Best Core Strength Exercises For Divers

In diving, core is probably the most important muscle group to train if you want to be good at the sport.

The core work that matters for divers is being able to bring their legs up quickly and holding a hollow core position under load.

Hollow holds, hanging pike-ups, planks and anti-extension work, and hip flexor strength. Those four cover most of it.

Why divers need a core at all

Your core is what connects your upper body to your lower body on the takeoff. The board pushes up with a lot of force, and if your midsection is loose that force will make you break at the hips. Then the position collapses, and you leave the board in a weak state.

When it's tight, everything moves as one unit and the board's energy goes where you want it.

That's the whole job. It isn't about looking a certain way and it isn't about how many sit-ups you can do. It's about whether your body holds its shape when the board is putting a lot of force through it, and lifting your legs up quick!

The four that matter most

Pike ups and tuck ups

Getting good at normal pike ups and tuck ups is a requirement to being good at diving. It is also important to do them with good form. Notice how some of these divers bend their knees and don't touch their toes all the way!

Hollow holds

Lower back pressed flat to the floor, shoulders and legs lifted, body in a shallow banana shape. Hold it.

This is a very transferable core exercise in the sport, because hollow is the actual position you need off the board and throughout different parts of the dive. When I talk about staying hollow on a takeoff, this is the shape.

Hanging pike-ups

Hang from a bar, legs straight, lift them toward your hands.

This trains the hip flexors along with the core and quads! Straight legs are way harder than in tuck and worth working toward.

If you can't do them straight yet, you can go up in tuck, pike out of it, and then lower the legs slowly. This will build your strength quickly!

Press work

Being able to press to handstand, or headstand drills, is great for understanding your body position on the come-outs and for stability, but also great for strength!

Planks and anti-extension work

Standard planks are fine, but the more useful version is anti-extension: anything where you resist your body being pulled out of position. Ab wheel rollouts, dead bugs, plank variations where a limb comes off the ground, side planks! Do them all!

The board is going to try to break your position. This is practice at not letting it.

Compression work

Sit with legs straight in front, lift them off the floor, hold. Or in a pike, actively pull yourself deeper.

This one directly serves pike position. Flexibility gets you into the shape, but compression strength is what holds you there while you're rotating, and a pike that opens under load is slow.

Core is important for divers!

Core strength is worth training, but I'd be lying if I said it was the highest-leverage thing most divers could work on.

If a dive isn't going around, the answer is usually board timing or a position that isn't tight enough, not a weak core. I make that case at length in strength vs technique, and it's important to always be looking for your weaknesses.

Where core work genuinely pays off is durability. It's part of what keeps a lower back healthy across years of takeoffs and entries, which matters more than any single dive. That side of it is covered in does diving hurt.

Train it consistently, and it will benefit you in the long run!

- DG