 When it comes to aesthetics, one muscle almost always tops the list for both men and women. These are the muscles of the core, the midsection, the abs, the obliques. They represent attractiveness, but they also represent incredible athletic physical pursuit. This true strong core translates to incredible athletic prowess, just like it does to aesthetic. So today's episode, we're going to talk about the core, how to develop the muscles of the core, so you can look good and move good, so you can perform well. Let's get to the core of it, Sal. I know. I always want to use the word prowess. Prowess. It's a weird... Prowess? Prowess. Prowess. There's a W in there, so I want to make sure to say the W. And is this true? Is it... Both sexes? Yeah. It's almost always top five for both men and women, is the midsection. Part of the reason is because visible muscles of the midsection show a lot, right? Shows that you're lean. You don't have to be lean to see them. You got to be super dialed to get there. Yeah, you have to be somewhat... You don't have to be super shredded, but just enough to see that it's lean and strong. And then when it comes to sports, arms and legs are involved in most athletic pursuits, but what connects the power from the legs to the upper body allows you to move, stabilize, what allows you to throw with a lot of force in the upper body or throw with a punch or rotate and catch something is the stabilization of the core, the strong core. You can have the strongest legs, hips, arms, back, shoulders, but if you have a weak core, you're going to hurt yourself. You're not going to be able to train like that to athletic performance. So strong core is imperative for all those different things. I still think it's crazy that you're more likely to become a millionaire than have six-pack abs. Isn't that wild? The odds of having a six-pack are lower. Yeah. To me, that has to be like one of the most fascinating stats that we've ever read. On the show is that you're more likely to be a millionaire than have six-pack abs. Well, think about this way. If you walk outside and we're in Silicon Valley, right? So millionaires are a little bit hot, you know, probably more common. Yeah. Put the whole U.S. I bet still, like you take 100 people, have them lift up their shirts, random people on the street. How many of them would have a six-pack? Not if they're random. Yeah. Zero. Yeah. Probably zero. Actually, I bet you it'd be a pretty low percentage, even in a gym where you have a massive body. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's one of the most memorable members that when I get like a new member who was like, you know, you could tell we're kind of insecure about their body and how they felt. And I would stand them up a lot of times and look at it. I said, this place is not full of all these crazy ripped bodies that people think. Most people in here, just like you and I in pursuit of a better physique and working on it and it's hard. It's not easy. Like, but I don't remember reading that stat until later, until we got into the podcasting when I think you brought it up on the show years ago. The craziest things I've ever heard. I know, right? Yeah, I would say that part of the reason why it's so rare is it involves like, you know, you can have like nice looking arms and be at a higher body fat percentage, especially if you're a man because you don't store tons of the arms, legs, you know, but core, you have to be kind of lean, but also, you know, I'm going to make a statement. I'd love you guys' opinion on. I would say that of all of the misunderstood, wrong, like, you know, applied exercises and poor technique and just, just myths around exercise, probably more of them circulate around the core than the rest of the body. Like there's so much. That's a good, that's a pretty good speculation. I think, I think that retreat them completely different than other body parts. Yeah. Like they develop different. Well, I would put him up there with, because I think before on the show, I've talked about glutes being like the number one like muscle that people have a hard time connecting. I would say abs would be the second, I think abs are number two. Well, let me ask you guys this. Is it, God, think about this. How often do you see someone doing a core exercise really properly? Think about that. Very rare. Almost never. Yeah. Almost never. You see a lot of people doing core exercises. Sure. But I almost never see them being done right to the point where that was a selling point for me as a trainer is I walked around the gym and waited for people to work abs because I knew I could show them in three seconds how to do it right. And then they would just, it would blow their minds on how much differently they felt them. Yeah. And for me, I never, I guess it's interesting. It's rare to see somebody like muscular with, with like fully displayed abs as well. It was like, there was a period there. It was like, everybody wanted abs so bad that they would just lean out completely without lifting weights. And it was just like, okay. So you got skinny and runner abs display. Yeah. Runner abs don't count. And I'm just like, sorry. No, that's not, it's like what we're going for here. All right, everybody, we're giving away maps, bands again because we're in launch season for this brand new workout program. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. Do all those things. And if you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. Now, everyone else, these are the final hours for the launch of maps bands, the workout program that only uses resistance bands. If you sign up right now during the launch period, it's 30 hours off. Plus you get two ebooks for free ultimate body weight training guide and quick meals for health and fitness. So if you're interested, if you want the discount and the free ebooks, click on the link at the top of the description below or go to maps bands.com. Use the code bands 30. All right. Back to the show and there's a lot of muscles of the core, but we're going to, we're going to stick to the more common ones because I think if you train kind of these, you're going to work all the other ones for the most part. Obviously you have the abs, the abdominals, then you have the obliques, both internal external. We're going to combine them into just the obliques and then you have the transverse abdominals, which we'll talk about because I think that's kind of a special muscle that we're talking. And we're talking mainly of the front of the core. The core really represents all the muscles around the trunk, but we're going to talk about the muscles on the side and in the front and how to work them and develop them. But really the actions are, you know, obviously flexing the spine laterally to the front. We'll get to the specifics, but a lot of the importance of the core muscles is to stabilize and allow power transfer. So stabilization would be like, if I'm throwing a ball as hard as I can, my core has to stabilize so that I don't twist, my body doesn't just twist off, off of itself, right? It's anchoring and grounding you to the earth. Anti-rotation. Anti-rotation. It's, you know, we're, because we're primates that walk on two limbs, the, I mean, if you look at like most common places for pain, it's the low back and it's because it's a vulnerable area because we walk on two legs and that the core has to be able to, when you walk, if you look at some walking or running, you'll notice that, that the opposite arm moves from the opposite leg. So it's like, for example, try walking right now, right leg forward with your right arm forward. Have you ever tried to do that? Yeah, he is like a robot, like a weird man. It doesn't, yeah, there's counter balance, counter rotation. The core is transferring all of that and it needs to be strong and stable. Every time you stand up, sit down, pick something up, those muscles have to be, because the spine, you take your spine out, it'll just flop over in whatever direction gravity tells it. So it's all those muscles around the core that protect it and keep it stable and allow for power transfer. So for, I mean, for purposes of lifting, you want to get strong in big lifts like the overhead press or the deadlift or the squat. Yeah. You better have a strong stable core. You want to get good at sports besides the technique where you better have a strong core. And then if you want to look good on the beach, that's the muscle that the opposite sex tends to notice the most. Well, and two, and that's sort of in contrast to what you're talking about in terms of what people like want to pursue this look, where they don't really consider the obliques as much and they don't really consider a lot of those like twisting transverse type movements that will like boost your strength performance and all of that. And it's really just like the pursuit is to like decrease the size of the waist overall and to be able to display your abs is like the six packs. So, but yeah, the obliques totally underrated muscle like very super impressive and it's it definitely stands out and chisels out like your whole midsection. Yeah, we'll get to the obliques, but you're it's funny when you look at Greek sculptures and statues, they base those statues and they're like Hercules, right? They'd like or David, right? They would sculpt them based off of the high performing athletes that they saw or soldiers of the day. Same thing with the Roman statues, right? Off the gladiators. Well, you'll always know about notice as well developed core muscles, especially obliques because really strong people don't have abs and no obliques like we try to do with bodybuilding, right? They have well developed obliques. These are so important, but let's start with the abs and as we go through this, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the two the points of attachment of muscles and then the way the muscle fibers run because that'll tell you how to train how to train him on what a muscle what a muscle ends up doing. So if you have two points and a muscle attaches on one point and another point and the fibers run straight between them when that muscle contracts, it pulls those two points closer together. So if you look at any anatomy chart and you look at muscles, you can pretty much figure out what that muscle does when it contracts because it'll pull those two points together in the direction of the muscle fibers. So with the abs without getting specific just general the attachments are the rib cage the lower rib cage and the pelvis. So they attach here and here and when they contract they bring the pelvis closer to the rib cage. They do what's called flexion of the spine. Now what they don't do is flexion at the hips. This is where people screw up. So anytime you see someone doing sit-ups or crunches or ab exercises, they think just bending forward or bringing the legs up works the abs. The abs stabilize but they're not really working in a full range of motion. What the abs do when they work in a full range of motion is they bring the rib cage closer to the pelvis. It rolls you up. That's the full action of the abdominals but they also stabilize the spine. So you want to pick exercises that do both if you really want to develop them. Now why would you explain to a client that our hip flexors tend to take over a lot of exercises like this for people? Is it more that they don't understand how the abs work or do you think it's because the hip flexors are just overactive because of their daily use and then when a movement like that occurs they just default to the hip flexor? We don't do a lot of full range of motion ab exercises in everyday life or movements but we do work on hip flexors because we walk. So when you tell someone to lift their legs up like on a hanging leg raise which is a very hard ab exercise, they know to get their legs up and what they do is they just automatically turn on those hip flexors and bend at the hips and when you do it try to do a sit-up they'll even do the same thing you'll see them sit up with this real upright posture because it's all hip flexors. Yeah and I think too like I could compare it I guess like squatting versus hip hinging movements like there's a clear distinction there that's like a little bit of a hard transition to educate somebody like how to hip hinge versus like how to squat down and because like a lot of natural inclination is to just you know squat their way down and to be intentional with maximizing the pull so you get more stretch out of the hamstring for instance or be able to like focus just completely on that I think it's the same with the abs in terms of like you know what's your desired outcome you're trying to to contract the abs at their full capacity so you have to be able to treat it like you said from point to point and shorten that range. Yeah and use the same things that you understand about the rest of the body like tension and rep ranges that you got to literally curl up like a ball to be able to make that happen. Yeah but rep ranges and tension I mean what builds biceps builds your abs too so there's a lot of myths around like you got to do 100 reps like no same thing like with your biceps you keep the reps and within the muscle building ranges which is low to like 2025. I think that's one of the biggest myths that were out there. I think that was least that's what I believe even in my early years as a trainer you know there's this idea that oh your your calves and your abs or have can take more of a beating because you use them all day long constantly and so therefore you should do even more repetitions to get them to build and the truth is I actually when I figured out that that was not true saw the greatest results going the opposite direction because you rarely ever see anybody train five or eight reps and abs just like you never see anybody do five or eight reps and calves you never see anybody do less than 20 reps right in both those and I felt like the greatest gains I saw in both those muscle groups came from actually focusing on heavy training and slow and controlled and only doing five reps. I saw a huge difference in my abs and my calves because I had all my life thought that I needed to be doing all these supersets and 20 reps and 50 100 reps like completely opposite here. I did I went for years thinking I didn't have good core genetics and have to get shredded to really see them to figuring that out doing decline setups really slow. So I'd roll myself up and only be able to get like really slow good like eight reps and my abs grew to the point where my abs now are one of my strongest body parts. That was over the course of like seven months of training literally how big of a difference I made to my physique by doing that. So yeah, tension reps but you got to have perfect form. You have to have perfect form in order for this to work. Now some of the best exercises for people are the ones they think encourage good form like there's a movement called that that I called hip flexor deactivators. We actually did a video on YouTube an old one. I used to teach clients that exercise because it helped them to engage the abs without engaging the hip flexors and the next step which I still to the states one of my favorite exercises are physical ball crunches. I like physical ball crunches because you wrap your body around the ball so you get full extension and then if you keep your hips in place so you don't rock back with your hips you keep them in place. It's a full ab crunch or full abs sit up. It's a full range of motion exercise. If you do physical ball crunches right with a full range of motion especially if you keep your hands here up by your head or above your head like long lever crunches even people with really strong course like 10 reps you're going to get a phenomenal exercise or so. Squish the bug happened. It was like one of the best cues I ever gave a God got from somebody. I can't remember where I originally heard that from but I remember teaching that before yet. So you know everybody knows how to do a traditional crunch where you sit down like lay down the ground your knees are bent at about a 45 degree angle or whatever that and you're just crunching up but when you do that short range of motion like that and your hip flexors are overactive it's like hardly any ab work whatsoever. And you'll see everybody has like this kind of natural arch in their low back we can fit your hands in that gap and so queuing people to flatten their back and all they're really doing is they're they're rolling they're basically deactivating their hip flexors because you roll the pelvis like activating the abs but it's such an easy queue for a client who doesn't understand how to you know deactivate their hip flexors or roll their pelvis you just say pretend like there's a bug in on your low back and try and squish that bug and that automatically rolls that pelvis activates the core and then when they crunch they get a better contraction I think that's been one of the best cues I've ever I like for people especially people who are learning how to do this or activate their abs fully I like reverse crunches better than traditional crunches reverse crunches are harder to do wrong than a traditional crunch so that's usually where I would start people as I have people lay flat on the floor and they would just I just bend their knees and sort of bypass that whole like hip flexor issue that way too Yep. Yep. Love that exercise and then advanced would be like a leg raise but a good ab leg raise does not look like at leg raises you see people doing the gym in fact very few people could do them properly because they're hard but what it looks like if you're hanging from a bar or you're supporting yourself by your elbows yes, you lift your legs but it's the pelvis that rotates the legs up it's not the legs bending up at the hip so it looks like you're coming off the bench and giving yourself like this long lever reverse crunch with a lot of resistance is what is what it is really strong abs I mean at my peak I was getting like 10 good reps so this is a high tension exercise but it can really build the abs right if you do them properly then we get to the obliques the sides of the core and the obliques I mean the attachments again the rib cage on the side the pelvis on the side but if you look at the way the muscle fibers run they kind of run diagonally the internal and external obliques both run diagonally in different directions that means when they crunch or when the muscle contracts it rotates the body it rotates and twists the body so some of the best exercises for full oblique development are cable chops or twisting crunches things that rotate your trunk not your not just your body because I see some people doing this with a twist but you see the whole body twisting you literally have to rotate the trunk then you're going to hit those obliques with that kind of full range of motion and really develop now when doing that exercise one of the best cues I'd learned was learning to resist the way back because the common thing so when she's a wood chop is they swing just like if they were to swing a baseball bat and then they let the cable kind of swing them back totally same rules apply just like we talk about building your biceps if you neglected the eccentric portion of the exercise you'd be missing out on one of the best ways to build your biceps the same thing goes from building your core your abs your obliques that exercise is I think one of the best exercise you can do for your obliques but one of the things that people miss out on is the resisting of that on the way back in the wood chop yeah definitely and I think step one is anti rotation and that's that's really like and two again this is sort of like you'll feel it just like you would your abs are stabilizing you when the hip flexors are doing work same with this to where like if I'm just holding a position and I'm loaded on one side you're really going to feel the isometric tension from the opposing oblique which is good like you want to be able to have control maintain control next sort of level to that is what Adam's talking about like you know really being able to rotate but then not allowing that force to pull you back and rotate with it and then the third phase of that I would then have a pivot where I then would rotate with it so now I'm doing it more of a sport specific or functional type of you know what that Q that reminds me of or that progression I should say reminds me of the progression that we take someone through a seated row when you first are teaching them to be upright retract their shoulders and you keep them in this kind of fixed position and then as they become more advanced they understand the action of the muscles then you allow them to go okay now to get all roll the scapula forward roll the scapula back and you take them through this greater full range of motion more range of motion but first you got to get them to understand what muscle they're trying to engage I feel the same action is in when you're teaching a woodchop and you're trying to engage the obliques and the abs to resist anti-rotation once they understand action okay now I can take them in this more athletic movement like you're talking about where it's a greater range of motion I go all the way yeah might one of my favorite count like anti-rotation exercise for the obliques would be to stand with a cable with your hands close to your chest and the cable is is at the side here so it's pulling me to the side but I'm standing straight and strong and then all I do is I extend my arms out in front of me and bring it back and what that does is I'm lengthening the lever thus increasing the tension of my obliques but the goal is to stay as rigid as possible and then bring it back so it's more tension less tension more tension less tension but when my obliques are doing a resisting rotation with that more tension now why is that important you want obliques to stabilize your spine so you don't literally twist off yourself that's that can cause like if you step off of a curb or you're playing a sport like football somebody hits you you don't want your your spine to just twist all the way you want your obliques to stabilize to prevent that from happening it also allows you to throw fast and throw hard and to run really well so that counter rotation stabilization super important for obliques and athletic performance you know I brought up the progression and compared it with the seated row and part of the reason why I want to do that for the audience because it's just reminds me of another example of what we unfortunately get caught up in online ways of teaching the exercise that we just explained and we explained it in like oh I would teach the anti-rotational first then I would teach catching it and resisting on the way back oh then I would take it through full range of motion in a more athletic movement what you'll find on tiktok and instagram or these clips of like one trainer bashing another trainer for teaching one of those three as if one is wrong on the other one is more right and the reality is that that's part of a part of a progression I see this a lot and in our way of like you know putting down other coaches and trainers and trying to you know claim that your way is better than other way when in reality like a lot of times it's it's a situation like that yeah and you know again I've seen more God this is I'm thinking about this there's I've seen more people who are otherwise muscular and well-developed who have poor core strength and core stability then then any other muscle I would say and it's it's because technique is so off and because you can get lean and still look like you have a developed core and immediately you create a ceiling of potential totally yeah you're if it becomes the if you look if you can't squat heavy or deadlift heavy or overhead press heavy because it hurts your low back that that means your core is not as strong as the rest of your body needs that's actually it should not be ever be that way powers leaking your powers leaking and you can't it just can't stabilize your body it's like trying to put a bunch of weight into the back of a truck but it's got like really it's got you know shocks made out of paper like you're going to crumple and break and that means you're and that means your strength is worthless it really does like if you can't support it with your state with your core your arms and legs might as well be a lot weaker in fact you probably be safer having weaker arms and legs because God forbid you do exert full power you're going to hurt your lower back I know people who've hurt in the lower back bench pressing because their core is so weak because my back hurt from the bench press so yeah and I again I think this is probably with it with people who work out a lot and because the technique tends to be off this is probably one of those top parts of the body that people just misunderstand next up the last main muscle would be the transverse abdominals now this is like it's like the body's weight belt okay so when you suck in your stomach that's what this muscle does now here's what's interesting about this from an aesthetic point of view this in particular with women is an area that I would focus on especially women who had children because and I would get this with women they'd have a baby and all the muscles of the core have to change their function with the growing baby and some muscles have to atrophy to allow for room the transverse abdominals is one of them you can't pull in your midsection when you're you know eight months pregnant so it would just atrophy and weaken and it's supposed to and that's fine the body figures out ways to stabilize when you're pregnant obviously stabilization you're not going to be stable as you were when you weren't but you know you're okay but then you have the baby then you work out you lose body fat you get lean you work your abs you work your obliques and then you're like why can't I get this lower belly pooch to go away I remember the first time this this happened I had a client or potential client come and asked me about this and we tested her body fat she was at 17% she was lean like that's really lean fit you could see some abs you could see some obliques and yet I could see what she was talking about she had kind of this lower belly pooch well I talked to one of my experienced trainers this one I was a new trainer they said oh it's the transverse abdominis that's the muscle that pulls things in so she could develop her abs and obliques all she wants but she's not going to bring her waist and core back in until she strengthens that so that's that muscle and what is that is that like the organs and stuff sliding down that's gravity pushing the organs down and out because you have no in because your transverse abdominis it's made up a 28 different internal muscles that wrap around the spine right so if this is super flimsy and weak the organs are going to slide down and out the ability for you to keep that tight and drawn in is what's going to keep that from yeah because your abs are attached up here and here so pushing about this way is kind of easy so this particular muscle if you want to strengthen it you have to practice drawing in so on your hands and knees vacuum pose is one of the most effective ways to do this and what's interesting is when I've taken women postpartum and had them try to do this it's fascinating because a lot of them can't even feel it they can't even connect yeah to this muscle it's a really hard one to reestablish yeah so we start by standing straight up have them draw in and then we slowly move them down to that you know hands and oh that's interesting that you start that way because I actually start in the four point maneuver to to use gravity to show them so they can feel it because a lot of time that way creates some sort of artificial resistance sometimes when they're standing upright I feel like they I'll tell them to draw their belly button and then as they're standing upright I'll have them hold that and then try and get in that position and then relax so they can feel it draw yeah because I I feel sometimes it's like you can't even connect you know if you can't you can't connect you can't connect like that but I mean that I found the in the four point maneuver it's it's it's that way that the organs are pulling down and so they feel like oh I'm trying to lift like there's my belly yeah so like cat cow is like an example classic one yeah what it kind of looks like it's a yoga pose but when they when they pull the back up they have to pull the belly button up towards the spine and and squeeze and squeeze really hard body builders just do this on stage Frank Zane was really famous for this so if you ever you know people want to crazy that's that's the great like just to look at it like what the human body can do like to see you know that that clear like extreme example of like normal flex like you could get real far back and then see the ribs really stick out yeah well and once you learn to you know connect to the muscle and activate it like that it's such a a valuable tool I mean there's for like on the plane right and like I sort of feel my low backs and that's actually one of the first things I'll do is I'll kind of sit up brace yeah pull in my core and then brace and it'll relieve that a lot of times people don't realize that's what's happening when you're in a car or in a plane or something like that and you're you're relaxing your core is not activated at all and so all the weight and gravity is pulling or stressing on the spine or your hips or whatever and simply by drawing that in and activating it'll relieve all that and it feels to it so once you learn how to do that you can control that you know learning to activate that throughout the day is a is a good practice yeah and I remember at one point there was all this debate about wearing weight belts and one side is like if you wear a weight belt it'll it'll reduce activation of the core make your core weak and then they came out with those studies showing muscle activation I think it was I think it was fMRI or or MRI and they showed oh no when you wear a weight belt and you squats and deadlifts and presses you still activate the core if anything you activate the abs a little bit more and so so then that side was like see it's totally fine to train with the belt it'll it'll activate you to push out yeah so activating and having a good muscle recruitment pattern are two different things what a belt does stabilization and the way your core uses it if you ever for powerlifters know this because you have to learn how to wear a weight belt and how to use it your core you push out against the belt and the belt creates stability in the real world without a weight belt that is not what your core does yeah to stabilize so if you always train with the belt yeah you're going to activate your core but you're going to learn how to stabilize your core in a way that doesn't work without a belt and you'll actually increase your risk of injury in the real world so for good core stabilization don't don't wear a belt now you're going to compete in powerlifting and you need to wear a belt then you should you should train on one part of the sport then you definitely want to learn it well this I'm glad you brought this up because we actually had somebody in our forum just recently a female who's going through our powerlifting program and she asked because she's never used to belt before if she should use a belt and there was there was there was some debate from other you know guys that were weight belts saying like oh you should or it's a great this and then we all said protect your back we all said don't unless you unless you're going to compete the competition allows you to use the belt because the belt can be an advantage right you have to learn how to use it right and so then then it makes sense okay train with it so you get good at your competition because now I'm advising you in sport I'm not advising you as an overall person who's trying to be as healthy as possible if I'm trying to advise you that way then I tell you don't use the belt because it is it's going to train a different recruitment pattern and unless you're going to walk around with a weightlifting belt in every day throughout the day it doesn't make sense for that be the way that you brace because one day you're going to bend over to pick a chair up or you know the couch or something heavy and your body is going to think to push out against the belt that doesn't exist because you're not wearing it right now and you would much rather have trained it to draw in to support you there which you don't need a belt in order to do that right okay so now that we know like bracing involves the core just stabilizing tensing and drawing it a little bit this is a great way to do your stabilization exercises to practice that right heavy loaded walking type movements some of the best so overhead carries carries in the rack position farmer walks suitcase carries holding something heavy keeping your body stable and strong and tight bracing the core and walking for steps with that movement right that movement and your body having that counter rotation excellent stabilization exercises I would say some of the best stabilization exercises are these ones right here then you have the classic like Plank right Plank you can do Planks Planks are also great stabilization but in in terms of like applicable like real-world stabilization nothing in my opinion is better than the heavy walk well Plank like draw and maneuver I think is a great place to teach what you're trying to do because to your point about the farmer carries overhead carries racks all these actually that is going to challenge it in a real-world way but you first need to know how to activate it right and you need to know which I think that's a I'm stimulus another great point that we're bringing up in the show because we do talk a lot about the values of overhead carries and farmer walks but if you do them and you don't activate the core or brace it right yeah or brace it correctly you're not getting a lot of value out of that movement right you're just fatiguing probably your shoulders or your forearms your arms that are holding the weight the main part of the biggest benefits of that exercise is to get yourself into good posture which by the way just getting into good posture will also many times draw in the core because in order to or erect the spine yeah stack your spine up and get yourself with the chest out in the shoulders back the core will draw in to hold the spine in that position and it really exaggerates that when you have anything overhead so the compensations are a lot more likely to occur and that's why it's so important to start you know with being able to connect and recruit properly because you need to be able to create a safe stabilized spine before now we like start adding any local motion where variables get you you know left to right forces twisting forces a lot more so than just a straightforward sagittal movement yeah now so you you brought up earlier that you know you train the abs like you would train any other muscle your bicep tricep with as far as the different sets reps things like that how do you guys prioritize like we we address like three major functions right of the core slash abs are you hitting all three of these specifically in a routine are you Monday doing maybe one one function Wednesday doing another function Friday doing another function I don't think necessarily either one of those is right or wrong but how how do you prefer I've almost always done the core workout all at once and I'll typically start with the stabilization stuff then move to the full range of motion stuff so to be like you know heavy walk or it would be like stabilization counter rotation walks and then I'll move to the sit ups and the which makes sense because you don't want to directly fatigued no you're in full range of motion stuff and then you would have your former walk and yeah they go do something where you got the stabilize by the way if you do ab exercises and your lower back hurts that's a clear sign that you're using your hip flexors too much because one of the hip flexors the so as muscle actually attaches at the lower spine and if you're doing like all these leg raises something like why is it hurt my lower back that's why that muscle is getting fatigued and will you where you're going to often feel it is in the low back the low back is because that's the the point of one of the insertions or one of the attachments of that particular muscle so there's that's like a red flag I'm doing ab exercise but my back hurts the next day or while I'm doing it you're not doing the ab exercises size is right if that is the the case so check this out if you want more free fitness information we have guides that can help you and they are nothing they cost nothing they're free go to mine pump free dot com you can also find all of us on Instagram Justin is at mine pump Justin I'm at mine pump to Stefano and Adam is at today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong well-developed chest when I think of weak points and and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time chest was up there with the yeah it was for me it was for me for sure I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique