The Last Article You Will Hopefully Ever Have to Read on "Bracing Your Core," Amen

The Question

Hi Casey,

Maybe you’ve covered this! Maybe it’s a fiction! But in looking up exercises to better my posture, I learned about “stomach gripping”—that is, always clenching your ab muscles, “sucking in your stomach”, belly button to spine kind of deal!

I have quite a belly, so I didn’t think of myself as having tight abs until I started paying attention and - yuh-oh! I am sucking in my stomach all the time and trying to “keep my core tight” and consequently, I take shallow breaths, habitually. This I attribute to a severe British mother who was obsessed with posture.

If this is, in fact, what’s happening, it’s given me worse posture and has inhibited my running progress and likely made good form on lifts harder (always bracing makes you worse at bracing, probs). I think it’s real ‘cause now that I’m focused on relaxing my belly, I am breathing better and feeling less tight, generally. My profile is probably wider but I feel a lot healthier!

Thanks!

Don’t include my name please lol

The Answer

What you are talking about is quite possibly “stomach vacuums,” which are a real exercise people do. But they do them in reps and sets in order to work on their ab definition, and not day in and day out. And yes, this would probably interfere with bracing properly.

I’m going to take this opportunity to explain bracing top to bottom, and hopefully seeing all the motions and mechanics of it will help you understand why it’s good to be able to exert some control in that area, which means creating tension as well as relaxing. Having a stronger core in general, which is enabled by heavy compound lifting and knowing how to brace, will help you stand taller and straighter as your British mother always wanted, but without sucking your stomach in so hard you can't breathe like every Marvel actor in every Marvel movie.