Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1285: The Ultimate At-home Ab & Core Workout

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss what it takes to build an impressive midsection. The origin story of the NO BS 6-Pack Abs Formula. (4:00) Understanding the function of the abs and the common mistakes people make. (10:07) Breaking the trend of NOT training your obliques. (16:35) Busting the myth that more reps equal more muscle. (23:42) The importance of reinforcing good recruitment patterns to build your core. (31:43) Factors that contribute to a very effective core workout. Build it and they will come. (34:50) The value of and how to utilize the Physio-Ball. (39:20) How to build the ultimate at-home and core workout. (45:40) Related Links/Products Mentioned May Promotion: MAPS Starter ½ off! **Promo code “STARTER50” at checkout** Special Promotion: MAPS Anywhere ½ off!! **Code “WHITE50” at checkout** Special Promotion: NO BS 6-Pack Abs ½ off! **Promo code “NOBS50” at checkout The Countries With The Most Millionaires [Infographic] Body Fat Percentage Distribution for Men and Women in the United States - DQYDJ Mind Pump #1032: How to Get an Impressive 6-Pack The (2) BEST Ab Exercises You’re NOT Doing Properly (STRONG CORE) | MIND PUMP TV How to do a PROPER Plank – Mind Pump TV The Most Overlooked Muscle Building Principle – Mind Pump Blog Hip Flexor Deactivators- Do these first to maximize your Ab development – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Max Schmarzo (ATC/CSCS/MS) (@strong_by_science) Instagram Cory Schlesinger (@schlesstrength)  Instagram Paul J. Fabritz (@pjfperformance)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk all about training your abs and your core and using minimal equipment. So we talk all about the factors that contribute to a very effective core workout. Like how do you get these muscles to develop so that they're more visible?

How do you make them more aesthetic? What rep ranges you should train in? Like how frequent you should train? We talk about a lot of the common pitfalls and mistakes. We talk about some of our favorite, favorite exercises. We think you're gonna love this episode, especially if you really want to place special focus on developing the muscles of your midsection. Now, before the episode starts, I want to let you know that we do have a core training program.

It's actually one of the original programs that we ever sold at Mind Pump. In fact, if you enroll in the program, you get to see 2014 Sal version. This is an old program I created, still extremely effective. It was actually filmed in my old personal training studio. This is before MindPump ever became a thing. And because right now everybody's stuck at home and because we're doing this episode, we're gonna put this program at 50% off.

That means it only costs, it's a full workout program for the core. That only makes this program $28.50. Here's how you get that program. Go to nobs6pack.com, so that's nobs, the number six, pack.com, and then use the code nobs 50 for the half-off.

So that's N-O-B-S and the number five zero no space for that discount. Speaking of feeding cells, uh, ego, I like this. Yeah, I know. I'm just pumping your tires. Do we need to do that? I know. We don't actually, but I think we should talk about this because one, I, I forget a lot of times. Uh, we feel like we talk about this because one, I forget a lot of times.

We feel like we talk about something at nauseam sometimes and then what I catch us doing is, you know, after we've talked about it so much, we, okay, we move away from it, then we don't discuss it. Kind of forget. Yeah, and kind of forget about it how important it is and I was reminded of this and I actually wanted to, to actually open it up with Sal kind of sharing

a little bit of the origin story of it. And I was getting, I got, been getting obviously lots of messages about people that are at home and things to do. And, you know, one of the, one of the people that messaged me just little yesterday was asking about, hey, do you know any like really good ad programs?

And I got a lot, I was like, oh shit, I was like, you know, when we first started the podcast, we talked so much about this. And a lot, I was like, oh shit, I was like, you know, when we first started the podcast, we talked so much about this. And a lot of that is one, at that time, we only had anabolic and no BS6 pack abs. And I thought that, okay, we talked so much about it. I think we've beaten that dead horse,

but the reality is, we haven't visited the kind of ab conversation in a long time. And I thought, you know what, what a, when we in a long time and I thought, you know what, what when will you better time to discuss an at home program that doesn't really require much weights at all to perform. And I want to start off first though before we get into it is actually you sharing cell because the kind of the origin story of No BS 6 pack abs is really cool.

And it was also around the time you and I were first kind of meeting and talking. And I remember looking into this, this was also, you know, I looked at Anna Balk and I looked at No BS 6 pack abs. And this was part of the brilliance of, again, pumping your tires of, of you. And what made me, it's what sold me, it really did. It's what sold me on, okay, I've got to meet this guy and we got to talk because he definitely gets it on another level that most people don't.

And so you have to share with the audience when, when, how you created, why you created it, and then let's break down some of the philosophies behind it. Yeah, I mean, you guys know this just as well as I do. We've all been doing this a long time. That there's a lot of myth and what would be considered common knowledge in the fitness space that surrounds muscle building and training and fat loss and some of this stuff. When you get into the space, you become a trainer, you figure out, oh, this is totally false. Some of it lingers for a very, very long time. Some of it is so pervasive that you accept it as truth

until later on, maybe sometimes years later, actually took me 10 years to figure out a lot of the stuff that I thought was true about app training was totally false. So up until this point, some of the stuff that I had thought was, you know, the way you trained abs was, you know, with really high reps and really, you know, it's about getting lean. And if you get lean enough, everybody has a six pack. There's definitely some truth to this is what makes a lot of this common knowledge, kind of myth stuff so hard to see through is that it's kind of based in some truth. Right. And that's true.

Every single person has a six pack if you peel off every layer of body fat. There's definitely, that's the shape of the abs. It looks like there's six blocks or eight blocks or four depending on your genetics, but there's definitely muscles there if you were to peel the body fat back. And so I'd been training for a long time.

Everybody knows the story, right? I started working out at 14, became a professional trainer at 18, and having a midsection that was impressive was always something that was something that I was after, mainly because it was something that people valued. Like, if you're at the beach or you take your shirt off, if you want to really look impressive, one of the most impressive thing,

one of the things that anybody will look at and admire is a well-defined, strong-looking minstection. Well, you remember that stat that you brought up not that long ago that I thought was hilarious that I'd never heard before that there's more millionaires in the world than there are people that have six pack abs. True.

I think that's hilarious. It is crazy. It actually highlights how hard it is to... Right, right. Because obviously it's not easy to become a millionaire. That's right. And again, if the average person is looking at you, let's say you're at the beach and you're a guy

and you take your shirt off, someone who trains might look at you and be like, wow, I could see he's got really developed delts and look at his back and his chest and all that stuff. But the average average person, they look at your minsection. If you have a six pack, you're fit. Like it's the most impressive thing. Like the gold standard.

It is. It's interesting that we've strayed away from, you know, ab conversations as much because that's the most high search term that you could possibly, you know, search in regard to fitness because that tends to just be this, it's like a benchmark sort of the epitome of when I got fit was when I had a six pack. So what people think. Totally. And so at the time, I thought, oh, I just got to get shredded

enough and do all these high reps and maybe don't train my core that much because I'm deadlifting and squatting. And so up into this point, in order for me to get a visible six pack, I personally, and this is a little different from person to person, but I had to get like, eight to seven percent body fat. Now most guys, they say, we'll have a six pack at around 10%.

I had to get down to about seven, eight percent, and they weren't really visible when I was relaxed. And I really admired when dudes would have abs that you could just see all the time. They didn't have to flex them. They could just walk around and they had like these brick abs that would kind of stick through. So I was always searching for that. Well anyway, as I got deeper and deeper into personal training and as I started to study workout techniques of the old-time bodybuilders and strength athletes, wake away before anabolic steroids were ever a big thing.

And by the way, if you examine the workout routines of bodybuilders and strength athletes, you can clearly see the influence of Annabelle steroids. Clearly, the training routines totally changed. Body part split routines were not popular until Annabelle steroids became a big thing before that everybody trained, kind of full body,

focused on compound movements and all that stuff. So you can clearly see that. So I was studying these kind of old routines and I started to kind of think to myself and say, you know, why are we told to train the abs differently than any other muscle? Like, do they not build? Don't they build like the biceps or the delts or anything else? And then I also started to really look at the function of the muscles of the midsection. And what's true for any muscle is this, if you train a muscle through a full range of

motion, through what it's supposed to do, you're going to get better results than if you train it in a partial range of motion, and you'll get better results than if you train it in just a static tension range of motion. Now all of those produce some kind of result result by the way, but the one that builds the most muscle and produces the best results is always kind of that full range emotion. So then what I started to do is I started to train and experiment with myself and then I started to experience certain changes. I was focusing on really full ranges of motion. I started using resistance. I started thinking of working my core the same way I thought of working my shoulders or

my back or my chest or my arms. I thought to myself, why don't I build these muscles? Because I know it's true for the legs and arms and chest and back, which is this. If you have more muscle, you don't have to look as lean to see the same definition. You just don't. If you have a muscular biceps and triceps, your arms look leaner at higher body fat percentages. This is totally true. The same thing should be true for the midsection.

I embarked on this journey of building the muscles of my core, and then this is how I developed the program, the NoBS-6 pack formula. My abs used to be a body part where again you couldn't see them until I was seven or eight percent body fat. I got them built to the point where at 10 percent body fat, not only could you see them when I flex them, you could see them when they were relaxed, you could even see them through my shirt. If I had a tight shirt on, people would comment on my abs and it was a massive complete transformation and that's when I came up with the program, the no BS 6 back formula

Now when you talk about full range of motion though You also have to explain to people the function of it because I think that's that's where a lot of my client struggled was really understanding the function of the abs and how to because if you don't understand the function It's hard to understand how to take that through full range of motion totally It's not as simple as you know Oh when I squat I take my legs by going all the way down, I take it through full range of motion. It's so much easier for people to visually see that or a bicep curl going all the way open

to all the way close. The abs are a little more complex. And so I think you got to explain first to people like really the complete function of the abs and then also maybe the mistakes that people make when they do that. Which muscles tend to get in the way of that? Oh, totally. I think people, the average person thinks

if you fold your body, that that's abs, right? So if I'm laying on the floor and I sit up or if I bring my legs closer to my body, that I am working my abs through a full range of motion, that's not necessarily true. Now all muscles, when they contract, they bring both attachment points closer together. So think of like a rubber band attached at two points. If that rubber band shrinks, it just pulls the two points closer together. Well, the attachment points of the abs,

for example, really are the pelvis and the lower ribcage. So think of your pelvis, think of your lower ribcage. When the abs contract, they bring those two parts closer together, not your legs to your body or your upper body down to your legs, that's part of it. And so what ends up, and now what does that? Hip flexors. And you have to explain to that, okay,

if the hip flexors are what response pull to that, what do we know about most people? Oh, tight and strong hip flexors, right? Because we sit all day long, right? That's it, and we walk, we at least walk, which is a lot of hip flexor activation. And remember, the hip flexors, so here's what's interesting, by the way.

And so if this is you, this is exactly what's happening. If you find that your lower back starts to get tight and you start to feel pain whenever you work your abs, that's because you are hammering your hip flexors. The hip flexors, one muscle in particular, the so-as muscle, attaches at the thigh, goes through the body, and then attaches at the lower part of the spine. So when you're doing leg raises or sit-ups, and you're not really working the abs through a full range of motion, what you're going to feel it is in the hip flexor and oftentimes it's not in the hip that

you'll feel it. It's at the attachment, which is the lower back. So you start to get like, oh, I can't do, how many times you have to get a client say this. I can't do leg raises when I do, it hurts my lower back. That's not because your back is bad. It's because your hip flexors are doing all the work and your midsection, your core, your abs in particular are not. So what's the full range of motion for the work and your midsection, your core, your abs in particular are not. So what's the full range of motion for the abs?

Full range of motion for the abs is lumbar flexion and extension. So it's bending at the lower back, not at the hips. So imagine a waiter, like an old-school waiter, bending forward with a really, really straight back to bow, right? That's hip. That's your hips. That's hip-ing. That's hip-ing. Right. Now imagine somebody, imagine you're laying on the floor and pretend like you're a piece of paper rolling out.

That's what I love to use the term rolling up. I think that's where, that's why I don't like sit up. Sit up is too, too simple. And I think that's where people go wrong is they think about sitting their body weight up and you just do whatever. You think momentum, like I'm trying to propel my upper body forward when in fact I'm trying to actually like roll forward and get my sternum close to my belly button This is this is why I like the perfect setup so much in teaching that because you're really trying to teach a client to Understand how to you're you can roll your vertebrae up Yes, you can roll the vertebrae like. You can roll the vertebrae, like you say,

and we've twisted up with a paper. And if you kind of think of that visually of what you're trying to do, versus just trying to get the body up, it makes a world of a difference, just thinking of it like that. Oh, it's huge. And how hard is it?

You take somebody, I've done this so many times. I'll take a client and I'll say, oh, do you work your core? Oh yeah, that's what I work all the time. I can do 50 sit-ups or 50 sit-ups on a physiabolism. Okay, I can hold a plank for like five minutes. Yeah, and I'll say, okay, well let's try doing them, but I'm gonna watch your form.

And then I'll change their form and have them focus on rolling up, and they go from doing 50 to doing five. Because now, there, because here's what happens. When you do a sit-up or a leg raise with all hip flexors, you'll feel it's in your abs too because your abs are stabilizing. So they are stabilizing, but you're not working them through a full range of motion. The muscles you're working through a full range of motion are your hip flexors.

The worst exercise for this, by the way, leg raises. Leg raises, almost nobody does them right. Nobody. When you watch someone do leg raises, all they're doing is bringing their knees up, swinging their legs up. Yeah, and really what you should do if you want to watch someone do leg raises, all they're doing is bringing their knees up, swinging their legs up. Yeah, and really what you should do, if you wanna do a proper leg raise, and I teach this in that program,

is you do bring the legs up, but you curl. You curl the hips under your body, you take your tucking your tailbone. You take your tailbone up, so you still kind of propel yourself up with the glutes kind of squeezes. Super hard, and it's a high resistance exercise, but it really builds the abs only when you do them properly.

When you do them wrong, you're just gonna get super tight. Well, this is why too. I think it's important that you learn how to do a just laying flat on the ground, really good reverse crunch before you progress to, like a, you gotta learn the technique first. Yeah, if you had to first, I mean, we talk about this all the time. We just, you know, came off of a month of talking a lot about mobility and the neurological

connection. That's part of this problem here is that you have a really poor connection to your abdominals, especially that that first initial roll up. And so getting people to understand that it's more of that, it's less of a, you know, do you have abs or not abs? Are you really connected well and understand how to articulate the movement, learning to practice that and get really connected to it before you start to progress to all these other moments?

Oh, remember, you guys remember years ago when I did that post on how to do a plank so that it works your abs and everybody lost their minds. Oh, yeah. Oh, physical therapist lost their minds. Everybody, because when you do a plank, you see this kind of straight back or maybe small arch on the low back. And that's fine, you're using some core, using a lot of hip flexors.

But if you do a plank and you tuck your tailbone, like you drop your tailbone, squeeze your core like you're doing a crunch, now hold that. Totally different exercise. There's no way you can't feel your abs. No, that's what you're doing. You're squeezing your abs and supporting yourself with your... I remember when I learned that,

I never again taught a standard plank. Yep, because I realized how... Where's the pot? 9910 times you're working with people up to hit flexor, bro. 100%. Yep, yep. The other issue that I think comes up with core training is, and this is kind of a trend that I think is silly,

which is not really training the obliques. You know, everybody wants to work the abs. Right. Nobody wants to train the obliques. I think that's such a big mistake. Yeah, I mean, come on. And I know this is probably influenced a lot by like presenting yourself on stage and there's this sort of value of having this, you know, this tiny waste.

And so like building the obliques to a lot of people seems like it's going to make them look a little more square. But in fact, it really helps to kind of highlight the development of the entire core. Well, it's kind of ironic that people don't, when if you ask somebody, would you, it like layman's term explained to me, like, if I asked like Katrina, like, what's your favorite part about when my abs are ripped? We like, what do they say? They say, oh, that V. It's that V. Well, what creates that V and exaggerates that V more than anything else is pronounced oblique.

Totally. So one of the best things that you can do to develop that look or create that illusion of having an even deeper V or more pronounced abs is also by developing the oblique. Now, CrossFit is brought a few things to the fitness space and some of them good, some of them bad. Here's one thing that I think is good.

It's actually highlighted what functional good core muscles look like. Because when you see these CrossFit athletes that are shredded and lots of people women will say, oh my god, I want a midsection like that CrossFit athlete. Or I want my midsection to look like that dude that won the games. Look at their cores. Their cores are built for competition and what you'll find is amazing abs but also well developed oblique.

It looks because they have to support their spines because all the load they're throwing up. It looks amazing. And to that, I mean, I know we're kind of talking a lot about the aesthetics, right? Because I know that's what appeals to most people, but the truth is as trainers, we know the function of that and the importance of that, especially, I mean, I was just talking to a client of mine,

and she went in and saw our chiropractor and she's having SI joint issues, and she was power washing for like four hours, and the chiropractor was explaining to her, just like, oh, you have weak rotational strength. And I told her, I said, listen, this is a stuff. I said, this is why you pay me the big bucks. I said, I know you normally come to me

and you were asking stuff about nutrition and looking a certain way, but when I get feedback from you like that, then I can give you exercises and movements to help support that. I mean, that's incredible information for me and a really good coach hears that and goes, oh, wow, now what I'll do and what I'll do

in your workout today is incorporate some anti-rotational type movements or rotational type exercises or oblique specific stuff which is going to help support that. And I would have to say that I think of a lot of things that clients lack in as they age, it would be that rotational strength and stability. I'll say this right now, all muscles are important on your body, but the obliques are some of

the most important for this reason right here. Most people, even out of shape people, even people who don't work out, they at the very least walk. I don't even mean walking for working out. They just have to walk, right? You walk from one place to another. Okay. Try this right now. If you're listening to this podcast and you have headphones on, try walking, but when your right leg goes up, move forward, move your right arm with that right leg. And when your left leg moves forward, move your left arm with it. So rather than countering, because typically what happens, if I step with my right, my left arm

moves forward and same thing with my left arm. Can I walk like a robot? See how fast you can walk. See if you can run that way. It's terrible. You have zero control, you have no speed. You can't walk that way. You have this rotation that's natural in humans, which we are, you know, the only animal

we know of that walks on two legs. This is part of why we're able to do that, is we have that counter rotation with the upper body. It's what prevents us from- For most local motion. It prevents us from spinning in place when we're trying to run and move, and that's a bleak. Also, you just reminded me some too.

Always for my athletes that are listening right now. This is a way I can always tell if you're a good performance coach. Take a look at like Max Marzo, Jake, Cory Slesinger, and then Paul Faberitz, right? PJF performance, right? If you look, and literally I was just on all their pages this last week, they're always popping up in my feed because I love their content. They all are athletic trainers, right, at the professional highest level. And look at the movements they're always

teaching, they're always teaching They're always incorporating incorporating that rotational power and strength because of how it translates to athletes So if you're an athlete listening to this and maybe you care maybe less about the benefits of Looking like you have great abs boy the functional carryover and to being performing and being a better athlete And I can't think right now of a sport that doesn't need that. You gotta support your spine in multiple directions. Life isn't just in front of us and behind us. So you gotta start thinking outside of that.

How can I support my body? How can I train my body to be able to withstand a lot of these forces pulling me left or right when I twist? Do I have the strength to be able to support my body in that twist? It is, and it is what allows you to utilize the strength of your limbs. If you have weak obliques, your legs and your arms

cannot express their full capacity. Even if you do nothing but walk, even if you just walk like I just highlighted earlier, you have to have functional bleaks. And from an aesthetic standpoint, okay, if you develop one nice looking bleaks with nice abs, even if your waist doesn't shrink, even if you have the same size waist,

the illusion is gonna look like you have a tighter, more amazing looking midsection. So do not neglect the bleaks, and I know most programs, don't look at, they play the bleaks are like second fiddle, they're not as important. You just reminded me of something else too. I don't know how often you guys got this.

I remember getting this a lot. I had many clients that the limiting factor of us getting a stronger deadlift and squat was due to having a weak core, weak oblique squat all the time. Oh my God, all the time. There was many times where I'd have a client who would hit a plateau in those two things, and we just maybe weren't putting a lot of emphasis

on app training at that time, and I could see that, I could see that they were weak in stabilizing and supporting themselves as I was starting to increase load. So then I went back to the drawing board, incorporate a lot more training in core nabs, all said and we see squat and deadlift. Yeah, just think about that.

I mean, if you're pulling something up from the ground from from your left arm from your right arm You're never gonna have like perfectly even force distributed between my left and right side So that limiting factor being your if you have weak obliques that's that's there to stabilize you So you can stay rigid you could stay strong you can stay efficient as you're pulling that up. So if you're not training that, you know, immediately that's a performance loss. Oh yeah, anytime you do a press with dumbbells or a standing exercise or a row with one arm or two arms,

basically anytime you do anything and involving your body, you need to have a strong and stable core. The another big problem a mistake that I saw and I still see this, is this weird myth that somehow the way you train the core is with really, really high reps. Like you only ever do high reps. All those infomercials. Yeah, and it's terrible. And this really boils down to the myth that, you know, high reps, sculpts and shapes and tones and low reps builds lots of bulk and size.

And of course, who would like a big bulky midsection? Nobody, right? Everybody wants a sculpted tight midsection. So I'm not going to do any high reps. Like here's a news flash. Okay. Resisting training, the goal is always to build muscle always. Now that doesn't mean you're going to get this massive midsection. And by the way, if you had, let's just say you were the one and a trillion people

that could develop muscle like Mr. Olympia, you still would not do a hard, heavy ab workout and wake up the next day and be like, oh no, I messed up. My midsection grew too much. It still doesn't happen that fast. The fastest way to get your midsection to look a particular way is to build those muscles.

And high reps can build muscle, just like low reps can, but if you only ever do high reps, it loses its value. This is one of my favorite to talk about because I love sharing paradigm, shattering moments in our careers. And this was an area that I felt victim to. I mean, I was the trainer who abs was kind of an afterthought. It was at the end of the workout.

It's like how we finished something off and you'd be doing 100 bike abs or a bunch of crazy sit-ups that kind of burn out at the end and feel them burn. And then, if I remember correctly, though, I think what fed into that, at least for me, is I remember reading something back then about the type of muscle fibers that you have in your abs and your calves.

That high repetitions tend to, they would say, tend to be better for those reasons. Right? That they can handle. There's most slow twitch muscle fibers that recover faster. And the case they would make is the abs and calves or muscles that you're constantly using all day long, so they need high reps to respond to it. Petitive stress levels. And so I fell into this trap, and for many years I trained it that way myself and my clients, and I wish I remember what I read or what it was when I thought,

you know what, I'm gonna go, I've never tried, I've never lifted five reps on abs. Never did five reps on calves, and those two things were one of the most pivotal things that I ever did for both calves and abs was switched to doing really high or really low reps and heavy weight because I had been so focused on high reps and I saw this boost on both those areas right away. Yeah, so what it came from and it's such a stupid myth, but what it came from is when they do analysis of different muscles they can see the they can kind of do you know they do a biopsy and they'll look at the breakdown between fast twitch

and so by the way, this is a really, really rough generalization. It's more complicated than this, but they'll say, okay, there's a ratio of, you know, two to one fast twitch, the slow twitch or whatever. Fast twitch muscle fibers are the ones that produce power and strength, but they also burn out very quickly. So it's like a car with a V10. It's going to burn the gas very fast, but it's a lot of power and strength, but they also burn out very quickly. So it's like a car with a V10. It's going to burn the gas very fast, but it's a lot of power, and it goes quarter mile super fast.

Slow twitch muscle fibers, they last longer. They're your endurance muscle fibers, but they burn energy much slower, and so they last longer as well. So it's like a car with a two-cylinder engine. It's like a Prius. Yeah, you're going to go for much longer, but it ain't going to go that fast. Now, the fast twitch muscle fibers, they have the greatest propensity for growth because the bigger they get, the better they do their job.

Slow twitch muscle fibers, now they can also grow, but they grow at a much, much lower and slower capacity because as they get bigger, they require more energy. And one of the things that you're asking your slow twitch muscle fibers to do is to have lots of staying power. So it doesn't make sense, for example, to have a two-cylinder car and say, I want it to go farther. So I'm going to make it a four-cylinder. It doesn't make any sense. What you want to do is make it more efficient.

So the fast Twitch muscle fibers grow, and this is why lifting weights makes your muscles build, and why doing super long endurance type of stuff doesn't make your muscles build. It's why long distance runners look the way they do and why sprinters look the way they do, okay? Now what they do is they look at the muscle biopsies and they say, oh, abs have more slow twitch than the delts.

Therefore, train them slow twitch. Look, it doesn't matter. The fact remains, training fast twitch muscle fibers results in more building and more shape and more sculpting. Training and higher reps results in more endurance and stamina. Now, higher reps, again, to a certain point, can still build, but if you stay there all the time, which is what people do, they'll do 20 reps for abs,

and they only ever do 20 reps. They never play in the 10 rep or the eight rep range, so they lose the effects that those could produce. I also think that what came with that too is just like our training certifications. You're gonna lean on the safer route. It's right. And it's like, if you take somebody

who doesn't have good ab control and then you load them with heavy weight, you wouldn't do that with anybody part. Right, yep, exactly. So then they're, and if we know, like, you brought up earlier about the so-as being attached to the low back, and then what that can do as far as that can strain people, and they're, oh, every time I do abs,

I feel it in my low back, and then you're sitting here telling me, Adam and Sal, that I should add load to that too, not a good idea. So as trainers, a lot of them started to, I think, lean on the, oh, let's do the safer route. I know, I know my clients are going to throw her back out doing body weight crunches to 100, you know, right? Right, right. Where if I gave her, you know, 15 pound medicine ball and told her to do it slow and control for five, like maybe she'd be at risk more. No, no, this does not negate the fact this is true for all body parts, for

all exercises that form is extremely important. So if you, so I'll put it this way. Let's say you do 50 reps on a physio ball for crunches, which by the way, the physio ball is one of my favorite, favorite tools for work in the core. And I'll get into that. It was made for it. Oh, it's amazing for it. And I'll get into that a little bit later.

But let's say you do 50 reps on the physio ball and you do a bunch of crunches. And I want you to do high resistance. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna perfect your form and slow you down. And that's all you need to do. Usually, I don't need to add weight. Now, adding weight, once you have the perfect form, then you can start to add resistance

to your perfect form. But what I don't, and I'm glad you brought this up, Adam, what you don't want to do is right now, hang up on the, you know, you're done with this podcast and you go and add resistance. How about you perfect your form, the range of motion, the squeeze and what you may find is that your reps are low automatically because now you're doing the right thing with your form. Now, and when you get something we haven't touched on

that it's also another great benefit inside of it and something I used to always present to clients on the importance of us training this and getting strong here is your core in your abs. This is your internal weight belt. Totally. You get really good at that and you get strong in your core and abs. This is what helps prevent you from throwing your back out.

When you go over and you pick up a 50 pound bag of dog food or you're doing something like that because you've put the work into really understanding how to control your abs. I mean, I know you guys do this because your trainers, I try and teach my clients to do this. And when you learn, it starts first with the mind muscle connection, right? Working on the neurological lofers. Once you learn and understand how to connect to the abs and activate them, then you treat that behavior. You make it a habit that any time I go to do something that could potentially compromise it, I always think my abs. I don't go pick a thing

a dog food up and do it mindlessly. Even though I could dead live four or five hundred pounds, it doesn't mean that I don't still brace my core even for 50 pounds. It's a habit that I've taught myself when I hinge over, I bend over, I grab something. Sitting down for a long period of time is just to be conscious of that and like, you're posture and then like, being able to keep and brace that position. So I wanna reinforce like better positioning

and I can do that by focusing on like my abs controlling that. You just reminded me of something else that I've been meaning to make a YouTube video, that's for a long time. And I gotta do, make a note for this dog, because I need to do this. I've been wanting to shoot a YouTube video of me sitting in my car and showing people,

cause so I suffer from what a lot of people suffer from which is like an anterior pelvic tilt. So my, looks like my ass is kind of sticking out a little bit which, you know, it can, contract the low back and my low back and IG model. Right. And it gets, yeah, exactly. And it gets really tight. And there's two main factors from, or there's multiple factors, but two of the major things that's going on there is I'm in that position because I have a low, I have weak abs. I'm not training them

as much as I should be and addressing the imbalance of what, what like the hip flexors. Now, once, once you understand how to connect, right? And the problem, so the problem is, as to sticking out too much, the opposite of fixing that is squeezing the glutes and actually activating and rotating the pelvis, right? You can do this in your car. You can do this on the plane.

So a lot of times, I know there's people listening right now that can relate to this, because this happened, you used to happen to me all the time I sit in the car for half hour hour or I'm on a plane for an hour and oh I get and all I've been doing is sitting and my low back is just And it's because I'm I'm relaxed And I'm sitting on the joint exactly and I'm sitting on the joints and my and it's stressing it so much and Something that I love to practice is, I become aware of that.

And while I'm driving, I'll squeeze the glutes, I'm doing it right now, as we're talking, and I'll rotate the hips even in this position. Because I've done the work of understanding how to connect, I understand my issue, and that I need to tuck that tailbone and you think I can create little ways of exercising throughout the day to do that. I tell you what, it's like how we talk about mobility and the importance of that.

This is one of those things that this is even better than one 60 minute hard workout all day or one 60 minute workout a week of hard abs. You'd be far better off understanding the function of the abs and then learning how to create these little behaviors. When you sit in your car, you activate and squeeze the glutes and contract the abs and you're sitting on the plane. You do it when you're standing up watching your kids play sports instead of kind of slouch over.

You can do reinforcing good patterns, good recruitment. Right. And this is what we're trying to stress because that's going to set you up for then, you know, being able to load the abs and being able to really build and develop them even further just like any other muscle but it has to be promoting the proper function. Yeah, what I like to tell people,

because sometimes you tell people, brace your core, squeeze your core, and they almost don't know what you mean, squeeze like how do I do that? Pretend like someone's about to tickle you or poke you in the stomach. You kind of brace it a little bit. Yeah, that's all you do.

You brace your core, and then you'll find you all all of. You kind of, you brace it a little bit. Yeah, that's all, that's all you do. You brace your core and then you'll find you also, all of a sudden, have so much more stability in your low back. Because I think people forget that the spine, they think the back part of your body is what supports the spine, which is part of it. But it's, the spine, it's, it goes all the way around. So it's all the muscles that surround the spine,

that support it, including the lats, including the glutes, these muscles that are a little further also support the lower spine, but they all create that stability. But look, at the end of the day, if you want a midsection that's visible, if you want one that looks impressive, focus on building the muscles of your midsection,

just like you would for your legs or your arms or your delts, like, I'll give you an example. Finally, it's taken a long time, but finally, women have understood that if they want their butt to look good, they need to build it. For a long time, it was like, like what we're talking about for abs and core training. High reps and just gotta get leaner.

It's like the glutes are a muscle. If you build them, your butt is gonna look a lot better. And now they're starting to get that. You're seeing women squat and deadlift and Romanian deadlift and hip thrust, which is phenomenal and people are developing amazing glutes. This is true for the midsection too. If you want a midsection that looks tight and impressive, even at higher body fat percentages, train them to build them and of course, perfect form and watch what happens. Here's another

thing that I think a lot of people, I think people realize this part, but they do it wrong. The, you know, for a long time, we've been told to train abs frequently. Definitely some truth in that. I think that's true for all muscles, but there's another part that goes to that, which is if you train your midsection frequently,

let's say three days a week or four days a week, it's important to manipulate the intensity. So what I mean by that is you're not going to train your abs for an hour, four days a week, super, super hard. Unless you are like the most fit core person in the world, that's just way too much, and just like that would burn out other parts of your body, it would not allow your midsection time to adapt and recover and build.

So you do want to manipulate the intensity. So if you're working out really frequently with your midsection, some of the workouts should be higher intensity. Some of them should be lower intensity. And then if you really want to have fun and get your abs and your midsection to respond, throw in some trigger sessions for the midsection.

This right here is an absolute game changer. So for people who don't know what a trigger session is, trigger sessions are low intensity, very frequent bouts of short, bouts of exercise. What I'll try to do is feel the muscle work, get a little bit of a pump, and that's it. It's separate from your normal traditional workouts. It works for anybody part.

If I want my biceps to respond, I'll do some band curls three times a day. On the days, I'm not really hitting them in the gym and just get a little bit of a pump and I'll watch my biceps change very quickly. This is also true for the mid-seps. Well, that philosophy is very similar to what I'm talking about with just doing, I mean, it's an isometric version of it, right? So you're saying trigger in general. That's a trigger session. Right. Exactly. It's it's not me. I'm not. I don't get out the plane and I'm sweating and my abs aren't sore from that.

It's just me connecting, connecting, reminding that, reminding my brain that this is where my body needs to be positioned. My abs are having to work, but it's not so intense that, you know, the next day I'm going to be sore and I can't use them. It actually promotes recovery. So then that way you go into like a more loaded, stressful type workout and you do this in between,

I'm recovery, I'm getting more blood flow, I'm getting activity, but it's not at a high intensity where it's actually gonna be damaging, it's gonna be actually promoting a healing estimate. It actually sends a very small muscle building signal, which when you combine it with your traditional workouts, it amplifies the entire muscle building system. I when you combine it with your traditional workouts, it amplifies the entire muscle building system.

I mean, you see this. This is something that you witness in people that don't work out, but that have jobs that require them to, you know, use a body part very frequently. Look at the, look at your mechanics hands in forums. Go find a mechanic who's been doing it for 20 years. Look at their forums and hands. The rest of their body could be out of shape, and you'll notice very muscular looking forearms.

Look at the calves of male carriers. This one, this is what blew me away. I, you know, when I, when my ex-wife's family has several male carriers in their family. And I noticed when it was summer and they'd wear shorts or whatever, every single, and they would be out of shape or whatever, they don't train, they just deliver male,

but they're walking miles every day. Beautiful cast. And every single one of them had these really muscular cast. So that's kind of what trigger sessions do. Now, by themselves, you'll get a little bit something, but when you combine it with your traditional workouts, boy, does that blow everything away? And when it comes to the midsection,

if you're listening to this podcast and you're kind of getting your mind blown and you're like, okay, I wanna see how developed I could get my midsection in the next two to three months. You wanna really put a turbo on it, throw in some trigger sessions, and kind of watch what happens. But again, form is imperative for all body parts,

especially for the midsection. One thing I wanna get back to is the fizzial ball. And the reason why I wanna get back to that is because the fizzial ball has this interesting Curve of popularity in the fitness space. It got introduced in the I late 90s early 2000s and Everybody was like wow, there's lots of benefit if I have my clients to shoulder presses on this or rows with a hand stabilizing or You know, whatever they're getting great results. It's good for stability It can't make some focus on their faults, use it for every exercise.

And then it went crazy. And then it was like, we're not using benches anymore. We're not using heavy barbells anymore. Let's stand on a physio ball and do weird stuff and one-legged crazy stuff. And it just went way too far. So physio balls went from being super popular to just like nobody wants to use them anymore,

which I think is stupid because somewhere in the middle is their value and some of their biggest value is for core training. Well, I'm glad you went this direction because early on we came out and actually talked a lot of shit about this type of training because it was the quote unquote functional training. That was abused like that.

That went crazy. And like many things, there's always exceptions to the rule. And like many things in the fitness space, something that if we find out is good, we end up abusing or exaggerating. But that doesn't mean that it's not a phenomenal tool still. It's just how you utilize it. And I can't help but think,

so I'm giving the analogy of the lower cross syndrome. When I talk about the anterior potele, the sticking the assilt, the sticking the ass out, the low back issues going on, the lower cross syndrome is what that is, right? So that's, and it's so common that, you know, seven out of 10 people have some version of it and some more, more extreme than others. If you have low chronic back pain, more often than not, this is an issue. And when I would train clients, especially clients in advanced age, this was always an issue.

And so here's an example, how I love utilizing the Figial Ball. And you wouldn't even think, because it has nothing to do with that muscle group, but here's how a trainer can utilize this tool. I would love to teach a chest press on a ball. And but here's the difference. I don't just put their upper back on there

and I'm not just focusing on the chest. I'm making them bridge. Yeah, the whole time. And what that bridge, so bridging is bringing their hips up. So they get on there and by the way, this like would roast a client. And they're doing a chest exercise, but then their glutes and their abs get roasted

because they're having to stay bridged the entire time. So I'll get a client who is, you know, that we don't need to be doing really, really heavy weight because I'm still working on their mechanics to get better control with the bench, which here's where I love the stability ball. I put them on there. They're a little unstable, which forces them to slow down, be controlled with their form, also forces them to activate their core and their abs to stabilize. And then I get them to engage their hips,

squeeze their butt, and bridge up, and keep that. So now I'm working on an issue that they have, also all at the same time. Here is where the physioball is phenomenal. It's excellent. It's okay, you know how you talk about the Z press a lot and how amazing it is for shoulder development and how it built your shoulders.

The reason why the Z press was so, why Adam loves it so much, why all of us enjoy it so much is not because you're sitting on the floor. The floor plays a role, but there's nothing magic about the floor, but what it forces you to do is to have perfect form and get full extension. And all of a sudden, your delts get this amazing activation. Physioballs can do that for a lot of different body parts, but here's why I love them for the core. When you're doing a sit up or a crunch on the floor,

the for a bench, they are flat. They're totally flat. Here, your spine is not. Your spine, full range of motion for the abs, goes from crunch. This is where the lumbar spine crunch full range of motion for the abs, goes from crunch. This is where the lumbar spine crunches forward. It flexes forward, right? But it also goes down to flat and then beyond

where you get what's called full extension. You can't do that on other, you can't do that on the floor, unless you put like a towel under your back and do also, but a way harder. You can't do it on a bench, but if you do a proper, fisiobal crunch or sit up, proper, nobody does it right, but if you do it right, it is literally one

of the most effective exercises for you. Yeah, it complements that natural curve in your lower back, like no other tool that you can get. So it's just a great way to learn the technique of full extension and being able to go through that full range of motion. I don't know any other tool that provides that kind of support. No, literally a ball is curved.

And so when you lay on a ball and if you allow, if you start to figure out, like, okay, this is how my spine should articulate so I can work the abs through its full range of motion, if you allow and you keep your hips up, if you allow your spine to arch over the ball and then crunch again over the ball while maintaining hip position up at the top, you are working your abs through a full range of motion. And I'm telling you right now, eight out of 10 of you listening,

if you do this right, you'll find yourself shaking, you'll find that you can only do six to 10 proper reps. I mean, my go toto-ab building exercise till this day is a physio ball crunch with my arms extended over my head. It's known as a long lever crunch. It's got a lot of resistance. I can do maybe 10 or 12 when I'd really, really do it right. And they just build my abs.

And all I need is a basic physio ball. You can buy it anywhere. The caveat to that, though, is that you do need to have really good form it. Yes. In the program, you do need to have really good form it. You know, in the program, you do a really good job of breaking the detail down on all the things that you need to be thinking about.

It's one of those exercises where like the plank, someone sees it and they try and emulate it and they completely mess it up. Totally. There are a lot of little nuances that, they're not hard, they just you need to understand it and you need to be queued it. And once you get the queues down and you focus on it, it can become, in my opinion, too,

one of the best movements that you can do, but how you do it is so important. How you do it is the difference between working your hip flexors and not getting much core activation and kind of wasting your time between that and really getting an effective core muscle building workout where you could start to see the abs develop where you could see them higher body fat percentages like we've been talking about. That's how important form is. So kind of just some things up, okay. You know, if you're training your core right now, one of the best things you can do is phase your workouts. Include some higher resistance type exercises where you're doing six to ten reps. Those will build your core, of course, perfect, perfect form.

Then throw in some phases with some higher reps. Higher reps aren't bad, just like lower reps aren't bad, but if all you ever do are one or the other, then they start to lose their value. So you definitely want to phase your workouts. If you really want to develop your core and you want to get it there in a faster way of doing it, train your core about three days a week, throw some trigger sessions on the side.

And if you want more structure, if you want to follow a program, now I created this program back and I think Doug said 2014. So if you want to see the 2014 version of Sal and see why I talk about aging and dog years, you get to see a young version of myself, but I created that program 2014, the original videos are in there. In fact, I filmed it in my personal training studio. This is back when I used to have a personal training.

Isn't it the only program that we still have that actually has old, the original videos? It's the only one that we have not. But a lot of that is because it's still so damn good. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the other ones it needed the face lift really bad, but that program is still awesome. Yes, it'll hold today. And I instruct throughout the program.

So rather than watching someone do it with bullet points, I'm actually teaching you as a trainer would teach you. I rather than, you know, watching someone do it with bullet points, I'm actually teaching you as a trainer would teach you. I think that's really important, especially with working the core. Again, it's in my old personal training studio. To follow this particular program, you just need something you can hang off of.

So it can be a pull-up bar or something you can hang off of a fisiaball and resistance bands because I do include rotation exercises for the obliques. It's called the No BS6 pack formula and we've had it since the first days of Mind Pumping. Again, it's one of our more popular program and I think because we're doing this episode right now because so many people are stuck at home

we'll make that program half off, which makes it very inexpensive program. Now, something I don't remember if this is in there. Let me know if it is, if it's not, I do think it's something that somebody should go look at on our YouTube channel. It was one of the first viral or more popular videos that we ever did was your hip flexor deactivator.

Yes, that's in our YouTube channel. I'm so glad you brought that up. So that's it, if you have a lot of trouble with your hip flexors totally taking over There's just have a heart just if you're somebody who has a hard time feeling in your abs. Yeah, that's this is this is the video for you It's an exercise that it'll deactivate your your your hip flexors and teach you how to feel things in your court It's not the best muscle building core exercise. It's one that helps you connect so that you can do the ones that help Yeah, yeah, I learned a technique. That's a great start. Totally.

And again, we'll put it half off, which makes it literally, it's a $28.50 program, so it's super inexpensive. It's a full AB and core workout. It's at nobs6pack.com, so that's nobs, the number six, pack.com. And then if you use the code nobs50, that's5-0, then you'll get the 50% off. And also, you can go to mindpumpfree.com. We got lots of free guides there. It costs nothing.

And if you want to find us on Instagram, you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Salon at them at Mind Pump Adam. 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 at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad,

maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family.

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