Using a staggered stance for lifts can improve core stability.

“if you deliberately insist meaning force yourself to keep your belly button facing exactly forward and for that reason sometimes it's helpful to do these in front of a mirror what you're doing is you're generating anti-rotational forces you're requiring that your upper body not twist while you're lifting these loads and what that does is it trains the obliques it trains components of your abdominals and to some extent it's training components of your lower back although not so much as it is the obliques the abdominals that are anti-rotation that are preventing your body from twisting while you're carrying out these movements”

“so I've certainly found and this was supported by again all of the experts that I spoke to that staggering one stance while performing resistance training typically curls or overhead tricep extensions there aren't many other things that lend themselves well to this so those are the two that I'm really focusing on doing that while insisting that is forcing yourself to keep your belly buttons facing completely forward okay not tilting to the side either way that can really help strengthen the abdominals through the use of what's called anti-rotation”

“what I found to be very beneficial and that is more kind of realworld related in the sense that it activates the musculature of the abdominals you can train your abdominals while doing things that more closely mimic what you do in real life is to actually stagger one's stance while doing certain forms of resistance training”

“in doing so you're also mimicking the way that a lot of movements are carried out in daily life because if you think about it it's pretty uncommon that you're going to be lifting things with one arm with feet parallel I mean it happens okay there are times when feet are parallel and we're lifting something up with both hands there are times in which you do something similar to kind of the stance that you would be in for a dumbbell curl you know with feet parallel in the gym or a tricep extensions with feet parallel but more often than not as we move through life one or the other feet is positioned in front of the other and you know we're reaching something or lifting something or we're pulling something those are the patterns that exist more typically in daily”

“certainly when I resistance train if I'm doing anything standing I make it a point to um stagger my stance yes um and at the same time to make sure that my belly button is pointing forward so that I generate some anti-rotation um effort”

“and I found that to be tremendously helpful for building core stability and a number of other things”