Before he was governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger was known as The Austrian Oak. He was big. In his heyday as a bodybuilder, the five-fold Mr. Universe and six-time Mr. Olympia stood 6-foot-three, weighed between 225 and 235 pounds, and 22-inch biceps, a 57-inch chest and 28.5-in thighs. And his waist; can you guess?
Not 30 inches.
Like many high school bodybuilders, Schwarzenegger acquired the hourglass-shaped torso using a special technique based on a general posture used in body competition in the 1970s, known as the “vacuum position”. Bodybuilders like Frank Zane, Lee Haney, Arnold and others suck in their stomachs to emphasize the chest in the competition. But the vacuum pose is also a good exercise for the rest of us, even if we pose just in front of the mirror in the bathroom. The exercise, called the ‘stomach vacuum’, or more accurately, the ‘inner-ab vacuum’ is credited with relieving back pain, strengthening the core and reducing the waistline in just three weeks by one centimeter or more.
‘Your inner muscles, called transverse abdominal, act like a natural weight belt, like the kind your workers at Home Depot wear, “explains exercise researcher Ellington Darden, PhD, a pioneer of the Nautilus Training System. “When you contract the muscles that lie horizontally deep below your abdominal muscles, it increases the inner abdominal pressure to support your spine.”
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These muscles are also responsible for good posture and for keeping your organs in place. By strengthening them, your abdomen automatically pulls up and backwards, reducing its apparent size.
Darden says a few times a day this simple move can be done, in addition to a strength training program and a healthy diet, it can also help decorate everyone’s waist. Darden devotes an entire chapter to the slimming technique in his book Flat stomach breakthrough for women. Here is an abridged manual. Read on, and learn more about how to eat healthy, these 100 unhealthy foods on the planet.
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