 Question is from Eric Rich. Any truth to squats and deadlifts thickening the waistline? This is one of those things that is really hurt a lot of people's progress. There's a few things that get promoted in the fitness space and the health space that cause a lot of problems. Now, there is a little bit, okay, and I'm gonna say this with a grain of salt, a little bit of truth to this in the sense that when you're doing heavy exercises that require a lot of core stability, you do work and build somewhat the muscles of the core. Now, how much are you gonna add to your waist? Nothing perceptible. What's gonna end up happening is you're gonna feel tighter in the waist. This is a, this was something that was told that bodybuilders have been selling for a long time, but the thing you gotta consider with bodybuilders is the amount of drugs that they're on, the amount of muscle that they build, for them, and a lot of them get these big guts because of some of the hormones they get on anyway, and I think a lot of them place blame on deadlifts and squats. This is largely a myth, and it's caused a lot of people not to do the two best exercises. I was taking all the steroids and I was deadlifting and squatting like crazy, and I have one of the nastiest V tapers. It has 95 plus percent to do with your genetics. If you have a good hip to shoulder ratio and you pile on muscle on your shoulders and your back from doing deadlifts and overhead pressing and squatting, and you'll end up still with the same ratio to your waist. So even if you did put on a little bit of muscle there, you're gonna also put it on the back so much that it's gonna look the same. It's not, it's so silly to me that this message has been perpetuated into the masses, and it really only, I guess, if I was a competitor that the amount of deadlifting and squatting that I would do in comparison to a lot of the other work wouldn't be like the average person. So my average client, I'm telling them that I want them deadlifting and squatting every single week. Maybe if I'm a competitor, I'm less concerned about watching my deadlifter, my squat go up 200, 300 pounds and becoming a great squatter or deadlifter. I wanna get some of the, reap some of the benefits from it, but maybe it's not something I'm training two, three times a week like most people or like a lot of our programs that we have for the average person. It's so funny because the average person is looking to work out to get leaner, boost their metabolism, improve their health and mobility and build some muscle. So when you're squatting and deadlifting and you combine that with a good diet, you're gonna get leaner and then you're gonna build some muscle. How much muscle are you gonna gain around your waist? Maybe, I don't know, not even a quarter inch. How much inches are you gonna lose off your waist by getting leaner? A lot, a lot. Most of us, especially men, store a lot of our body fat around our waist. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna take out two of the most effective exercises known to trainers and coaches, squats and deadlifts for fear that you're gonna thicken your waist when really get leaner. That makes all the difference. Not only that, but how much deadlifting and squatting does for the glutes. And the glutes are part of that, give us that hourglass and that V-Tabre look. So you, you, you, You need to develop the major muscles more. Right. Focus on that. Right, so you gotta think, your hips are here and then your waist is up here. And by deadlifting and squatting, you're gonna build the butt and the glutes a lot more than skipping those exercises to do things like what, kickbacks, walking lunges, leg press, other inferior movements to get when it comes to building your glutes. So you're gonna eliminate those in fear of the, a little bit that your obliques may build from doing the deadlifting. This is where my brain literally short circuits. I just don't, I don't fucking get it. I don't get it. If you're trying to build muscle, you're trying to build muscle. You're trying to get stronger. You have to be able to support your upper body and you know, what are we doing here? Like we're, 100% for the bodybuilding community. Yeah. To the point where men are wearing waist trainers. You have men that are working out. Which is the equivalent to a boob job. Right. No, it's worse. No, it's way worse. You're actually losing stability in muscle and causing yourself dramatically increasing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you're wearing a cast. For the sake of vanity is my point. It's like you're wearing a cast. And we haven't, I don't, it's been a long time actually. This was something we hammered a lot in probably the first like 300 episodes. And we haven't circled back around to this in a long time. Obviously a much larger audience today than back then. The, this is why they wear these waist trainers. So the male and the female. It's like a corset. Yeah. It's a, they wear this corset around their waist. And the reason why the, there's before and after pictures that show it working. And then people measuring it. Look, I lost two inches on it. It's cause you've lost, you've killed the muscles. The same idea that somebody, if you were to break your arm and you put it in a cast for six months or whatever the timeframe you normally wear cast after a broken arm and you, and you cut open the cast, what is your left arm that had the cast on look like compared to your right arm? It looks like a noodle. I mean, you lost all the muscle on there. That's what you're doing to your waist. Now, for somebody who is I guess 100% stuck on the, the vanity of what I need to look like on stage to win, try and win a trophy. And this creates the illusion of a better hip to waist, hip to waist ratio and shoulder to waist ratio. And that's all you give a shit about. I guess maybe these are, these are steps that you can take. But if you're the fucking average person, this is the stupidest and most ridiculous thing. It's, I think it's stupid for those people to do it. I think it's even more stupid and ridiculous for the average person to be doing this because what you're compromising. I know young, I know young lady that because she wore this, these waist trainers cause they encourage you to wear them all day or sleep with them. And this is how the muscles shrink because the corset is stabilizing your body, the muscles not weak. Like a cast. Like a cast. She actually had a blockage in her intestines because it's so tight and it caused problems, had to go and get surgery, which completely ruined her aesthetics or whatever the looks. Like this, the obsession with shrinking the waist is one of the worst obsessions ever in the fitness space. Now, yes, it's true. It is, you know, somebody who's lean is gonna have a nicer hip to waist ratio for women or a waist to shoulder ratio in men. That's true. But going to the extent of hurting yourself, damaging your body or preventing yourself from becoming more fit, strong and healthy in order to achieve this illusion, it doesn't look better in real life. It really doesn't. If you look at like, pull up some pictures up cause this got a, this obsession happened in the, 100, 200 years ago where women were wearing actual corsets and causing lots of problems and back problems and they had these tiny little waist or whatever. Do you know what these women look like with these corsets off? If you were standing in front of your naked, it wouldn't look good, it looks bad. Doesn't look good on a man either. So like to have this obsession to create this illusion, you actually don't look any better. All you gotta do is get lean. Get lean, whatever your waist size is based on your genetics is what it is. Build the muscles. Have this nice, strong, stable physique. In real life that will make, that will look better. Work with your body's potential. That will look the best. And please God do not eliminate squats and deadlifts for that reason. Dumb.