“Hey everybody! It’s coach Sam. Today I’m going to go over probably the most asked question I get from the moms out there and they say, Sam, “how do I get rid of my lower belly pooch? I had all these babies and now I can’t seem to get rid of this pooch.” Before I get into the correct exercises, they will actually tighten the waistline up. I do want to make mention that if you are over, if you have a very high percentage of body fat, doing these correctional exercises is not really something that you need to be focusing on right away. It will help in terms of functionality during your movements in life, and you can do them, but if you’re really wanting to have a flatter stomach, what you need to do is start resistance training and taking proper nutrition, okay?

Weightlifting, eating healthier, drinking more water. Those are the things that you really should be focusing on first but with that being said, this can help people, especially those mothers that have had children, because what happens is this muscle, the transversus abdominis, which goes around our waist right here and attaches in the back, it can get turned off when mothers are pregnant, because it expands to accommodate the baby that’s in front of their belly and then it will atrophy. And sometimes that muscle can get completely turned off. The mind muscle connection is no longer there. So it’s not really firing the transversus abdominis like I said, it goes all the way around. It’s like, think about like a belt. It’s not the rectus abdominis, which is those bulky six pack muscles. So training this is not going to get you that look in your abdominals. It’s going to give you a tighter waistline, a little tighter belly or on the pooch and it can help out with that lower belly pooch. I’m going to show you two ways that you could easily start to activate your transversus abdominis at home for all those moms out there looking to kind of tighten it up or really for anybody, if you haven’t even a male clients that has never done that. Something that I, when I started doing, I noticed my waistline sort of getting smaller as well.

So I’m gonna show you really quick here. The first exercise you can do is you’re going to stand up just like this. You’re going to breathe all the air out of your lungs. So you just breathe out and you can follow along with me if you’re watching this video. So we breathe all the air out of our lungs, and then tighten your lips up here, it’s going to be hard for me to talk to you and do it, but just tighten your lips up here and then let your belly hang, breathe in all there, still letting your belly hang, big breath in and then as you exhale, so blow, start to blow the air, take your belly button and try to pull it through your spine here. So pull up in and up and you want to tighten it up. And you’re still going to breathe through those tight lips. And you’re going to do this for about 10 seconds. So I’ll hold in and up, breathing through tight lips for about 10 seconds. You’ll start to feel and get a little bit tighter in there. So after you do that for 10 seconds, you can relax and you can rest for a few seconds and then go right back into it. You want to aim to hit that 10 times. So 10 seconds, 10 times through, once you get proficient at that, you’re pretty good at that you could take either a broomstick if you have one at home, or I have a dowel rod here I’ll show you with. 

You’ll actually drop down to your knees and we could train it. Same breathing pattern, basically the same thing we did standing up, you’re just down on all force. The reason being this will be more difficult is because your organs kind of create a resistance against there. So doing this bullet, it’s almost like resistance training for this muscle. And then we’re going to use the dowel rod to kind of make sure our spine is staying in alignment. So with the dowel rod, I want it against the back of my head, the middle of my back and my lower back here. Okay. There might still be a little arch you could be able to figure hand through right there, not a problem. As long as it’s against those three points of contact, you’re going to go down on all force and then we’re going to do that breathing pattern again. 

So we go down all force, make sure it’s staying against those patterns. We’re going to do the same thing. So let all the air out of my lungs, breathe in with close lips, letting the belly hang. And then as I exhale, pull in and up tightening up that core. Again, you would go for 10 seconds for 10 rounds. Once you get proficient at that, and you’re able to do that pretty consistently, you should be ready to start incorporating actually using your TVA, your transversus abdominis in regular core exercises, which I can explain if you have more questions on that, that’s more advanced and I could go through that in this video. You could start to do that as well. 

So just to recap really quick, if you have a high body fat percentage, start with the basics, don’t… you could do that breathing the standing one, but don’t really put as much emphasis on it as you should with eating properly exercising regularly, getting plenty of water in and proper sleep. Things like that are going to give you more benefit than that. If you have been training and got those things down then you’re still noticing their belly pooch, try out that standing vacuum hold, and then you can go down once you get good at that, with the stick on your back, broomstick, whatever you have at home to those holds right there, that will actually tighten up your waist to get us not gonna make you blocky. They’ll tighten up your waist, working your transversus abdominis. Thank you to everybody that’s asking me questions as always. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below. I love to do a video and answer them for you. Thank you all for tuning in this Saturday. Everybody stay strong.”