep scheme pyramid: six reps, four reps, two reps. If you want to do more, eight, six, four, two. But the most important thing is that you must do the 10-second hold to emphasize stability, to limit the excessive or unwanted motion of the spine. We want to keep that spine locked in place while we move the rest of our extremities. I want you to start doing the McGill Big Three. I promise you we will find a huge carryover to how you feel and how you're moving in the gym. Hope you guys like today's quick video. If you did, please subscribe to my channel, like it, and in the comment section below let me know if there's anything else you want to learn about in next week's video. Until then, happy squatting.