Why you'll never hear me say "engage your core"

A lot has changed in the last 15 years since I completed my first Pilates qualification, including me. Growth means change, and for me this means there are certain ideas and concepts that I have let go of over time. My relationship with and understanding of "the core" is one area that has evolved significantly, and things that I might have said 10 years ago are no longer part of my teaching vocabulary.

"Engage your core" is probably the most common cue in any Pilates or fitness class. You've heard it. You may have said it. But does it actually mean?

Ask ten different people and you'll get ten different answers. Pull your belly button to your spine? Brace like you're about to be punched? Suck everything in and hold? The vagueness of the cue is its first problem. If your students are all doing something different in response to the same instruction, the instruction isn't doing much work.

The second problem is one of efficiency. Stability and support through the trunk is something your body is actually designed to do automatically — it's a reflexive process that happens in anticipation of movement, before you've even consciously thought about it. When we constantly override that system with a volitional "switch it on" cue, we're essentially telling the body not to trust itself. We're making a subconscious, automatic process into a conscious, effortful one. That's not more control. That's interference.

Then there's the issue of overrecruitment. More tension is not always better. The body works best when the effort matches the task — what's sometimes called "tension to task." Asking someone to brace or engage before a gentle spinal rotation creates unnecessary rigidity, and rigidity is the enemy of movement.

Perhaps the most overlooked problem is the message it sends. When we imply that you must "switch on" a specific muscle before you move, or risk injury, we inadvertently create fear around movement. The suggestion that your body will let you down without this conscious override can actually make people feel more anxious and more guarded — which, as I've written about before, tends to create the very tension and dysfunction we're trying to avoid. There is no single "right way" to move, and framing any exercise as something that must be done in a particular way or else — is rarely helpful, and often harmful.

So what do I do instead?

Rather than cueing muscles directly, I use breath and movement itself to create the conditions for natural, appropriate support. Breath is incredibly powerful — a well-timed exhale will do more for your abdominal engagement than any number of "pull your belly button in" cues, and it keeps the system fluid rather than locked.

I also use what I think of as positional cues — directing attention to the bones and joints rather than the muscles. The position of your pelvis, the relationship between your ribcage and your hips, the direction of your tailbone — these structural cues automatically influence how the surrounding muscles respond, without ever having to name them. The body is clever. Give it the right conditions and it will organise itself.

And above all, I prioritise movement. Movement of the spine through all its ranges — flexion, extension, rotation, side-bending. Movement of the joints. Fluidity over rigidity. A body that moves well through its full range is a body that is supported and strong in a way that no amount of "core engagement" can replicate.

The core — if we're going to use the term at all — is not a muscle you switch on. It's a system that works best when you stop trying to manually override it, and instead create the movement, breath, and positional conditions that allow it to do its job.

That's what I'm here to teach.