 Hey everybody, Lance Goyki here. We are talking today about how to use the abs when you're deadlifting So when you think abs, generally you're thinking this crunching motion, this rounding back motion and that to me to most people just doesn't make any sense. Why would I use the abs on something like this? This this deadlifting motion is trying to bend me over. Why would I try to pull myself that way? And and the distinction here is not that you're looking for that movement. You're not looking for this flexion movement, this bending movement. You're looking for stabilization and you're looking for that stabilization to come from your abs They're gonna work a little bit more eccentrically. They're going to elongate. They're gonna hold your hips in the right position because that's my abs come down to this pelvic bones here They're gonna stabilize that so that when I contract my glute It can push my leg into the ground rather than trying to move the rest of my bones around. It provides this stability and outside of all of that it gives me some sort of pressure on the inside of my body around my organs so that when I do try to pick stuff up, I am not just leaning over like this. Okay, that pressure is what supports your weight when you're up here, right? When you're locking out and that pressure keeps my my spine more rigid during my deadlift helps me put that force into the bar So long-winded explanation, but how are we using the abs? Now again, we don't want this Right, I'm not crunching down to try to get this So we need to find To me, we need to find these lower outer abdominals Those tend to be the hardest ones to find and they tend to be the ones that are going to help you the most Now if you do this wrong, you can put your back at risk. Okay, so Make sure you watch the whole video. Please And also consult your doctor before you lift now If I am setting up I can give myself A little bit of soft knees Take some tension out of my hip flexors that will allow me to Control my hip bones more my pelvis more And then from there we've unlocked the knees then we can reach forward and exhale And if I exhale all the way right now because I guess I slept pretty well last night I can feel these outer lower abdominals and I'm going to tell you Most of you are going to be able to do that right away If you can't make sure your weight is back on your heels not forward on your toes And try to exhale again Do that a couple times sometimes you just need a few rounds to loosen things up and to allow those things to contract To actually turn on So we're doing that in the setup portion of this so that we can access the hamstrings and the glutes, right? These are these big muscles that everyone always talks about when you're trying to deadlift, right? You need stronger hamstrings and glutes and that's why your knee hurts or whatever Whatever, but sometimes your abs need to unlock stuff so that you have the position To find your hamstrings and glutes sometimes your hamstrings and glutes aren't actually all that weak They're just out of position and they can't work Okay Very particular point very important point in our video series. I think this is like video 126 Okay, that was oddly specific. So it's probably correct Trust me Now i'm setting up soft knees exhale Reach forward. I have my abs, okay? Now i'm going to stand up and i'm going to hang on to him have I lost him if you lost him go back a step Okay, and that's going to be our sequence. I was just doing this with another client He frequently has back issues when he does any sort of deadlifting and he's trying to relearn it And every time we would change a step. He would lose what he had already gained even though he knew he was trying to keep it Okay, so it's okay if that happens. You got to go slow. We have this This mentality of perseverance, right? I want you to do something that will allow you to do something again tomorrow Okay, so you don't have to set any records today. You just have to be a little bit better today compare yourself to where you were yesterday Soft knees reach Got him stand up still got him Sweet i almost said a different word sweet Now next step we've got to learn the romanian deadlift before we can learn the deadlift It's always best to start from the top and work our way down So I hold on to my abs now that i've been talking I feel like I lost one of them. So I'm gonna reset. I've got him again. I'm standing up normally I'm not hunched back like this, right? Yeah, I got my abs. I'm not gonna deadlift like this. I'm gonna Got him stand up got him. Okay. Now. I'm gonna do my rdl Hang on do them. Oh, I actually feel him more. It helped me bend over. Awesome Now next uh You know, I think we skipped a step There's an important step that I'm realizing more and more how important it can be for certain people If you're the type of person who kind of looks like me super nerdy. I'm kidding. It's not nerdy It's the flatness of my neck if your neck looks really flat You might need to lift your chin a little bit and even look upward a little bit This allows your abs to turn on Likewise, if my if my neck is if we go the other direction if my neck is flat It flattens out my low back too because everything is connected and if I just flattened out that I'd lose my balance, right? So I need to flatten my low back there too That's not gonna help me find this optimal position for hip control and for ab activity so I might need to look up a little bit and I can tell you anecdotally helps me a lot And it helps my clients with flat necks a lot as well So consider it especially if you look like this now Slight gaze upward got soft knees exhale. Okay. I feel my abs find this look here I'm gonna do my rdl. I'm gonna keep looking gradually up not at the same spot But just gradually up here and I still have my abs now from there I'm gonna come back up And I'm gonna try to keep my abs and I feel like I lost them a little bit. So Instead I'm gonna go slow Let's find this I got my abs I stand up. I'm looking up. Oh, yeah, I still got them. Okay And still got them. Yes, and we're coming back up And I still got them. So let's do another rep Okay, now my arms are doing this weird locked back thing. So let's let them relax like a barbell Good still got them Notice I haven't lost my neck position and I haven't lost my hamstrings Still got them Sweet. Okay. So you can start there. There's no weight and it's just the rdl. That's the way to do it, right? outside of that I can start to progress more it depends on your goals, right? So if you just want to look good and Yeah, just look good You might be able to just start with this rdl and we're just going to use that as your deadlift variation But if you want to feel better, I might want to progress your mobility a little bit I might want to teach you how to get all the way down to the ground and hang on to those abs and those hamstrings. So Got them those abs squeezed a burp out of me. That's not good Too much indigestion. So I've got my looking up. I have my abs. I do my rdl and then from here My hands are about knee level, right? If I were holding a bar the bar would be about knee level I feel this stretch here. I'm still looking up And now I'm going to keep my back angle the same relative to the ground and I'm just going to squat everything down And I can feel a lot of hamstring and now this is about where a bar would be And I'm going to reverse it back up and so I lost them a little bit. Let me see if I can find my abs here now Okay, so I did a little reach towards the ground And there we go got them Okay, and I can work this bottom portion of the deadlift too And I can learn how to get that leg drive and so I'm going to start sweating here And I can work the rest of this deadlift you'll notice I did it kind of weird I didn't do it like, you know, maybe an automatic deadlift would look like but that's kind of how I'm teaching the deadlift, right? So we do this RDL first And then we have this squat we unsquat and on the way up. I need to make sure you're bringing your butt forward So I'm letting people's knees bend often and then I let them just stand up Later on the line, you don't need to bend so much, but you do need to still initiate with the glute Okay, so whatever will help you bring those hips forward Will help you keep that leg drive on the way up keep that tension off of your back That is man That's a lot of words that is pretty much everything I got to say about the abs here Try to cue them if you can't cue them get down on the ground do some sort of ab exercise See if you can keep a little bit of tension there. See if you can loosen your back up and then Take that new body that you just made and put it into a deadlifting scenario and try to figure it out from there If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments below