Before I get into specific core exercises, it is important to talk about 'engaging' your core. You have probably come across this term 'engaging', and it is very important that you do this whilst lifting weights, particularly heavy weights. This will prevent any lower back injury!
How do I engage my core whilst lifting?
In order to do this you need to understand that your core is a lot more than just 'abs'. It is made up of pelvic floor muscles, transverse abdominals, multifidus, internal and external obliques, rectus abdominals, erector spinae, longissimus thoracis and diaphragm. Okay so you might not care about every single core muscle but you do need to be concerned about consciously contracting your abdominals. This is the process of 'tightening' these muscles in order to 'engage' them.
A great exercise to improve overall core strength is the plank as it involves all the major core muscles especially the transverse abdominals.
When lifting weights breathing is extremely important and will help with engaging your core.
It is important to breathe in on the contraction and breathe out on the eccentric movement. For example, A squat, You breathe in as you lower into the squat and breathe out as you push up out of the squat.
So now you know how to engage your core whilst lifting this will help to develop your core significantly daily. You can also do specific ab workouts or exercises. I would highly recommend this to beginners to strengthen the core to avoid injury, however once you have become more experienced a few ab exercises supersetted with other lifts will be sufficient to maintain core strength.
Some of the best ab exercises are simple ones like hanging leg raises, decline sit ups, planks, Russian twists, bicycles etc.
Personally, I don't have an 'ab day' or 'ab workout'. Every other day I do 10 minutes of quick effective ab work. This usually consists of hanging leg raises (the best workout in my opinion), hanging leg raises with twists, weighted side bends, cable oblique twists and decline sit ups. My core is rarely sore after these, I find that pull ups (on back day) and squats (on leg day) work my core much harder.
If you need help constructing an ab workout or exercises email me at [email protected] and I can make one single ab workout for you or if would would prefer a full workout plan.