Breathing exercises are the most powerful and effective ab exercises you can do. They beat ab crunches into an over boiled sprout. They also improve lung capacity, so you can go faster, think better and shove heavier stuff about.
In this particularly scary looking exercise, he breathes in and out a few times, concentrating on fully expanding his lungs on the in breath. Finally, he breathes in, stretching his lungs to capacity, then holds the breath. We can see how skinny his waist gets. The muscles that lift the ribs out are called the intercostals. How can this help? Well, the more your ribs can move, the more you expand your lungs, the more oxygen you can get in. Result.
An alternative that I prefer is to fully breathe in as he does – with maximal rib expansion, then to fully breathe out, drawing the waist in and allowing the diaphram to fully rise. This should make the pelvic floor lift strongly and stretch the diaphragm up.
Advantages to my alternative is that it trains the brain to not panic when running out of breath. And strengthens the fabled core.
Either exercise is also good for post Christmas blockages since they give the bowels a jolly good squeeze.
Mind you, I don’t recommend doing either exercise straight after Christmas dinner or a large meal.