Core Strength: Building Baby Abs
You might join a workout class, practice your plank, or do crunch after crunch to improve your core strength, but baby abs are built on the floor — moving and grooving, rolling and reaching, grabbing baby toes and doing baby sit-ups.
Building baby abs isn’t about vanity. This core strength is a critical step in getting your baby ready for all the milestones ahead, from flipping over to sitting to walking. Making your baby’s muscles are strong and prepared will help ensure he can learn these skills.
Here are our tips for encouraging baby ab development during three developmental stages:
Early Stage:
Make the most of their time being carried and held. How we carry babies can help or hinder their core strength. These three methods can improve your baby’s abs:
Tummy-time or football carry: This hold can be performed with newborns or older babies. Hold your baby at one side, tucked close to your body and almost “under your arm.” Your hand should be on her belly or chest and your elbow is near her bottom, as if you’re carrying a football. Use your opposite hand to help support in any way needed for safety. Carrying your baby on their bellies, or slightly on their side, can help strengthen the postural muscles along his spine. As with everything else, be sure to alternate sides! This can also help ease them into tummy time on the floor!
Forward carry: This carry can be performed once your baby can safely hold his head up during tummy time, roughly around two to three months old. Hold your baby facing forward in front of your abdomen, against your body. Wrap your arm around her, under her arm, and hold safely hold her between her legs or onto her far leg. This carry will help to build core strength in a safe and secure way while she is held against your body. Be sure to alternate sides!
Held on knees or legs while sitting: This can be performed once your baby is ready to practice sitting, around five to six months. Check out our supported sitting post for more tips if you’re currently working on sitting! When you’re sitting, hold your baby around their trunk or hips while she straddles your legs. The lower your hand placement is, the more work it is for her to balance.
Take advantage of tummy time! Check out our tummy time tips and tricks for how to make this experience way more fun. Improving core strength means bolstering the muscles all around our midsection, like our abdominals, obliques, and spinal musculature. These muscles are all strengthened through tummy time, as babies begin to reach and pivot on their bellies.
More Movement:
Grab those toes. Grabbing toes takes a lot of ab strength! This mini-milestone usually occurs at around four months of age. You can help your baby find her toes in a few fun ways:
Place a towel roll under your baby’s tush to help bring his toes a little closer and into his sight. Seeing them can encourage your baby to reach out and grab them.
Place fun toys, bells, rattles, or rings on her feet to bring attention to her toes! When Lindsay’s daughter was four or five months old, Lindsay sewed little bells and ribbons on a couple of pairs of socks to make ab workouts and toe-grabbing fun!
Practice baby sit-ups. Baby sit-ups are safe to do once your baby can hold her head in midline, can hold a chin-tuck, and no longer has a “head-lag” when attempting to pull-to-sit, which is a baby sit-up. It’s very important that she has this head strength before working on these next steps. When your baby is laying on her back, hold her hands and pull her forward to a sitting position. Her chin should tuck and her head should stay in midline while she’s staring right at you. Sometimes it helps to have your foot or a towel roll under her tush to assist her into a sitting position.
Use a yoga ball. Baby sit-ups can also be performed on a yoga ball. This can feel like it requires having four hands, so only work on this if you feel very comfortable keeping the ball stable and your baby safe.
Work on balance. Place your baby on a yoga ball in a seated position and help him shift his weight from side to side and front to back. These multi-directional weight shifts can work on your baby’s core strength.
Next Level:
Learn to sit. The process of learning to sit is all about core strengthening. If your baby isn’t sitting independently yet, look at our sitting guide for tips and advice.
Get reaching. If your baby can sit independently, it’s time for him to work on reaching! Reaching out to the side, with his right arm reaching out to the right and vice versa, helps to build the rectus abdominus, which are our six-pack muscles, and external obliques.
Reach across the body. Reaching across, with the right arm across midline towards the left and vice versa, helps to build external and internal obliques, the muscles needed to rotate, roll, transition, and stabilize our centers. Help your baby do this by holding out toys or your hand and encouraging use of the opposite arm to reach.
Boost that sitting session. Bump sitting and reaching up a notch by switching to bench sitting, which is sitting with your feet dangling off an edge, like on a bench. Place your baby on a safe surface, like a chair, and encourage her to reach out for a toy.
Jessica is an experienced physical therapist passionate about early development, gross motor play, and improving daily function for those with neurological diagnoses. She earned her undergraduate degree in kinesiology from Michigan State University and her doctorate in physical therapy from Daemen College. Practicing for nearly seven years, Jessica has worked with children and families in hospital, outpatient, early intervention, school-based, and private clinical settings.
Jessica lives in northern Michigan, where she spends as much time as possible outside. She’s mom to five-month-old Declan and aunt to two energetic toddlers, two-year-old Tallulah and three-year-old Grayson.
