 All right, our first question is from Jesse Jesus. What are some best ab exercises that will help with mind-to-muscle connection? I'm having trouble with my lower abs. What was the name of the YouTube video that we did? Hip flexor deactivator. Yeah, so okay, so let me address first the whole lower ab thing. Your abdominal muscles have kind of two attachments. The one attachment is at the pelvis, another attachment is at the rib cage, and so when the abs contract, it's that whole area. Yeah, there is no lower or upper abs. There is no other attachment. So I know a lot of people say, do this exercise for lower abs, or this exercise for upper abs. This really worked that way. The abs all contract, or they don't, and the two anchor points are at the bottom and the top, and that's it. But as far as connecting to the abs, this is actually quite important. In fact, more people have issues connecting to their ab muscles than don't. Just feeling them burn doesn't mean you necessarily connect to them very well. There's a lot of muscles that can fold the body forward. So when you look at ab exercises in general, especially the classic ab exercises, they involve folding your body forward. But you can also fold the body forward using your hip flexors, for example, and those tend to be more active in most people. The abs fold the body forward at the lumbar spine, not at the hips. That's what will work the abs. So one of the things you want to do to help connect to your abs is understand the function of the abs. It literally rolls you forward at the lumbar spine, at the lower part of your spine, not at the hips. So if you do a leg raise, the raising of the legs isn't working your abs, it's the rotating of the pelvis that works the abs. If you do any kind of a sit-up, it's the rolling forward that works the abs. It's not the folding forward necessarily that works the abs. So consider that first. But the most common reason why people don't feel the abs connecting is because the hip flexors are doing a lot of the work. And I did that video that Adam talked about that I called hip flexor deactivators. And essentially what you do in that movement, and I'll walk you through it through the podcast, you lay on your back and you put your feet up on a bench or a physio ball with your knees bent, push down into the bench or the physio ball with your heels, lift your hips up off the floor just a little bit. And what you're doing is you're activating your glutes. You want to squeeze your glutes. Now the reason why you want to activate your glutes is because when you activate one muscle, it helps to relax the opposing muscle. And the opposing muscles from the glutes are the hip flexors. So now that the glutes are active, the hip flexors are more likely to stay out of the exercise. And then you can practice slow crunches. And this will help you feel the abs rather than do movements with your crunches. Serene also did another video with an assisted perfect setup, which I love to teach. I think that's a great way to teach somebody to really activate their abs and slow it down. A lot of times when people struggle with feeling their abs, it's like a speed thing, right? They're just using momentum and they're rocking their head and their neck and they're like sows and using so many other muscles to get them up, get the exercise up. And they feel a little bit in the abs because maybe on the weight. Stabilizing. Yeah, stabilizing or the weight down, right? As you go back down on the floor, you feel them a little bit. And so you assume that you are working them, but they can be worked so much better. And just by slowly rolling the spine up like in a perfect setup, articulating that. Is that perfect setup or McGill setup? Is it the same thing? Yeah, I don't know if it's called a McGill setup. I don't know what a McGill setup is. I've seen different people call it different titles. I know I think Serene titled it assisted perfect setup when she did the video. It's a really good video because it's already hard. I think most people are challenged even to one. Sure. So using a band to kind of like help assist you up so you can really focus on the rolling of the spine, I think is a great exercise. Yeah, it's educating too to see kind of when you start to articulate each one of those vertebrae, like where the sticking points are, where it's extra hard for you to get some in that strength to kind of curl your body into that position. But yeah, to learn that process of being able to actually roll forward and use your abs, you know, in that direction is eye-opening when you get it down. Oh yeah, physio ball crunches are good at this. But you know, here's the other thing with physio ball crunches. So make it so that you don't really work your abs very much at all. Oh, easily, yeah. So if you get on a physio ball and if physio ball crunches, by the way, one of my favorite ab exercises, if you do them properly, you put your lower back on the top of the ball, bend your legs and then put your feet on the floor and then push your butt up. And while you're pushing your butt up, allow your lower back to wrap around the ball. So now you're kind of arching back and then crunch over the ball while pushing your hips up. And then help anchor the hips and kind of get those hip flexors out of the movement and help you focus on the abs. Yeah, that's one of the biggest things I see people misusing it is they'll start dropping their hips down and letting their hips kind of move with and roll with the exercise. And they start just rocking back and forth.