maratoolStomach Vacuum
How to do the stomach vacuum
- To begin, stand straight with your feet shoulder width apart from each other. Place your hands on your hips. This is the starting position.
- Now slowly inhale as much air as possible and then start to exhale as much as possible while bringing your stomach in as much as possible and hold this position. Try to visualize your navel touching your backbone.
- One isometric contraction is around 20 seconds. During the 20 second hold, try to breathe normally. Then inhale and bring your stomach back to the starting position.
- Once you have practiced this exercise, try to perform this exercise for longer than 20 seconds. Tip: You can work your way up to 40-60 seconds.
- Repeat for the recommended amount of sets.
Muscles worked
The muscles under tension are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.
A stretch loads them at the far end of the range they normally work in, so the position you hold is itself the resistance.
Every exercise for:Abdominals
How this movement works
You get into position and hold. One joint sets the angle and one muscle group takes the tension, so the load stays exactly where you put it. Hold for time, breathe normally, and come out the moment the position drifts: a shape that has quietly shifted is no longer training what you set it up to train.
It is filed under stretching, so the target is range of motion rather than force — a position you can settle into and breathe in, held long enough for the tissue to give.
What you need
No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.
Every exercise using:Body only
These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:
- Supine One-Arm Overhead Throwmedicine ball
- Torso Rotationexercise ball
- Ab Crunch Machinemachine
- Ab Rollout on Knees with Barbellbarbell
- Advanced Kettlebell Windmillkettlebell
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 97 abdominals exercises in this database, 69 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.