Core
29 pieces
- Exercise2 September 2026Hanging knee raiseHang from a bar and bring the knees up. It is the abdominal exercise most likely to be done badly in a busy gym, because a swing looks like a rep and nobody can tell from the outside. Done still, it sits among the highest exercises measured for the whole of the rectus abdominis and the internal oblique[1].
- Exercise2 September 2026Front-rack carryTwo kettlebells racked on the chest, elbows in, and then you walk. Everything wants to pull you into a backward lean, and refusing that lean for the length of the walk is the exercise. It is the carry that asks the most of the upper back and the least of the grip.
- Exercise2 September 2026Dead bugOn your back, arms up, knees up, and then one arm and the opposite leg reach away while your lower back stays flat on the floor. It looks like nothing. Done with the back genuinely down it is one of the plainest tests of whether you can brace under a moving limb.
- Exercise2 September 2026Cable woodchopA cable set high, a handle in both hands, and a turn that takes it diagonally across your body to the opposite hip. The turn is supposed to come from your torso rotating over your hips. In most gyms it comes from the arms, and the difference decides whether the exercise is worth doing.
- Exercise2 September 2026Cable crunchThe cable crunch is the crunch with a weight on it, which matters because the abs answer to load the way every other muscle does. What it asks for is a spine that curls and hips that stay where they are, and nearly everybody gets that the wrong way round.
- Exercise2 September 2026Bird dogOn all fours, one arm forward and the opposite leg back, hips square throughout. It is the least dramatic movement in the library and one of the most useful, because the point is not the reach. The point is everything that does not move while you reach.
- Exercise2 September 2026Bear crawlA bear crawl is a plank that travels. The whole job is keeping your hips from rocking side to side while one hand and the opposite foot are off the floor, and it is one of the movements Reckoner reaches for when there is floor space and nothing else.
- Exercise2 September 2026Ab wheel rolloutThe wheel is not something you do for a burn. It is a test of whether you can stop your back arching while your arms travel away from your hips, and in a lab comparison of abdominal exercises the wheel's rollout was among the strongest for both halves of the rectus abdominis and both obliques[1]. Done on a Swiss ball, the same rollout kept the hip flexors among the quietest of ten exercises[2].
- Exercise2 August 2026PlankA plank is not a rest. It is a hold against your own spine folding, and done properly it is hard inside thirty seconds. It is the movement Reckoner reaches for when a room has nothing in it and the day still needs bracing work.
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