Stomach Vacuuming: Easiest Way to Flat Abs or Too Good to Be True?

There’s a new abdominal technique in town, and it has an unusual name. But stomach vacuuming isn’t as weird as it sounds.

It’s a breathing exercise that’s supposed to activate and strengthen your transverse abdominis (i.e. your deepest ab muscle) by contracting it. Stomach vacuuming experts swear it’ll help tighten your abs while stabilizing your spine and improving your posture.

According to one YouTube video on the technique, you can do a stomach vacuum while standing, sitting, kneeling, or lying on your back. All you need to do is breathe through your nose for up to five seconds, exhale through your mouth, draw your belly button into your spine, and hold it for several seconds before starting again.

And then flat abs are yours! …Or not, since several fitness experts aren’t exactly buying it.

“I couldn’t list one fitness expert who uses this exercise — I sure as heck don’t,” personal trainer Nick Tumminello, owner of Performance University International, and author of Strength Training for Fat Loss, tells Yahoo Health.

Fitness expert and athletic trainer Tony Gentilcore seconds that, telling Yahoo Health, “I’m someone who doesn’t agree with the stomach vacuuming maneuver.”

But…why not?

According to Tumminello, repeatedly doing stomach vacuuming will just make you better at stomach vacuuming. While you have to use your stomach muscles to do the technique, you’re not adding any additional weight to it that will take your abs to the next level.

“You’re not going to exceed what your body is already capable of,” says Tumminello. “It’s like doing strength training by opening your mail.”

Gentilcore says abdominal strength (and, by extension, helping people with lower back pain) is more about synchronization and getting several muscles to fire at one time. “It’s not about isolating one teeny-tiny muscle with vague, often cumbersome drills,” he says.

Personal trainer Doug Sklar, owner of New York City’s PhilanthroFIT, tells Yahoo Health that doing stomach vacuuming won’t hurt you — it just won’t “significantly enhance your progress.”

As for the posture claims, Tumminello calls them “total bulls—.” “Posture is habitual,” he says. “Saying something will improve your posture by squeezing this one muscle for a few seconds…well, it can, temporarily.” After you’ve finished vacuuming, he says, you just revert back to your normal posture.

Tumminello doesn’t agree with the lower pack pain-reliever claims, either. He cites research conducted in the ‘90s by physiotherapist Paul Hodges that found the transverse abdominis, which is part of your core, has a delayed activation in people who suffer from lower back pain. Many people misinterpreted that as the reason why we have lower back pain but “it’s a symptom of back pain, not the cause of it,” says Tumminello.

Still want flat abs?

Gentilcore says it’s going to take more than a few breathing exercises.

He recommends palloff presses (which involve pulling a cable attached to a weight machine toward your sternum) and farmer carries (walking while carrying a weight in each hand), both of which train your entire core and help improve stability and strength in that area.

Sklar points out that there is no quick fix or secret exercise that, by itself, will flatten your abs, since “all the stomach vacuuming in the world can’t make up for otherwise inconsistent exercise and nutrition habits.”

Moral of the story: If an exercise sounds too good to be true, it probably is.