 First question is from black t-shirt seven our stomach vacuums an effective ab exercise Will they help make your belly flatter as some claim the good old vacuum pose sure they will they well They're not an ab exercise. So let's be clear. Don't take a vacuum and put it on your stomach. No, that's don't do that No, it's so it's not an ab exercise. So the abs They attach TV at the pelvis they attach up at the rib cage And when the abs contract they bring the rib cage closer to the pelvis like a crunch The muscles that you're working when you suck in your stomach that's what a vacuum pose is right so it's like imagine you're at the beach and Somebody attractive walks by and you want to make your stomach look flatter. So we do you suck in your belly button a little bit That's called the transverse abdominus the TVA and that muscle literally is like your body's weight belt It literally cinches in and is like a brace So if you've ever worn a weight belt and you wonder why it makes you feel more stable, it's because it's increasing Core stability well the TVA on its own will do that and it does it by by pulling in so if you make that muscle stronger Yes, it can especially if you have a weak one It can shrink your waist a really weak TVA aside from producing You know low back problems and stability issues remember you're standing so gravity is pushing your organs down And then they're gonna kind of come out and so strengthening the TVA kind of brings everything tighter And I've actually measured this with clients Typically I would have a client lose a quarter to a half inch around their waist When they would practice Effective vacuum poses without getting any leaner. It was all because they got strong in that area Women post-pregnancy. This is a very important exercise for you because when you're pregnant The TVA muscles they stretch and atrophy to make room for baby And when you're done with and you have your baby if you don't target this muscle Doesn't have a good reason to get tight again. This was one of those I had to explain a lot and especially with You know women who had Just had it had a kid and came back and we're really trying to get that flatness of the stomach again And we're doing crunches for days and just didn't understand why didn't have the same response And so to to be able to get that gain regain that connectivity to the TVA Makes a massive difference and it is something that you can work on and you know Reconnect and rebuild and get stronger again. Well, this is also a great time to point out how stupid corsets are too and waste trainers Right, so we haven't talked about those in a long time I know that I think I saw a question not that long ago and we're like, oh wow We haven't addressed that in a while, but when you wear those corsets or waste trainers This is what you atrophy I mean, you are you are creating an artificial TVA in a sense drawing in your stomach The problem with that is you weaken those muscles by wearing some of that and same thing goes for the guys that love to wear their Weight belt the entire time they work out like all the time like it's not a good idea to do that You want to be able to train those muscles that draw the stomach in not just for aesthetic reasons So you look cooler or look better or flatter stomach, but because that's your support system I mean, it's I think it's 28 or 32 different muscles internally that it's made up of that wraps around the spine and Works as a vacuum around the spine to support it if you wear a corset or these waste trainers Or even your belt tight all the time while you're working out you start to weaken those muscles Arguably some of the most important muscles in the entire body. It's so absolutely ridiculous Yeah, absolutely It's not even just weakening you wear a belt you're you actually teach your your your core muscles to do the opposite Push out of what they do normally because they push out against the belt So the belt provides that stability But when you don't wear a belt the more effective way to build stability or the effective way to do it naturally is for things to Kind of draw in and tighten up. It's funny because vacuum poses used to be Very big part of bodybuilding in the early days bodybuilders would get on stage and they'd suck in their midsection And show their rib cage and how small their waist was and yeah, you don't see that much anymore Is that not like part of their They're bringing they bring it they're bringing it back in the the new division the classic closing. Yeah, so it's it's there Did you practice these when you competed? I did but not like on stage, right? So like part of men's physique that that's not like a staple pose But I understood the value of it, you know to be able to make because when you're so when I'm up there like I'm keeping my my core drawn in the entire time And that takes it the more you practice that the the more natural it becomes to do that So if I do a good job at training that the transverse abdominis to be able to draw in like that and make my waist look smaller That's only gonna make me be able to present better on stage because then I can keep that drawn in and tight while I'm also You know flexing my shoulders and my back and doing all my other poses So I practiced it wasn't part of my actual train of my routine as far as my posing routine But it was absolutely part of my training routine Yeah, if you want to look at what like a cool bodybuilding vacuum pose just Google just Google Frank Zane Vacuum pose. Yeah, this famous one with his arms behind his head and it was actually quite impressive