Core workout: what your squats already cover, and what to add

"Core" usually means the muscles that wrap your trunk: the abs down the front, the obliques at the sides and the muscles along your spine at the back. In lifting, their main job is to hold your trunk still while your arms and legs move a weight. Under a bar, that job is the brace, tightening your midsection before each rep; squat form and deadlift form show how to set it for each lift.

This page is for someone who already squats, hinges, pushes and pulls. (If that isn't you yet, the first four weeks comes first.) It answers whether the big lifts already train your core, then gives a four-exercise block and where it goes in your week.

Do squats and deadlifts already train your core?

The back of it, yes. The front, much less. Studies that measured trunk muscle activity during heavy lifts and core exercises agree on the first part:

• Heavy lifts beat floor exercises for the back muscles. In 16 people, squats and deadlifts at 80% of a one-rep max produced more activity in the muscles along the spine than the same lifts with body weight, a superman or a side plank. The abs and obliques showed no differences.¹
• And ball exercises. In nine resistance-trained men, squats and deadlifts at 90 and 100% of a one-rep max worked the back muscles harder than three stability-ball exercises, with no differences in the abs or obliques across any of them.²
• The review. A 2013 systematic review of 17 studies and 252 healthy adults found a deep back muscle, the multifidus, more active in free-weight exercises than in ball and device exercises, and its authors advised building core training on multi-joint free-weight lifts. It covered only three deep muscles, though: not the rectus abdominis (the front abs) or the obliques.³

The front of the trunk is where the lifts fall short. In 12 resistance-trained men, seven of them competitive powerlifters, heavy back squats (a six-rep max) worked the abs and obliques about as hard as a plank with a weight on the back, and the spine muscles harder.⁴ In seven recreationally trained men who front-squatted and overhead-squatted at up to 95% of a three-rep max, a plank worked the abs and obliques harder than either squat.⁵

Read together: heavy lifts already give the muscles along your spine plenty of work, but the abs and obliques get about a plank's worth at most. All of these studies measured muscle activity during the exercises, not growth or strength over weeks, and they were small and mostly in men. Take them as a direction, not a verdict.

What adding core work changes

Training studies give a modest answer. A 2016 meta-analysis of trained people aged 16 to 44 found that core strength training made the trunk muscles much stronger, with only small-to-medium gains in other measures of fitness and athletic performance, compared with no extra training or regular training alone. The studies were of low quality, and trunk strength itself was only weakly linked to performance.⁶

So the case for a core block is plain: it trains the front and sides of your trunk more directly than your main lifts do, and a stronger trunk is a fair goal on its own. Don't count on it to move your other numbers much. It takes about ten minutes.

The core block: four exercises, four jobs

Each one trains a single job: refuse to arch, refuse to twist, refuse to lean, or curl forward.

The plank: stop the arch

Forearms and toes on the floor, a straight line from your head to your heels, and your midsection tight so your hips don't sag. Hold it only as long as that line holds. Can't keep it for twenty seconds? Start with the dead bug: on your back, arms and knees up, slowly lowering the opposite arm and leg while your back stays down on the floor.

Once forty-five seconds feels easy, make the plank harder rather than longer. In 19 people, a long-lever plank raised activity in the abs over a standard plank, a plank with the pelvis tucked under raised it in the obliques, and the two together raised both; the long lever did more of the work.⁷

The Pallof press: stop the twist

Stand side-on to a cable or a band anchored at chest height, hold the handle at your chest with both hands, and press it straight out without letting it turn you. The cable pulls you sideways; the job is to stay square. In a 2025 study of 12 physically active adults, six men and six women, who held the press out at arm's length, kneeling was the easiest version to keep still, and standing with one foot directly in front of the other was harder. It measured how much the pelvis moved, not muscle activity.⁸

The carry: stop the lean

Pick up a heavy dumbbell or kettlebell in one hand and walk tall, without leaning toward the weight or away from it. That's a suitcase carry; a weight in each hand makes it a farmer's carry. In 18 college-aged adults (12 women and 6 men), with about 25 kilograms in each loaded hand on average, both carries worked the muscles along the spine more than holding the same weights still, and the plank worked them very little. The plank worked the front abs hardest of anything tested. The suitcase carry, weight in the right hand, worked the obliques on the left side about as hard as the plank did.⁹

So the plank and the carry do different jobs; the one-hand carry is the one that loads your sides. Walk 20 to 30 meters, then switch hands. With no weight at home, a side plank on one forearm works the same refusal to lean.

The crunch: curl forward

The other three resist movement; this one bends your trunk forward, the abs' other job. Start with a floor crunch: curl your shoulders up toward your hips, then lower slowly. In a gym, a cable crunch (kneeling, pulling a rope down as you curl) or an ab-crunch machine lets you add weight like any other exercise. In 21 healthy men and women aged 23 to 43, a hanging knee raise with arm straps and a reverse crunch on a bench inclined 30 degrees were among the exercises that worked the abs and obliques hardest,¹⁰ so those are the next step up.

How many sets, and how to progress

• Two sets of each for the first two weeks, three from week three, the same build as the full-body plans on this site.
• Holds and carries end when your position slips, not when you collapse: your hips sag in the plank, the cable turns you in the Pallof press, you lean in the carry.
• Crunches run 10 to 15 reps, stopping with a rep or two left, like any other set. (Here's how to judge reps left.)
• Progress one thing at a time: a few more seconds or meters, a heavier dumbbell, then a harder version. Progressive overload works here exactly as it does on a squat.

Where it goes in your week

At the end of the session. The American College of Sports Medicine's 2009 position stand advises ordering a strength session with large muscle groups before small ones, multiple-joint exercises before single-joint ones, and higher-intensity exercises before lower-intensity ones.¹¹ A core block is lower-intensity work, so it goes after your squats, hinges, presses and rows, where the arm workout goes too.

Two or three times a week, on days you already lift:

• A full-body plan with one core slot, like the first four weeks, the bodyweight workout or the college routine: keep the one slot and rotate the four exercises through it.
• The 30-minute workout pairs its core move with the hinge. Any of the four fits.
• Upper/lower or push/pull/legs: the whole block at the end of two sessions. Which two is your workout split's call.

What to skip

• Trading lifts for ball work. In the studies above, heavy lifts worked the trunk as hard as or harder than ball and balance exercises did.^1,2
• Five-minute planks and endless crunches. When a version gets easy, move to a harder one.
• Sharp or lasting pain. Stop, and talk to a doctor or a physical therapist.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Four exercises are easy to list. Fitting them into a week that already holds squats, deadlifts and a schedule of its own is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts live in the Trainerize app, built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: add a plank and a suitcase carry to the end of your next session, and write down how long and how far.