Ab activation

“Hey! What’s going on? It’s Ian Hart here at Relief4Life. I’m a Back Pain Relief Expert and Co-Creator of Back Pain Relief4Life that you can find backpainrelief4life.com.

Today what I want to speak to you about is activating your abs. We find that most people are disconnected with being able to consciously activate their abs. They don’t even know how to fire from thought to the abs; they can’t even activate it. This is leading to a lot of back issues. The abdominals are endurance muscles that help support the body. Because people are sitting down all day or leaning over, those muscle atrophy, they become weak and they become disconnected from those muscles.

So, I’m going to give you 2 techniques to help you activate your abs, but before I get into that, I want to explain a misconception and a myth that has been taught through a certain mindset or thought or idea in the training and this can lead to issues later on. It’s not the best approach, it’s actually not only not the best approach but it’s not correct in terms of activating the abs. Here it is: Sucking In or drawing in close to your spine. A lot of times when I say activate your abs when I’m working with a client, they will suck in and I say No no… press out with your abs. They have no idea what I’m talking about. They think activating your abs is sucking in. So sucking in actually weakens the abs so if you think about it just in terms of structure, in terms of creating your foundation if you have something closer together it’s [getting] weaker than wider apart. So if you draw your abs in, it’s weakening the area around your spine plus you are not activating the muscles which is a contraction so the muscles are meant to protect the organs, sucking in is not protecting. Okay so don’t suck in, don’t draw in.

The best way that I’ve learned to teach people is through Coughing. When you cough <cough> – just natural coughing, it forces you to activate your abs. If you hold your stomach and cough, you can feel your abs activating. So now once you connect that thought process, you can now do it consciously. It might take a little bit longer for you to get it if you haven’t done it in a long time, but it will help. The next thing is Punching Yourself in the stomach, obviously not to hard but just taking your hands and hitting  yourself in the stomach. It forces you to activate yourself, your abs, core muscles are there to protect you so unconsciously it will protect yourself when you hit yourself in the stomach. That will help you connect your mind to the movement, and this is also very important in our Back Pain Relief program because it helps you reconnect your mind with the movements; It gets better results; it gives us that 4G access we want in the body. Remember, your body is like the internet. It can be disconnected and it can have dial up. We want 4G.

So here you go, this is Ian Hart with backpainrelief4life.com talking about Ab Activation. I want you to go ahead and try if you’re sitting in your chair, go ahead and just hit yourself in the stomach or cough and see how it activates your abs. Now if you are sitting down all day, you should think about keeping your abs active throughout the day, sitting up right and this is going to help prevent back pain. It’s going to make you stronger and you’re going to feel better. Take that home, use that one. This is Ian Hart with backpainrelief4life.com.”

Ian Hart is a Body-Mind Transformation expert, the creator of EarthFIT Training Systems, co-creator of BACK PAIN RELIEF4LIFE, and founder of BEAUFORTPERSONALTRAINING.COM and MYBACKPAINCOACH.COM. Ian and his team help people get into optimal shape in the safest, fastest and most effective way possible, using cutting edge science.