Dr Mel Siff

An article in a popular bodybuilding magazine stated:

“Inhale and suck in your stomach to activate the transverse abdominis, which
is your body’s natural weightlifting belt. If you learn to use it properly,
you increase intra-abdominal pressure, which will have an unloading effect
on your disks. As with any other muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it!”

***This ’sucking-in of the abs’ advice to stabilise the trunk via activating
transversus is one of the very popular urban myths based on old aerobics
practice and partial references which do not relate to strength training
situations. Belt wearing does not prevent you from using your abs -
plenty of EMG electrical recordings show that idea to be untrue. Moreover,
transversus may be activated in several other ways than just forceful
sucking in, such as forceful grunting and exhalation (see Basmajian
“Muscles Alive”).

There probably isn’t a Powerlifter or Weightlifter alive who would suck abs
in while doing serious training or competitive lifts. Similarly, even
without an added load and no belt, there are no athletes in other sports
who stabilise their trunks in that misguided way – for example, my Russian
colleagues have studied breathing and abdominal muscle recruitment patterns
in their top gymnasts, jumpers, pole vaulters, shotputters and so forth and
nobody sucks in the abs to stabilise the trunk during their events.

As a matter of interest, the body quite naturally responds to force
production with a breath holding reflex (the Valsalva Manoeuvre)
accompanied by an outward bulging of the abdominal muscles. Any deliberate
attempt to pull the abs in produces a tendency towards spinal flexion,
which is the last tendency that anyone wants when squatting, lifting a load
from the ground or pushing above the head.

Outward bulging of the abdomen is a perfectly natural reflex action
associated with large force production and trunk stabilisation – why go
against a natural reflex and pull in when your nervous system is doing a
perfectly competent job on its own by guiding you to push out?

As mentioned earlier, the acts of forceful grunting and short, sharp
attempts at expulsion of air from the lungs tends to strongly activate the
transversus muscle and we have all noticed how often that sort of action is
indulged in by powerlifters.

This ab sucking-in tale is all part of a whole belief system which
maintains that the abdominal muscles are the most important muscles in
stabilising and protecting the back. Some of us in the past have had very
heated arguments about this, but the proponents of this method resolutely
refuse to accept that it is strength of the back muscles which plays a far
greater role in protecting the backs of Weightlifters and Powerlifters.

They seem to refuse the research of folk such as Basmajian (“Muscles
Alive”) that it is passive bulging of the abdominal muscles, rather than
active contraction of these muscles, which offers added pneumatic
stabilisation to the already massive contribution by the erector spinae
muscles of the back. Maybe they actually believe that huge abs are better
for trunk strength than strong backs!

The article continued: “I’m not a proponent of lifting belts because
wearing one tends to cause dysfunction of your transverse abdominis, which
can eventually lead to serious injury. A weight belt inhibits your nervous
systemís ability to fire that muscle when itís neededónot only for
weightlifting activity but for normal everyday movements”

***This is not supported by research. There are several ways of wearing a
belt, anyway – the fairly loose wearing of a belt can enhance one’s
proprioceptive awareness and act as a useful teaching tool. On the other
hand, the chronic wearing of a very tight belt for entire workouts at a
time, day in, day out theoretically can lead to altered patterns of trunk
stabilisation, but there are very few lifters who ever leave tight belts or
wraps on for hours on end – invariably most lifters who use belts correctly
loosen them directly after their lifts. The chronic use of a fairly tight
belt would probably be more associated with some sort of psychological
dependence than any real weakening of any muscles – and that may be one
reason not to rely all the time on belt support for every exercise

I cannot see anyone using a lever buckle belt set at maximal tightness for
anything longer than one maximum lift, because of the severe discomfort
associated with that type of chronic use.

Very tight belts are used only for the few seconds of maximal attempts and
there is absolutely no research whatsoever which show that this causes any
spinal problems. Nor is there any research or clinical evidence that
“dysfunction of your transverse abdominis” eventually leads to serious injury.

To state that “A weight belt inhibits your nervous system’s ability to
fire” is total nonsense and is sheer opinion – again there is no research
showing this, so don’t take it seriously. It would be most interesting to
hear more about how a belt can inhibit a whole nervous system’s electrical
functioning.

There is far more risk in telling any lifter not to use a belt for the
occasional 1RM efforts than there is in that same lifter employing a method
which he/she is used to. By all means use a tight belt for those periodic
maximal lifts, but just don’t become too psychologically reliant on belt
security for entire workouts at a time.

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ARCHIVED ARTICLES ON TA

Here are a few past articles that some of us wrote for other Internet groups
on this topic:

http://www.WeightsNet.com/cgi-bin/weightsissues.pl?2338
http://www.WeightsNet.com/cgi-bin/weightsissues.pl?1971
http://www.WeightsNet.com/cgi-bin/weightsissues.pl?2331
http://www.WeightsNet.com/cgi-bin/weightsissues.pl?1977
http://www.WeightsNet.com/cgi-bin/weightsissues.pl?1467
http://otpt.ups.edu/listservs/PTHER/ABS_PARADOX.html
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/physio/2000-07/0201.html
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/physio/2000-05/0054.html
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/physio/1999-07/0034.html

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Dr Mel Siff

Dr Mel C Siff

“By focusing on your the transverse abdominis when you move, you can
improve your core control during exercise”, says NY City physical therapist
and personal trainer Suzanne Countryman. “Plus you’ll suffer less wear and
tear on your back, neck and knees”.

***Comment. Activation of transversus abdominis (TA) appears to be the
latest “hot” advice for core stabilisation and training among PTs and
fitness instructors. While voluntary activation of TA sometimes may be
useful in contributing to trunk stability in fairly static postures before
a dynamic multi-dimensional movement occurs, it becomes impossible and
unwise to mentally involve yourself in any dynamic training or sporting
tasks which activate numerous different patterns of contraction and
relaxation of many stabilising and moving muscles.

Moreover, the more rapid, more forceful or more complex the activity, the
less able one is able to focus on controlling the moment-to-moment action
of any given muscle. The inadvisability of doing this to TA or any other
muscle for that matter has often been fondly referred to in exercise
physiology as “paralysis by analysis.”

So, while you may be able to activate TA at the start of a squat, press,
jump, clean or deadlift, the moment that complex dynamic action begins, the
neural programs that control the pattern of movement will set off a series
of involuntary reflexes and motor actions over which one has little or no
control. In fact, deliberate attempts to activate TA often tend to
activate abdominal contraction and lumbar spinal flexion, which is the last
thing that you want during a heavy lift or complex action.

It is unnecessary to try to intervene in controlling in any given single
muscle once you are an experienced exerciser, because the correct
repetition of any exercise will ensure that your neural programs activate
or relax the necessary muscle in the most effective and safest manner. The
very reason that we practise technique is to create automatic neural
programs that we don’t have to ever think about during an exercise or
sporting action.

I leave the comment about TA control helping to protect neck and knees to
others for their scrutiny.

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ISOLATION PHILOSOPHY

Dr Mel C Siff

The therapeutic and fitness training worlds still seem to place a heavy
emphasis on an isolationist approach to physical testing and conditioning,
without carefully identifying the situational limitations and scope
whenever such as approach is used.

Attempts are made to test and train muscles individually. Few days pass
without comments being made on isolating the upper or lower abdominals for
training, selectively training the core of the body, activating
transversus abdominis to ’stabilise the trunk’, testing for weaknesses or
imbalances in certain muscle groups or explaining poor performance or
injury on the basis of imbalance in some isolated system of the body.

The body constitutes a linked system and, unless the scope and limitations
of any given isolationist approach is meticulously identified, it is
misleading and unwarranted to use and extrapolate findings based on
isolationist methods. If one unquestioningly applies isolationist methods,
then it is being assumed that the isolated area concerned constitutes a
closed system. This implies further that this isolated system is not
affected by or does not affect what happens in adjacent or other linked
systems, or at least that any such interaction with other systems is
insignificant.

The trunk, abdominals, lower extremity, knee and so forth are not closed
systems and any action involving these subsystems influences what is
happening in all parts of the body and the body as a whole. It is vital
that the body be regarded in terms of a systems theoretical approach,
rather than one which makes very tenuous assumptions about the closedness
of conveniently isolated subsystems whose apparent isolation from other
systems invariably is based entirely on convenience or convenience.

Even if one attempts to apply a systems theoretical approach, it may still
be inadequate to regard the entire body as the superordinate closed system,
as is implied, for instance, by the current somewhat simplistic emphasis on
so-called “core training”. The limitations of the latter concept may
readily be noticed if one observes that it is very rare in land-based sport
for core stability to be manifested in the absence of contact with the
ground or external objects. Peripheral stability, which usually is reliant
on solid contact between the extremities of the body with some surface, is
essential before core stability becomes implicated in a given sporting
action on land.

Without adequate peripheral stabilisation, the functional capabilities of
the “core” are meaningless. The entire body or the body-surface constitutes
the appropriate closed system for our attention. Thus, if terms such as
“core stabilisation” are to be used, then they need to be carefully applied
within the appropriate context.

This is not to negate the value of approaches that use isolationist
approaches for valid therapeutic or analytical reasons, such as those
involving EMG mediated biofeedback, “Kegel” exercises, and post surgical
respiratory exercises, but it is to stress that the unqualified application
of isolationist approaches to sports conditioning needs to be viewed with
careful circumspection.

If we do so, then we may also become far more careful to avoid referring
rigidly to certain muscles as stabilisers, movers, agonist, antagonists,
flexors, adductors and so on, instead choosing to refer to the stabilising,
moving, agonistic, antagonistic, flexor and adduction roles of a muscle
during any given phase of a specific motor action.

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Someone from the original group which initiated the discussion on a
squatting article in that bodybuilding magazine reminded me that I also
sent in these comments about belt wearing and squats. Here it is, just in
case some folk feel that the critique may be incomplete without inclusion
of this aspect.
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Dr Mel Siff