 Okay, it's time for a heavy deadlift, but I don't have a bar and this is my living room and I live in a mobile home, so we're not going to do it here. But if you got to do a heavy deadlift, I want you to know how to breathe and how to brace yourself for it, okay? So big principle here is I need pressure in my abdomen, I need intra-abdominal pressure to keep my back from collapsing as I start to pick the weight up, right? If my back collapses, we would call that an energy leak. So I'm trying to push energy into the bar, but if I push into the bar and I lose the tension that I have, then that energy leaks out, it doesn't get transferred to the bar, it gets transferred to my vertebral discs, right? So big things are, I need to worry about how I'm taking my breath. Now, general principle and the way that I would think about this and the way that I did think about this when I was coming up and doing powerlifting and stuff is more air is better, right? So more air is more pressure. But I don't necessarily agree with that anymore and I'll tell you why. Because I think if I take in too much air, it can compromise some of my joint positions and it can even like, it just sits me floating. It's like trying to sit on an over-inflated deadlift or exercise ball. If it's a little bit deflated, I kind of sink into it and I have a little bit more optimal balance. But if it's super stiff, I can't really feel anything. It pushes me away right away and I have to kind of wobble around. I feel like one of those machines, I gotta learn the name of these, but one of those machines that are at used car salesmen and shops and stuff. Blow the air up and the thing goes, so I wouldn't just say take the biggest breath you can because I think oftentimes when that happens, we are leaning back too much and we lose the tension that we need in our abs, lose the position of our hip joints, lose the position of our pelvis and then therefore lose the position of all the muscles that are supposed to be doing our deadlifting. If I tilt my hips forward like this, I pull my hamstrings long and they lose this ability to generate their own tension, this active tension and they just stretch themselves out. Great way to get again that energy leak that we're talking about. If I'm really stiff here, then something has to give and something usually gives right around my mid-back when my chest collapses and that's why you see people collapsing their chest often. It's not because they don't have enough air, it's because they have the wrong balance of pressure within their body. They have too much maybe here, too much air here and not enough here or whatever. I don't know. We're not going to keep going with that, but hopefully that kind of makes sense. When I'm setting up for this, I want to make sure that I take my breath in, I take my breath out first to reflexively turn on some abdominal muscles. Again, those are going to position these pelvic bones, keep them back a little bit. You might even want to reach forward and there I feel my outer lower abs turn on right away and so I feel like I'm having a good day because it was really easy to get them. I might do that to figure it out. I don't want you to have to do this every time that you deadlift. I think that's kind of a crutch. I want you to be like if you're moving furniture, helping your buddy move into his new apartment, you're not going to hold on. Yes. Okay. Are you ready to pick up this box? Right? I mean, I might do that because it would be kind of funny among my friends, but most people aren't going to set that up and do all that. I want you to just be able to generate that tension whenever you can. I might use this as like a learning tool, but then once I know what it feels like, I'm going to say, I got it. See? I feel my abs again already. I use this to remind me how to do it and then I can just get it from an exhale and then maybe eventually I can just get it from a squeeze. Yeah. There we go. See? I got a little bit there. As I do that though, I get my exhale. I don't want to have no air because that doesn't make sense. That makes me the kind of the floppiest that I can be. I want to take in the right amount of air because again, we said don't take in too much. You're going to compromise your position. Again, there is a general principle is if you're at end range, it's probably wrong. Okay. So then I'm going to keep that ab tension as I breathe in. It's going to be kind of difficult. And now I have this tension. I have some air all the way into my butt. I have some air in my midsection here and I can pick this bar up and go a couple different ways that you can do it with the brazing. Most people that I see pretty successful at deadlifting set up this way. They're around, they stretch their legs and then they pull themselves down to generate tension. Okay. I have my abs here. I like to exhale and push into the bar. I have my abs. Okay. And now breathe in, set, push. Okay. Your voice shouldn't get like that. It should be kind of right because you're trying to push this air out, but you're closing your windpipe so it doesn't come out. And so you keep all this pressure in this canister here. Just like this hydraulic piston that's about to lift hopefully 800 pounds, right? Hopefully that process makes sense. Use the reach to find the abs. If you have to breathe into the abs, you should feel the air go in 360 degrees of directions. It should go forward a little bit. It'll even come up a little bit. It'll come backward. It'll come out the sides, right? Your expansion will happen everywhere and it just widens your entire base so that you are more stable for your deadlift. Same principles apply if you start from the bottom here. I push. I have my abs. I breathe into them and then I set and then I go. That's just the walkthrough. If you have any questions, if you like a different little ritual, some people do things other ways, leave them in the comments below. I'd love to hear.