Top 5 Yoga Poses for Strong Abs

hey friends thanks for joining me for yoga for core strength i chose my top five yoga poses for building a strong core and i'm going to show you how to do them let's get started pose number one is plank pose plank pose is an awesome posture because it's an overall core stabilizer two of the core's function is to stabilize your spine and pelvis the other function is to move your arms and legs around with force so plank pose has to use all of the core muscles in order to stabilize your pelvis and spine in this posture so let's dive right in on some alignment here you want your hands shoulders distance apart wrist crease parallel to the front of your mat all fingers spread all knuckles grounding down your upper arm bone this is your humerus bone you want it to be externally rotated so that it sits in the shoulder socket safely your forearm is in a neutral position so from here walk your feet back curl your toes under so that your heels stack over your toes your feet can be hips distance apart and as you start to work on this posture you can begin to bring them together so shoulders stacked right over your wrists fingers spread low belly pulls in so really pull your belly up and into your spine get your legs nice and straight by engaging through your quadricep muscles so we'll just keep holding here building our strength and stability so a tendency is to drop the hips and remember one of the cores function is to stabilize your hips your pelvis so make sure those hips stay nice and kind of lifted and use those low core muscles to help stabilize your pelvis let's hold here for a few more breaths now if you need to modify or come down at all you just simply drop your knees this is our modified plank posture let's hold three belly pulls in two one come on down another common tendency with this posture is to hyper extend the arm so your elbow joint and your elbow crease would point forward and you'll see the elbow joint past the wrist and so what you want to do in that case is actually turn your elbow crease to face each other and take a little soft bend let's hold our plank pose one more time just to get all that alignment and put it together shoulders over wrists you're gazing a little bit forward but down there's a slight push of the floor away belly pulls in legs firm three two one release down our second core posture targets the obliques and is also another core stabilizer because you'll see you have to really use your core muscles in order to not drop your hips now the modified version of this is with one of the bottom knee down your upper arm just like in our plank pose still rolls away from your ears so it's called external rotation so that the arm bone sits safely in the shoulder socket so here you would have your modified side plank now let's actually come into our side plank from plank so we can get a nice strong and stable transition here roll to the outer edge of your right foot your right foot will be in line with your right hand stack your left inner edge of your foot so you're in kind of a mash up of plank and side plank i call this the swivel so now we can shift our weight more to our right hand to make sure that upper arm bone's still rolling away from your ear as you peel and stack your left shoulder arm up we'll hold here so you can see or feel rather that your obliques and your outer hip the glute medius are really engaged here lifting up otherwise the hips would sink down right so we have to use those core muscles to help stabilize our pelvis here in space and now to come out we'll go through that swivel so left hand down turn the feet and we'll switch sides outer edge of your left foot left upper arm bone rolls away from your ear and shoulder blades pretty neutral on the back here you can gaze up towards your right thumb it's a great idea to hold these core stabilizing postures maybe build up to 30 seconds to a minute breathing here and we'll come out the same way we came in through our swivel and plank drop your knees down my third favorite yoga pose for core work is locust pose so we'll lie down prone on our belly bring your arms alongside your body palms will face up so now we're going to work our back core muscles i want you to draw your shoulder blades in towards the spine as you lift your arms your shoulders your head and then lift your legs so you're trying to get your heels and your shoulders in about the same line pull the belly button up into your spine that'll help stabilize your lumbar spine here and then rather than cranking the head up just keep your neck nice and long so your gaze is forward but down breathing and we'll release down now we can make this more challenging by bringing our arms forward into a v shape here when the arms are above our head in this way we're really working against gravity so here we go inhale we'll lift on up locust try to keep your arms and ears in the same line belly pulls up and in think of those back core muscles engaging to lift your legs and arms and we'll release take crocodile pose just land your forehead down bend your knees rock your knees side to side let's do one more round of each so inhale lift on up feel those back core muscles nice and strong remember the core second function is to move your arms and legs with force so we're lifting through the strength of our core we're not lifting our arms and legs if that makes sense okay release down and we'll try our version with the arms above the head one more time as well draw your inner thighs in a little bit inhale lift up through the strength of your back body so those arms and legs are there for the ride you can still engage and energize them and release rest opposite forearm on top bend your knees windshield wiper your knees here's my fourth yoga pose for core which will be a hollow body shape so go ahead and lay on your back and now for hollow body you want your front ribs to go down there's a sensation of going down the bottom ribs kind of coming in towards each other that will automatically lift your pubic bone up and lessen the curve and your lumbar spine so you want to work towards getting your low back as flat as possible now the more curvature you have the more hips that you have that might be a little bit difficult and i want to show a couple modifications here as you come into your hollow body you could do one leg at a time like this that will help flatten your low back you could have your legs lifted a little bit higher or bend your legs so for a hollow body we'll start with our legs straight or take any of the modifications you need i want you to lift your head your shoulders up chin to chest belly pulls in those front ribs are down reach your fingers towards your toes and now try to keep your low back flat as you lift your legs up and we'll hold here so hugging everything into the midline of your body belly pulls in and down five four three two one release down we're going to do that again all right here we go lift your head shoulders chin