Transcription
How to Strengthen Your Transverse Abdominis
Guys, I am so excited for you because this muscle is so weak on you right now, and it's so overlooked. This muscle right here is your deepest core muscle. Check it out; it goes all the way around. It actually runs underneath the rectus abdominis; it goes under, but this art is just showing you where it connects to. So this muscle wraps all the way around, connects in the center. Look at the fibers; they actually wrap around and around this direction. So this muscle, what it is, it's your natural back brace. You've got one inside of you. This is built in from the factory, from God, from Evolution, from whatever it is; it's in there. You gotta wake that up, and I'm gonna show you how. Love this muscle.
So what this muscle does for your body? Well, now that we're on the topic, it provides core stabilization like this. It compresses the midsection when it squeezes; it compresses in and creates pressure this way, which what that does is it decompresses your spine. Crazy! If you do it right, it does this. So when this muscle squeezes inward, it squeezes all of your guts and your organs and tightens this up, and it actually decompresses your spine. So this is your Teeter inversion table built in; your back brace is built in. This muscle also is an ex-respiratory muscle, meaning that you've got a tidal volume, a normal breath that you take is in and out; there's the reserve volume of air that's left after you breathe out, and this muscle, it expires the reserve volume. So as Ty breathes in and pushes there out, pushes out, pushes out, this muscle is tightening and tightening, pushing the diaphragm up and kicking the air out of the lungs. This muscle also stabilizes your pelvic floor; that's the set of muscles around your butthole, around that sphincter, sphincter included in the pelvic floor muscles. Uh, pelvic floor issues—uh, we'll get into some signs and symptoms that you might have a weak transverse abdominis—but pelvic floor stabilization.
Before we get into the exercises to strengthen your transverse abdominis, you need to know what pressurization is. You need to know this; this is what you need. Okay, if you focus on one muscle, you're going to be, you're lost. You need to know that this transverse abdominis right here, it acts with the diaphragm, which is the muscle on the top; it acts with the pelvic floor. Those three muscles must be worked together; there, they must be synchronized together for you to strengthen your transverse abdominis. But as a result, you're going to strengthen your diaphragm and your pelvic floor, and you're going to create more mobility in your pelvic floor and your diaphragm. They are designed to be synchronized together. So get your mind off of the one muscle, and you need to focus on the pressurization, and here's what that means. It means that underneath the rib cage here, from your rib cage to the butthole, what exists in this area underneath your diaphragm and on top of your pelvic floor is are your organs; they're your, your bladder, your intestines, um, you've got your liver in there, you've got your stomach in there. All of these organs exist in here, so it's a, it's a liquid; it's, it's, it's liquid; it's liquid that's all contained within, with on the inside of the transverse abdominis, under the pelvic, above the pelvic floor and under here. Now this is where it gets good. To increase the pressure of the area, it's like, it's like your car tire. Okay, this area is like a car tire; if you crank the PSIs up, get the PSIs up, up, up, the higher the PSIs, the more stability to your low back, the more decompression to your low back, the more protected your low back is from injuries, the safer it is for you to bend or lift with more pressure. Now the downside of that is if you create too much pressure, you could have issues such as, uh, hemorrhoids, hernias, uh, splits through the Linea Alba. Those are also signs of a weak transverse abdominis, but do know that it is a balance between, uh, creating the most amount of pressure in the least amount of pressure.
So what happens is this: when Tai takes a diaphragm breath in, big diaphragm, the diaphragm pulls down; that's why the air comes in your mouth because the diaphragm pulls down and it creates a vacuum and pulls the air. So the diaphragm now comes down. Got it? Now Tai is going to lift his pelvic floor up slightly; you can't see it, but he just, he just lifted the butthole up a little bit. Okay, lifted the balls up a little bit; women pull the tampon up a little bit. These are little cues and to be able to hold that endurance, and now he lifted that up. Okay, diaphragm down, pillows float up. Now the magic, can move out of all of them, is going to be that transverse abdominis can fraction. So as this goes down and this goes here, in the transverse cinch is in; you're now creating compression. Were you holding your breath? Yeah. Oh, you're now creating, sorry for the cue, Ty; he's a professional; he knows better. So now what you're doing is you're basically getting this ball and you're squeezing this ball of liquid tight as possible, and that creates the most PSIs. Now the opposite is true with low, with low PSIs. If you have low PSIs, you're pretty much letting everything relax; you would slowly exhale your air, relax everything here. With low PSIs, you're able to get more spinal mobility, more flexibility around the joints of the spine because you've reduced the pressure. The more pressure it is, the more rigid this area is, the harder it is to flexibility yourself. So for the most part, most all of you need to learn how to pressurize, and right now we're going to get into those three, uh, three you're really going to want skills, pressurization, but there's three individual exercises that learn that equal pressurization. Oh, but first, how to know if your transverse abdominis is weak? Easy. If you have pain, back pain, joint pain, SI joint pain, tighten muscles down here, hemorrhoids, hernias, hip impingement, sciatica, your shit's weak; it's been a week for 15 years. Size, if you have, you look yourself from in the side in a mirror, and you seem to have like bloating or doming or poor posture, meaning the hips are kind of going forward, or you're an anterior tilt, or you're through here, or your hip on leveling, upper back kyphosis, those are all signs, things that you could see that your shit's weak, and often those signs, if you don't fix them, turn into symptoms later. So those are how you know if yours is weak. I'm just looking at you right now; you're watching this video going this far; your shit's weak. Let's get it strong. You're gonna learn to pressurize. All right, Ty, ready? Let's start them off.
You're gonna start off with a diaphragm, uh, learning how to turn your diaphragm on. Most of you are sad, wimpy upper chest breathers; you literally breathe like a mouse. You're breathing from your chest, upper chest, even breathing sadder than that, Ty, and what this is doing is, upper chest breathers, you're also going to get issues such as neck pain because the muscles up here, the upper chest, those muscles contract to lift your lungs up, and so if you're getting a lot of tightness and pain up here, you're probably an upper chest breather. Also signs of upper chest breathing, low energy. Think about, you're only filling your gas tank up quarter tank; you're just like, it's never filling up; you don't have enough fuel in there; you don't have the oxygen in there. So number one is to learn how to fill your lower lungs up through a diaphragmatic breath, and to do that, you're going to put your hand, one hand on stomach, one hand in the upper chest; you're going to start off with a chest breath, and that's going to be more of like a high pitch [Music] probably like you're doing chest moves up. Now relax the air out. Good. And now you're going to do a diaphragm breath; this hand doesn't move, but your stomach is going to come out like your Prego. Okay, nice inhale; let it relax. Okay, let's try this jump from the side. So now an upper chest breath again. Good, good, and, and now diaphragm breath. Watch yourself in a mirror; I see almost all of you think you're doing, but you're, you have to look at yourself in a mirror. These are often your blind spots; I mean things that you don't know that you're doing. Watch yourself in the mirror when you do this, and there's a couple other variations that can help you as well that we'll get into. So next to do is going to be to get the full exhalation, and what that means is this: is you want to maintain your posture. Now you want to take that diaphragm breath in maximally. Good. Now what you're going to do is you're going to keep your posture upright but force all of the air out of your lungs with an audible noise, all of it. That's your transverse; that muscle you felt, that is your transverse abdominis. Again, diaphragm in, force all the air out. Show them how they round forward to do this. No, no, no, no, no. Maintain your posture and force the air out. Nice. Okay, so I'm assuming you've done this a few times; you've hit pause. Let's move on to the next, which is called the snap technique. So what this is is you're going to stand now, relax, keep your posture upright. Okay, stop standing like, stand kind of tall right now. So now what you're going to do is I'm going to see you work on allowing your stomach to protrude and then doing your belly button and drawing it right back to your spine as much as you can. Snap that back. There you go, and let it relax, and again, snap it back. Now you're going to work on some speed, so let's see, pick up the speed, Tire, ready? Go with my fingers and relax it, speed. Good, there it is. Good. Now some endurance, so now hold, sustained hold, hold, hold, hold, to get really good at this, you're also going to feel that your belly button is being drawn back and up; it's like looped, pulled back a bench first at your belly button, but you should feel all of these muscles cinching and pulling you back; all of this is cinching back. Okay, everything; I can't emphasize this enough, how important this is. Let's put these together. What you're going to do now is this: number one, you're going to keep the snap in, hold the snap in, do not release the snap ever, hold the snap in. Now you're going to take it a large diaphragm breath in, holding the snap. Good. You're gonna feel, you should feel some pressure on the outside of the ribs here if you're doing it right; you might even feel some pressure back through here if you're doing it right. Okay, now you get that breath in and you're snapped in. Now you're going to maintain the snap tight and now you're going to force the exhale, but never release the snap. Go ahead, force the exhale, force the exhale, all the way, all the way, all the way. Good, maintain the snap tight, tight, tight, tight. Take the full diaphragm breath all the way in. Good, maintain that snap again, tight. Now force that exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, and also keeping your posture upright. Here's what pressurization is: it's that pause, it's the snap, it's the full diaphragm breath in with the snap; that is going to be the most pressurized position of your back. This is, this is biomechanically the safest position for your spine to be in.
Now a couple common faults and fixes, these, um, and let's, let's, we'll move the table and let's show a couple of common, um, fixes and more of introductory moves; it's a lot easier to do some of the stuff in your back. So you ready to go to the table? Let's go to the table. Let's go. Okay, so now I want you to lay in your back; I want you to try this in your back because many times it's hard, your body, your core is so not controlled; literally, you're like a snake trying to move around and gain coordination. This puts you on a flat ground and also, oh, I almost mentioned you don't want to be standing up like him when you do these at first; I should have told you it's safe to lay down because you could get really light-headed, which I'm sure at least 12 of you got light-headed and fell down, but hopefully you didn't hit your head on anything. Should have gave you a little forewarning on that one; take this as the post warning for the rest of you that didn't fall, that won't fall because you didn't already fall. Okay, so you're on your back now, which is we just started from to begin with, and now you're gonna have your hand on your chest and one hand of the stomach. So this is going to be an easier way to feel your chest versus your stomach breath. So now that your hand's here, go and take that stomach breath in, Ty, go ahead, and I'll go and let that air out. Now let's see, only the chest breath; this one's tough to see, but you have to feel it with your arm. Do you feel your arm lifting? Good. Now going to release that. For the most part, most of you need to minimize your chest breathing; most of you have developed into chest breathers, whether it's due to stress, anxiety, office sitting, compressing yourself, um, whatever it may be, most of you need to move away from this and take those diaphragm breaths. You're going to feel maybe lightheaded; you're going to feel a lot of ox; if you feel light-headed, you're actually oxygenating your blood; your body's probably, what the hell, what do I do with all this oxygen? I'm so used to being deprived, right? You're giving it full saturation of oxygen; your body has to get used to this stuff. Okay, so that it probably may be a little high after this thing, a little buzz, a little free buzz on oxygen, the organic; it's a natural high. Okay, so now I want you to work on that full inhalation and full exhalation because this way your posture can't fold here. So now go and take the full diaphragm breath in. Now force that air all the way out; force it out, and I want you specifically to feel your shoulders staying on, on the bench; that's going to simulate you being able to do this instead of this. Okay, and you can also perform the snap here too, which is a simple snap, but we just did, snap the transverse in, take the full diaphragm breath all the way in. There you go, snap, full diaphragm in. Good, keep a snap in the full exhalation. Now, great. So now your maximally pressurized right here, diaphragm snapped in, snapped in, diaphragm breath in, holding your breath, bam; that's the most PSIs in your midsection. If you're doing a plank or a push-up, you're going to be in this position right here, and now, right off the bat, let's start with, let's do a plank, tag, um, snap the transverse abdominis back, and now what you're going to do is you're going to maintain a snap the entire time; you're going to take that inhale underneath the snap, and then you're going to force that exhalation, maintain the snap, and you're just, your goal is to maintain that sequence of breath when you're planking. Notice your plank before that you're doing it; you don't even know what you're doing; you're counting time; you're, you're counting, uh, whatever freaking sheep, like you're dreaming or something like that. Now you're active in your breath, and we haven't even got into the technique of this, which posterior tilt, scapula pressing, spinal alignment, like those are all separate and for those courses and for those videos and programs, that is our move you membership. I'm sure there's a link somewhere for you to click, uh, to get in, but we have full programs for breath for the back and the core, for the hips and the glutes and the ankle and foot, shoulder and arm, head and neck. Community; there's events; it's really set up; it's, I'm most proud of it; I mean, it's the my most proud thing that I personally built and my team has as well; at least I think it's the most proud to be able to better Ben, um, so that is going to be, uh, how to get more information on fixing pain. Breath is actually, believe it or not, in the backing core program; the breath is taught; this is taught week one, level one, back in core, and I got three levels of backing core and then five weeks of each one. So this is a fraction of what many of you need to live a pain-free life, but man, this is going to help every single one of you. This breathing technique helps all of you, whether you have, doesn't matter your back, your shoulder, your neck condition; this helps absolutely everybody feel better, have more energy, and gain some connection and strength in the deep core muscles. So that is how to strengthen your transverse abdominis through pressurization, um, you learn what the transverse muscle is; it's your natural back brace; what it does, it forces expiration; it stabilizes your core; you also, uh, now know common signs that it's weak with pain and posture issues, and you learned the three exercises, the progressive exercises that help you build the skill of pressurizing your midsection. Thanks for tuning in. Oh, also make sure you subscribe, like, comment, share this with your friends, share this with anybody who needs it, and remember, picture [Music].