What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, Athlean-X.com.
Today I want to show you a very overlooked, but important combination of muscles if you
really want to get a ripped core.
All I've got to do is lift myself up and show my artwork.
Show my muscles drawn all over the place with my markers because what you really want to
do if you really want to get shredded, or have that shredded appearance – I'll get
right in the camera here and tell you.
First, you make sure you're getting your nutrition and diet in check.
You're not going to see anything if you don’t learn how to eat right.
But when you do learn how to eat right and your body fat levels start getting lower – they
don’t have to be so low – getting lower.
I'll tell you why in a second.
You're going to want to make sure that you pay attention to, not just your abs, but your
serratus into your obliques.
Now the obliques are the muscles the run down here and tie into your rectus abdominus.
The serratus interdigitates.
It does this: it basically intertwines with the attachments here of the obliques.
I didn't really draw it all that great here, but the serratus are coming in this way into
the attachments here of the obliques.
You can see it a little better here on my undrawn side that we have the obliques here
and tie into the abs and tie into the serratus and then when they go in here they actually
wrap in and around and underneath the scapula.
Their function is to allow you to press out.
They're called the boxer muscles because you really want to have the ability – or the
self-defense muscles – because you want to have the ability to push somebody away
from you; keep them at arm's length.
The muscles that are responsible for that are going to be serratus.
Even if you don’t care about being ripped or getting a ripped core you do want to have
adequate strength.
If you're not training them you're not going to get them stronger.
So we know we need to do that.
As far as being ripped goes, guys, we focus a lot here on the abs, but the shreds, the
rips, all the lines – the more lines, the more shredded, the more ripped you look – are
going to come from here.
Here's the part that I told you that's actually a reason for optimism if you're not really
at an extremely low body fat level yet.
Where do we store fat as guys?
Mostly down here.
What we do is, we'll actually start to get lean from the top down first.
You might see your upper abs sooner than you would see your lower abs.
You might actually see some serratus development and maybe even some upper oblique development
letting you appear to have a more streamlined waist if you start training them.
So here's how we do it.
I'm going to get here on a physio ball.
You don’t have to use a physio ball if you don’t want to.
You can just use a bench, but the physio ball here allows for a stronger core challenge.
You put your hands on the side of the ball, you get yourself with your feet back, into
a plank position.
Now, here you now push your shoulders away, try to get as far away from the ball as you
can without bending the elbows.
The key is to make sure that you keep your arms straight.
Try to get further away from, or as far away from the ball as you can.
Now you've got your serratus working.
Remember, I showed you in the beginning that these muscles are interdigitated.
They like to work together.
Why?
They're anatomically setup that way.
So let's make them work together and add some rotation to make sure the external obliques
are working, too.
Now I take my knee and I drive it across keeping my trunk – my upper body – straight, I
drive the knee across to get the upper body rotation.
We do the same thing on the other side.
We alternate and we work one side at a time, but the key is this: don't allow your shoulder
blade to start retracting back again.
If you want to keep the serratus engaged you've got to keep them out and away from your body
while you do these side to side movements.
Hopefully you will gain two things from this video.
Number one, and most importantly, an appreciation for some of the muscles that you can't always
appreciate.
We always focus on the chest, the biceps, the abs, but we don’t really think "serratus".
We don’t really even think "obliques".
If you want to get a truly ripped core I'm telling you this: you're going to want to
start focusing on these smaller muscles because these smaller muscles, again, provide the
lines to show a more ripped appearance.
Secondly, as I said in the very beginning – I'll get back in the camera again, nice
up and close – you'd better make sure you're eating right if you want to make sure you're
going to see these muscles because a low body fat level is going to be necessary to start
seeing them all, all the way down to your lower abs.
I've got a solution for you.
If you want to start eating right, guys, I make it as simple as I possibly can.
Our X-Factor Meal Plan actually allows you to eat and allows a lot of diversity in their
meal and how they approach their meals.
That's why it's so easy for our guys to stick to them and why we get the results that we
do.
I include it in our Athlean-X training system.
You can get that over at AthleanX.com, but in the meantime, start training these obliques.
Get something going here.
Get the serratus and the obliques to start working together by including this exercise
into your ab workouts.
I promise you, you'll start to see results even if you start off a little bit on the
high end of the body fat.
You should still at least start to see some development and changes up above.
All right, guys.
If you've found this video helpful make sure and leave your comments and thumbs up below.
In the meantime, I'll be back here in just a couple days with another new video.
I'll see you.