Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1032: How to Get an Impressive 6-Pack

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

A well defined, muscular 6-pack is almost universally admired and is the goal of many gym goers.  In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin break down exactly what it takes to build a visible 6-pack in the shortest amount of time possible. How Catrina has as many bikinis as Adam does shoes. (1:59) What is the allure around the abs? (3:30) The two major factors that contribute to the definition of your abs. (7:07) The myths surrounding the PROPER training of your abs. (10:15) What are the actions of the abs and the muscles that comprise of them? (16:58) DO NOT fall for the waist trainers! (24:07) How anti-rotational movements are the most underrated movements you can add to your routine when training your abs + the importance of training the muscles that are responsible for protecting you when you move in and out of these plains.  (26:40) The ULTIMATE ab workout (exercises and all explained) to get an IMPRESSIVE 6-pack. (30:59) The biggest myth around ab training shattered! (49:33) Related Links/Products Mentioned May Promotion: MAPS HIIT ½ off!! **Code “HIIT50” at checkout** The Anatomy Of Your Abdominal Muscles Best CORE Exercise You've Never Tried! (1 of 3) | MIND PUMP Build An Amazing Midsection with the Side Wood Chop Shrink Your Waist with Stomach Vacuums | MIND PUMP - YouTube How to do a PROPER Plank - YouTube How to Build a Strong Core with Kettlebell Farmers Walk Mind Pump TV Mind Pump 1027: 3 Steps to Speed Up Your Metabolism Mind Pump 995: The 3 Things You Must be Doing for Rapid Fat Loss Mind Pump Free

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, ob-mite, up with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode, what we wanted to do is we wanted to give people a concrete, specific way to maximize the aesthetics, the appearance, the looks of their midsection, their abs, their obliques, shrink the waist, how to make it look defined. We actually, in this episode, give you a specific workout that we come up with, that we think generally

will give people exceptional results. And we also talk about how to apply it. We talk about the rep ranges that will build and develop your midsection to make it look more, to make it appear easier at higher body fat percentages. We talk about like how often you should train your midsection. We talk about the function of the muscles of the midsection. We talk about a muscle that a lot of people don't know about, but it actually shrinks your waist. And it's not your abs, it's not your obliques.

There's another muscle that's deep within your core that shrinks your waist. We talk about that as well. So I don't wanna go too much deeper. Again, this episode we give you a workout at the end, so you'll get everything you need to develop an impressive six pack. Before we continue though, I want to remind everybody that Maps

Hit, it's our high intensity interval training program, is 50% off. It's a very effective, fat burning program in the short term. So it's excellent for those of you that want to burn that extra few percentage before summer. It's 50% off. Here's what you do. Go to to maps, hit, MAPS, h-i-i-t.com, and use the code hit 50, h-i-i-t50, for the discount. And that's it, without any further ado, here we are talking about how you can get your abs to be visible sooner rather than later. We got summer coming up. It's around the corner. Summer is coming.

Yeah, you know, it's by far, I already know the answer, but I'm gonna ask you guys anyway. Have you guys, his girl's been bikini shopping already? Are they getting ready like that already? I heard the thong song on the other day. That was a throwback. Not at all an answer to this question. That's all I just immediately, my head,

that's what came out. Awful input. No, no, no, she's got herself a couple new bikinis. She does a lot of sun tanning out in the backyard. My, my girl has a bikini addiction. Really? Yeah, we have, we have a dresser at the house that is bikinis. It is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. How many do you need? Wait a minute, hold on a second. We're talking. We are talking in the hundreds. Wow. Wow. I feel like you're being a little hypocritical.

No, that's why I get away with the shoe deal. She has 100 bikinis. You have how many pairs of shoes? She probably has as many bikinis as I have shoes. Now, value wise, which one has been a, as it wasted more I mean shoes is more shoot yeah, but that's just it you ain't reselling your bikini for nothing Hmm nobody's nobody's buying a used bikini. Yeah, and if they are

I mean market for that there is maybe in Japan Why Japan You guys never seen those vending machines for, those are the underwear? Yes, yes, that was the reference. Anyway, I'm sorry everybody. Anyway, I don't know a low note. Summers coming, and the reason why I said that is because, and the reason, what question I was gonna ask you guys is by far what's the one body part

that you get the most questions around, especially when it comes to summertime. Abs. Yeah, hands down. Visible abs. Not even close, right? Not even close, it's always about the midsection, to summertime. Apps. Yeah. Hands down. Visible apps. Not even close, right? Not even close.

It's always about the midsection, the apps, defined, apps, six pack, sculpted, you know, midsection, whatever. By far, that's the most popular thing. But I think we got to deconstruct why. Why do you guys think that is? Like, why is it all about, like, why isn't it just, like, define shoulders or quads?

Why is it abs? I don't know, I feel like abs are a visual representation of health. Yeah. I mean, it's not to say that you agree. It's not that you can't be healthy and not have like pronounced abs, but if you do have pronounced abs,

it's a good clue. Yeah, it's a good indicator. Why is it so thick as rare? You know, like if you go to the pool, you don't see a lot of six pack abs. Like it's hard good clue. Yeah, it's a good indicator. It's rare. You know, like if you go to the pool, you don't see a lot of six pack abs. Like it's hard to attain. Yeah, I don't know if it's, you're right. And that could play a role, although not all things

that are rare are, are alluring. Sure. Like I said earlier, I could grow, you know, 15 inch fingernails. But no, he's doing that. And that'd be the only one with them. And nobody would be like, oh my God, it's rare. Right.

Like so good. No, I think what you were saying, Adam, is a big thing because if you have lean abs, it means you're probably lean all over. Whereas some people can be store very little body fat in their arms, but have a lot of body fat in the places. If you're lean in the midsection, it generally means you're lean.

Also having muscular core, tens is a pretty strong hint that you have good movement in athleticism because it's like the connector between your lower and upper body, it literally is. And if it's strong and functional, it means you have good, usually what, good local motion, good athleticism. So I think we find it attractive or alluring because it tells us this person's healthy, fit, athletic, and view-rile. Yeah, they have a lot of abilities.

Like, if you have a nice strong core, you know, from an athletic perspective, it really, you know, shows me that, you know, there's probably some power and control and you're capable of a lot of things. Well, it's really the foundation of almost all pursuits, right? Whether it be strength, athleticism, like a good strong core is the base, right? It is. To your point, and it supports both the lower and upper. Absolutely.

And, you know, it plays a major role in most function. And so it makes sense that that body part would be so prized by both men and women because it's both. You know, there are certain body parts that tend to be more prized by men and more by women. Like, you don't see too many guys asking about glute training, for example. But when it comes to the midsection,

everybody wants it chiseled. Yeah, both sexes. Lean midsection. It looks good for everybody because of the things that that's a good point too. That's probably the abs too, that's probably, the abs are probably the most universally loved. Easily, right?

Cause to your point, I don't get a lot of guys that ask me about building their butt. And I know that are like, I want bigger biceps. Yes, right. But I would say abs are probably the most universal. Well, I think too is, as we get older, we age like that's one of those things, where it's harder to maintain a flat stomach,

a nice tight six pack. You can't get away with things quite as easily as you progress an agent. So if somebody actually puts all the work in, the effort, it's very noticeable. Yeah, and to get an incredible looking midsection, there's work involved, obviously, and it can be difficult, but it's not complicated.

That's where I think a lot of people, they almost think it's like this elusive. It's not easy. Yeah, it's like this elusive formula, like it's gonna be, you know, not everybody's gonna have great looking abs or whatever. And yes, there's genetic differences to the way the midsection's look,

but most of us can accomplish some pretty phenomenal changes in the way our midsection looks with a but most of us can accomplish some pretty phenomenal changes in the way our mid-section looks with a good plan, with a simple plan. I feel like there's two major things. There's two major factors, nutrition, which I feel is pretty obvious. You got to be lean. You're going to have the greatest, most developed mid-section muscle, but not lean. And then how you train them, which I believe that's the part that's most neglected.

I think we've heard abs are made in the kitchen, right? And there is some truth to that. Like you could have the strongest abs in the world, but if you don't reduce your body fat, you'll never see them. So there is some truth to the statement that abs are made in the kitchen. But because of that statement,

and I think how popular it's become, I think a lot of people neglect how important the training pieces. And that's really what I hope that we dive into the most today is like, you know, how to train the midsection to have these pronounced abs. And all the different things that the abs are responsible for. So there's a lot of moving parts in the transverse abdominis and all the things that it's capable of doing and a lot of different Exercises that target it different right and you know What you said earlier about the training is so so true. I learned this lesson

It's got to be at least 15 years ago or 12 years ago where probably more where I Would routinely get lean in this summer. I used to get my body fat down to around 9%, 10% every summer because I'd want to look lean. And when I would flex, you could see that I had a six pack but it wasn't super pronounced. And then when I was relaxed, I had a flat midsection, but I didn't have those abs that showed even when I wasn't flexing my muscles.

And I really wanted that. I always wanted that six pack or those abs that I could just stand relaxed and people could tell, oh wow, that guy's got well developed abs. It could never accomplish that. And I thought, gosh, I'm gonna have to get shredded in order for that to happen.

I'm gonna have to get down to like 6% body fat, which is just insane and it takes a lot of work and at that point your body really tries to fight the fat loss and it's not necessarily a healthy body fat to get down, at least definitely not to stay down that lean. And so I had kind of this epiphany where I realized, we know how to develop the muscles of the body as trainers. We know that heavy resistance, tension, full range of motion, any particular application

of how we do those things builds more muscle than other ways, right? We know that if I do lots of sets of 30 reps and 40 reps, I'm just not going to build as much muscle than if I do heavier weight, more tension, more resistance, you know, eight to 15 reps. And yet, forever, I thought the way you train the midsection was super high reps. That's what I thought. You do, you do lots and lots and lots of reps for your core, lots of circuits. That's the way you develop that. That's still like the common thought and information that's provided out there where, you know, if you look at anybody's programming, that's pretty much what you're going to see.

It's just a ton of wraps or just, you know, holding a plank where you might not even be targeting your abs specifically for a long period of time. So, you know, these are all things that we try to bring to light. So people know that like, okay, there actually is a way that you can be more effective with that same exercise you've been told is good this whole time, but you may be actually applying the technique incorrectly. Yeah. Well, I remember reading somewhere when I first started training where they would compare abs and calves to the rest of the muscles on your body, and they would say that it's comprised more

of fast twitch fibers. Therefore, the higher reps tend to work better. Or twitch. Yeah, or excuse me, slow twitch. Thank you. Slow twitch fibers, therefore, they tend to respond better to these higher repetitions. And because I remember reading that,

I assumed it to be true forever. And I was the person too who was, you know, 30 repetitions or supersetting ab exercises between each other and neglected to strengthen them. The same, like to your point, Sal, these foundational principles that we've known for all other muscles, right? And I did the same mistake with calves.

This was like, this was mind blowing for me for both my abs and my calves, calves that later on that I pieced this together that why am I treating my abs any different than any other muscle on my body? Right, now first thing, the your muscle fiber types can actually adapt and start to act like the other muscle fiber types.

So let's say you do have genetically high numbers of slow twitch muscle fibers, which are the endurance muscle fibers. Endurance muscle fibers have more stamina. They can contract over and over again for longer periods of time. They're not as strong or as explosive and they have less growth potential. Okay. The fast twitch muscle fibers contract harder, faster, more powerfully, but they burn out much faster. They lose stamina much, much faster. They also, and they have a higher capacity for muscle growth. But what we find with studies is that if you train a particular way, muscle fiber types start to act like the other types and start to because your body is adapting,

is trying to get better at what you throw at it. Number two, sure, your midsection may have a higher percentage of stamina type muscle fibers than other parts of your body. And yes, if you train those, the midsection with lots of endurance stamina stuff, it might have a greater propensity for stamina endurance, but that still doesn't override the fact that training, the fast twitch muscle fibers or training that, with that type of training, is going to build the most muscle no matter what, because those are the muscle fibers that grow. They have the highest propensity for change, physical, visible change, and growth.

The other ones simply don't. And when I learned this 12 years ago, when I started thinking about this, I'm like, huh. Maybe I should train my abs, and rather than doing these high rep, sets and circuits, maybe I should try to just get them strong. Like I do with my legs or my biceps or my chest

or my back. Maybe I should train them to get strong, train to build them. It was mind blowing, the results I had literally, literally. And I have pictures, I gotta find them because they're old pictures obviously. Within months, I'm talking like within three months, I had a midsection where my six pack

went from not being visible when I was relaxed to being so visible when I was relaxed to being so visible when I was relaxed that if I wore a thin shirt, you could see my abs through my shirt. And it was all because I developed the muscles actually built them. So what happens when you train your midsection properly is that those muscles in that definition becomes more visible at a higher body fat percentages. Now what did that look like in terms of like your reps, were you at like a 20 rep count

and then you brought it down to a five to, you know, like what did that look like in terms of like your crunches, like the kind of exercise you're doing? Well, to be clear, all rep ranges build muscle just some are better than others. The best rep ranges to build muscle range between, you know, if we were to look at them all, although you can apply them all in different ways,

you're looking at anywhere between five to, I would say, 20 reps. Like play within that big zone, you're gonna build, you're gonna build muscle. Now, if you stay one zone for too long, that stops working. Well, I guess we should know. And I think that's the greatest takeaway from talking about

ab training and what most people do. It's very, very rare. I walk into a gym and I see somebody doing reverse crunches or some sort of a sit up and they're doing five reps. Like slow, hard, really added resistance and yeah, low reps. You don't see that a lot. Right. So it more than likely, majority of the people listening to this podcast right now would probably be better off heading there first

just because I think they'll see the greatest change right away. Now all rep ranges, I think it's important to incorporate that. But more than likely, you've been doing stuff in the 10, 15, 20 rep range. It's probably even more than that. If you look at the popular core training workouts

that are out there, it's like 30, 40 reps. It's no rest in between sets. So it becomes a circuit. I go from this one to that one to this one. It's all around stamina and endurance building. Yeah, I used to be part of the camp of trying to hit 100 a day and doing the pushups in conjunction with that and like calisthenics. And yeah, that was a common thought process was like as many as many as possible.

That was like, you know, my only focus and not really bringing it back to actual strength training. Now something that's important to understand is, just like with all exercises, this is not just true for the midsection, all exercises, form is crucial, but it's especially crucial for the midsection because when you go and do a heavy resistance ab exercise like a decline sit up

and you're holding a weight at your chest and you're aiming for five to eight repetitions, if your form is not perfect, you're not gonna, it's not gonna work, you're gonna feel it in your hip flexors and you may in fact five to eight repetitions. If your form is not perfect, it's not going to work. You're going to feel it in your hip flexors and you may, in fact, feel it in your low back. So you want that curling up motion that the abs do. So just a quick lesson on the abs. I think we should go into the different muscles of the midsection and why they're important

to develop. But the abs themselves, which give you that six pack, the action of the abs is to bring the rib cage closer bring the ribcage closer to the pelvis. Because if you look at the attachment, remember the way a muscle works is it has two attachments, two anchor points, one on one end, one on the other end. And then the middle of that are muscles that squeeze and contract and shrink. And what they do is they bring those two anchor points together. So the anchor points for your mid set, for your abs are rib cage pelvis.

They are not bending you at the hips. They are bending you at the lower back. Does that make sense? So think about somebody who's, like somebody with really, really tall posture bending over like a waiter. That's hips, that's not abs. What you want is you want to roll up in the lower back area,

because that's what's flexing me up. This is how I explain. I explain it like if you have somebody spine and you're trying to roll it up. To me, that's a better visual, trying to understand bending at the hip or where you're hinging at versus rolling it up. If you just lay down flat on your back

and you imagine you're spine all the way down and of course there's this nice little curvature in there but you are trying to roll it all the way up like you're trying to roll a piece of paper up that's your goal and to perfect that movement before you add any sort of resistance or anything. Yes because what I found with clients too is that they'll be like oh I use resistance then I'll watch their form and they're they're all flexing at the hips and I'll take the resistance off make them do that or they're rolling, and now they need no resistance and it's heavy.

Right. So first thing, like getting their back flat on the ground, is it called a perfect crunch? It's a perfect sit up. It's a perfect sit up. It's a favorite technique, a specific exercise that I like to kind of take my clients through to learn. Okay, so now I got through that first vertebrae, second vertebrae, third, and I'm working my way up and really rolling and crunching my way towards the belly button.

And that's something that, you know, they can feel that it takes, it takes that amount of concentration and effort to do it right. Yeah, and it's important to understand, too, that muscles have different functions or different ways of contracting. There's a stabilizing contracting where it's just holding steady. There's the full function where it's squeezing and then extending. There's fighting opposite forces type of a functional movement. But by far, the type of movement that builds muscle is when you go through the full range of motion.

So although the midsection does a lot of stabilizing and you should do stabilization exercises in your training like planks, planks are not going to build your abs like a full range of motion slow sit up or reverse crunch or properly done leg raise. That's what's going to build. It's no different than me saying, I'm gonna train my biceps, and so on what I do is I'm gonna do some stabilizing, and all I do is hold a dumbbell out by stabilizing with my biceps.

You're doing tension stuff. Yeah, that'll build a little bit, and it'll build some strength, but it's not gonna build as much visible muscles if I do curls, which is through the full range of motion. So that's something that you wanna keep in mind. The other thing you wanna keep in mind are the main muscles you wanna attack

when you're training your midsection. Yeah, not when you just attack and then the responsibility of all of them. I think there's a lot of stuff that's neglected and I think you just nailed one right there with like, you know, isometric or tension type stuff and then anti-rotational things. Oh yeah, that's a big one.

There's other responsibilities of all these muscles in your core and your abs. You don't just have these abs that just roll the spine up. There's a lot of other responsibilities that you're trying. There is. You have your obliques, both internal, external,

that twist your body. So just think of it really easy. Aside from the other things that those muscles do, you're looking at rotation and stabilization. Then you have a muscle underneath all of that, called your transverse abdominis, which is like your body's weight belt. This muscle is more responsible for shrinking your waist than the abs and the obliques.

So for those of you listening right now that not only want defined muscles of the midsection, but you also want a tight midsection so your waist is small. You want to be able to train this particular muscle right here known as the transverse abdominis with a TVA. And that muscle doesn't crunch the body, it doesn't rotate the body, it shrinks the midsection. So literally if you're sitting listening to this podcast or standing and you suck in your midsection, the muscle that you just used was the TVA. I like to use the analogy, I used to use a pen, right? I used to grab a pen and I'd put it between my hand towards kind of floating around right here and I'd shake it around so my client could

see the pen kind of moving around in my finger or in my hand. And then I would explain to them that your transverse abdominis are these internal muscles that wrap around your spine. And when we activate them and we engage them, we tighten that up. And then I would lock the pen in place. and that's what we're training when we train those muscles, and like to your point, so I'm facing response. Right, not only is it important for,

you know, stability and strength, but also visually, because it'll bring your stomach in a little bit, and I know you did a great YouTube video on this, on like vacuum poses. Yeah, that's actually one of the exercises I almost always recommend. And you know, for a lot of,

and I get this more from women than men, where especially women who've had children, they'll come to me and then they'll be like, hey, I got lean, I do lots of ab exercises, I do lots of oblique exercises, I can see my muscles in my midsection are defined, but I have this lower belly pooch that I didn't have before and it won't go away.

No matter how lean I get it, whatever, I have this, my midsection isn't flat and tight. The reason for that is because they didn't strengthen their TVA muscles. When you think about going through pregnancy, having a baby, like right now, Katrina's pregnant right now. She's very visibly pregnant right now. All the muscles of the midsection have to kind of atrophy a little bit to allow the growing of this baby.

But the muscle that really has to atrophy is the transverse abdominis, because that's the weight belt. That muscle has to relax and stretch. And then when you have your baby, you do your abs and obliques, but you don't strengthen into the TVA, that muscle stays, it stays weak, it stays, you lose a, it's ability to squeeze and contract.

In fact, when I have, especially post-pregnant women, do vacuum poses, it always surprises them that they can't at first. They can't even, they're like, I can't connect to that muscle. They can't activate it. Yes, but then we start to activate it and work on it, and then I've, I mean, it's not unheard of for female clients that I would train to shrink their waist by an inch without getting any leaner, just because they got that muscle stronger. Like, we would measure their waist relaxed, and it would just go down by an inch, not getting any leaner. And

that's the key with good midsection training is, yes, you've got to get lean, but if you program your workout properly and you train the function of the abs, obliques, the TVA, and you throw some components of stabilization and some anti-rotation in there, and then you train with the right amount of reps and frequency, you are going to see significant changes in the way your midsection looks just because those muscles really get developed. Now, why we're talking about shrinking the waist. I think this is a important time to talk about to do not fall for the waist trainers. Oh, no.

That are out there because a lot of them will promote the shrinking the waist. And in fact, a lot of them actually do work. If you wear them and you wear them non-stop day in and day out for weeks, you will take inches off your waist. The only problem with that, it's the opposite of what we're doing. Instead of us, like we're talking right now about strengthening these internal muscles. So those muscles hold in and draw in your stomach.

This actually totally atrophies and weakens all those muscles so they shrink. And they're not losing spinal support. Right. If you've ever had a cast on your body anywhere and your arm or your leg and then you've taken that cast off after a month or a few weeks or whatever, you'll notice that the muscles are significantly smaller and you're a lot skinnier. Like I remember as a kid, I was 13 years old, I dislocated my left kneecap,

and I had to wear a knee, excuse me, a leg brace, and I wore it for like two months. I kept my leg totally straight, I wasn't really fully activating my quad or my hamstring. Maybe it was even less, I might even been just a month. When I took that knee brace, that leg brace off, my left leg was significantly skinnier

than my right leg, totally at atrophy. That's what happens when you wear a waist trainer. You are making those muscles around your midsection atrophy, and on top of it, you're also compressing your digestive organs in your body. I actually know of a person who wore waist trainers and caused a bowel obstruction that required removal of some of her bowel

because of a freaking waist trainer that her trainer told her where was she was sleeping and wearing it all the time. So definitely not the way to shrink your waist. Plus a smaller waist as with less muscle, looks weird. It doesn't look, people think it'll look aesthetic and look nice.

No, it doesn't, it actually looks kind of strange. If you see it, you can tell that person doesn't look fit, they just look like they have a smaller waist doesn't look good. Well developed midsection muscles with good definition, even if your waist isn't smaller, just looks incredible. In fact, if you look at female hardcore female athletes, MMA fighters, high level CrossFit competitors,

even females, these women don't have tiny ways, they have well developed obliques, but they look impressive, they look amazing. And I'm pretty sure everybody who sees what they look like would say, that's something I would want to look like. Yeah, now trying to explain anti-rotation without getting like lost in the weeds, like if you just think about being the ability to rotate, I want to rotate back and reach for something while keeping my hips and my legs where they are and stabilized.

That's anti-rotation, that's keeping my lower body in control while I also have the ability to rotate and twist in my torso. And that could be with my legs rotating as well, where I'm trying to keep my upper body doing something else. So in terms of athletics, I mean, that's huge, that's everything, just the ability to control your body. Not only that, I think it's one of the most underrated exercises and movements when incorporating or talking about training the abdominals is incorporating that because when I think of my clients that I've trained for years,

man, this is where injury normally happens, is moving in another plane, and it's never like, oh Adam, I was, you know, lifting this 300 pound thing and through my back out, it's like, oh I was gardening. And I reach back to get the most mundane things you've got. Yeah, right.

Or I reach back to hand my kids something of juice in the back seat or some, like the most mundane type of movement, they end up injuring themselves. And that's the lack of these type of exercises being incorporated into your routine. We just stop doing that because we don't move in all these different planes

as we start to age, we forget the importance of training the muscles that are responsible for protecting you when you move in and out of these planes. And that's why I think anti-rotational movements are arguably one of the most underrated things that you can incorporate when you're training your abs. Yes, and here's the cool thing about the way you train your body is when you train it in a way that's both geared towards aesthetics and function, you get more aesthetics. Okay, so let me say that again just so everybody gets, it sinks in.

Because a lot of people think I just want to train my body to look amazing. I don't care about the function, I don't care how strong it is, I don't care how well it moves. I just want to look good. And most people won't say it outright like that, but that's what they think, right? They go to the gym and like, look, I just want to look good. And most people won't say outright like that, but that's what they think, right? They go to the gym and like, look, I just want to look good. Whatever, interpretation, is it going to make my,

my abs look as nice as this exercise over here that if it doesn't, I don't really care. Here's a deal, in my experience, if you want maximum aesthetics, definitely trained for aesthetics, but throwing some stuff that maximizes your function, then you get more aesthetics. You look even better.

And for those of you listening right now, they're thinking, what does that look like? Look, it's like the buffed guy at the pool versus the buffed guy at the pool that can also move really well. Okay, now just picture how they look and how they move. The guy who moves really well, he looks better. He moves better.

So incorporating these functional movements like anti-rotation stuff, it's not specifically a category for aesthetics, but it will improve your overall aesthetics, because part of your aesthetics isn't just how you look in a picture, it's how you look in real life. In real life, means you're moving and you're standing

and you've got a particular type of posture. And so it makes you look better as well. Here's another example of anti-rotation. If you had poor, let's say you had no ability to prevent rotation in your core, and you go through a frisbee, you would literally twist your body in your heart. You go with it.

Yeah, you would go with it. Your body would just, you know, like flail with it. You twist it half. And so part of the core's body is to prevent stuff like that from happening. And that's what, you know, and so the cell sounds really complicated, don't worry. We're literally gonna break this down for you.

I think we should at least. Give people like an example of what a workout is gonna look like. Give them an example of like how often. That's another one too. One, I'll call it a myth, but I'll say that I'm some truth to it. Back in the day, people used to say,

train each body part once a week, but train the abs much more frequently. That's part myth and part truth. The myth is that the rest of the body shouldn't be trained frequently, that's false. Body parts seem to do better when you train them, two or three days a week with the same amount of volume than if you just did once a week.

So that part was false, but the part is true. It's true for the apps too. Train the apps, I think in my experience, three days a week for most people seems to be the best approach. Yeah, I agree. So let's look at how we would kind of break this down. Like what a workout would look like. One of my favorite, favorite app building exercises exercises for the abs, for specifically for the

abdominals, is a good, slow, reverse crunch. I like the reverse crunch even better than I like the crunch. I don't know what your guys' opinion is. No, I agree. And this is where I think some people would end up using, like, hanging leg raises. And I don't like those there, especially when I'm teaching abs. It would be very rare that I would get a client that when we would go do abs, they had really, really good form. I actually think that you can make a reverse

crunch, laying on a bench on the ground, really, really hard. And Justin, I think, made the point of like trying to articulate every single little vertebrae and roll it up. This is another great exercise for that. Oh, it's incredible for that. And if you do that really slow in control, it meant five reps of your body weight.

Just your legs, the weight of your legs, of rolling the spine up really slow and opening back up really slow. So I found it easier to teach a revert, to teach people proper ab function with the reverse crunch than a regular forward crunch because with a regular forward crunch, I would see a lot of neck movement. Yeah. I would see people kind of jerked themselves up or whatever.

But when I have people lay down flat, tuck their legs and just try to roll their hips back off the bench, they would get it much faster. There's a reason for that. When you roll backwards like that, once you get to about the halfway point, it actually flattens the back. Flattens the back and then you keep continuing rolling up, which is I think an important. Because you're taking your butt off, you're taking the hips off the back.

Exactly. Which I think is an important cue when you're doing a regular crunch. So if I'm teaching a regular crunch to somebody, I have to cue the, press your back flat against the ground first and then crunch up. Otherwise, they end up bending at the hips and they get so much hip flexor involved that their abs maybe kind of feel it or not at all and they feel it on their hip flexor. So I agree, Sal, teaching the reverse crunch, kind of, that's kind of a train or trick, right?

It's like a, it's not that it's technically a superior exercise. It's that it helps people get the cue and understand that importance of that low back getting flattened out. It builds that connection even deeper. Right, I think like once you can really educate them on the process of like how you should feel that go, like that's a great technique to use that that trainers can teach, you

know, each one of those individual vertebrae as they release from the bench. Now, now if you want to add, let's say you do these really, really well, you're on a flat bench, you're doing them, your form is good, and you, but you want to build the abs and you're just doing too many reps because if you're strong, your form is good, but you want to build the abs, and you're just doing too many reps. Because if you're strong, you're midsection strong, you got strong abs, reverse crunch is flat on a bench, you'll probably get to the point where you're doing 30, 40 of them, that's typically what I can do.

All you gotta do is put yourself on a decline. So grab onto a decline bench, and oftentimes I'll even have something for you to hold on above your head. So rather than, it's like those decline benches where you can hook your legs over the top to do like a sit up. Instead of doing that, lay backwards on it so your head is at the top, your legs right at the bottom.

Hold on to the top and then tuck your knees and tuck your legs and then roll up into your reverse crunch now going uphill. Now you've got some resistance. Now we got some added stress. Now you've got some resistance. Now we got some added stress. Now you've got resistance. That by far, once my abs get stronger, that was by far one of the best ab building exercises I ever did, ever.

I would just make the decline steeper and steeper as I got stronger. I would slow down with the full rep. And man, I would literally get a pump in my abs, which I didn't realize you could get, but obviously you could because it's a muscle like not others. So definitely I would say first pick for the number one exercise, reverse crunch, and if you're strong do it on a decline bench.

Second exercise, I think we should go into doing another kind of full range of motion exercise, but this time let's do it for the obliques. Now here's the thing, and I'll ask you Adam, because I know you were in the space for a little while. The obliques sometimes get a bad rap. Yeah. You know, sometimes I say don't train the obliques because it'll make your waist bigger.

Yeah, which I think is really, I think it's funny. First of all, our waist, we all have, you know, depending on our skeletal structure, we have either wider narrow hips, I mean, no matter what. And I think building obelisks, regardless of you have narrow wide, only makes the body look more aesthetic, and it makes the V taper and that V line that goes down that everybody likes. Everybody talks about that.

What do they call that? That's like the, yeah, I don't know what you, I don't know the technical term, but the V that goes down to the crotch that everybody loves that look and building the obliques creates even a greater, you have a love V, we'll call it the love V. Creates even greater illusion by building the obliques out.

And this was so for me, I love cable chops for me where like my go to. I love cable chops for doing that. And for the reason that you said Sal is like, you know, I want a full range of motion type of exercise for the Obliques and it just offers that. And it's really easy to set up and using like a free motion machine

or cable machine, I can adjust it right to my height so I could work that. And it's really easy to set up and using like a free motion machine or cable machine, I can adjust it right to my height so I can work that. Now for hypertrophy, the way I like to do a cable chop is I'm trying, because there's different ways to do a cable chop. But when you're trying to like work on the aesthetics of the obliques and so work on through full range of motion and kind of build them and make them look more muscular

and more defined, I like to plant my feet. I like to keep my feet both flat planted. And I'm keeping my arms are just a long lever holding onto the cable, and I'm just rotating my upper body so that I'm rotating at my spine, working my blicks through full range of motion. So you're keeping your hips from rotating

with your upper body with. So I'm going all the way back and then rotating forward. Which, so this is a good point, and it's a good way you started that by saying that because your focus is aesthetic because yes. Training for function and training for athletics different. Yeah, you'd be rotating with your feet. You'd be throwing more dribbling your back foot and and rotating with it because it would be a smoother movement. This is all good point because there's controversy here. This is like if you were to put a video up on YouTube

and you put one way or the other, you would get a bunch of critics like usual on YouTube or trolls that come on there. Oh, let's critics. Right. Yeah, critics is a nice word for them. We call them trolls. The fancy name for trolls. Yeah, so they get in there and they would say that. So there's it's not that one is right and one is wrong. It's that there's if you if goal is something different, if we are strictly using this as a tool to build the obliques and our desired outcome is aesthetics, then it makes sense what you're saying, Sal, if we were looking for athletic performance,

where there's a lot more rotational movement going on, that would make sense or function, something that's more functional, you would move and pivot like just in this thing. Now to take it a step further, here's a little variation, and you probably won't find an example of this anywhere, but I'll explain it and it's kind of easy to understand.

If you did these cable chops seated, you could straddle a bench, put your legs underneath the side of the bench, pinch the bench with your legs, and then do your cable chop. And what that does is the pinching of the bench with your legs anchors the lower body and it forces it to stay steady.

So now you're just rotating at the top and it's purely in a bleak building exercise. Yeah, from the knees. I used to do from the knees. How would you do that? On your knees. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So just get on your knees and you could do that.

Easy, that's it. I never thought of that. Yeah, that would be another real easy. So now you've done an exercise that, two exercises that build and develop the muscles I never thought of that. That would be another real easy. So now you've done an exercise that, two exercises that build and develop the muscles of the abs and obliques very, very well because they're kind of these full range of motion,

aesthetic or bodybuilder style exercises. And these are the ones that are gonna give you the most aesthetic bang for your buck. These are the ones that are gonna cause most of that visual change. But we do wanna to work the function. And the other functions I should say of the muscles of the midsection,

they do contribute to aesthetics as well. And plus, again, they just make your move better. So we got to talk about stabilization. Yeah, isometric has got to be. Isometric, you got to be able to stabilize the core. And so we should talk about the good ol' fashion plank. The most abused and incorrectly done exercise, in my opinion, in gyms. But the exercise when done properly

has a lot of value. Now the way that we teach it, in fact, we have a YouTube video that was one of our first, I would say, viralish videos on YouTube. It was controversial for some reason. It was because the way that planks are typically taught is people get into plank and they put them in anatomically proper posture. But I always thought, if I wanna work my abs with the plank, I wanna put myself in a crunched position while doing the plank and then hold that position.

Let me tell you, the difference between crunching your abs and holding that and then the other way, night and day, you feel the abs really working when you do it the way that I explain it. And you're still getting a lot of the stabilization benefits that you would get from the plank. It's just now more of an emphasis on the visual aesthetics of the abs.

So to explain it over the podcast, I definitely recommend it. We'll put the video in the show notes. So if you want a direct link to it, just go to mindpumpmedia.com, go to show notes, and you'll be able to see it. But I'll explain how it is. So it's just like a plank, you're on your forearms

and on your toes, but rather than being kind of this tall posture, tuck your tailbone. Tuck your tailbone and squeeze your abs, but rather than being kind of this tall posture, tuck your tailbone. Tuck your tailbone and squeeze your abs and hold that position throughout the however long you're doing it. And typically I have people hold up between 30 to 60 seconds. Right, because the typical explanation is to keep like a neutral back. So you naturally have just a little bit of a curvature in your lower back. And the common way that people have taught it is to just really, to just squeeze, you know,

your glute squeeze and try and draw in your abs to support that neutral back position. But we're emphasizing the squeezing of the abs even further by tucking that tailbone. That's right. And you'll really emphasize it so you'll feel those abs get involved. It turns it into a much more difficult exercise. Yeah, no, this is an incredible. And I think that, you know, you're talking about a regular plank right now. I think, you know, including some sort of a side plank

or, you know, going back and forth between those on different, alternating on different days. I love to do that. But just the main point is there's got to be some sort of an isometric exercise. Yeah. So when I think of all the movement, we've got to have a strength building one in there.

We've got to have an isometric, and we have to have an anti-rotational for sure. Yeah, yes, yes, absolutely. So, but before we do the anti-rotation, I do like people at this point, throwing in something for the transverse abdominis to get the muscles that shrink the midsection, to practice and strengthen them through their range of motion.

And you know what's funny is that this was actually a prized function of bodybuilders. Right, wasn't this opposed that that could be on stage? Yeah, and show that. Because it really does take a lot of practice and technique and repetitions to be able to activate that and be able to really like hold that, that pose, it takes a lot of work.

It does. And so another video that we did a long time ago that went semi-viral was our vacuum pose. Video will put that in the show notes as well, but just to explain on the podcast, a simple vacuum pose is standing, and all you're doing is you're drawing in your midsection, you're drawing in your belly button,

and imagine you're trying to get your belly button to touch your spine. So you're pulling it in as hard as you can, holding your breath, trying to get it in, trying to touch your spine, and hold that squeeze for anywhere between five to 30 seconds for those of you that are really strong. You can almost grab with your fingers,

you can feel your ribs at that point. We'll get like far enough back. Yes, yes. Now, if you want to add resistance, get on your hands and knees. So now, on your hands and knees, your organs are pushing down through your midsection. So now you have the resistance of your organs,

and it makes it more difficult to do that back and post to draw it in yoga. It looks like camel pose where the back rounds and they're sucking in the midsection. Yeah, they are training certification called this the draw maneuver, right? The draw maneuver. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would do that and I would do sets of that.

I would recommend people do that movement, you know, three to five sets of anywhere between five to thirty second holds and then course, rest in between, make sure you catch your breath. This is an exercise you can actually do every single day, by the way, just a little off topic. That, especially for women who've lost the strength and tone of this muscle through pregnancy, post pregnancy, I recommend women do this two times a day every single day in the morning and that night, just because you're trying to reconnect to those muscles

and get that waist to shrink up and tighten up again. But in this workout, three to five sets, plenty, plenty. Now we need more kind of that anti-rotation stabilization type stuff. What do you guys think of like a suitcase carry? What do you think about that? Absolutely, low-suit, fantastic. Yeah, yeah.

And a suitcase carry is like a like one handed farmer's walk. You're literally holding a dumbbell in one side and you're walking, but how you walk makes the big difference. Well, it's great too, because you can work on just good posture in general to bring those shoulders back and down and really stand nice and upright.

While you're holding this weight at your side and you're not allowing your body to compensate for that. So what's going to try and happen is your body might want to dip down at some point where you're trying to correct that and keep tight and you're going to really feel that and your obliques trying to stabilize. And this is just another one of those things too and I know we are talking about building an impressive or a good looking six pack or abs.

But this is, I can't help but think of the importance of this just again for protecting yourself. And when you think of your everyday stuff that you do and you grab your bag of groceries, never is it exactly even in both hands. It's normally there's a little bit more weight in one side. You're carrying one kid in one arm on one side. There's so many things you're carrying a bag of dog food.

There's so many things that you do in your life where you're not perfectly carrying the same weight in both arms. Rare is it balanced. Yeah, exactly. Rare in life and everyday stuff is it actually balanced out for you. And so these things like this, I think, are such a good thing for you to practice. And then if you're also getting the benefits of helping build this great looking six pack abs, it's like it's a no brainer. This has to be in my routine. Now one tip, what will happen is when

you're holding something heavy on one hand and you're walking two things. First, walk tall, walk with your full foot, walk straight, try to keep your body upright, don't let it dip, and then don't let the opposing arm stick out to counterbalance. So it's not like you're carrying a bucket and you're just trying to get it somewhere where your hand sticks out because you got something heavy. You want that other hand at your side as well. So that means you might have to go lighter and you want to walk like a robot almost, you know, step, step with your other hand swinging just a little bit but standing nice and tall. This is the

counter rotation aspect of this exercise. If I was just standing with the dumbbell, this would be a stabilization type movement, but the fact that I'm walking and my lower body wants to rotate but I'm keeping it from rotating and I'm also holding away on one side, I get that counter rotation keeping it from rotating. And I'm also holding away on one side. I get that counter rotation effect from this exercise. And that's something that I recommend people do. Three sets on each side for something like, what do you think, 20 steps?

Is that about right? About 20 to 30 steps? 20 yards, something like that. About 20 yards? Yeah. And do that for about three sets. At the end of your workout, just not something you want to start with your workout off. But what's cool about this is, by the time you get at the end of your workout. Does that something you want to start with your workout off?

But what's cool about this is by the time you get to the end of your workout, you'll start to really feel how this works because you've already done the reverse crunches, the chop and all that other stuff. For sure. Now in terms of frequency, we talked about three days a week.

I think every other day is ideal. Work out one day, give yourself a break, and then work out another day. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 10s, a big good thing. Now what about reps? We didn't talk too much. We kind of gave it a range. Well, if we are, if we're setting this up, like the way I'm envisioning the way we're

explaining all this is you should be able to take this information, take the exercises, take what we're giving you right now, and build it right into your current routine. Right? So, and what I would do with that is I would do a three day a week routine and then I would have one day that is more strength-based. I'd have one day that is more hypertrophy-based and one day is more endurance. So what does that mean? That means the strength day, I'm doing all these exercises that we just talked about,

but around the five rep range, and then the high-perture fee day, I'm looking at eight to 12 rep range, and then on the endurance day, I'm looking 15 to 20 reps. Oh yeah, excellent, excellent. And they give you a different feel, they work the muscle a little bit different, this will prevent some plateau.

So just to kind of put it all together, this is what it looks like. And this is literally the workout that we think will work for most of you. And of course, make sure you have doctor's clearance, make sure that all these exercises work for you. But your first exercise, reverse crunches, about three sets of this, the rep ranges anywhere between five to 20 depending on what day your workout, if you're doing the strength hypertrophy or endurance day, cable chops, three sets

as well, per side, your plank, hold that plank, squeeze those muscles. It's real important that you actively try to tense those muscles up even harder. Do that for anywhere between 10 to 30 to maybe even 60 seconds for those who are really, really good and strong, vacuum poses, three sets. Hold that squeeze for five to 45 seconds, depending on how much control you have. Suit case carries, you're doing about 20 yards. I would say you can go if you're doing strength,

I would do shorter hypertrophy, 20 yards, endurance a little bit longer. So that means the strength days will be a little heavier. The hypertrophy days a little lighter and the endurance days will be the lightest. One thing, by the way, I do want to go over the a couple, one big myth about ab training. And that is that you're gonna work,

you can work the upper or lower abs, depending on the exercise. So a lot of people will say, leg raises works the lower abs, sit ups works the upper abs. Here's the deal, doesn't work that way. The abs have two main attachments, they all contract. So whether you're doing a reverse crunch or a forward crunch,

it's lower and upper abs at the same time. And yes, I know there's studies that show that maybe the muscle fibers of the lower abs contract first and a reverse crunch and therefore, you are totally, you're splitting so many hairs it's like you're at the you're at the quantum level. Total waste of time to focus on upper abs and lower abs, but I would say focus on obliques, abs, the drawing and maneuver, full range of motions, stabilization and counter rotation. And I think you've got that all.

And the idea is that we've laid out a really nice foundation for you, and then if you want to do different strength or size, so let's say you've been doing reverse crunches for the next four or five weeks, and this is where you would rotate other movements in there. Instead of the reverse crunch, now you do like a full situp instead of that movement.

And there's tons of anti-rotational movements that you can do and isometric movements that you can do. And so you can get on YouTube and search other ones to switch in and out. But I would stick to those movements, the rep range, the kind of the cadence that we're recommending right now for a good solid four to six weeks before you start, you know, changing out any sort of the movements. Absolutely. And of course, remember, you got to get lean, but I'm telling you this, if you develop your midsection muscles properly, you won't have to get as lean to have muscles that are more

visible. You can get more definition without getting leaner simply because the muscles are more developed. This is true for any part of the body. A well-developed arm is going to look more defined at a higher body fat percentage than a arm that has smaller, less developed muscles. True for legs, back, glutes, chest, and for your midsection. So training your midsection properly with good programming, that is a that is literally half of the equation. So if you're if

you're right now, like you're in the middle of May and you're like, oh, I'm trying to, I'm getting leaner for summer. I want to look good for summer. So I'm looking at my diet and we've got plenty of episodes on that. I think the metabolism boosting episode and fat loss episodes that we've done are excellent for that. And you're doing all that, do not negate proper exercise programming because that is the other side of the coin here. And if you do it properly, you will be like I was.

Again, I trained for years. I was an experienced trainer at this point. I developed my abs and it was like, holy shit, I'm at 10% and my abs look more visible now than they did when I was at 7 or 8% before when they weren't as well developed. And make sure you check the show notes where we have links to some of these exercises that you can click on and watch our demos so you make sure you do them right. Also go to mindpumpfree.com and download any of our guides they're all absolutely free.

Also you can find us on Instagram. Justin can be found at Mind Pump Justin, Adam at Mind Pump Adam, and me, I'm at Mind Pump Sal. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle

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