What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Welcome to Torso Thursday here at ATHLEANX.
I know another Washboard Wednesday a day late, but I've got to do my best with what we've
got, right?
So, here's the deal: more importantly, I want to help you to solve this problem.
The problem is, your ab workout making you look fat.
You see, there actually is a way that you should be breathing when you're doing your
ab training that will help you to achieve the goal you're actually trying to do in the
first place.
That is to flatten your belly, cinch it down, and create a tighter, narrower looking waste.
But if you're breathing improperly, you're actually going to be doing the exact opposite.
You're going to be working more toward a distended belly, more toward a relaxed belly, and you're
going to be looking toward a fatter looking belly, even if you have abs.
I see guys from time to time that actually have abs that are distended and pushed out
from anabolic steroid use.
So what I want to do today is teach you how to do that properly, but more importantly,
get you out of that mindset also of thinking that your ab workout could do anything to
combat the fat if you're already fat.
You see, people have this idea "I've been doing ab workouts, you give me all these great
ab workouts, but I still look fat.
It's not doing anything to shrink my belly."
Because no ab workout ever will.
The consumed energy in an ab workout is minimal, maybe 30, 40, 50 calories and you're simply
not moving enough muscles at a time for a long enough period o time to cause any significant
impact in terms of caloric burn.
So an ab workout alone, even if you're consistent with it, will never be enough.
That is why in our ATHLEANX app, the 6pack Promise, it's actually available on Android
and iOS.
We don’t just give you the actual ab workout, but we give you as ample meal plan as well
to help you start getting rid of that overlying fat because it's the only way you're ever
going to have an impact on the fat.
There's a couple things that you'll hear when it comes to having a thicker looking waist
and what you should do about it.
First of all, some people will tell you to avoid oblique training because what the obliques
will do is thicken your waist and make you look blockier.
That's bullshit, guys.
That's not good advice.
It's one of the worst pieces of advice, especially as you conquer your meal plans and start shredding
some of that fat because what your obliques are going to do is allow you to have that
more tapered look.
So you can see here that an oblique that's developed, yes, it can cause a little bit
of thickness down here.
That's just our genetics.
That's what we're born with, but it's okay because if the obliques themselves have definition
up above, they're going to create this tapering effect because of the angle that they run.
So you never want to avoid oblique training if you're trying to get a more tapered looking
waist.
You want to make sure you're pairing your oblique training, most importantly, with a
nutrition plan that allows you to show off the obliques.
Otherwise, yes, it might look a little blocky, but it's not justifying enough the reason
for you to skip doing obliques.
But as far as breathing goes, you want to make sure that you're not breathing out during
any of your ab exercises.
Is this easy?
No, it's not that simple.
It's a skill that you might have to acquire, but that's okay.
Take a little bit of time, just like you did when you started riding a bike where you started
to practice what it feels like and once you got it right you can ride a bike without even
thinking.
Well, you want to make sure that you're not blowing out as you exert or perform the ab
movement.
So, look here on a crunch.
If I'm in a crunch – a lot of us make the mistake of doing this.
We're crunching up and breathing out at the same time, not controlling or even having
any mind at all as to what we're doing with our bellies.
We're simply just coming up and blowing out.
So you look here, we come up, we blow out.
Come up, and blow out.
We're pushing out on the belly here without trying to control, or actually engage in the
transverse abdominus beneath that will hold it and cinch it in.
you should be doing the exact opposite.
You should actually trying to shrink the waist down as you come up.
It's a new sensation for a lot, but it's worth the effort if you're not used to how to do
it and it gets harder the more difficult the ab exercise becomes.
You can do it on a hanging leg raise.
Is it harder?
Like I said, yes it is, but it's worth the effort.
Try just to cinch down first as you see me do here, and then perform the reverse curl
here, in this case; the reverse leg raise.
But you want to make sure that you're doing that on every single exercise and you're not
holding your breath.
You can breathe, you can talk, you can do everything normally, you're just making sure
that you're breathing out and cinching in at the same time.
If you do that you will have a much flatter appearing belly.
If you don’t do that, even despite all the ab work – as a matter of fact as your ab
work piles up you might start getting that more relaxed and distended look even if your
body fat levels are down.
So what are you going to do?
What's the take home point?
The take home point is, continue to do your ab training as much as possible.
I recommend six to seven times a week.
Keep the volume intense, but short.
Make sure that you're following a proper nutrition plan.
We give you all those things in our 6pack Promise app, again, with a sample nutrition
plan.
Then support your overall efforts of burning more calories by training more muscles, increasing
your metabolic rate by having more muscle tissue.
The only way you're going to do that is by training your body completely.
So we say it all the time.
If you want to look like an athlete you've got to train like and athlete.
It doesn't just mean focusing on your abs.
Yes, the abs and the core are very central to anything and any athletic physique, but
it doesn't end there, guys.
You've got your legs, you've got your upper body, and you've got your whole rest of your
body that you have to focus on.
I actually help you to do that, too with our ATHLEANX training program.
We leave no muscle out.
Even the unimportant muscles like the rotator cuff that will help you to prevent those upper
body and shoulder girdle injuries; we're going to address those, too.
We don’t overlook anything.
Head over to ATHLEANX.com and get that program.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful make sure you leave your comments
and thumbs up below.
Let me know what you want to see here, whether it be Washboard Wednesday, or Torso Thursday
a day late, the idea is, I want to make sure I cover what it is that you want to see.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again real soon.