Hi,
I’ve been following Barbell Medicine for a while, have purchased a couple of templates, and really appreciative all your work.
I have a simple question which is probably obvious, just not to me.
How relaxed should one be when measuring their gut to determine if they need to stat losing some fat?
When I measure I can be:
- 40" when completely relaxed and actively letting go of my abs
- 39" when relaxed but slightly engaging my abs
- 37.5 as if I was to have my shirt off in front of people.
Appreciate some guidance here.
Cheers
Simon
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You should be measuring your abs right above the anterior superior iliac spine while standing up straight, but not sucking in.
$.02 from another trainee: I don’t actively “suck in” when measuring, but I do tighten my abs. My thinking is that it’s much like going to parallel in a squat…there’s many versions of “almost there”, but only one version of “there”.
By tightening my abs, I’m sure that I’m measuring apples-to-apples. If I try to relax, then like you said, am I totally relaxed, or only mostly? I find it very difficult to get the same level of relaxedness day to day. By tightening, I know I’m being consistent across measurements.
Granted, this might not be accurate for the Navy calculation, but I’m not concerned about that as much as I am tracking my own progress over time.
Hi Jordan
This might be a daft question, but when you say “abs” is that the same as waist (ie. the metric where having a measurement over 40” represents a health risk)?
A bit of internet searching shows different organisations have different ways of measuring this. Very confusing for a non-medic who doesn’t know which organisation is credible. For instance, the English NHS says the measurement should be midway between the top of your hips and the bottom of your ribs. But isn’t the ASIS effectively the top of your hips?
thanks v much in advance
The measurement point is just above the ASIS. This is the way to measure that. NHS has the same measurement point.