 Question is from Alec Cosmo. What is the best way to train abs? Isometric or concentric and eccentric? Okay, so. Yeah, first break that down for people. Yeah, so there's three types of muscle contractions. Isometric is basically when the muscles just tense and holding a position. Example plank. Yeah, so like if you were holding a dumbbell, you curl it, but now you're just holding it up there. Well, use an example for us. Or a plank, a plank, right? Concentric would be the muscle shortening. So a crunch coming up in a crunch. Eccentric would be the muscle lengthening, which would be coming out of a crunch. So those are the three types of muscle contractions. All three of them are important to train with your midsection. They're all three important to train with any muscle. This is like any other muscle. It is, and your body, you know, it gets better. The type of adaptations you get with training tend to be more closely related to the way that you're training. And then there's some general adaptations that kind of come off of that. So if I train my abs isometrically only, I'm gonna get really good isometric contractions. I'll have a little bit of carryover to concentric and eccentric. And the truth, and it's true the other way around, you will get a little bit of general adaptation. Training all of them will mean you'll get better at all of them. Well, and if you wanna see the greatest change, then the one that you do the least amount, you should put emphasis on. So if you're somebody who does lots of planks, and that is your quote unquote way you train your abs, and you never do crunches, then doing some crunches would be amazing. Or if you're somebody who blasts on crunches and they crunch crunch and then they just let their body fall back, fall back, fall back all the time, but they're really good at crunches, they can do thousands of them, but they never like slow down the negative and resist it on the way down and focus, do that. So it's like whatever you're doing the most of, or you do, you gravitate towards the most, then focusing on the other ones are probably the best thing that you could possibly do. Yeah, now as far as building the muscles of the abs so that they're more visible, those are gonna be your concentric and eccentric reps. That's gonna be the full range of motion exercises where the abs are squeezing and then moving out into more of a stretch position. The isometric stuff though is phenomenal because you want your core to be able to tense up and stabilize your spine for exercises like squats and deadlifts and overhead presses. That follows you in basically all movement patterns. It does, it does. Now generally speaking, when you guys think about abs and the majority of people, what's some of the single best advice that you've given to clients in regards to that? Well, just teaching clients the difference between flexing at the lumbar spine and flexing at the hips. I think when people do a sit-up. The mechanics of it. Yeah, I think when people do a sit-up or a leg raise, a leg raise is a real common one. They think if the body folds in half that they'll work in the abs. In the abs, you may feel them even in that position because they may be stabilizing. But really if you wanna work the absolute full range of motion, it doesn't flex the hips at all. It flexes the spine. It takes your pelvis and it rotates it so that your tailbone tucks and it brings your rib cage closer to your pelvis. That's what they do. So like a leg raise, some people will get in that leg raise position and they'll just bring their legs up and their back is still up against the pad and it's still straight back or whatever. You're not working the abs through a full range of motion. You're working the hip flexors. Yeah, and too like in terms of rotation because that's another component where that they're responsible for stabilizing, like just having the ability to do both, like rotate with your hips with it and then also anti-rotate. So your hips stay locked in place but then just your torso is responsible for that rotation. So that's something else that a lot of people just are going through these things with momentum and they're letting their body sort of dictate where they're going without having full control. This helps to kind of promote more control and center that with your torso. I love that we all were thinking three different things because I think all of them are extremely valuable. I think Sal's is first and foremost, understanding the mechanics of it is the most important. Like if you don't know how to contract your abs properly, all the other tips are kind of worthless. Justin, I love the idea of rotation and anti-rotation because it's probably one of the most neglected things that people focus on. And when you talk about longevity and safety and advanced age, like talk about one of the most important things to help protect your back is focusing on rotation and anti-rotation. The third thing that I would contribute that I remember giving as advice that even myself neglected was loading and heavy ab work. Abs are so, it's so common to see supersets and bicycle abs and 100 crunches and everybody thinks high repetitions like similar to calves. People think that that's the way to train them for the best results. And in fact, some of the best results that I ever personally had with training my abs or training clients abs was actually doing five repetitions of slow, controlled, heavy loaded abs. And because most people don't train that way, you tend to see incredible results from that. So man, I tell you what, if you're listening right now and focusing on abs, you take those three, those tips and probably see. Well, we did a YouTube video a while ago on long lever crunches on a physio ball. If you do those right, you're gonna do maybe 10. If you're strong, probably less. That's a lot of resistance with your arms like that. Yes, you do a good long lever crunch on a physio ball, slow, full extension so that you're at the end of it, you're actually arching over the ball and rolling the spine like you're saying. Over it, keeping the hips stationary so you're not sitting down with your hips, squeezing the abs, keeping the arms up above your head. That's a lot of resistance. You will develop muscular strong abs with an exercise like that. The real high rep stuff, it's good for endurance, but it's not gonna develop the muscles of the core. But I remember there was a period of time there where it was like planks, plank was the exercise. That's what everybody does. Let's just plank all day long. And they have some value for sure, but you gotta do everything. You gotta do all of, just like when you train any other muscle.