 Our next caller is Sally from Alabama. Oh, I know why you're all excited Sally. Did you watch the game last night or what? Okay, you went to Auburn, but you work at Alabama Yeah, school teacher in Birmingham, Alabama, but I went to Auburn and I can't stay like my dad went to Auburn uncle went to Auburn I cannot, I cannot stand Alvin I do love Deontay Smith though, I'll give it to him. He's an incredible player. Okay. Okay. So that's great So what's your question? My question is I'm just trying to work on my physique a little bit and I've always been in the fitness Um, and it is about I didn't know if y'all could help me out with this Sometimes with women they have and it's not fat in the lower area It's like protruding abdominals in the lower Adominal section and I've tried I've heard vacuums work I've heard that it's supposedly weak transverse abdominus and I was like do y'all have any advice on that and how you can fix it Or is it just something you're kind of stuck with that because I've seemed to always It's just gotten worse as I gotten older. Hmm. That's a really really good question. Sally. Are you a mother? I'm not a mother. Okay. I'm not so this is more common when women have a baby mainly because the Abdominal area stretches and muscles atrophy in particular transverse abdominus, but it's not super uncommon It's actually very just generally right because here's what happens when you're standing gravity pushes your organs down And it pushes out torque at the lower abdominal area And so it makes people feel like they have a lower belly Pooch and they'll get lean and they say why is this kind of sticking out and your best bet is to strengthen the muscles that pull in The midsection you mentioned vacuums. That is a great exercise I would do them on all fours to add a little bit of resistance But also I would work on doing vacuums while doing core exercises So normally when you do a crunch or anything else, you're not necessarily pulling the core in you're just doing the movement But I would recommend doing that as well to try to pull in the midsection while doing just to kind of tighten Things up a little bit. I think this is to a two-prong too. I think that It's an area that we tend just as humans to store body fat and it's one of the last places to go I experienced this when I was competing. It was it tripped me out I went all the way down to about seven percent body fat, which was really really lean for me I'd never seen myself that lean Yet I still had this like little bottom pooch that I couldn't figure out. It just didn't make sense to me I was leaner than what I was when I was in high school as a kid Yet I have this this bottom pooch of fat that I can't seem to get rid of and it took me to put on some muscle lean out again put on some muscle lean out about three times of Staying consistent with my training and diet and building and then cutting back down and building before I Finally kind of eliminated that so you add in what Sal is talking about with the TVA and the organs and make sure you're doing that Training and then also have a little bit of empathy with yourself You know, we're all not you know 15 year old kids anymore And we've put on somebody body fat over the years and that's probably just a stubborn area And so that's why it's probably makes it seem like it's even worse So the combination of those two things the transversa dominance and then also we store more body fat there And then just sometimes it just takes a couple times of leaning out putting on muscle leaning back out to really eliminate it all the way Sally another question for you. Are you familiar with what an anterior pelvic tilt is? Yes, I read on that that that could be a problem with it and I don't have that I've gotten checked on that and I've done multiple in the test that y'all also recommend and I do not have that Okay, okay, so But I but I also have been I mean, I've gotten down to as a woman This was way too low, but I've been 8% body fat and I still have That area that it is it's definitely not that it is just like lower abs that stick out a little bit And it's only in that lower section. Okay. Now you might if I ask you a personal question. Yeah Do you think you might be a little too harsh on yourself? Yes, I Definitely believe that I can't I have struggled with body dysmorphia before and an eating disorder and everything But that is completely gone. I'm healthy got healthy menstrual cycles and everything, but it is Like if I was to ever compete or anything like that that would be an area that I Would definitely try to work on because it is something that I do believe is Does stick out a little bit and I could improve some way Okay, so I'm gonna go in a little bit of a different direction salad. I I myself struggled with body image issues in the past I don't necessarily believe they completely go away. I think it's always kind of in the back Round for most of us. I know it is for me. It can rear its ugly head every once in a while and one of the characteristics of You know body dysmorphia or even ha or even experiencing it in the past and coming out of it is we tend to have this remarkable ability to be super critical of Everything about our bodies and we tend to look at ourselves as pieces rather than as a whole and I've done this to myself Where I'll look at one part of my body And it doesn't look the way that I want and it's you know, I can I can focus on it and it becomes very challenging So here's I'm gonna change my advice for you Okay, because you said a couple things to me that you've been working out for a long time You got down to 8% body fat which for a man as lean is shredded for a woman is Insanely shredded. So here's my advice to you and you could take it for all that it's worth But I would say for you to focus entirely on performance on strength on speed on mobility and on stamina and Completely ignore the aesthetics for a while. I would take your scale I don't know if you use a scale Put it in the closet stop weighing yourself and I would stop if you can this is a challenging thing to do but I would stop credit looking in the mirror and finding things that you need to change or work on and rather Take that focus and this isn't where you want to end up But this is a great place to move your focus because it does help It will help or it can help you become a little bit different with this Change that focus that you have From what you look like to your performance and start just journaling your workouts Am I stronger and my faster and my lifting more? How do my joints feel do that for about four to five months and just be Dog it about it be just hard-headed about it and then four or five months later Go ahead and look at yourself in the mirror and see if you notice anything different. Well, I have one more before Okay, Sally. Are you in our private forum? In my what are you in our private forum? Okay, I'm gonna give you access to that so Doug can we send her access to the private forums you're on Facebook Do you have Facebook account? I do have Facebook. Okay, so I'm gonna make sure Doug gets you access to the private forum And in there is it's a small community of people that have been listening to us since most of them since beginning most from gone through our programs and It would help if I actually saw you right? So we're sitting here trying to speculate and guess based off of how you're describing things But I would love to see the way you move and the way it looks on you because once out could be absolutely Right, you could be just being really hard on yourself And you probably look phenomenal or it could be something mechanically going wrong Like we could see the way you squat or move and maybe there's something there that we can help out with But I agree with Sal like not Focusing being so hard yourself if you're someone who's been all the way down to 8% body fat I bet you look pretty damn good. So I don't I don't think it's that I think it might he might be right There might be something a little bit there where you're probably a little harsh on yourself But there also could be something going on Movement-wise that we could potentially help you with and in that forum There's just a collection of people like ourselves. We're in there. We've got a lot of pts doctors Nutritionists therapists everybody's in there and if you come on there and kind of share what you going through Either there's probably other people that have also gone through that and to we can take a look at you and probably give you a little bit more advice. Oh Wow, that sounds great. Yes Excellent awesome Sally. Thank you so much for calling Sally Yeah, thank y'all for helping me out. It was so good to talk to y'all. Thank you. I don't thank you That's a really hard one dude. That's a tough one, you know It's you know, it's funny you Start listening a little bit to how she's talking about well You nailed it you nailed it when when she said she's been down to 8% it wasn't gone Then you okay, you might be a little a little harsh and I know what that feels like well Especially if she doesn't think that it's body fat because I've shared on the show many times I mean I that blew me away like I thought it was the weirdest thing ever I'd never seen that on my body before 8% for a woman's like 3% for a man Yes, and no right like Katrina carries her body fat percentage really low It never made sense to me every time we've test consistently. She's like around 10 or 11% and I mean you see my girl She doesn't look 10 or 11% so some people just their their their body fat percentage will read lower like that She's one of those people so that doesn't quite tell the full story, you know that just because she says she's at 8 She's been at 8% body fat But the fact that she thinks it's not fat Yet something is sticking out and protruding then that also makes me think of just like the way her posture is She might just have that structure, you know, right right that women in particular They'll get lean and they'll have the lower This is Jessica her lower abs will come and then they'll come in down towards your pelvis right and I find it I think it's extremely attractive looks very that's why I want to see her right So that's part of why I might get on the forum Let me see a picture because then maybe we can talk talk some sense into her if she does look phenomenal And it just literally is just you may just need reassurance. Yeah, it could be her anatomy We're all we're all I mean, you know, I remember when I was competing I would get so many guys that would be asking like how you develop this certain looking abs and everybody has like different You've got some people with these very very over the blocky looking some people have abs that are like They're not lined up. So they're they're off. They're off on it, you know, and you just have one big one I'm like why was this one bigger? Yeah, and that's not that's not something you're going to go train and changed It just could be your anatomy and so yeah I'd like to look at her and see if it's if it's that or maybe it's more what Sal you were alluding to but I mean The dark side of fitness as you really can get into it And then you can get really critical of yourself and just break yourself become an obsession and you're never perfect Well, I think and you I also think it was great that you address to that I don't think that it it ever goes away for us Like it's always it's if it was an in if it was something that created a deep insecurity in us that drove us to body Dysmorphia where we were doing things to our body. I don't I think you can get beyond that I think you can learn from that But I think if it was that much it caused you to do things it's forever kind of there right tendencies We'll probably show yeah, it's I mean I know it's in the background always for me And that's why I always like to kind of challenge it by like pushing myself the other direction to make sure I Keep growing in that area because I know it's so deeply rooted So yeah, that's a tough one without seeing somebody and being able to look in and assess ourselves But I think you hit the right areas