Dr. Andy Galpin

So do not disregard the transverse abdominus, even for aesthetics, even though you can't see it directly.

A real critical missing component for a lot of people who are failing this because you're doing all RA work, right?

You're doing the sit-ups and the crunches in there, and maybe you're doing some side bends.

You're not doing rotations, but you're not doing anything for the transverse abdominus.

So it's having a harder time kind of pulling that stuff in and tight.

Other weird considerations here are things like your posture.

For example, if you have tight, or however you want to phrase this, hip flexor muscles, psoas major, and it pulls you into anterior tilt, so it pulls your hips forward, especially if this means it flares your rib cage up, or if you have an underdeveloped diaphragm,

or a combination of these, you might actually look like you have a more rounded, more distended stomach when you actually don't.

And so this is a case, and I've seen this work, where when you correct those things,

The abs quote unquote look better, even though you actually didn't lose any weight and you actually didn't add any muscle size there, but you simply corrected that position.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, just exaggerate it.

Like flare your hips way up in the air, arch your back really, really, really hard, and you'll notice your stomach shoots way out.

And then do the opposite, kind of like tuck your tailbone underneath you, pull your ribs down, and you realize, wow, I'm pretty flat there.

So if you're in one of those exaggerated or poor positions,

Simply actually moving that around and getting into a more neutral spine position might be a part of your equation if you're here exclusively or primarily for looks.

In kind of summarizing this group up and finishing it, we do have, I don't know, six or so studies that have actually directly looked at either ultrasound or MRI-based imaging of muscles in the core.

And what you're typically going to see is a magnitude of effect that's pretty similar to other ones.

So depending on the study you look at, you're going to see rectus abdominis can grow by, you know, and grow being defined as muscle thickness, by 10 to 20%.

Those are pretty common.

A lot of the research here are in these kind of weird models where they put electrical devices on your stomach and contract your muscles for you.