Core Journals: A month-long quest for core strength

This is part of a series of guest posts by Kristen Scott. Follow Kristen as she aims for increased overall core strength to help her regular yoga practice. Be sure to check out Kristen’s other articles and posts on her personal blog.

Enjoy!

Enter Kristen…

A month-long quest for core strength

Core strength is something I thought I had in the bag.

For the last four years I’ve kept an active yoga practice which, I thought,  had been building total core strength.  I was wrong.

A few months ago I started going to a new yoga class, the philosophy of which seems to be “no pain, no gain.” At the first class I put my mat front row center, ready to meet a new challenge head on. Unfortunately, I  regretted this decision almost immediately after displaying my complete inability to do the first few poses to the entire class;  a difficult series of Paripurna Navasana (v-sit/boat pose) which involved holding the pose and then lowering both legs and upper body simultaneously ten times before resuming the posture.   I didn’t even attempt the wide leg variation of the pose.

“What’s going on here?” I thought to myself.  Navasana had never been my favourite pose, but the fact that I couldn’t even seem to isolate the muscles necessary to realize the posture was just downright shameful.

I hoped that with regular attendance I would improve, but after a few classes with similarly embarrassing results I decided something needed to be done.

My weaknesses, it turns out, are my lower abs and hip flexors which is why Paripurna Navasana and its variations are such a challenge.

Therefore, my first resolution of 2011 is to build some serious core strength, which I will do by introducing a simple and focused core workout into my usual routine. Starting tomorrow I will perform a personalized core workout three times a week and, using the dreaded Paripurna Navasana as a barometer, will chart and blog my progress. The ultimate goal is to fully realize the posture in one month.

Today I did some initial testing to see where my core strength is at. Turns out I can hold plank for 1:27 (yippee!), which is apparently pretty good. However, my current Paripurna Navasana looks like this…

when I would like it to look like this.

I also learned all of the exercises I’ll be doing over the next month.  Each week the workouts will increase in difficulty.  This week’s workout is below.

Follow along and leave comments about how the workouts are working for you!

Kristen’s Core Workout Routine – Week 1