Barbell Shrugged - 173- Why Your Mobility Is Not Improving w/ Roop Sihota

Episode Date: April 15, 2015

Why your mobility is not improving and what you can do about it.

Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. You got mobilized for your podcast. Rolled around, and that's all I need. That's all I need. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe standing here with Chris Moore and Doug Larson. We have a – I can't help it. We got a CTP behind the iPhone camera here. Gear failed on us.

We're supposed to say we're upgrading. We're trying something artistic. That's right. That's right. Artistic expression via mobile phone device. We're going minimal. Minimal. There you go. We have Roop Sahota.

Ooh, that's it. You got it. Yeah. Good job going minimal. There you go. We have Roop Sahota. Ooh, that's it. You got it. Good job, coach. Mobility expert. He was down here teaching a mobility seminar. That's right. And so Doug and CTP

went and checked it out and said we should learn how to podcast with this dude. So yeah, we took over CrossFit Invictus. Very green in there. Very. Lots of D's everywhere.

Much thanks to those guys for letting us come do this. So I wasn't at the seminar today, but I'm going to let Doug's going to have to lead this whole show today. First, make sure you go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. Check out the courses and coaching programs. See what's going on over there. If you have specific goals

for, uh, well, you're training these, they might be over there. Maybe, maybe not click on it. Find out. Yeah. In a big way. How did you get into teaching these mobility seminars? Oh, uh, so I've been at San Francisco CrossFit since 2007 2007 as an athlete but i started coaching there back in 08 uh back then it was myself kelly starrett adrian bosman uh diane fu carl pauli and a few others and a good team a good team a pretty good onset yeah yeah we were in a parking lot fucking around a lot so the old school days outside yeah yeah the misty days the misty days we were in the parking lot from 08 lot. The old school days. The misty days. We were in the parking lot from 08 till 2010 or 2013. During that time, I started coaching, fell in love with what we were doing. I always liked movement. I always liked the notion of physical therapy, but not necessarily

how physical therapy was conventionally done in the mainstream medical field. Then when I met Kelly in 08, it kind of readily registered in with me as far as all right somebody gets it the way i want to apply it it's not just about fixing people when they're broke and it's not even about having a conversation about preventing injuries as much as let's show people that they can get really good performance out of really good movement and mobility and oh by the way by doing so you don't have to have the conversation about preventing injuries they just don't happen and you'll find yourself feeling great and you'll find, absolutely. So you were coaching there for a couple of years and then you went to physical therapy school? Yeah, I was coaching there from 08 to about 2010. During that

time, I was also in the Silicon Valley working for a Fortune 500 company. You're kind of classic desk bound, Indian engineer, IT kind of guy. And I decided in about 2009 to go back to school, which required about a year's worth of prerequisites, a bunch of all over the place, Bay Area community colleges, extension schools to get all my prerequisites done. And then I started PT school at the end of 2010. You just decided the engineering and stuff

on a typical path. This wasn't for you, man. For me, it was just, I was sitting at a desk and I had no direct connection with any of the customers. Like a boss would come to me and tell me what to do and i like i have no idea what the hell products we actually make i have no relevant i don't know what the relevance of these products are to the world so it really didn't resonate with me or have the impact that

i wanted to and you felt this was the opposite thing yeah absolutely i had direct connection with people trying to make the changes we were hoping to make i could impact their lives without feeling like i had to take 20 steps or go through a bunch of red tape to get there. It was just like, here's the individuals that I get to see three or five times a week in a gym. I don't have to worry about insurance. I don't have to worry about sitting here and go through a bunch of formalities that the medical system has to go through.

People are here working out. Let's fix their movement now. And then I decided to go back and get my degree, my doctorate in physical therapy in conjunction with that. So now I can actually practice if I need to, but it really helped me vet through a lot of my thinking when I'm working with individuals to really understand what's going on with their bodies. Are you separating the two in your practice? Are you having your physical therapy clients and times,

and then you have when you're training, or are you just kind of blended all together? It's kind of a blended model. We call it an open clinic at Sandwiches CrossFit. So if you walk into Sandwiches CrossFit, you guys have been there, and you guys know the little corner where you did your interviews with Kelly and Carl. That's our open clinic. The little mobility zone? Yeah, the mobility zone, right? That's our open clinic. So we tell people when you're coming to our place, like this is where you're going to get any sort of treatment done on you if there is any manual therapy. But this is our open clinic, meaning how we mobilize here and how we fix your manual therapy, we then correct your movement right here and there in the facility without having to bunch of do a bunch of correlates or take you somewhere else

so it has a nice model where it's like everything is there in my practice I do see a lot of individual people one-on-one that want some private coaching that are dealing with some major injuries in their life that they're trying to recover from or just don't trust other people because of the experience that I fortunately have and I teach CrossFit classes but there are still occurrences where I'll have individuals come in be be like, I've done all this mobility work. I've done all this movement stuff. I've done everything you guys have talked about. Can you get your hands on me and do a little bit of manipulation, do some adjustments? Those are people that are a little more challenging because they put in the leg work on their end. They don't

just come in and say, Hey, I'm tight. Fix me. Right. Cause those are the people that I'm like, all right, go fix yourself. A lot of times people walk into a PT clinic. That's the only physical activity they get. Yeah, absolutely. And then they go home, sit on the couch until the next PT session. They also expect for you to fix them. Yeah, that's it. Like you're magic.

Yeah. Like they don't have to do anything on their own. You lay hands on them like a witch doctor and remove the evilness from their body for good. Like pull out a liver. Take a cheap liver from the belly. Me doing this one little simple mobilization is going to fix your hip for the rest of your life. It's like, come on.

And we talked about this at the end of the seminar today. It's like, my goal is to always empower individuals to go take these tools to go fix themselves. I just want to educate you on what's wrong, not actually get my hands on you. If I need to, clear some corners, but my goal is to give you the tools so you can go off and do it yourself.

Now, whether or not you're accountable enough, responsible enough to go do that on your own, is going to be indicated by either you get better or then you get stuck in the rat race of the medical field and it's like good luck you're not going to get really much result there because you're just going to get tossed around and that's the sad part of it people forget man like you spend all this time and always cumulative hours getting very immobile yeah and now you show up and a guy does yeah okay you're feeling better and you go home like, this can never be undone now.

That five minutes has outdone the ten years of shitty posture I put in. Well, this is the thing. So I was talking about this seminar this morning or today. It's a lot of athletes come into the seminars, hey, like my squat technique stinks. Like I want to get better at my squat. I'm like, all right, talk to me about your day, not just about your exercising. And they're like, well, when I work out, I squat. I'm like, no, no, I know what you do when you work out.

I know you're trying to get in the best position and you're trying to mobilize. Talk to me about the other 14 hours of the day. Like, all right, they're like, well, when I work out, I squat. I'm like, no, no, I know what you do when you work out. I know you're trying to get in the best position and you're trying to mobilize. Talk to me about the other 14 hours of the day. Like, all right. They're like, well, I go to my office. It takes me about an hour and a half to get there in my car. Then I sit in my office about six or eight hours. I get up once in a while to go get some coffee. And I'm like.

That's what you are. Yeah, that is what you are. You're a guy who spends the most of his day sitting around waiting for coffee breaks and doing nothing much. And so your hips are going to. I know, but if that's 23 hours and then the one hour or 35 minutes you go to the gym and you hustle really hard and you be an athlete, the bulk of your time is laziness. Absolutely. Not to be a dick about it, but just lay it out on a budget graph and see where the time goes, man. A budget graph.

A budget graph. I bet you do a lot of budgets at your house. You could have made a budget. I go, Jamie, this big wedge, how can we make that one different shaped? That's how I think of numbers. But the point travels, folks, right? I mean, the cumulative weight of what you do is what you are, right? Yeah, and at Mobility, while we talk about 10 or 20 minutes a day,

we'll chip away at the rust that you guys develop. But a lot of people come in saying, I want results quicker. All right, you want results quicker. The 10 or 20 minutes will make big changes, but we're looking at a long-term plan here. Now, if we're talking about, do you want to make those changes quicker? Let's talk about the whole lifestyle approach to this. What are you doing on a day-to-day basis to actually improve your mobility? Are you going around for a walk once in a while? Are you going

out sitting on the bottom of your squat? Or is the vast majority of your sitting happening in a chair, happening on a couch, happening on a dining table? And so we start looking at the paradigm and look at the entire structure and try to understand, hey, what you do the most is what you're going to adapt to. What do you do the most? What do you actually want to do the most? And start making that shift in the thinking. And I actually prefer that mentality over, you know, just come and fix me. I'll work out for an hour a day. I'll do the best I can. It's like, okay. You got any tools for accountability to help people realize how much they're doing in bad positions? Like one of the easiest ways you can fix a diet is right. I know you think you work,

you eat well, right? And when you write down the food, you can fix a diet is, I know you think you eat well, right? When you write down the food, you're like, oh shit, I forgot I ate all those Twizzlers last night. But could you do that? I want to be good with time. Eight to noon, I sat in a chair. Didn't move a muscle. Oh shit, yeah.

Well, I do it the other way where it's like, I don't want to recognize what you don't do or what negative things you do. I want to recognize what positive things you do. So rather than sit negative things you do. I want to recognize what positive things you do. So rather than sit here and acknowledge how long you sit, tell me how long you squat. So that way at least it creates that mentality of, all right, I need to squat more rather than, oh, my God, I sit a lot. Sticking to the positive. Yeah.

So what I try to do is I'll tell people, like, go sit in the bottom of your squat for 30 minutes a day. And if you think about it, you're up for, let's say, 14 hours. That's less than five minutes an hour. Just give me five minutes an hour and you can easily chip away that sucker. So find a way to quickly, you know, a lot of people say. That accumulates a lot. Yeah, it accumulates a lot. And if you just sit there and tell people like when computers became so dominant in the workforce,

people were like, hey, every 20 minutes, look away to rest your eyes, relax. You can't, you know, you can actually relax your cilia muscles. You're not. Same idea. Instead of going for a walk, which is fine. I've never heard that. You've never heard that. You cast your eyes out.

I've heard Katie Bowman talk about that. I have, but this is the first time I've heard anyone say that that was a standard thing that people were like, oh, make sure you do that. They don't do it anymore, I don't think. No, they don't talk about it as much as they used to because they feel like it's assumed that you're supposed to do that, get away. But the reality is we're probably spending more time on our computers, more time on our iPhones than we have ever before. I think the reality is people don't realize how bad it is, how destructive it can probably be to your long-term vision.

Sitting and staring at something close to you. What was the thing you mentioned earlier about the neck? There's a term for it now? Oh, yeah. Tech's neck or something like that? Yeah, it's a medical condition now called tech's neck, meaning that if you're somebody who's, we average about two and a half hours of time on our phone,

physical devices in our hand. And every time you're in a negative postural aligned position, meaning your head isn't stacked over the rest of your body, every shift of weight, every shift of degree of your head has, it increases the weight of your head. So if I- It's not a 10 pound sandbag hanging in front of your face. No, 60 pounds. 60 pounds.

Right here, just me standing here, it's about 10 pounds, normal. But every degree forward, when I get to 60 60 degrees it literally is 60 pounds of weight and if you have a head as big as mine fuck it's got like 120 yes oh my god and if you guys ever want to test out how just grab a 60 pound kettlebell and just hold it out now you know what it feels like just to stand like this man does your head is heavier than his kettlebell how is that possible yeah exactly so it's those type of things that in the medical field they've just turned it into all right it's just another diagnosis let's just go ahead and say, hey, it's a text neck. And you can go ahead

and treat all the crap around that, which is, all right, you got all this pain, but until we actually fix the issue, which is, are you in a good position, recognizing you're spending two and a half hours there all day long, we're not going to change anything. For some reason,

I feel like when people get a diagnosis, once there's a name to it and a label to it, they can take the responsibility away from themselves. They're like, well, no, I have this thing. It's not my fault. I have this condition. And there's nothing I can do about it because it's a condition. The tech's neck.

Yeah, right. It's just something I'm going to live with. No, it's interesting. You got to go get my – I'm waiting for a law to be intervened now. We got to intervene and force people now to hold their necks right. We need more laws in place and more bureaucracy to stop it from happening. Oh, I have people all the time telling me – A scourge of hold their necks right. You need more laws in place and more bureaucracy to stop it from happening. Oh, I have people all the time telling me. A scourge of Tex-Nex.

I have people all the time telling me, hey, if you just give me like a bra or some sort of contraption to hold my shoulders back and hold me in this position, that would just make my life so goddamn easy. And I'm like, yeah, let me just go make that billion dollar idea. Because what we need is more shit in the world. That's what we need. Save this awareness raising. But it's interesting that you bring that up about this whole, once you get a diagnosis, almost you can rely on that diagnosis as your excuse. We've had people at our gym that will come in and be like, hey, I've been dosed with

quad tendinopathy. No wonder why I have pain. It's like, wait a minute. No, no, no, no. You got the tendinopathy tendonitis because of something. Just having that diagnosis is your acknowledgement of the symptom, which is you've irritated the crap out of the tendon. You've yet to acknowledge what actually caused that and what changes you're making to address that. And I think that's what

is significantly backwards in kind of our approach sometimes to healing people is we look at what they do. Hey, you came in with a herniation in your back. Let's go ahead and surgically repair that. But they don't take a step back and say, hey, that herniation is probably just your symptom. You did something to cause that herniation, which then leads you to pain. But you just going in there surgically may reduce the pain associated with it, but you never address the cause of why you had that herniation. We should just stop naming stuff after the symptoms. We just name it from the cause.

After the movement error. And then people will go, I'm such a retard. That's exactly right. Because it's not the thing anymore. They'll take responsibility for it. They have to, right? That's exactly right. You call it dummy neck syndrome instead of Texas

that's exactly right Kelly Starrett and I have been talking a lot about this and he what we want to do is start developing the diagnosis around the movement pathology not the you know pathognomonic like the occurrence of our ACL tear no we don't care we do care that the ACL tore we care that you had a deficiency in your squat when you tried to create torque and obviously it should not have been loaded like that in the first place or else it wouldn't tear yeah exactly presumably and so a lot of people are like well a lot of these injuries are just going to happen because athletes are you know really high demand like sports they're crashing

their bodies into each other and it's like okay you'll have these injuries this one-off occurrences occur but vast majority of acl tears are non-impact injuries right and so it's it's not like somebody is running into somebody else, jamming the leg into their knee, and all of a sudden there goes the ACL. Yeah, I don't like anybody saying it's the nature of sport because there's a lot of people who, yeah, they're playing sport at a high level and they were amazing and they didn't last as long as they should have. Yeah, absolutely.

Because it doesn't matter that they were amazing. They found a way to be amazing, but it cost them everything. Average span in most sports is what, Three to five years in an NFL contract? And so you're looking at somebody who's 28 years old and the career is almost over and it's like, wait, is this truly a reflection of their true capacity and their potential? No, you just as a business have spent away their genetics

not trying to address whatever's going on because your goal is to get them for the shortest amount of time, pay them whatever they need to so you can move on to the next person to make you the most amount of money. They're expendable. Yeah, exactly. Because if someone else, younger,

less beaten up, will come in and they can just take the contract. Absolutely. Now you're figuring out how sports work, Mike. Good job.

Earlier you were also saying you saw a commercial with a... There's some other industries that work the same way, I won't mention. You were saying

you watched a commercial and on the commercial you saw an NFL player jump and his knees click together, which is a symptom of, I guess technically a symptom, but it's an indication that you probably could tear your ACL down the line.

You guys predicted that he would, and then magically, a couple years later, he totally did. Oh, really? Yeah, absolutely. You see this occur a lot, and we talk about this in some of our seminars, and when people tend to stand, you see a lot of athletes who have flat feet, and people just take that as, oh, it's just genetics. It's just how they were made.

That guy can never join the Army. Oh, flat army oh right right but if you're a college student going to the nfl and they see that kind of flat foot occurrence is that drops your draft status because that's the pathognomonic cue for it you're probably likely to tear your acl because you have this inability to keep your hip in a good position causing that knee to cave in and what we saw is in this case is we saw a player coming out of college doing doing these commercials, and you see these faulty mechanics. It's like, all right, that person's very vulnerable. Could it possibly have not occurred? Sure.

But the likelihood, in our opinion, was a little bit higher because of these faulty mechanics. And then over years, it just happened to come to fruition. I think what bums me out about being a former athlete and stuff, no one's telling that kid there that he should back off and correct motion problems before he compromises his ability to play football in the future they're going to push that kid as fast into the situation as possible to get the money and i think that the reason that is is because what we prioritize

is the number on the bar the number of reps and around the time that you've taken every time every number and there's something to be said for how strong you are but if how strong you are is trumped by the quality of which you move or the other way around how strong you are trumps the quality of which you move then maybe that's not the best indicator of how strong we possibly are. Maybe it's more of an indicator that you could be stronger, you could be safer if we get you into a better position. And this is just a number where you truly are spending your genetics. But if we get you into a better shape, get you into a more mobile position, maybe the sky's the limit on your capacity there. And we're not, with a lot of these athletes, we feel like

we're not really challenging their capacity, we're spending their genetics. And if we can get to them into a better position, then it's a true test of what does their capacity actually look like? Right. And even in the CrossFit community, we see this a lot where a lot of people come in and they're working out really hard, but because of the amount of effort that they have to go through just to fight their own body, to get into a good position, the workout is not really a reflection of their work capacity. It really a reflection of their work capacity. It's a reflection of their work capacity after they figure out how to fight against themselves.

So hugely inefficient. Yeah. And if we can make them more efficient in their movement pattern, the economy of motion goes up, the movement patterns get better and better. And then the workout put is a true reflection of their genetics. Better performance and less weight and less recovery demands. It's the only way.

So earlier you were saying that it's 20 minutes a day, no matter what, you should be working on movement skills and mobility. Yeah. And then an interesting thing that you said during the seminar was that it's not just 20 minutes a day. It's 20 minutes a day if you don't do anything. Yeah. If you work out for an hour, it's another 20 minutes. If you work out for two hours or two sessions, it's probably another 20 minutes on top of that. Yeah.

So it depends on how much you actually move, how much maintenance you need to do as well. Yeah. We generally say is that if you're not moving at all, it doesn't matter to me in the sense of you're not moving in your gym exercise routine, you're still moving throughout the day. You're still sitting, you're still commuting in a car. So you're still doing negative impacts, things on your body. So we want a minimum of 15 or 20 minutes a day just to undo that. If not, at least undo whatever you did before exercise wise to undo that. If not, at least undo whatever you did before exercise wise the day before. If you are working out the 15 or 20 minutes, we feel like is adequate enough. But if you're working out for two hours, you have to add

another 15 or 20 minutes on top of that. You're working out six hours, it adds up. Now it doesn't all have to be rolling out with the lacrosse ball. It doesn't all have to be, you know, go ahead and have a partner smash you out. It could be, all right, I'm going to go sit in the hot tub. I'm going to go put on a Mark Pro device. Kelly says it the best, like, what are you doing to prepare yourself for the next day? It's what are you doing to impact your body in a positive way to undo some of this congestion, the stiffnesses that you've built up?

Especially in, you know, your guys' world where you're spending a lot of time commuting and traveling, like being in a plane, being in a car, like all these types. And you, big man, being in a plane. Who you calling fat, dude? All right. No, I'm kidding. But being in a plane.

No, I don't squeeze into an airplane seat well at all. Good God, no. Totally accurate. Well, I was just talking. It's like you read my mind. I went to Phoenix last weekend. And while I was there, I fortunately had an exit row seat. And so I got the opportunity to have a little bit more leg room.

But I was like, screw it. I haven't had the opportunity to couch stretch while I'm on a plane ever. So I just dropped myself down, did a little bit of couch stretch. And I was like, screw it. I haven't had the opportunity to couch stretch while I'm on a plane ever. So I just dropped myself down, did a little bit of couch stretch, and I put a little post out. Matt Vincent responded back and was like, that would never fucking happen to me. There's no way.

Twice your size. Yeah, he's like, there's no way. You get these strange looks on the airplane, like, oh man, this guy, he's doing something provocative on the airplane, everybody. Get your attention on him. He gets his fucking foot up on the chair, weirdly. Yeah, the brown guy sitting there

with a Mark Pro device, being in the back. I get some weird ass looks right there, man. So I do have to be aware of that. But luckily my wife was there. She was helping out. She's a people. He's stretching.

Yeah. He's just taking care of himself. And I was like, okay. But you have all these other occurrences where we're just, we spend a lot of time in our life trying to get from point A to point B. And that requires us to be in not the best position possible when we're commuting.

So what are the things that we're doing on a day to day basis to fix that? What I try to do when I'm at home, this pisses off my wife like no other. I try not to sit on the couch, even though we spent a lot of goddamn money on these couches. We're getting rid of our couches. I've tried to have that conversation. Should I be ready? Yeah. Our couch is just good for laying down, in my opinion, but my wife just likes to lounge, and hey, that's her prerogative. But I get home and I sit on the ground. I try to just kind of open up my hips, sit in the lotus position

or just do a little couch stretch, do whatever I can. If I'm going to sit, I'm going to try to do whatever I can to make it a positive routine. Yeah, we learned, listen to Katie, that you can use the floor as a tool to basically massage yourself. You actually mentioned that today. Yeah, if you're laying on the floor and flopping around, you're basically giving yourself a massage, using the earth as your rolling device or whatnot.

I don't get all that hippy-dippy into it. It's a hard-ass graph. We're so hippy. Yeah, I see that, right? No, but it's right. If you're laying down on the ground, and some of you guys will try this at home. You guys are laying on the ground

and just rolling your stomach, and all of a sudden it feels like my quads are getting rolled out by a roller. That tells you how tight you are. That also tells you you don't need a lot of equipment to do any mobilization. Just get your butt on the ground and do something and just keep moving that tissue,

and maybe there's some value in that. Doug, I tell you, we're doing the whole small minimum firm bed thing now. I mean, why? If we're getting rid of our big, cushy, awesome bed, we're going to thin.

It's layers, tight layers of wool and cotton, I think. Wool and cotton, so it's very dense, it's very short, and we got a very minimal low bed, like a Japanese style frame for it.

So it's going to be a, old Chris is going to do some experimenting on himself. We're taking some bets, man. He's going it. So it's going to be a, old Chris is going to do some experimenting. We're taking some bets, man. He's going to fold, he's going to give in, he's going to go get that big shirt and mattress. I'm trying to squeeze some more life out of myself, but I'm going to try anything I can. Because look, here's the thing. One thing I'm learning is the easiest part, like for my

training right now, because I'm going to try to do a power to me, right? And I'm feeling alright strength wise, but the barbell stuff for me, that's the easiest part of it. Being strong is the easy part. Doing what I need to do to accelerate my recovery and rejuvenation for the next session is something I've always – when you're 20, you don't think about that shit. No, absolutely not.

But now it's like that is the most important thing is self-love and rejuvenation, mobility, and recovery so I can come up and be optimized for training. That's right. Then all the numbers, all that's easy if I can do all the lead work to prepare for the training. Yeah, we talk about this seminar today, and it's like as human beings, as athletes, we do a great job going zero to 60 real fast. Like we're really good at revving up, right? We're really good at redlining when we need to.

But we do horribly when we're trying to go from 60 to zero and downregulate the system, recover really well, get the good sleep, get the good hydration. How am I rolling out at home? What does my sleep pattern look like? Is it a dark room? Is it a room that has all this extra light into it? What are all the things that I'm doing to prepare myself for the next day? And if you're waking up- All that adds up. Right? Yeah. If you're waking up and you've slept less than six hours because, yeah, you got kids, you got other things, you got to realize that maybe your nervous system is not primed to lift heavy that day. And there's plenty of apps out there nowadays. I think Omega, no, is it Omega Wave? I think Omega Wave may be one of the companies that one of our mobility crew uses. And what it is, is just you wake up in the morning,

you do a little quick test and based on how you slept, how you recover the next day, it tells you what your nervous system is going to look like the next day. Meaning that if you wake up in the morning and notice that you're going to be a down day, maybe you adjust your training. Or maybe you say, I'm not going to look at it till the end of the day. Did my feelings throughout the day match what my nervous system was going to respond to? Yeah. And it gives you that kind of input ahead of time or after the fact to

acknowledge, did you optimize your system based on how your nervous system was recovered from the next day? Is it going to be able to tell on his floor palette? Oh, don't, don't go, don't,

don't start poking back on my lifestyle choices. Keep your focus on the man and his questions and ideas. Let's take a break real quick. When we come back, we're going to find out all the different options for sleep here. This is Tim Ferriss, and you are listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show,

go to barbellshrug.com and sign up for the newsletter. And we're back. What am I bringing up, Doug? He's like, I'll let you bring it up. I'm like, we didn't discuss it. Doug goes up. I just want you to look awkward. Doug goes, don't worry about this. I got this. But you lead in.

Alright, so during the seminar today, you said that before the workout, you do most of your mobilizations, band distraction-type stretches. And then after the workout, post-workout, you're going to do most of your soft tissue work, your rolling, things like that. And that's not necessarily what most people do. Why do you choose to do it that way? Well, there's two different ideas on here.

One, when we're doing a lot of soft tissue work, let's say you're rolling on a foam roller that's rolling on a lacrosse ball, if you are making the right results, if you're making the right changes, it's going to require you to get into some deep, deep, gnarly, stiff bits into your tissues, require you to get some deep relaxations to unglue those trigger points. That, we feel like, does two things. One, it takes a little bit more time than just kind of rolling superficially on your foam roller. You've got to get in there. You've got to get into that deep, deep, deep, nitty-gritty tissue. Second, if you do that and it takes that much time, you're kicking in what's called this parasympathetic response. Your rest digests, go to hell to sleep. I'm not ready to rev up.

And what we tell people is that type of stimulus should be safe for after a workout. What we find is if you're trying to roll out for less than three or four minutes and you're just getting on the cross ball and a roller, yeah, you could probably make some change, but you're probably not going to make as much change as you would if you grabbed a band, opened up your hip to clear some of the corners going on in the joint capsule. And the joint capsule is something you can quickly add into a warm-up without cooling down your nervous system that allows you to clear little corners, quickly get the ranges of motion back that allow you to utilize it for the workout that you can include in that warm-up without down-regulating the system and doesn't take away from good performance. And soft tissue, however, after a workout, as you guys found out today, when you're doing soft tissue correctly, one, it's freaking uncomfortable. You're probably not going to feel like even thinking about the workout after somebody worked you over good.

Yeah, you're wanting to just go into that happy little pain cave of yours, just zone the hell out and just call it a day. So we say save that stuff for after a workout where you can actually make the most amount of change and where we feel like you can get the best about a recovery from that. And so that's why we tell people the problem is, is not only does the soft tissue work elicit that parasympathetic response, but then you also have to realize this. We talked about this in the sense of, all right, you've just been sleeping for the last six or eight hours, or you've been at your office all day long, sitting in a chair, you come into the gym.

And the first thing you do is lay down on a foam roller. It's like, wait a minute, what kind of response are you trying to get out of your body right you have fall asleep before you train yeah i lay down a foam roller right when i get to the gym it means that i don't really want to be there right now i'm just like fuck maybe i'll just roll yeah right means i'm tired is what it means that's exactly the response right you are tired you want to lay back down so we're like hey if you're coming in here and 15.5 is on the schedule if you got thrusters and burpees or thrusters and whatever you've got going on, man, you've got to get that core temperature up.

You've got to figure out where your stiffnesses are at. So when I start the class or I'm starting to coach you, I don't have to deal with all the crap that's going on in your body. I can actually warm you up and teach you these complex movements because you've cleared some of those corners. Now, once in a while, if there's a big class going on and I see some common errors, like nobody's able to get their overhead position as good as they could, maybe I'll throw in a band and clear some corners.

We say warm the system up, get the blood flow where it could maybe i'll throw in a band and clear some corners we say warm the system up get the blood flow where it needs to go throw in a band to do some mobilization but leave all that soft tissue crap till afterwards where you make the real big changes and you recover really well for the next day yeah i've actually noticed uh i got some stuff from jill miller yeah and all the soft tissue work i think i made more progress with mobility using that versus any stretching whatsoever. Absolutely. And with the mobilizations nowadays, I think people know how to use the bands. I think people know how to what to do before a workout and warm up. We do a horrible job, like I said, on the other end is the 60 to zero bringing down our system. And the soft tissue work is great and dandy when you're laying out and kind of doing it.

But when you're and when you're doing it correctly and you're getting into where your stiffest bits are and you're contracting, relaxing, taking big, deep, continuous breathing patterns in to really get into those deep tissues, that's where you're going to make the biggest change on your mobility. The joint corners are relatively easy to clear out. Any physio and osteo can get in there and clear some of those corners. You can do it with a band. It's the soft tissue restriction. The soft tissue restrictions that most people end up making are the adaptational errors that they make because of the natural posture positions they're in all day. If I sit in this kind of douchebag shoulder-rolled position, all these tissues are going to get tied all day long. It's like I can go off and clear the joint. Especially if you go to the gym and then do three sets of 10 bench press every day for always and never do anything else.

Nothing else. The best part is you'll see the biggest guys like this and be like, how much you bench? It's like, 165. Because they can't do anything else because their shoulders are stuck forward i had somebody ask me this after the summer like why can't i push i'm so strong pulling i can't push worth crap and i'm like well look at your shoulders you got no mechanical advantage to push from in this rounded position if i actually got you in this position where you had more range to claim what a big power that does they are arched back and pin right because it gets your shoulder

leverage yeah yeah exactly and you feel like there's a lot of athletes coming in, like, look at my pull-ups are so strong. I'm like, well, no crap, because look how far back your shoulders can move, even though this is probably not the best pattern you want to go into. And they get stuck in these positions. But here's the problem with this. We have a lot of athletes that come in, like, all right, I have these kind of douchebaggy tight shoulders. So what I'm going to do is go ahead and strengthen the living hell in my back, because now my posture is going to get aligned.

Your body plays this kind of tug-of-war equation, right? If I'm being really compressed down here and my pecs are all tight, my pec minor, my subclavius, everything here is tight. And let's say it's like, I don't know, eight out of 10 tight at all times. Do you think that by strengthening your back and it gets you into a better position that you've really remedied the problem? You'd have to get really pathological in the back too, right? Yeah, exactly. But now you have a system where it's 80% tight on this side, eight 8 out of 10 tight and now you've strengthened it even harder on the other side now you have this dynamic tug of war now you're restricted in force production you're just stuck and yeah now you can go ahead and try to work out because you feel like you're more aligned but the amount of tension you

have created in your system to get aligned versus actually treating the cause which is you're just stuck here let's mobilize these corners and continually build the strength around it and not ignore the fact that you're just stuck here. Then we actually have a system where it's like, all right, now I could be here and relax and create strength around that. It's not like I'm fighting all my systems to even be in this position. I kind of do that. I roll out the pec and then strengthen the back and activate those muscles.

And then that's, that's made, that actually made really quick changes for my shoulder posture. I was having shoulder trouble last year. This is what I wish I knew 10 years ago. Oh, absolutely, dude. Because 10 years ago, it was like, man, my shoulders don't feel so good. Isn't that the freaky thing?

Your upper back needs more. Just do a couple sets of this and fuck it. You're done. But isn't that the freaky thing? You look at all these kids. That's not exactly how it works out. 10 years ago in powerlifting, we were like, just do more face pulls.

For me, it really took about, my shoulders were just a little rolled forward. It wasn't like one of those things where people would look at me and go, whoa. It was just a little bit enough that if you go as a weightlifter, go overhead over and over again, it started becoming symptomatic. So I had someone show me, hey, just roll that out, then do this to activate the back. I did that for three weeks straight, like two or three times a day. Next thing I know, my shoulders were actually like sitting back different all day long. They were actually shoulders, right?

Not just kind of hanging off the shelf. We talk about this a lot on Mobility World. We call it positional inhibition, right? Why your lower traps, why your rhomboids aren't working versus if you go see a medical practitioner, they're like, hey, let's go do some external rotator exercises. And they're like, all right, go ahead and just keep doing these rotator exercises. But the reality is, if I'm stuck in this position,

no amount of strengthening in these random corners is going to fix anything, right? So until I fix the position and then strengthen around the position, as you said, there's got to be an order or sequence to this stuff. Then you have the capacity of actually getting into a stronger position. And you're right. If I would have known this stuff when I was 18, I wouldn't be talking here with you guys. I'd probably be making a crap load of money and doing other stuff. The people that are coming up this generation, you look at all the new CrossFitters that are coming up, they're 16, 18, you know, the young Pancha kids, like Austin Mollio's kids, like monsters out there. 16-year-olds hitting

225 for cleaning jerks at 16. It's like, what was I doing at 16? I was playing Zelda and sitting on my couch. You know what I mean? A lot of bench pressing. Not mobilization. Not at all. Not at all. But it's those type of patterns that we and our generation have to kind of go against,

meaning that I spent a lot of time when I was a kid sitting at home playing video games. Yeah, I'd go outside and play basketball and play some flag football. But six or eight hours a day playing with my friends, just kind of hanging out in the video game. This is a pattern that I've developed for many years. And people are like, all right, if I mobilize for the next two weeks, I'll be in this position. I'll be able to bench press like 365. I'm like, calm the fuck down. Right? You had 20 years of this. You think two weeks, I'll be in this position. I'll be able to bench press 365. I'm like, calm the fuck down. You had 20 years of this.

You think two weeks is enough? You can't just undo it all instantly. You could start the journey for sure, but it's not like you're expecting everything to change like that. Most people come into these seminars or come into the gym expecting, fix me now, and then I'll go off and just do all the strength work. What's your best advice to them on that front? That's what it all comes down to.

If you can just teach people not to rush so much, they get what they want. But that's one of those things everybody knows, but how do you actually teach it in an effective way? I just recently wrote an article for the Box Magazine, I think, talking about this, where I was like, I think the title of the article I put is, why is your mobility not improving? And the simple thing is, you have to realize that if this is a game of patience and this is a game of making long-term changes, then you have to realize that long-term is the task, that the patience is key here. But the problem is, is a lot of people look at videos and they see some of the best lifters and they look at PRs and they look at the whiteboard and they're like, I got to get my number to be

this. Even though I'm never going to compete in the CrossFit games, even though I'm never going to compete at regionals, I have no real sport reflection that I'm utilizing this for. I just got to get better in the gym. And I'm like, wait, calm the hell down. Like we're in this for the long haul. If you're not trying to play a sport and you're not trying to get better at anything, then the task is what? Look sexier, feel sexier, be sexier, and then move better when you're out in the real world. That's a long-term goal.

That's a good point. It's an obvious point. What's really your goal? Honestly, what is the goal past this number that you're just thinking is the goal? Yeah. And people are like, I want to sub two-minute frame. For what damn purpose? What do you actually goal? What's your goal? Honestly, what is the goal past this number that you're just thinking? Yeah. People are like, I want a sub-two-minute Fran. For what damn purpose? What do you actually want?

Yeah. What is that going to get you in life? And it's like, well, if I'm more fit. Yeah, if you're more fit, you have a better engine. That girl will see me do it. Yeah. And that's it. And I'm going to get laid.

That's what it all drills down to, right? Totally going to happen. I want a Fran time. Why? Because chicks, bro. Within two questions, it's going to be for every guy on this CrossFit Adventure Spice, chicks. Coach, why did you make this box?

I want chicks to think I was really awesome. You don't want to help people? No, man, chicks. You're embarrassing me now. No, and I struggle. I personally struggled with this for a long time, too, where I was always a fitness junkie, and in college, I would use that as a

means to play in better intramural sports. We'd play a lot of football, basketball, softball, whatever. But then once I graduated college, fitness was just my normal routine to look better, look sexier, feel good, talk to girls. And it didn't actually translate into anything functional, real life sport. You go back to the annals of CrossFit, CrossFit always say what practice, Glassman's always saying practice a sport. And I think we've kind of lost that a little bit because of the sport of CrossFit has built up so much. But the reality is we need to separate CrossFit into CrossFit sport. That's like the one or two percenters. That's your high level athletes are getting somewhere. You know, regionals, athletes, the rest of us are in this just for

the livelihood, the community, getting better at things, being excited about things. But then what do we do with that community outside? How do we express our fitness in the real world? What are the sports we're playing? What is it that we're doing that you actually have a goal to attain to? And most people just come in the gym and they look better and feel better. Great. But then if you're trying to hit all these PRs and trying to get into these better positions, what for? And are you going and doing that consistently? And if you're trying to get better at your squat, then how much time are you spending in your squat? Because if you sit here and say hey i want to go climb mount whitney next week man oh man we better go do some climbing first to get you prepared for that you can't just

fran yourself the whole entire time and then even jump onto mount whitney and be like all right yourself yeah and just jump onto mount whitney and think like all right i got this so if you get someone who they can squat maybe halfway down yeah you know they're they're above parallel and then they're they're starting to butt wink and their knees are starting to dive in. Does that person not get to squat at all? Or do you give them a variation of squatting, a partial range of motion? Or what do you do with those people until

they're better, until they have more mobility? Just max effort, good mornings with bands and chains? Hey, there's nothing there. But no, that's a great question. It's because at least San Francisco CrossFit Mobility, we're like, look, you're never going to stop somebody moving. That's the goal. Movement is key over everything else. So you need to keep this person moving. But then you just crystal clearly make them understand that, hey, my priority is always to keep you safe., hey, you're only squatting to about 90 degrees because that's all the hip, knee, ankle capacity you have before your spine starts wobbling on you, then we have to let that person make the decision at that point and be like, all right, I'm understanding why the coach is having me squat

just to this depth because I don't have the range of motion because they're trying to keep me protected and they're giving me a mobility strategy so I can achieve full range of motion, which is what we're all trying to strive for, then that's a plan of action to get forward. Most people come in and be like, all right, he's not letting me squat below parallel. I'm going to go to another gym where they will squat below parallel. I'm like, that's fine. But then don't come crying to me when you need to spend more money fixing yourself because you broke it. And so there's this whole notion of task completion versus the quality of movement. And I get that you want to squat below parallel. I get you want to hit that wall bar target by getting your hip crease below parallel. But if every time you're doing that,

you're losing the stability around your spine, we need to understand the ramifications of that and make the decision of whether that's the strategy you want to use. And I'm never going to tell somebody what to do as much as give them my two cents and two. Here's what's happening in your body if you decide to make this positional emphasis versus this one. You get to decide what you do because you're a grown-ass adult. I'm not going to hold your hand through this. And hopefully you take that advice to mean I'll make my own decision. I'll decide what to do.

And then this is the only way for you as a coach also to keep yourself sane, right? Yeah. You can't care so much to the point where somebody's obvious bad decision, despite your best efforts to educate, is going to wear on your ability and they'll help somebody else who is listening to what you have to say. Absolutely. But there is something that I'll say for this is like at San Francisco CrossFit, I remember this happened at one of our competitions, our in-house competitions, and we saw an athlete making a bad decision. And I mean by a bad decision

is they'd round their back on the deadlift. We saw it once, all right, shame on you. We saw it twice, hey, you're making a bad decision. Saw it three times. Kelly went over to that barbell and stood on the barbell and just kind of stood in front of the guy and like, look, I get you're trying to win this workout, but the time's running and you're not showing me

you can keep your back flat. What decision are you going to make? And so when I teach classes now, I make that kind of same call, is I'll stop the class before the workout starts, and I'm like, all right, here's my rule. I don't care how low you go. I don't care how much weight you pull. What I care is whether or not you can keep your spine straight from the get-go when you load your hips, set your hamstrings for the deadlift. If I see you lose it once, shame on you.

If I see you lose it twice, I've obviously already let you know because I saw it the first time and said, hey, make a better decision. If I see you lose it twice, I don't care for 90 seconds into a 15-minute AMRAP. I'm going to say, hey, I know you're paying me a lot of money at this gym to be here. Your workout's over for the day because I'm trying to protect you. That's why you pay me the money, by the way. Yeah. To save you the money later on. And all of a sudden, you'll see these faces for people that are paying over $200 to come to your gym. All of a sudden, they just go white in the face like, what do you mean you're going to stop my workout in 90 seconds and do it? And I'm like,

I don't care about your performance when it comes to sacrificing your position. And people are like, oh shit. And then they make the decision, all right, I don't want him to stop me during a workout because I'm paying to be here. I will make a better decision and get into a better position. Then he'll let me work out the entire time. And then if they can't, if they physically can't do it after a couple of reps, they're fatigued or they just can't hold that position because they're fatigued, then what do you do for them? them well what i tell them at that point is i recognize that you've taxed your nervous system so much that you've reached a true threshold and adaptation you've fatigued yourself out now it's a decision do you go a little bit lighter do you go you slow down you take a little bit more recovery this is a 15 minute amrap you take the next minute and

catch your breath i'm seeing you start becoming a big chest breather you're not able to stabilize your spine just slow yourself down and what i always will tell people is like if you have the ability to always be conscious during a workout, control your breathing pattern, you should be able to sustain yourself for the entire workout. But if you're redlining the entire workout in the first 60 seconds, what are you going to do for the next 15 minutes, right? So you have to be able to pace yourself. And what I always tell people is a quick, easy way to determine whether or not you have good control of your body is see where you're breathing. You step up to a barbell, let's say it's a wall ball deadlift running workout. You step up to that barbell after the 400-meter sprint.

You come back in. You start breathing through your chest, and you don't have the ability to control it. Just take a step back. Make sure you're breathing through that belly. Good control. Now step up to the barbell and deadlift that 15 times. Then go to the wall ball. But if you come in, you recognize that your breathing pattern is thrown off.

Once your breathing pattern is thrown off, your mechanics go to crap. Diaphragm touch, psoas, psoas, spine to hip, everything gets shut off. Man, breathing is so important. Recently I found that just a little bit of that, I did a little bit of the Jill's ball stuff. Yeah. I realized, well, I never even think about breathing and diaphragmatic health and all this tension. No.

And we did a show with Mark Devine at Seal Fit and I got, okay, yeah, I need to work on the breathing stuff again. It's like, play with that, plus just mindfulness in the morning to work on breathing as part of a morning ritual yeah and what's amazing is uh doing that for like two weeks right then i noticed that my squat training again instead of thinking about loading the bar just on my back and squatting the bar up and down all of a sudden i realized my body was feeling about pulling the weight and kind of hinging more with my belly yeah you're moving the load like a lever with my tight, healthy abs now. That was probably-

And I wasn't even feeling the load so much in my back. It was shifting down closer, like in the middle of my spine. And also, my squat is up 100 pounds. Right. Because it's this fucking stupid purple ball and some breathing shit in the shower in the morning. We started- Making me squat more.

Wait a minute. You're doing the ball work in the shower? Yeah. That's what I was going to say, too. No. Ball work plus shower breathing thing. Two things. So you're doing the- Are you doing the breathing? You do a different kind of ball work. Is there a work in the shower? No, ball work plus shower breathing thing. Two things. So you're doing the breathing?

You do a different kind of ball work. Is there a shower in the breathing? Scrotum massage in the shower. Are you breathing in the shower? You breathe in the shower. Here's what I do. I get up in the morning, hot shower, meditation, deep breathing exercises. Is your shower ball purple?

My balls in the shower sometimes turn purple. Look, two things happen. Shower breathing plus the belly drills. All I'm saying is it works, okay? It works. In fact, this things happen. Shower, breathing, plus the belly drills. All I'm saying is it works. It works. In fact, this shit works. It works well. It'll make you strong.

Yeah. You think it's going to make you... What I want to know is... Oh, yeah, I really do feel less... My belly... No, it will make you stronger. That's why you should do it. Can I leave the shower out?

Is it still going to work? I recommend you still jiggle your balls. And I do recommend showering once in a while. Yeah. No, but this is a great thing. It's like we saw this error occur over and over again today. One of two things. Either people just end up standing with their ribcage up in the air.

It's just a natural position because what's happened is a lot of people end up being a little bit rounded in their upper back. And they think, all right, I'm rounding my upper back, but if I just arch my lower back, it will fix my upper back problem. It's like, no, no, no, no. You just create an extra hinge of issues. But if I recognize you're in a bad position let's go mobilize to fix that but people don't do that people just kind of stay in this elevated position they have this massive hinge but the problem with this massive hinge is now you shut off the ability to really control your diaphragm because you're pulling up on it now you're fucked right now you put a barbell on

your back you take a big deep breath in you're about to black the fuck out it's because you don't have the ability to stabilize your system you're breathing up in your chest and not through here and so with a lot of individuals, we just fixed first stand in this position with your ribcage down. People are like, I feel rounded. I'm like, I know. Let's go fix the rounded issue and not create a whole other issue by hinging around that. And then you get them in this position and they're like, wait,

I don't even know how to breathe here. I'm like, I know because you're used to so breathing in your chest that you don't have the ability to hinge and stabilize here. So then when they squat, the first thing that happens is they flinch right back out of it. And as soon as you fix that rib cage and breathing pattern, now they have the capacity of actually keeping that rib cage down.

It's almost like a good morning through your rib cage before you sit. And now all of a sudden you're going, man, my training's feeling good. What in the shit? You're not having to work

five times harder than you need to with half the results you should be getting. You actually can optimize on your nervous system because your nervous system is actually functioning properly. I was actually training

with a kid just yesterday. He's like, oh, I've got this back injury, lower back injury. It's really killing me. So I'm going to lift easy. I'm like, all right, let's go easy. As soon as he went in overhead press, it was. Oh, absolutely.

It was like this. I was like. You can do this. He's like, you didn't hurt your back back squatting. You hurt your back living. Yeah. Like, like. I recommend you don't be alive anymore.

Or like living, you know, yeah. Yeah, the position, the stuff you do all day long, right. Yeah. Like, I recommend you don't be alive anymore. Or like living, you know, yeah. Yeah, the position, the stuff you do all day long, right? Yeah.

You can do this at home any given day. It's like somebody's going to give you a bear hug and keep your rib cage down. Try to see if you can put your arms up all the way over your head without letting that rib cage flare up.

And if you cannot, it's a big sign that you've lost the capacity of moving your shoulders independently of your spine moving. And that, you all go ahead and overhead squat that.

You know, let's say you do Nancy and you're overhead squatting 95 pounds plus running all over the place. You have this error now where you're overextended and now you go run 400 meters and you're like, my back has completely exploded out. And most people are like, all right, this is that classic back pump. I feel so good in my back. I'm like, that's not a good fucking sign, dude. Your back's about to blow out on you and that's like, oh, it feels so good.

The only time I want a back pump is maybe if I'm doing reverse hypers. Right, right. Any other time my back blows up, something has gone wrong. Exactly. If you're just standing there, it's not a good thing to happen. Or even deadlifting. I shouldn't be blowing up my back. No way.

Coach, I was sitting in a self-checkout line at Kroger, two half pints of ice cream in tow, and all of a sudden my fucking back was killing me. What two-second stretch can I do to fix that problem? half pints of ice cream in tow and all of a sudden my fucking back was killing me what two seconds stretch can i do to fix that problem oh but you're so right right it's like the only time you should really feel your back works if you're doing some sort of back extension if you're doing some sort of reverse hyper the rest of the time it's like your spine is there to stabilize the rest of your system your hips your shoulders those are the things that are working for you

squats too like if you feel your back working on a squat instead of your legs, you should work on something. That's what I've learned. Plastic health is I never felt my back bending. I used to do a lot of good mornings and shit to make my back so strong that my posture issues didn't fucking matter. I could do a good morning with 700 pounds so I figured my back wasn't a problem. That's totally not wise.

When you're 21, you just fucking don't worry about it. I'll just get stronger. What's the big deal? That's why, from a powerlifting perspective, I love the box squat more than any other lift because I feel like that almost forces people to acknowledge they can't quickly transition out of the bottom position. You've got to sit down there, stay on tension, control your position,

and show me that you can even take a breath in that position while you're under the load, not completely losing your stability, but do you have the ability to be conscious down there and understand where you're at and then stand up out of that, which is like that good morning. Do you understand how to load without losing in that stability? And people have just lost that capacity.

And part of that is not out of their own, you know, shame or anything. It's because of just the everyday posture alignment positions, the daily routine that they go through. It's also nice that you can control the exact depth they go to. That way they can't get tired, slip past it, go a little further, butt wink like they're not supposed to. Every rep is parallel. They try hard, but it doesn't work.

You can just fix it. Yeah, there's a lot of athletes that we try to give them some sort of proprioceptive feedback mechanism. Hey, do you have the ability to remember and know that your abs stay tight in your squat? Well, when they go down, I can't feel that they get soft. They may or not, but you see them and their butt is winking all over the place. Well, yeah, give them that extra feedback to be like, here is your tactile feedback. You're sitting to a box. That's as low as I'm going to get you to go and i know you can get down there

with the neutral spine if you get down there you don't have a neutral spine that's just you being lazy at that point you got to hit that position because we know you can't because i've seen you do it with or without a barbell right and that's where the training adaptation we hope to make because in the case that you were talking about there is like there's a lot of kids and a lot of people that come in with back pain that's like the back pain issues are like the bane of my existence i can't even believe we still have the conversation about that it's all self-manifested There's a lot of kids and a lot of people that come in with back pain. That's like the back pain issues are like the bane of my existence. I can't even believe we still have the conversation about back pain. It's all self-manifested.

Yeah, it's all self-manifested. It's all manifested. It's all the positions and errors that you make all day, and then you go load it up in exercise, and you think throwing your butt back, chest up on a squat. You throw ibuprofen in a future surgery at it. Oh, dude, there's so many dirty secrets in the real world when it comes to if I just mask all the pain, I don't have to deal with it.

Therefore, I can live my life. It's like, all right, there we go again, treating the symptoms. Go America. Another thing you pointed out was that the best posture for you is the one that you're not currently in. It's the next posture and keep moving. I was reading this article the other day on the Fast Company website, and it was just an article talking about. Dope magazine, by the way. Yeah, it's an amazing magazine.

And it was talking about, is sitting really that bad for you and is standing really the best option. And there was, there's some debate out there saying that, Hey, once in a while, there's nothing wrong with sitting. And I like that once in a while, there's nothing wrong with sitting. If I get home and it's been a long day, I'm going to sit on the couch and just relax out. Yeah. It's your treat. Right. And you recognize it may not be the best position possible. Sure. But I'm doing it for like 20 minutes, then I'm going to go have dinner and hang out and go to bed. But if you're aware that what we want to do is always try to strive for the best position, the best position is relative towards what you're doing.

What you should be doing is very movement-centric. Our body is meant to move. There's so much research out there that says the more you move, the more everything, whether it's inflammation, whether it's systemic, whether it's pathognomonic, just movement pattern errors, all the things that you can detect in a human being can be fixed just by keeping continually them moving. This is where a lot of Katie Bowman stuff comes from too, right? She's like, always keep moving, go out in the real world, climb from

trees, go on the real. And there's something to be said for it. The more you move, the more consistently you're putting your body into different positions, the more adaptive your body is to different types of stress. And that's where at least CrossFit has- And a more cumulative time, you're just not sitting. So the best posture is truly the next posture, because that tells me you're going from one position to another. Yeah, I'd love for you to stand in this neutral position, butt tight, stomach tight, creating this torque. But my dream would be, you know what that position's like, you can work with that position and go do things. You know what it means not to hang on your hips, hang on your spine when you're just kind of standing there talking to somebody, you're climbing a tree. You know what it means not to hang on your hips, hang on your spine when you're just kind of standing there talking to somebody

or climbing a tree. You know what it means to be in a good position, but you artistically should be able to continually move your body any which direction. Now, there are specific shapes we definitely want you to maintain when you have 300 pounds on your back before you squat, right? I don't want you to twist, bend, and all that, but it doesn't mean your body shouldn't have that capacity. Unless you have a sweet-ass Hanna-Bar mustache and a single-arm singlet. You can fucking side-bend that bitch You can fucking side-bend that shit. Like the Anderson squat where you throw.

Those are pretty rare skills nowadays. Very rare skills, right? Side-bend skills, yeah. But that's true, right? So we always want to understand that our body is meant to move. And being in any sort of sedentary position, standing is always going to be better than, or not always, but standing is going to be, for the most part, be better than sitting. But standing in and of itself all day long, it's still a sedentary

position, right? So we want to, and that's where the whole, you know, the debate about the treadmill desks. I'm not the biggest fan of that, but you know what? I'd rather have a meeting where we're outside walking and talking and being on our phones if we need to, like, cause can you imagine the environmental stimulus that your brain gets from being out in nature when you're walking and on your phone or in a meeting versus being in a four-cubed, four-wall cube? You're fully uncasted and out in the wild. Yeah, absolutely.

So your brain actually gets to work and not worry about all the extra kind of – it's like I always have this – this is a funny conversation. I had this with Chad Whitman of Reebok a couple years ago when we were at the CrossFit Games and we were at the Marriott and we were hanging out there and I just had, we were at the Marriott and there's a golf course right behind us. And I was like, look out there, how does that make you feel? He's like, fucking pretty nice. Right. And I was like, what if we could create a hospital that had that kind of stimulus? Yeah, it sucks that you're sick, but if I put you into a room that's got four walls with this dull limb light that just makes

you psychotic, like, is that really going to help you heal? Now, what if we put everybody into this kind of place where you had this greenery and you had this water flow and you had this natural, wouldn't that at least incentivize them to get healthier or make them more positive, which in itself has a huge physical manifestation. But haven't they done studies that show that hospital rooms that have a window in them, people recover much faster, statistically significantly better. Yeah. And what do we do? We put more walls up, right? It's just absolutely silly. And I know the whole infection control

and you can't put people into an open space environment when they have all these diseases. Sure, but you can still put them in a more comfortable, homely-like environment. You can still not put them in a shithole. Yeah, right? In a place that depresses the healthy people who show up to visit their sick friends and family.

That'd be a good fucking start. You've been to some bad hospitals. I've been to some real bad hospitals. I go to a real nice. I've been to some real bad hospitals. I have not been in a good one. It's a shithole, dude. But that makes me think of

any time I work with a high-level executive, I'm like, when's the last time you had a meeting just walking down the street of Market in San Francisco

going for a walk down any street? And it's like that type of stimulus, you're never going to be able to get inside of a room with four walls in it. And that actually probably is reducing your productivity. And that's what you got to make it about for these guys anyways, right? What are the actual performance results for this? Yeah, it's great to go walking, but what if I just saved you a year on your life? What if I just improved your income by X amount? That's where the rubber hits the road and it'd be great to get a lot more research around this stuff

where, hey, how do we actually improve things? Because yeah, people want to live longer, people want to live pain-free, but all they care about is money and performance. So it seems like

at San Francisco CrossFit, everyone that's been there for a long time has side projects that are very cool. Kelly's got a million things plus his book. Carl's got his book.

Diane's working on her book and they all have all these other things they're doing outside of the gym. It's easy to feel like a loser in the coffee break room like, fuck, I haven't written three books yet. That's right. When's the root book coming out? Oh, fuck that, dude.

I can't write shit. I don't recommend you do it. It's pain in the dick. I just wrote an article for the Box Magazine. It took me like a week to write 600 words. And I was like, fucking A, dude. It took me back to like college days where I had to write my thesis. And I was like, all right, this is not my communication method.

Somehow, I picked that to be a living. What was my fucking problem? We're on the same team, man. I hate writing. I hate it. If I see the computer, I see that blank white screen. I'm just like, God, how do I get myself into these situations? What am I doing?

The best part for me is my wife sits there and reads my paper. She's like, you write like you talk. I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm like, wait, what? She's like. You don't like how I talk. She's like, you write like you talk. I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm like, wait, what? She's like. You don't like how I talk? She's like, yeah. Have you heard yourself fucking talk?

And I'm like, oh, shit. I'm like, all right. It's not good, sweetie. It's not good. And I had the same feedback. People were like, even when I wrote my thesis, they're like, you write how you talk. And I'm like, all right, what's wrong with that?

But they're like, read your sentences. And I was like, oh, fuck, dude. You know what? Was that you reading a sentence? Oh, fuck, dude. I, it depends. Was that you reading a sentence? Oh, fuck, dude. You just put that in the middle?

Abstract. Oh, fuck, dude, I had to come up with something to graduate, so this is what I came up with. Intro segment. Yeah,

and literally, just everything that comes into my head just gets spit out on paper. Well, I'd say it works, it works, you don't want to talk like you write for your thesis or like a scientific publication

or a legit, like, you're talking to coaches in a formal way. Yeah. But I always tell people if you want to write really well in a way

that you can reach people in an authentic way, you write exactly how you would talk to a friend you love. If you're hitting the masses, like you got to write at that fourth grade

reading level or whatever they say these days. here's why I think this is important. Like how you would say it to anybody, you know? That's why I like using like my Instagram posts

where I just post on Instagram. I just post whatever the hell comes out of my head because you know what? This isn't, I'm only accountable for putting this information. I don't really care what anybody thinks of the information. I'm just going to tell you how you feel. I did this stuff. You like it. You don't.

It's a quick exchange of the value. Yeah. That's, that's all it is. But when it comes to the formal stuff, that's just not. So when it comes to writing books, I'll leave that to Kelly, Diane, Carl. I just go out and try to, I'm more of a visual. I'm here to talk to you one-on-one. Let me help you however I can type of person. That's how I prefer things. Your focus is on engagement. So you take the seminar, you can do a lot more of that, I suppose. Yeah. And I get the value of writing a book. It gives you a lot

more notoriety. There's a monetary aspect of it. You get to reach a lot of people. For me, it almost takes me back to my Silicon Valley days where it's like, all right, who am I reaching to? Do I actually have direct physical contact with this person and i'd rather write a book where it's just all people giving me testimonials about what they i think i think you're making a great point in that uh there's all kinds of things that are great and bad but not for you necessarily either way like is this good or bad i don't know like what do you what do you what makes you happy what do you what do you want to achieve how do you want to reach people why do you want to let an expectation rule your fucking life right and why do you really want that two-minute

friend it comes back to the same conversations like what are your goals and you don't have to have the same level of goals that somebody else does to be you know self-fulfilled and so for me it's like i would rather go out there and travel and talk with people and again have a book where people just give testimonials not to like pat my own back be like those are the people that i impacted therefore that's the people that i communicated with and had direct contact that's what's kind of more important to me and that's what i like this great message to share is like you have to do something that makes you happy and it's okay to admit to yourself what is actually going to make you happy and if you let go of the thing that you're chasing that is not really what you want you're going to feel so much fucking

better about everything man a little scary up front but if you let go you're going to feel so fantastic yeah it absolutely is and even at Francisco CrossFit for the longest time, I was just like, I, I, when Adrian Bosman was still at San Francisco CrossFit, within the first month of being at San Francisco CrossFit, I sat down, I was like, Adrian, can I have lunch with you? He's like, yeah. He's like, all right, what do you want to talk about? I'm like, all right, I want to be a fucking amazing CrossFitter. I want to get to the games. I want to get to this shit and this shit. And he's like, all right, do you understand what the fuck you're talking about? Because this is one complicated ass process. And I was like, all right. And he's like, you're already 27,

28 years old, this and that. And he was trying to do his best to like you know be encouraging but at the same time he's like why do you want this i'm like all right because be cool and this and that and it's like that won't take you to the game yeah it's just the idea of it being cool i mean cool right and so it was one of those things where i had to take a step back and like all right what am i actually trying to do and it came to me more than anything else i just want to move really well and the reason i want to move really well is because at any point if somebody says hey we're to go play ball, we're going to go play hockey,

we're going to go do this, this, and that, I know I have the physical capacity. Does this and that include impressing chicks? Hell yeah. Again. Shooting baskets, why? Why do you want to be so good at shooting baskets? Because the chicks usually

hit that sweet fadeaway over Kelly on the court and now you get all the pops. Kelly's a big ass guy, dude. I ain't shooting over his ass. Practice makes perfect. That's true. I think Rube over his ass. Practice makes perfect. Rube's got a plane to catch and we have an iPhone that's on less than 10%.

Where can people find you? Where can they follow you on Instagram? Just RubeSahota R-O-O-P and then last name S-I-H-O-T-A. Rube underscore Sahota for Twitter. Social media, I'm everywhere on Facebook. Rube at SanFranciscoCrossFit.com Rube at MobilityWad.com. Don't hesitate to reach out to me. I always everywhere on Facebook. Rup at SanRosesCrossFit.com, Rup at MobilityWad.com.

Don't hesitate to reach out to me. I always tell people this, like if you're struggling with something and you've gotten, fallen through the cracks in the medical system or whatever system you're in

isn't helping you, reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to give you my time in a little bit and just talk to you about what I think is going on and I think we can make

some big changes and help you out. We're going to facilitate all those links. You just heard everybody will be down in the show notes. Go to barbellshort.com for the show episode and you will see everything there neat and clickable for you. You just heard everybody will be down in the show notes. Go to barbellshort.com for the show episode

and you will see everything there neat and clickable for you and your chubby little fingers in your iPhone. Click away. Discover. Nice. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you guys very much. Cheers, man. The phone works. I don't expect something to go right like that.