What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
If you've been a fan of this channel for any
length of time you know that here we train
like athletes, ok.
Not like bodybuilders, not that there's anything
wrong with that, but we're not out for just
purely aesthetic goals here.
We want to train you like an athlete, athletically,
and then get the aesthetic byproducts of our
hard work.
So, that being said, today we're going to
do something really interesting.
We're going to take the 2 realms of bodybuilding
and athletic training,
and pull them all together with one common
exercise, a Stomach Vacuum.
That's right.
A Stomach Vacuum, one of the most classic
bodybuilding exercises of all time.
I want to show you how to apply it in the
athletic world to not only help us prevent
injury, but to help you get more out of your
ab training,
so even if you are training like an athlete
like we do here, you're getting better aesthetic
outcomes for your abs, ok.
So, that being said, the Stomach Vacuum.
How do we do it?
And then how are we going to apply it and
take it to the next level?
And what is the whole purpose in the first
place?
The purpose of the vacuum is to target the
deep inner abdominal muscles.
In this case, the transverse abdominis that
runs this way around our nature's weight belt,
right, internally, and our internal obliques.
Now, the internal obliques in our transverse
abdominus have to be able to cinch down and
tighten together to allow the muscles above
them to work properly.
The same way we talked about you can't fire
a cannon from a canoe.
If the canoe is unstable, the muscles above
it, or the cannon itself, won't function properly.
If your internal and transverse abdominis
are not functioning properly, are not stable
or strong enough,
it will never get the force and power that
you should be getting out of your abdominals,
rectus, and external obliques that lie above
that.
So, we've got to fix that.
So now let's see how do we do this?
Well, when you look at the Stomach Vacuum,
there's a few ways that people do it.
You can do it kneeling.
You can do it laying down.
I like to do it standing because obviously
we always have to be on our feet here if we're
training like athletes.
Secondly, when you get into this position,
I'm going to show you in one second, when
you're there, you then should make one very
important tweek
that a lot of people don't make, I think,
to tie it all together and follow up with
exactly what I just said,
initiating the movement inside and then involving
the muscles above it so that they can work
together the way they prefer to work.
So, that being said, the Stomach Vacuum.
You're going to try to get all the air out
of your stomach first.
So, you blow out.
Once you've blown out, your goal then is to
take your belly button and try to cinch it
straight back to your spine imagining that
it's just being pressed straight in.
Now, when you do that you can help to visualize
that by imagining you just stepped into an
ice-cold bath of water.
You know when you get that feeling like, 'HUUUUUH.'
You know, you're kind of like sucking in and
you're, and you're really trying to get your
stomach away from that cold water?
It's that same sensation.
In that position, the very key tweek that
I want you to make is, once you establish
it, you're going to kind of look like this,
alright.
I'm not there yet, but it's hard to talk.
But when you're there, you kind of look like
you're in this position.
When you're in this position, that's an artificial
position.
That's A. Not athletic. and B. It's not very
functional at all.
So, what you want to do is, once you're there,
you want to try to posterior tilt and get
yourself as back to vertical as you can,
not over here hunched over, but back to vertical
while you still establish that position.
Now remember, the old bodybuilders would stand
way up tall.
That was good.
The point of that is to now get yourself internally
stable and then activate the external and
the rectus abdominis on top isometrically
to pull it all together.
So, how do we do that?
Let me show you.
You get up here.
You're going to blow out as hard as you can.
Once you've gotten rid of all that air, you
try to suck your belly button in.
Ok.
Right there.
And then set.
And you hold it isometrically, ok.
You try to hold it for as long as you can.
Again, I'll do it one more time.
Blow out.
Suck in.
And set.
And you can see, very flat in through here.
Another issue sometimes people have is, they'll
have well-developed abdominals but when you
look at them from the side, they're sort of
blowing out their lower belly.
And they've got no transverse abdominis control.
So, now, what does that mean for you athletes
out there?
It means we've got to start trying to prevent
sports hernias.
Sports hernias can come from a weakness in
the lower abdominal musculature,
usually caused by the fact that you're asking
those upper level abs to do more work than
they're capable of.
Why?
Because the inner muscles, the ones deeper,
the transverse abdominis and that of those
internal obliques, never did their job of
stabilizing first.
And now you're asking the muscles above them
to do too much work.
What happens if there's a weakness here?
If there's a thinness in the tissue?
You're going to get a sports hernia.
You could be laid up for a long time.
So, how do we do it?
We then take another level to our vacuum exercise.
We establish it.
We hold on to a band.
And we try to get a little bit of rotation
while holding it.
Again, it's very difficult because you have
to be able to isometrically contract.
And when you do, you're just trying to go
for these disruptions to your stability to
see how well you can handle them.
The key, though, is never losing that inner
stability first.
So, again, blow out.
I got a band just hooked up over here to the
side.
I blow out.
Suck in.
Engage.
I try to do as many as I can.
Again, I'm breathing out very slowly there.
I just can't talk to show you that or demonstrate
that.
But literally, as I'm turning, I'm breathing
out nice and slow to be able to hold that.
I'm not holding my breathe entirely the whole
time.
You just have to make sure that you're not
just, whew, blowing out completely all at
once.
You'll likely lose the vacuum.
So, here, the 2 worlds of bodybuilding, the
oldest, most classic exercise in the book
meeting a more current and more functional
and more athletically purposed driven workout
come together and now you see the benefits
that you can get both athletically and both
aesthetically.
That's really what it's all about at ATHLEANX,
guys.
Let's try to get you looking like an athlete
by training like one.
And let's take some classic exercises even
like the vacuum, and add a little twist to
it to make it literally, to make it even more
functional and overall more effective for
you.
Alright guys, if you haven't already, and
you want to see what it's like to start training
like an athlete for 90 straight days,
then head to ATHLEANX.COM right now and grab
out 90-Day Training Program.
In the meantime, if you found this video helpful,
make sure you leave a thumb's up below.
And let me know whatever else it is that you'd
like to see, and I'll make sure I make a video
about it here in the days ahead.
Thanks guys.
