4 Weekly Pilates Moves for Strong Abs in Your 40s

Building Core Strength: More than Just Crunches and Sit-ups

When considering how to build core strength, it’s easy to think of sit-ups and crunches. Although these exercises do build strength in your abdominal muscles, your core comprises of more than just abs. It includes muscles in your pelvis, obliques, and lower back. Therefore, to achieve a stronger core, exercises that work the entire core are more beneficial than focusing on the abs alone.

The Core: More than Just Abdominal Muscles

“Crunches have their place in core training, but our core has a much bigger job. It’s not just about flexing the spine forwards,” explains Pilates instructor and strength coach, Rebecca Daodun. She states that in reality, our core needs to bend, rotate, resist movement, transfer force between our upper and lower body, and keep us stable while our arms and legs are moving.

Four Core Strengthening Exercises Recommended by Rebecca Daodun

To help you incorporate a more holistic approach to core training, Daodun shares four core-strengthening exercises she includes in her weekly routine. These exercises challenge the core in different planes and in different positions, making them a better alternative to relying solely on crunches.

1. Weighted Side Bend

This exercise challenges the core through lateral flexion [side bending] with the weight adding resistance. Obliques work to control both the movement down and the return to upright. “I love this move because we tend to think of core training as everything happening at the front of the body when actually our trunk needs to be strong in every direction,” says Daodun.

2. Standing Cross-Body Knee Drive

Daodun describes this as a much more integrated core exercise. By balancing on one leg while bringing the opposite knee and arm towards each other, the obliques are involved in the cross-body movement while the rest of the trunk and pelvis stabilize you. The integration of core strength with balance, coordination, and hip control makes this exercise beneficial not only in the gym but also in everyday life.

3. The Hundred

This classical Pilates movement involves sustaining abdominal work while the limbs are moving, instead of repeatedly curling up and down as in a crunch. “The further the legs move away from you, the greater the demand, so it can be easily modified by bending the knees or bringing the legs closer” explains Daodun.

4. Back Extension

Back extensions are critical when developing core strength as they strengthen the muscles along the back of the trunk, including the spinal extensors, which support and control the spine. Daodun emphasises that the core isn’t just your abs and back extensions balance the flexion-focused exercises like traditional ab workouts.

If you’re looking for equipment to perform these exercises, check out these home dumbbells.