Your core muscles keep your entire spine and pelvis steady against the forces of gravity and your moving extremities. According to the Mayo Clinic, strengthening your core muscles helps improve balance and stability. Having a strong, stable core makes all movements easier, and being able to stabilize your spine during weightlifting movements helps reduce your risk of injury.
Warm Up
Always warm up before core workouts, just as you'd warm up before working any other muscles. Do at least five minutes of cardio exercise--biking, brisk walking or running on an elliptical trainer--that gets your blood pumping.
Repetition
Core workouts have a reputation for being boring. Some people think you have to do hundreds of crunches to get any benefit---that couldn't be any further from the truth. The Mayo Clinic recommends starting with five repetitions of any core exercise. As you get stronger, you can build up to doing 10 to 15 repetitions of each exercise. Once you can do more than 15 repetitions, it's time to do a more challenging variation of that exercise.
Breathe
It's tempting to hold your breath when you work out, especially if you're focusing on squeezing your core muscles tight to hold your body steady. Focus on breathing normally instead during isometric contractions. If your core exercises involve movement, follow the standard weight training advice to exhale on the effort portion of a lift--the contraction of a crunch, for example. Then, inhale on the release, lowering from the crunch when a core exercise involves movement.
Shoulder Blades
Always make bringing your shoulder blades down and back a part of any core exercise. Think chest up and out. Squeezing your shoulder blades helps keep your spine properly aligned and also helps ensure that your abs, not your shoulders or arms, do the work of stabilizing your body.
Bracing
Certain exercises such as squats and deadlifts, challenge your core muscles to keep your spine stable as your other muscles shift a heavy load. Prepare yourself for these exercises by bracing. In other words, stiffen your core muscles to keep your spine stable before you initiate the movement, and keep your core muscles stiff throughout the entire range of motion. Note that, as mentioned above, this doesn't mean you should hold your breath.
Equipment
Stability balls make great workout aids; they make even the most mundane of exercises, from crunches to chest presses, into a new and interesting challenge. If stability balls aren't to your liking there are a number of other pieces of equipment you can use to spice up your ab workout, including Bosu trainers, medicine balls and wobble boards. You don't need any equipment at all to get an effective ab workout, but you might as well use what's available to keep your workouts interesting.
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