 Our first caller is Nicole from New Jersey. Hey Nicole, how can we help you? Hi guys, thanks so much for having me. I'm a huge fan. I'm super excited to talk to you. So my question is actually about my core. I've always struggled with tightening up my core and strengthening my core and just my stomach area in general whenever I train. So I just wanted to ask what I can start to incorporate in my routine and in my programming to really help me strengthen my core and just tighten up that tummy area. Okay, now when you say, okay, so strengthening, we'll get to that, but when you say tightening up, do you mean leaner or do you mean it's just not sculpted or strong feeling? A little bit of both. Definitely leaner, aesthetically. But yeah, I do feel like it's strength too. I really want to make it strong just to help with all my other lifts. I just know that if my core is just stronger, it will help improvements with so many of the other things that I do when I train. Right, okay, so when it comes to strength, it's like training any other body part. Now the core's got some of its own unique challenges. Technique and form is always important for every exercise, but when it comes to the core, it's especially important because a lot of core exercises involve bringing the body forward, like folding forward. Well, we can do that without really activating the core properly. You can also do a lot of exercises that you normally do for other body parts, but incorporate a core stability component. This is where a physio ball can come in handy. So a physio ball you can use for dumbbell rows or seated presses or other exercises where you're kind of forced to engage the muscles of the core. As far as training frequencies concerned, I would do good decent workouts for the core a few days a week and then incorporate stability in the other workouts when you're training the rest of your body. Well, there's a couple things here. One, I would also recommend stomach vacuums. I think that's incredible exercise, especially if you're trying to get the flat stomach look. Then there's the other thing that, I've shared this on the podcast a long time ago. I haven't talked about this in a long time. When I fell out of shape, I was a 20% body fat and when I leaned all the way down to 7%, which was the leanest I'd ever been in my life, I was left with this like bottom pooch that my clients used to tell me about that it was so stubborn for them to lose that I had never experienced this. The Joey, that's what we call it. Is that what it is? And I was blown away that I had this. I was like, this didn't make sense to me. I'm leaner than I've ever been in my life, even leaner than what I carried myself in my teens and 20s. Yet I had this like, you know, body fat that was sticking around in my lower abdominals. And it was really frustrating that I had been this low and still that, well, what I found was I went on like a little bulk, like a good bulk, I wasn't a dirty bulking. I just added calories and put some weight on and then I went back down and cut again. Then I bulked again and then cut it. And it took about three times of cutting and going lower than I'd ever been before to actually finally get that to go and to eliminate that. And it's also one of the first places that it comes back when I put body fat on. So what I have found sometimes with my clients is they had that same stubborn area that they're just, they're frustrated with even when they feel like they're in shape everywhere else they've got this lower bit of body fat they don't seem to get rid of. And sometimes that's we just, we need to take the body to a new level of leanness that they've never seen so that it taps into that, utilizes that and then gets rid of it. And so it did take me a few times of cutting before I actually eliminate all that. Yeah, one more thing I wanted to add. I've noticed too with some of my clients that have really tried to emphasize the flat stomach and how that looks and everything else have been also noticed, noticeably had an anterior pelvic tilt and an arch in their back. And if that's something too that just posturally if you're more conscious of that and more intentional with the way you carry yourself and engage your core and brace properly, that's something too just aesthetically, focusing on that will actually help a lot in terms of you feeling like you're presenting yourself. Yeah, at the end of the day, I would train the core a few days a week. I would do maybe two exercises each workout. Every day you could do a little bit of core if you wanted to do the core stability movements. And then when it comes to the body fat, like what Adam was saying, the first place that you store body fat it's always the last place that you're gonna lose it. When people say it's stubborn, really it's just the last place your body decides to burn body. So it'll get lean everywhere else except for it's preferred area of storage, which just means you gotta get even leaner to get it off. And at which point sometimes you gotta ask yourself, I mean, do I really wanna get that lean? A little bit of body fat's okay, especially for women, they can get so lean that their hormones get thrown off, their metabolism really starts to get affected negatively in the pursuit of this body fat percentage that really isn't that healthy. So you also wanna make sure that you're doing this in the right way and that you've got a good relationship with your body. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's super helpful. It just is always like, I see my body changing and leaning out in so many other areas like pretty quickly, which has been great, but that's just the one area and I probably don't train it enough. So that's definitely helpful. And I definitely do not do enough of this disability type movement and in my training. So that's great to know and very helpful. Awesome, thank you, Nicole. Thanks for calling. Thanks, guys. Yeah, it's that, you know, we all have that one area, you know, that just, like for me, my shoulders, arms and legs, I mean, they're always lean. I could get my body fat pretty high and I'll have shoulder striations. He's like, I'm pretty much sexy all over the scene. Pretty much my shoulders, my chest, my little area on my finger. Like, it's like, oh, please, give me, oh, it's my trunk, it's my trunk, my trunk, my gut and my love handle area. That's where I'll store it. So I understand. I have to get really lean for that to go away. You know, I talk about, yeah, we haven't talked about this actually in a long time on the podcast. I know I shared it a lot earlier, especially when I was going through it. But this was one of those, there's been many things that when I went through the whole, you know, cutting down that lean, right? Getting ready for like competing and stuff. What it taught me or what it helped me to be a better coach. And this was something that I had heard so many times from clients, but had never really experienced it myself, which is that, you know, Adam, I feel like I'm really lean, but then I just can't get rid of this lower body, you know, lower pooch. And I had never seen that on myself until I did this. And I was like, what the hell? This doesn't make sense. I'm 7% body fat. I see I'm more vascular, I'm leaner than I've ever been in my life. And yet I still got this body fat and it did. It took about three times of pushing the levels of how lean I was before it finally like eliminated. Yeah, a couple of interesting things too about that is hormones can affect fat storage. So high stress situations, you'll see sometimes more visceral body fat. And also, you know, body fat storage, you know, preference of the body might make you good at some things and worse it does. So what I mean by that is what you tend to see with high level female athletes is they tend to store more body fat in their midsection than the average female. Now, it's not because they play sports. It's just their genetics, but it's beneficial for sports because if you do store body fat, you don't want to on your limbs if you're running, moving and doing activities. Another reason why women store in the lower body to begin with typically is because it's a lower center of gravity. And when they have a pregnant belly, it balances them out. Obviously, if they stored everything in the belly and they were pregnant, it would make them very, very unstable. So body fat, you know, the way you body stores body fat definitely can get affected by hormones. Your sex at birth affects it as well. But I mean, largely it's your genetics. And so if you see a part of you that's not getting lean like you want, you might need to just get leaner. I also really like Justin's advice too about the posture because this was something that I didn't piece this together until later. And because I have that too, right? I have the, you know, Instagram, you know, butt position going on, right? Arch and look back. Yeah, low back. And it's actually very common, right? I mean, most clients suffered from this whether how excessive or not. But when you're in that position where your low back is arched like that, sticking your butt out, it does it. Sticks the belly out. And just by you rotating the pelvis and activating your core, you see like your stomach flatten out just from that. So I think that's a great point too. Right.