My Favorite Exercises: Volume VI

It bulletproofs your core and relieves and prevents back pain as you age

This letter is part of the My Favorite Exercises series. Read the full series here.

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My first real job was acting as Fitness Director for Men’s Health magazine. I spent about 7 years there, writing and editing stories on fitness, nutrition, sports performance, health, and more.

In that role, I talked to world-class trainers, athletes, and scientists. When experts sent us an exercise or workout, I was the sucker who tested it to ensure it would work for our readers. I vetted hundreds and hundreds of exercises.

Hence, I discovered many truly effective exercises—and I’ve kept all the best ones in a file ever since.

When I think about what makes a good exercise, I consider a few factors:

• It should deliver many benefits in a single movement, improving our health and fitness in less time.

• It should improve our fitness in a way that isn’t just safe, but also makes us safer in the future by making us more resistant to injury.

• It should help us move better. The better we move, the better we feel and perform—which improves our health and life.

• It should offset some of the harms of living in the modern world, where we spend most of the day sedentary.

• It should translate to the real world and make us better at the activities we love, whether outdoor sports, pickleball, or chasing down dogs, kids, or grandkids.

That’s why I started the My Favorite Exercises series. We feature just one exercise I love and always go back to.

Why just one exercise in each post? One is actionable.

When we get a list of 10 exercises, we’re more likely to cherry-pick. We do some, but not others—and miss out on a lot of benefits. One good exercise, done consistently, is worth more than ten we dabble in.

Today, we have my favorite core exercise. It’s kinda weird, kinda unconventional—but damn does it work.

It’s great at building core strength that transfers to real life: whether lifting weights, rucking, hiking, or sports—it’ll help you do them all better.

Perhaps more important: it’ll help you do them all more safely.

I recently got too aggressive with deadlifts. You know, one of those sessions where I was feeling good and thought: Why not add one more set and really push the reps?

This was a miscalculation. I tweaked my back.

Back pain is what my grandmother would call “a real bitch.”

• 80% of people experience low back pain at some point in their lives.

• 25% of people have had it in the last few months.

• It’s the most common place people experience pain, and the most frequent reason people see a doctor and take a sick day at work.

• People with chronic low-back pain are twice as likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, psychosis, and sleep deprivation.

• When people experience back pain, they reduce their movement. And that creates all sorts of ill health effects that limit our experience of life and reduce our lifespan and healthspan.

When I looked what I’d been doing in the months leading up, I realized I hadn’t been doing today’s exercise as often as usual. My core and back weren’t as resilient.

A team of international researchers called today’s exercise “one of the most effective therapeutic exercises for the prevention and treatment of low back pain.”

So I started doing it again consistently—and the pain subsided. Sometimes you need to get punched in the face to learn how to dodge punches, I guess.

But if you do this exercise, you can skip the punch entirely.

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In the rest of this letter, you’ll learn:

• Why standard core moves like planks might leave a gap in your back protection.

• The specific, unconventional exercise a 2025 study found is superior for pain relief, core strength, and resilience.

• Research finding that the movement also improves aging—keeping us mobile and functional as we age.

• Videos of exactly how to perform it to build strength and resilience, including a standing variation you can do at your desk.