5 Red Flags for Weak Abs (FIX THIS!)

It doesn’t matter whether you have visible abs or not, the strength of your core is not something that can be assessed by how they look in a mirror. In this video, I’m going to show you 5 specific things you can look for that will act as red flags to alert you to an ab weakness that you are going t

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. Today we’re talking about weak abs and it’s something you do not want because if you have weak abs, they’re going to wreak havoc on almost every element of your training. So today I want to help you identify five things – we call them “Red Flags” – five things that will help you to find out right away where you’ve got a weakness, and more importantly, what you can do to fix it.

We’re going to knock them off one by one. Let’s get going. The first red flag that you’re dealing with some weak abs is, when you do your ab exercises your hip flexors fatigue before your abs do. Let me show you an example here, guys. On a hanging leg raise, if I lift my legs up, and I find that after however many repetitions my legs are feeling heavy, and I can’t lift my legs anymore, but my abs feel pretty fresh; that’s because I’m letting the hip flexors drive the movement.

That’s wrong. Same thing here. If I was on the ground, doing the scissor. Yes, this is an isometric hip flexor exercise where I keep my legs off the ground the entire time, but if that is what’s failing, if that’s what fatiguing, once again, I’ve let them drive movement, as opposed to the abdominals. What you need to do is flip that around.

You have to engage the abdominals. Up here on the hanging leg raise you curl the pelvis. You curl the pelvis. If the pelvis is curling and flexing, we know the abdominals are doing their job because that’s what they do. They flex the pelvis.

We know that the hip flexors, on the other hand, can pull you into an anterior tilt, extending through the midsection. So, you want to make sure that you’re getting flexion on the ground. Same thing. If I’m going to do a scissor, I get my back off the ground to get us into flexion. That now activates the abdominals first, and then allows the hip flexors to go along for the ride.

Guys, it’s a very important point. Do not allow, on any ab exercise, for you to start feeling fatigue here first. If you do, it’s a major red flag. So, we mentioned the overactivity of the hip flexors, but that can lead directly to this next red flag. That is the presence of low back pain whenever you do your ab exercises.

That’s something you do not want to tolerate, and you definitely want to fix it. We can look at that and why that’s happening here with a traditional sit-up. Now, this isn’t necessarily my favorite exercise, but it is something that’s functional, and you’re going to see that it relates to one of the red flags later on. However, in a traditional sit-up what are you looking for? When you come up off the ground do you see the following: first, do you need someone to anchor your feet down?

Are you sticking your feet under something – I know who you are – under something to be able to perform the exercise? Because if you are, you shouldn’t need to. Second: when you come up, your shoulder trail. If you get a significant arch in your low back, you have weak abs. That’s something you cannot allow.

The third thing is: if, on the way down, you slam down to the ground uncontrollably, that’s due to weak abs, once again. Those are all related to the one thing I mentioned in the beginning. That is a dominance of the hip flexors. The hip flexors taking over. So, here’s what we want to do.

We want to make sure that we don’t allow that to happen. The first thing you can do is change the way you hook your feet. Instead of allowing them to be pressed down and hooking them under something, you want to put them over something and drag back. That does the complete opposite, anatomically. You’re activating the hamstrings by pulling your heels into that, which is going to help shutdown the hip flexors, or at least decrease their activity.

So now I’m not getting that pull on the low back. I’m able to come up and perform these exercises. The second thing you want to do is, you want to be able to put yourself back down on the ground, one segment at a time. Literally paint your spine down one segment at a time. When you come off the ground you paint yourself off the ground, one segment at a time.

That’s going to guarantee that you’re activating the abs first, before the hip flexors. Why? Let’s take a look at one more thing. If we activate the hip flexors first, and I get my line of pull from here, I pull, and it pulls Jesse into extension. It puts a lot of unnecessary force on the lumbar spine, likely creating the pain that you’re feeling.

However, if we can get the abs to activate first, if I were to simulate the line of pull on the abs, I’m pulling on segment at a time off. I’m getting the abs to contribute. On the way back down, look at the control I have over his torso as he goes down. I’m the brakes applying this slowdown, and this slowed descent back down to the ground. You’ve got to have that.

You’ve got to have your abs driving first. You can’t let your hip flexors dominate. The next red flag is going to reveal itself to you when you perform any of your three big list. The squat, the bench-press, or the deadlift. We know that the role of the abdominals during those movements is to stabilize, and brace your core throughout to add efficiency to the movements.

To clean up the bar path. What we’re not looking for here is dramatic increases in strength. This is supposed to be somewhat of a background activity and it’s more neurologically driven, more mind-muscle connection than overall ab strength. However, there’s something you can do. What I want you to do is test yourself on each of the exercises I just named.

The next time you perform them try to actively brace as hard as you possibly can. If you notice a better bar path, more efficiency, all the things I already mentioned; good. I know your ab strength and your mind-muscle connection is where it needs to be. However, if you feel like you could start adding 60lbs or 70lbs to the bar because you actively brace, what tells me is bad news. That tells me you were not doing that right now.

It tells me that unless you’re heavily focused on doing that in the exercises themselves, you’re not getting that. That’s a significant weakness. Albeit, a mind-muscle weakness, it’s still a weakness, and it’s going to rear its ugly head every time you perform these exercises. Especially, as you start to add more weight to the bar. Red flag number four can be revealed just by looking in the mirror.

As a matter of fact, turning sideways and looking in the mirror. If you see this distended lower belly here, you’re likely suffering from a weakness that you need to address. This is a major red flag. This is not what I want. I want you to be here.

Not here. But here. You’re probably saying “What’s the main difference there? All you did was contract? ” Yes, you’re right.

But what I did was contract the transverse abdominus. I have the ability to contract the transverse abdominus because I have the strength to contract the transverse abdominus. That muscle is just like this weight belt here, guys. Its role is to run, just like this weight belt would, in terms of its orientation of the fibers. It does the same thing a weight belt does.

As it contracts it cinches down. Here, contracts, it cinches down. It creates that smallness of the waist. It creates that tightness, inherently, by performing like a weight belt would. Now, you want to make sure you have the ability to do that.

You need to make sure you can do it by practicing and by ingraining it and integrating it into every ab exercise you do. So, if you see me doing the scissor here, you don’t want to allow yourself to distend while you’re doing the exercises. That’s being too