Your core plays a big role in your overall strength – it helps stabilize your body, protect the spine, and improve your posture. So when you’re working out your core muscles, it’s critical to ensure you’re engaging them properly. 

We’re going to take a closer look at abdominal coning – a phenomenon that could indicate you’re not engaging your core properly – and some of the ways that you can address and fix it.

So, What Exactly is Abdominal Coning?

Abdominal coning refers to when the linea alba, a strong band of connective tissue in your abdominal region, pushes forward and beyond the rest of the abdominal wall. This may make your abdomen look a little bit like a tent. 

Abdominal coning is most often seen in pregnant women, but it can also affect non-pregnant individuals, regardless of gender.

Coning may also be an indicator of a condition known as abdominal diastasis of diastasis recti (DR). This condition happens when the linea alba doesn’t just push through the abdominal wall but actually tears away from it.

Why Does Abdominal Coning Happen?

Coning occurs when the pressure inside the abdomen increases too much. If the pressure gets too high, the abdominal wall can’t contain the pressure, and it pushes out through the linea alba, since it offers less resistance than the muscles of your abdominal wall.

In some cases, certain exercises, how you hold your posture, or even certain breathing exercises could cause coning. 

If you notice coning is more prominent during certain exercises, it’s likely because these exercises or activities are causing a burst of intra-abdominal pressure.

Coning in non-pregnant individuals is often caused by weak core muscles, improper exercise techniques, or any other medical conditions that could increase the amount of pressure in the abdomen.

Diastasis recti is most common in pregnant women but can occur in other individuals due to excessive weight gain, repetitive strain in the abdomen or a connective tissue disorder.

Why Does Coning Happen?

It’s important to pay attention to coning since it can be an indicator that you’re not engaging your core muscles correctly or of diastasis recti, which can make it more difficult to stabilize your core. If you’re noticing coning, you can start to pay more attention to how you’re moving and breathing so you can start to take steps to help mitigate it.

How to Prevent, Minimize, or Fix Coning

Working toward minimizing coning also means you’re working toward engaging your core muscles correctly, which is helpful for the vast majority of exercises you might be doing. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can start to address coning.

Posture

If you’re noticing coning during certain exercises, the first step is to look at your posture and how you’re setting up for the exercise. Some people have a tendency to arch their backs, which stretches the front of the abdomen and can make coning more likely since the abdominal wall is even thinner. 

When you’re setting up your posture for lifts or other movements, focus on maintaining a more neutral spine position with your shoulders over your ribs, and your ribs over your hips/pelvis.

Breathing

Breathing can also be an important component of ensuring that you’re engaging your core correctly and minimizing coning. Holding your breath can sometimes increase pressure in the abdomen and promote coning, so it’s critical to breathe correctly and regularly, especially during movement. 

First, focus on how you’re inhaling and exhaling. Inhaling should feel like you’re breathing down and out (with your ribs and abdomen expanding), and exhaling should feel like you’re breathing up and in (with your ribs and abdomen contracting).

Additionally, you can work on syncing your breathing with your main movement patterns to promote a stable core. When completing eccentric movements, inhale. When completing concentric movements, exhale. For example, inhale when lowering into your squat and exhale when you’re rising out of it.

It’s easier to increase muscle activation in the core when exhaling. Find a breathing cue that works for you to help with that core activation. You can think about/picture your hip bones coming closer together, a zipper running up the center of your belly, connecting your bellybutton to your spine, or making a Shh sound when you exhale to focus more completely on the exhale.

Props & Cues for Engagement

There are other props and engagement cues you can use as well to help engage the core and minimize coning. The more you engage various parts of your core, the more you can help prevent coning.

For example, the transverse abdominals are the deepest layer of your abdominal muscles and wrap around the sides of your torso from the front to the back. Engaging these muscles can help manage the pressure in your abdomen and how much tension the linea alba feels. Certain cues can help you clue into and engage these muscles, like squeezing a ball between your hands, pushing inward, and picturing your hip bones coming together.

Engaging the pelvic floor through props and cues can also help with overall core stabilization and preventing coning. You can use a pilates ball to help cue your pelvic floor by placing it between your thighs, taking a deep breath, and then squeezing the ball with your thighs (activating your adductors) on the exhale. 

Activating your pelvic floor can also help activate your transverse abdominals, creating even more support!

Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy

Given the importance of activating the pelvic floor for supporting your core and managing pressure inside your abdomen, it could be worth exploring pelvic floor physical therapy as well to minimize coning.

A pelvic floor physical therapist could prescribe specific exercises to help strengthen the pelvic floor and the abdominal muscles and guide you through techniques and cues to improve awareness and ensure proper muscle engagement. 

Helpful exercises that can help engage and strengthen your pelvic floor muscles could include:

• Kegels
• Hip/glute bridges
• Squats
• Pelvic tilts
• Bird-dog
• Heel slides
• Toe taps

Take Care of Your Core: Work With a Coach

Your core muscles are a critical component of how you engage not only in strength training exercises but also how you perform everyday activities. And knowing how to engage your core can make all the difference. For many, though, core engagement can be difficult.

Working with an online fitness and nutrition coach could be the support that you need to get in touch with your body and understand more about muscle engagement. If you want to learn more about working with an online coach, read the comprehensive guide. And if you think online coaching is for you, head to the inquiry form so that we can connect one-on-one.

Written by Emily Greffenius. Reviewed by Meghan Farrell, CPT, BSN