waist not, want not
where abs and mindset intersect
disclaimer: if you are super mega comfy with your abs, dgaf about abs or maybe think it’s silly or a bit obsessive to think in great and serious detail about what lies beneath your shirt, stop reading. you'll just get bored, and you have other things to do with your day. i'm in support of that - just giving fair warning that this post is not for you.
but if you, like me, are fascinated by the somewhat mysterious real estate between your ribs and pelvis and all the wonders therein, keep reading. if you feel like you’ve tried everything in the book to bring yourself towards that ultimate yet ephemeral goal of a “flat” stomach and still fall short, this one’s for you. and if you, like me, have what one of my dance teachers called “smart pretty girl syndrome” and what i call the “pernicious p's” - perfectionism, people-pleasing, and/or brainwashing by the patriarchy - definitely stick around.
why? because chances are good that if you’ve taken a fitness or dance class of pretty much any kind in the past 40 years or so - including my own - you have been told a great big lie about how to work your abs. the lie in question is not only not very useful for strengthening or toning abdominals, it actually works against us, contributing to low belly pooching and even pelvic floor issues. because of it, i missed the point of many an ab series for years.
the culprit? the all-pervasive “draw your navel to your spine,” “pull belly button in” mantra.
i'm not down.
“navel to spine” is a shortcut cue and doesn’t tell the whole story, yet so many teachers repeat it every day. i know i have. i'd heard it so often in my training i'd never thought to question it. it’s certainly a hell of a lot easier to say than “pull your belly button and surrounding areas in and up” or “engage your transverse abs by pulling their horizontal muscle fibers in towards center and bring the entire abdominal wall in and upwards to support your internal organs and spine and lift your pubic bone towards the navel and use your muscles to stabilize your pelvis…”
it's not that the cue itself as a sentence in a vacuum is particularly damaging but words have power. cues matter, and when repeated over and over by instructors and then performed intensely and constantly by a roomful of overachieving women who are thorough af in everything they do, a shoddy cue can become a problem.
shortcuts don't work for the long run.
getting great core engagement is one of those simple but not so simple ideas. it’s a learned technique, and like anything, there's more than just one way to do it. the point is that when we, as participants or instructors, cling to a cue and overdo it, we are not listening to our bodies or the bodies in front of us and create patterns that do not serve us. i've written about this before, but i mention it today because i’ve noticed lately a common correlation between low belly pooching and very strong and defined middle and upper abs (which was totally me, until not too long ago) and i realize why - it's because we have all been told to pull in at the waist, and we did. go figure.
the problem is that too much pulling in of navel to spine can result in imbalanced abdominal activation, aka upper ab gripping. when we cinch around the waist without first lifting the low ab & pelvic floor muscles, we not only leave them out (literally), we actually put pressure down and out on this area which can eventually lead to issues like stress incontinence or even prolapse (over time or after pregnancy, y’all - calm down, you’re not going to actually break your vagina by pulling your belly button in. at least, not right away).
what to do instead? well, pilates and barre with me, duh. but also - consider this: your waist is not your abs. you have multiple muscles that make up the abdominal wall, front back and sides, and these muscles work together towards various goals - holding you up against gravity, for instance, or stabilizing and moving your trunk, pressure management in breathing, and containing vital organs, maybe even protecting growing humans. it’s so much more than the waistline alone, and sometimes in order to get things firing correctly, the go-to muscles have to chill out to let the ones in the back row have a chance.
here's a replacement shortcut cue i use. the next time you hear “belly button to spine,” instead think, “lift pubic bone up.” this helps the lower abs to fire and to distribute the work (and pressure) more evenly throughout the abdominals. try it for a few workouts and let me know how it goes.
what does this have to do with the pernicious p's of perfectionism, people-pleasing and the patriarchy? well for one, the cultural expectation of female physical perfection as expressed through abdominal flatness is definitely learned, not innate. there’s some patriarchy for you. as is learning to feel that your value as a human has anything to do with the topography of your midsection. (spoiler alert - it doesn't.)
the perfectionist part is baked into the tendency to overachieve so that a casual catchphrase can become an absolute law because it is done so constantly and intently. and people-pleasing? i think we all have a little of this. as a kid i wanted my dance teacher's praise, so i tried to do as she said. later, as a fitness professional, i honestly thought no one would believe a word i said about dance or exercise if my stomach wasn’t flat - a mindset that was misguided to say the least. now i know y’all don’t care about my abs. you care about yours.
(which brings me to my PSA for the day: don’t choose instructors based on how they look. choose based on how they make you feel.)
i will say that personally it was a big deal for me to let go of this cue. it had all the weight of a paradigm shift. i was even angry, in a way. but it wasn’t my teachers’ fault. ultimately it was my own inability to be brave enough to listen to my own body and try something outside of what i was told was the the truth. but that, my friends, is no longer the case. and if you are exercising a lot and feel your abs aren’t firing/appearing as you’d like, i can help troubleshoot. take class, book a 30 minute private, ask your questions and get some answers and exercises to try. i'm here for it.
