Shadowing Practice: How I Train my Core (5 Simple Exercises) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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These days, core training can seem complicated, but I've been going back to the basics,
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and I'm always extremely surprised at how strong a body you can create with just you in the ground.
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So for those of us that can't make it to the gym to use weights or fancy machines,
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here's five simple exercises that will connect your core, protect your lower back, and give you the torso that makes you look good and feel good.
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Number one, front plank.
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There's a reason why planks are given to most beginners.
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They're powerful in creating a strong foundation.
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Now the path of least resistance in a plank is to let your pelvis drop and your core relax.
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The plank is all about finding that tension that resists the pull of gravity.
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To achieve this, you simply have to turn on most of the muscles on the front side of your body.
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Abs, obliques, serratus interior, but also the deeper muscles closer to your spine.
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And when you squeeze your glutes and push your shoulder blades to the side of your ribcage, you create this hollow, powerful position.
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Of course, even the beginner can get started here, slowly working to the feet over time.
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The plank is an isometric.
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You're learning how to create strength, not through moving, but holding.
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They're extremely safe.
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Often you can train these with an injured knee or back, and it's how you can be skinny, but strong.
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It's not about growing muscle.
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It's learning how to activate and strengthen the muscles that generally protect our spine and improve our posture.
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A 60 -second plank is the standard, but 90 to 120 will have you feeling unbreakable.
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Number two, side plank.
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I don't know about you, but I definitely find my side core muscles are underutilized in day -to -day life.
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The side plank activates muscles like the QL and obliques,
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And it teaches your body how to coordinate those activations with your glute muscles in the side of your hip.
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It's also great for the shoulder to push away directly to your side.
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Think of your body like a bridge.
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It wants to cave between your elbow and your feet.
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Use muscular tension to keep that hip raised.
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Side planks are actually quite hard if you haven't trained them before.
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Going on your knees is a great place to start.
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And by pushing your hips down and then up, you learn which muscles need to activate to keep the hip raised.
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And eventually, if you lift the top leg, then the bottom hip has to work tremendously.
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Most people don't realize that the side plank is a powerful glute medius exercise.
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It's these glute muscles that can often become weak and create hip imbalances, affecting the low back.
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Taking it to one leg for just 10 to 15 seconds is quite a challenge.
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But if we switch the leg that we push through, we arrive in the Copenhagen plank.
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Now we strengthen the top leg inner thigh muscles.
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If you think of all the exercises you do at home or in the gym, most people find they never work the inner thighs.
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But the inner thighs connect to the pelvis, and they seem to be a pretty vital part of your core.
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If you're just getting started, train the standard side plank and work up to 30 to 60 seconds.
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As soon as you feel strong enough, introduce the single leg and the Copenhagen variations.
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A lot of testimonials these days are fake.
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Here are some screen grabs from my email of people having success with our daily reps program.
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My quick elevator pitch is that it's only 30 minute workouts.
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It's potent exercises done mostly body weight that'll get you very fit.
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Sent straight to your phone, super user -friendly app.
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We give you a healthy mix of strength, mobility, and conditioning so you can build a balanced body.
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We're constantly updating this program.
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We're actually adding in reverse and side plank because I've been loving them so much.
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I'm going to drop you guys a discount.
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Use code CORE, 20 % off.
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And finally, rounding out our planks is the reverse plank.
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These strengthen your body in an extremely unique way.
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First, you must stabilize through your shoulder blades by rolling the shoulders back.
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Then the glutes and hamstrings fire like crazy to raise the hips.
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But the ab muscles also activate to stop the hips from raising too high and to keep a neutral body line.
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These are the ultimate posture corrector.
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It strengthens where a lot of people lose muscle from sitting in chairs and staring at screens.
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The plank that works the posterior chain and starts to balance the front of the core work we've done previously.
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Both reps and holds can be great.
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I do a combination of both.
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If you don't quite have the strength to raise the hips from the elbows with a straight body line,
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you can take baby steps towards this position by working on a crab press.
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Keep the knees bent with the hands behind you, raise the hips.
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This will be much less intense on your core glutes and hamstrings, but will start to develop the shoulder strength to work towards the reverse plank.
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And if you feel like your arms are just too short, you can always do the full reverse plank on your hands.
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Number four, leg lifts.
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These move the legs which engages the hip flexors.
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This is one of the simplest exercises you can do using gravity to help strengthen your core and hip flexors together.
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As you lower the feet, the core must stabilize the legs while the hip flexors are challenged to get long and strong.
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And taking that bottom position slow and controlled will give you a lot more benefits.
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Now a hanging leg lift may be my choice if I have a bar handy.
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But the cool thing about a lying leg lift is it changes the angle of where your hip flexors receive the force.
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You can't replicate this bottom position when you're upright and that's why I put these back into my routine.
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Now to get started you can do less range of motion not dropping your feet as low to the floor
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and you can also stick your hands under your hips which will give you a bit better leverage.
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10 slow and controlled reps can be enough to strengthen the heck out of your hip flexors.
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Number five, superman lifts.
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We need something that directly trains the lower back.
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The superman lift will train your erectors, glutes, and other spinal muscles to extend.
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Superman lift is simple and it works great for an equipment -free option.
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But I find if we can stabilize the feet by placing them under a couch or having someone sit on them,
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it makes this exercise far more powerful.
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See, just like all the plank work we've done, if you have a point of contact to press firmly into,
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it allows you to create realistic tension through your body, and it'll most likely carry over into real -life strength better.
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There's also this version that
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Knees Over Toes guy showed in the back extension video we made together.
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As a bonus movement, I want to show you the crawl switch.
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I work this into my movement practice weekly.
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Everything we've done up until now is linear and stability focused.
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The crawl switch engages the core through rotation.
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It's like hitting the core 360 degrees with one movement.
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See, the first five movements are kind of like prehab.
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Keep everything strong and stable and the body feels safe.
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But in real life, the core's job is to facilitate our movement and keep us in balance.
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The crawl switch is one of the top ways to practice stabilization through rotation.
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Now even though I do all the previous exercises,
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when I do these, I feel areas of my core work that I didn't even know were there.
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Of course, this is a pretty advanced variation that I'm showing here.
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If this seems way far off for you, I like to get people started with building a very strong crawl in place.
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Crawling in place is one of the best functional core movements you can do.
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As you start to feel really strong and stable, you thread the non -supporting leg through the middle,
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and you let that turn you from front to back.
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I know, so we're breakdancing now, right?
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but you may be surprised at how these super simple little switches will strengthen your core, build protection in your shoulders,
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and actually leave you feeling pretty darn athletic.
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So honestly, I kind of stopped training my core the last few years.
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But I have this memory of about 10 to 12 years ago when I had constant back, hip, and knee pain.
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I started doing core work and hip mobility at least five times per week.
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All the pain I had in my body, it left.
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So the last six months I got back to doing these ground -based core exercises, my body just feels so much more connected.
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It feels stable and safe and i've been wanting to move in ways
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that i haven't in the past few years for me core work is truly the foundation
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and i encourage anyone who's not feeling the best in their body to give this routine a shot
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now next week we're going to explore the exact opposite moving with your torso
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and i got a special guest that's going to join me
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if you want to do all these core exercises
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and a follow along with me right now pin comment below as always
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How I Train my Core”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: core, plank, hip, muscle, leg. This video has 118 sentences and 1613 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:48. The speaker talks fast, about 237 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| muscle noun | /ˈmʌs.əl/ | A contractile form of tissue which animals use to effect movement. |
| strengthen verb | /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/ | To make strong or stronger; to add strength to; to increase the strength of; to fortify. |
| hip noun | /hɪp/ | The outward-projecting parts of the pelvis and top of the femur and the overlying tissue. |
| knee noun | /ni/ | In humans, the joint or the region of the joint in the middle part of the leg between the thigh and the shank. |
| crawl verb | /kɹɔːl/ | To move by dragging one's body along or close to a surface, like a worm or insect, or on one's hands and knees, like a human baby. |
| reverse noun | /ɹɪˈvɝs/ | The opposite of something. |
| activate verb | /ˈæktɪˌveɪt/ | To encourage development or induce increased activity; to stimulate. |
| stable noun | /ˈsteɪ.bəl/ | A building, wing or dependency set apart and adapted for lodging and feeding (and training) ungulates, especially horses. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| rep noun | /ɹɛp/ | A fabric made of silk or wool, or of silk and wool, and having a transversely corded or ribbed surface. |
| tension noun | /ˈtɛnʃən/ | The condition of being held in a state between two or more forces, which are acting in opposition to each other. |
| superman noun | /ˈsupɚmæn/ | An imagined superior type of human being representing a new stage of human development; an übermensch; (loosely), a man of extraordinary powers. |
| thigh noun | /θaɪ/ | The upper leg of a human, between the hip and the knee. |
| routine noun | /ɹuˈtin/ | A course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure. |
| engage verb | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| do up verb | To fasten (a piece of clothing, etc.); to tighten (a nut etc.) |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| push away verb | To apply a force to (an entity) such that it moves to a more distant position. |
| push through verb | To force (legislation or a plan) to be passed or agreed to or a decision to be reached. |
| work up to verb | To reach by gradual effort or developments. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- We're constantly updating this program.
- I'm going to drop you guys a discount.
- I know, so we're breakdancing now, right?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been going · I've been loving · i've been wanting |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't trained · we've done |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are given · are underutilized · are challenged |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 28 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/, thigh /θaɪ/, thread /ˈθɹɛd/, athletic /æθˈlɛt.ɪk/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: tension /ˈtɛnʃən/, rotation /ɹoʊˈteɪʃən/, variation /ˌvɛəɹiˈeɪʃn̩/, extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, activation /ˌæktəˈveɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: mobility /mə(ʊ)ˈbɪlɪti/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, stability /stəˈbɪlɪti/, facilitate /fəˈsɪlɪteɪt/, elevator /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like muscle, strengthen, hip.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.