Ripped Six Pack & Obliques (THE “X” EFFECT!)

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What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. Today we’re talking about the obliques, and we’re actually breaking out the serape. What the hell is a “serape”?

The serape is a piece of clothing, but more importantly, it explains how the muscles work together. We always talk about “Train the muscles the way they prefer to work together”, and that’s what we’re going to do here today. We’re actually going to break out the muscle markers to show you how it’s done. We’re also going to break out Jessie to help me show you how it’s done. Jessie, come out on the other side of the camera here.

You guys all know Jessie. Always looking dapper. Now, the thing about the muscles of the core is they prefer to work in cross patterns. So a serape is a scarf you wear across your neck, and then it crosses over you in front. ATHLEANX has more than just the X in the name.

It’s actually how our bodies are setup. So if I take my arms out to the side here like this, and I tell Jessie “Try to rotate me in one direction. ” So he’s trying to turn me this way. Let me let him win, okay? There.

So he’s doing that. So for me to stop that I have to do – hold it Jessie – I have to do this, and overcome, and turn back. To do that I need the internal obliques on this side, and I need the external obliques on this side. I’m trying to basically – let me win this time – protract. He’s a strong son of a bitch now!

Now I’m trying to protract my arm this way too, so I even have the serratus anterior. So what that does is, it sets up this cross pattern where the serratus anterior goes through the external obliques, crosses through the rectus here, down into the internal obliques on the opposite side. Now, let’s go and turn me the other way. So now if he’s trying to turn me that way I have to produce this counterforce in the opposite direction. So now I’m trying to contract my internal obliques over here, and my external obliques over here, and of course my serratus on this side as well.

My rhomboids are working on the other side, too. We’re just not going all the way to the back, but now – wrong color – now we’re working this direction. So again, I wasn’t joking. Our muscles are actually setup in this “X” pattern. So now how can we train this?

Jessie, thank you as always. So now, how can we train this? Let me show you right here. We have something here we call an Olympic twist. This is something really cool because it’s easy to do.

Just take an Olympic bar and you start off by having the bar underhand. You’ll get a little bit of bicep work here too, isometrically, but you’ll allow your bar to sit in front of you at your hips. Beginners: first time through, whatever it is for you, allow your hips to rotate with the bar. What you’re working on here is overcoming the momentum of the bar. That’s a lot of weight being carried in one direction that you have to control, decelerate, and accelerate your torso back in the opposite direction.

So you’ll feel this immediately. But if we want to take it up just a notch from here, now we can lock in the hips. By locking in the hips, now there’s more stability needed. Which is a great thing because the abs love to provide stability. So now the hips stay there, the trunk and torso will rotate in the opposite direction.

Now we’re starting to get that stretching effect; that serape effect. We’re starting to get it because now we’ve basically have this association between stable hips and a movable upper body. But now – of course we’re going to train both sides here. Now we can go and take it up one more notch. Now we’re trying to get external rotation on the hip, or just rotation in one direction of the hip, and then we’re trying to get the opposite rotation at the shoulder.

This is really, really common if you look at this functionally, for anybody that plays a sport that throws. Anytime you have to lift up overhead – you can see me here. If I’m a pitcher I rotate here, and I raise my arm up here, I’m getting rotation this way up top, I’m getting rotation this way at the bottom. That creates that serape, which creates a stretch reflex that allows me to throw more powerfully. That’s how guys throw 100MPH, because they create this effect extraordinarily.

So we can train that by actually stepping out, trying to get the hips going in that direction – as you see me doing here – and then raising the bar. I’ve changed my grip here too, to an overhand on the bottom hand, and an underhand on the top hand, and I also had to raise my arm up on the bar a little bit higher because the weight of that bar gets pretty hard to handle. The idea is, the motion is what you’re going for, and you simply try to work on reps in this direction. Even if you’re not throwing in the opposite direction you want to work on that, too for core balance. So the muscle markers don’t lie, guys.

Neither does your anatomy. Your body is setup in a certain way for a reason. To allow you to function at your best. If you want to do that you’ve got to train it. You can train it that way by training with ATHLEANX.

We train like athletes. If you’re looking for a program that does that step by step, day by day; head over to ATHLEANX. com and get your ATHLEANX training program. In the meantime, if you’ve found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me know what else you want me to cover here, and I’ll do my best in the days and weeks ahead.

See ya!