Barbell Shrugged - Benefits of Single Joint Exercises with Doug Larson, Travis Mash & Dr. Mike Lane #842

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

In this episode, Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane, and Coach Travis Mash flip the usual strength conversation on its head and make the case for single joint training. Instead of focusing only on squats, deadlifts, cleans, and presses, they explain when movements like leg curls, calf raises, lateral raises, curls, triceps work, and hip isolation drills become incredibly valuable. The core idea is simple: compound lifts build the foundation, but single joint work helps fill in weak links, improve symmetry, and keep athletes healthy enough to keep progressing. The conversation digs into where isolation work matters most. Mash shares how targeted hamstring work helped address knee pain and imbalance in an elite Olympic weightlifter already operating near the top of the sport. Mike explains that single joint training can deliver hypertrophy and tendon loading without the same global fatigue and axial stress that come with more heavy compound work. The group also connects the dots to sprinting, jumping, jiu-jitsu, and everyday adult performance, showing how training knee flexion, calves, tibialis anterior, glutes, shoulders, and other overlooked areas can improve resilience, movement quality, and injury prevention. They also make a practical case for using isolation work in the real world, especially for busy lifters, aging athletes, and people training around pain or injury. A few hard sets at the end of a session can go a long way, and even one challenging set per week is dramatically better than doing nothing at all. Whether the goal is aesthetics, joint health, better activation, or simply staying in the game longer, this episode is a reminder that good programming is about context, not dogma. Single joint exercises are not a replacement for the basics, but used at the right time and in the right dose, they can be the difference between spinning your wheels and continuing to improve. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, Doug Larson here. And this week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about the benefits of single joint training. As you like we already know, the vast majority of your training should be compound movements like squats, cleans, deadlifts, pull-ups, sprinting, etc. That said, single-joint training does have its place. And in this episode, we discussed the why, when, and how around how to incorporate single-joint training into your programming, how to use them to strengthen weak links that compound lifts often miss, think calf raises. Also, how you can build muscle and improve joint health without the same level of fatigue and wear and tear associated with high-volume, movement, also how to train around pain and injury.

So if you're a person that wants to build muscle and minimize wear and tear, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Doug Larson here with Dr. Mike Lane and coach Travis Mash. Today we are taking the conversation, the opposite direction of normal. We're talking about the benefits of single joint training. If you have been lifting weights for a long time, you follow any podcasts, especially

this show, we kind of primarily talk about, you know, the big movements, squats and deadlifts and cleans and snatches, et cetera. But there really is a time in place for single joint training. So, Matt, I'm going to kick it to you first, especially with your high-level athletes, like when and where do you decide to do single joint training? I mean, if you want to keep high-level athletes symmetrical,

I mean, I feel like targeting the specific joints is super important. Like Ryan, for example, you know, we're continually like when we assessed him, because, you know, remember too, like he's at the last little bit. He's top eight in the world right now as a weight lifter.

And so we lost 1%, but what can we do now? And we found that, believe it or not, like knee flexion, he was super weak at it. So, you know, so when you're talking about the hamstrings as it crossed the knee, which makes total sense because like weight lifters are continually extending, extending, extending. But what was happening was causing a lot of like, you know, knee issues, a lot of pain. And so we needed to, not that I wanted, you know, think that doing lead curls for lack of it, or even Nordic leg curls. Not that I think that's going to make him a better way with her.

But if we can, if we can, you know, keep him healthy, which knock on wood, thank God, he's never had a major injury yet. Then the last man standing is the one who normally makes the Olympics. So that's the first area I would do it. Yeah. Yeah, showing up in balances like that for a weight lifted that's normally working the hamstrings, like by flexing, extending the hip. Yes. As opposed to, you know, flexing the knee. I think that's very, that's valuable.

Also, you just get a little bit more volume in a way that's not stressing the joints in the same way. So especially looking to have hypertrophy and you just want to get like a little bit. of extra volume without like without beating yourself up too much oftentimes you can you can layer on assistance work in the form of single joint training without really beating yourself up you can even add in blood flow restriction you get a you know a ton of like even less you know fatigue and even more probably type two fiber um perjury possibly yeah potentially the idea of uh bfr on the hamstrings on the leg curl that is a it's a very strong choice there cotton I want to see all that later rounds.

Yes. I've only even done BFR maybe twice my whole life, but like, it's a lot of pain. Yeah. 30% of your 1RM. Yeah. If somebody says that they love BFR training, it's like saying they love lower body day. Like, you got to see them train that because there's, oh, you do RP5 squat. Yeah, I like squatting when it's not hard.

But if you seem like, you know, bleeding for it and throwing up between sets, you're like, oh, oh, you're, you are. You love the of R. Yeah. So. Yeah. I know what happens in your bedroom, too. Yeah. Those whips and chains aren't for your cattle.

All right. Cool. So to go into what MASH is pointing out there, I think context is key. You know, I like the idea of single joint training is putting the ornaments on the tree. So the first thing you do is build the damn tree. And that's where your compound movements will always be the greatest way to apply great systemic stress to really build up all of your musculature. And then plus, Doug point out well that you don't put a lot of wear and tear on your joints doing a leg curl. You do put wear and tear on your joints doing heavy

RDLs or heavy deadlifts. So it allows us and also to train the knee flexion as opposed to the hip extension. So it's all about the time and a place. And so, you know, great example is upper body. You know, we can do a lot of rowing and that's going to get your biceps some, but that's not going to get the full bicep development you get if you did dumbbell barbell some other iteration of a and there's nothing wrong with i don't have time so i do a heavy push a heavy pull i do a lower body compound but then it's like okay you've got a guy that we know is doing the Olympic lifts we know is squatting heavy because i see the videos you put of him and he is effing strong and at this point do you think having him do a bunch of heavy r dls heavy Nordics is going to the risk reward ratio is in

your favor? Yeah, exactly. Well beyond. Exactly. Put them on a seated leg curl, something where we can train that muscle, but we're not putting that axial loading. He doesn't have that bar or that weight compressing through his spine, but it's still putting the tension on the muscle itself, on the tendons, but we're not getting that same global stress we get when we're doing the heavy loads. even if you're just say like whether you're an athlete or you're just an adult like us just trying to be healthy to you there's definitely time and a place so you think about like what I want to do I want to sprint let's say I want to be I want to sprint fast well then I probably should definitely target specific muscles at specific joints because like I want to target in a way that's very similar to what they're going to do say for example the hamstrings once again going back to that you think about a top level sprinter or even a someone who just wants to go out and jog without getting hurt, you still want the eccentric strength of the hamstring to be incredibly strong so it can slow down the lower limb as it comes forward.

So then even doing your Nordic leg curls. Once again, it's a single joint exercise, a tough one, you know, or even doing like situated, eccentric loading with the hamstrings. They do a two leg leg curl, whether you're seated or whether you're lying, lower it with one leg. So two legs up, one leg down. So really strengthening the eccentric contraction of the handstrings that can help you with running. So now whether you're an athlete,

with an adult, there's a single joint that's going to help with performance, not just slugs. Yeah. And I'll go ahead, Doug. I was going to say, be tough to say something like a leg curl is like a sport-specific thing. Like if you're a basketball player or, you know,

any random field sport athlete, like sprinting for sure, there's like there's something in there. But like for a guy like me that I do jiu-jitsu, And leg curls and jujitsu are that much more sport specific. There's a lot of times you're laying on your back and you got somebody in front of you. And you're, you're, you are doing a leg curl to pull them down when you're doing a triangle or an arm bar or any number of different submissions. And so I do, I do leg curls because it's very common.

It's happened to me many times in the past where like, I've been using my hamstrings flexing at the knee and like got like a hamstring cramp, like right in the middle rolling, which happens like semi regularly. And like when I, when I do more, more leg curls, I'm more. more conditioned. I don't, I don't tend to cramp up as much. Uh, so I do like curls because I do Jiu-Jitsu specifically, but, you know, they're, they're good for many people for many reasons, but, uh, for sports like Jiu-suitzoo, they're that, they are that much more specific than your normal, you know, field sport or court sport. Yeah, I wouldn't even like here, here's the infamous one, like the 50 year old here I am, I'm turning 53 on Friday, but like the guy, you haven't been doing anything, I'm going to go play basketball with my child.

tear the Achilles. I mean, it happens all the time. I remember watching my high school football coach. He went and played this 50 over basketball league and I wanted to go watch him. Tears his Achilles. So by just doing some like basic cap raises, could he avoid that maybe, you know, or even just cap raises with an isometric cold, you know, like those things could help prepare him to do those, you know, those ventures. So like preparing the body is important. And a lot of times doing like, especially, you know, the Achilles or at the ankle, we don't, in anything we do, even in our multi-joint things, I guess cleans, you kind of get that concentric contraction, but you don't get any eccentric, when you're doing it hardly. I guess maybe in the bottom, you know, of a squat, you could say the knees are forward. But if you want to, if you really want to get that Achilles and calves prepared to do something like run, jump, then there's another example of why it'd be important to.

you know, not to mention it just looking good. But who doesn't want to look like Arnold? I do. Well, and to go into what you point out there, MASH, one of the big problems with most resistance training programs, and I know I've written those in the past, it's there's no calf training whatsoever,

much less in TBIL's interior. I know that's kind of having its light and day in the sun due to knees over toes guys and other influencer, which is because at the end of the day, if I have a guy squat heavy and deadlift heavy, we know all the musculature that involved in knee flexion, extension and hip extension flexion is getting trained but unless you're doing if you're doing clean pulls and snatch pulls uh the Olympic lift variations we know you're at least doing some powerful concentric

which is still putting tension through it but we're still supported there's still something on the bottom end where your heels on the ground and it's now like when i'm running where nope i need to be able to stop i need to be able to hit that isometric bottom and right loading of the calf and now we're getting to you know yeah go figure you haven't you've you've you've now made the change the change the two other joints of triple extension more powerful and that we have untouched the third one. And this is why anyone that hasn't done any running, sprinting, jumping drills for X number of months and then they go and play a pickup game. The next year like, man, my calves are smoked.

It's like, yeah, bud, we just got a more powerful transmission, a bigger engine, and we did nothing to the tires. I wonder whether the tires got smoked. So like, what do you think? You think your little 18s are going to run all that torque of a 700? or horse engine, no. You're just going to spin your wheels and wonder why they get torn up. I love your analogies.

That was a great analogy. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Artae program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garan and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Artae is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan.

It's not physique transformation and pre-imposed pictures. Artae is something completely different. Aratee is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise, to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Artee isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit Arteelab.com. That's A-R-E-T-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show.

It's a weak point in the line, and, you know, and that's the cool thing. It's like, If all I do some calf raises and I'm going to jump higher, I'm going to run faster, or not going to get hurt, all you do some leg curl, come on, guys. If a coach came to you and it's like, the only way to get better right now is to do, I don't know, narrow stance, safety squat bar, you know, sets of 20. You're like, are you sure? But like, all you have to do is do is do some lying leg curl. Like, I get to lay down.

And then all I do is try to pull my heels to my butt and I'm going to be a better athlete. Like, yeah, that's it. Like, play me up. So. So I think, and, you know, it's the pendulum, you know, it was the, was it Arthur Jones, Nautilist, one set to failure, single joint, that's all you need. And then it was like, we need to be everything to be as comically as sports specific as possible. And it's, you get very specific context. And, you know, I'll be the first, I make fun of myself all the time.

Thanks to powerlifting in my incredibly long limbs and short torso, I'm a potato with sticks. all my mouth is through my midline of my body. And so go figure, like things like triceps, biceps, quads, and hams were always slower to develop because everything had to be moved around by the shoulder and hip joint. So for me, both injury avoidance and, well, let's be honest, to look better, I've got to either prioritize movements that put me in a better position or single joint. And single joint is a lot more sustainable and easier to do. I mean, you mentioned the Arthur Jones one set to failure thing. Like obviously, you know, just doing that is, is not the greatest training program of all time for many reasons.

There's no Olympians out there that are, that are doing that one. I don't think Ryan's going to win any world championships with that method. No. But also like taking just a piece of that, like at the end of my workouts, after I do all the other stuff that we've been talking about all compound movements and what have you, doing like five sets total, you know, five exercises, one set to failure at the end of my workout, you know, maybe I'm pressed for time and I go, okay, now I'm going to go do calf raises and, and, you know, hip abduction exercises and, and, and, you know, front raises and,

and, and, and, and, um, you know, front raises and then, and then I'm out of there. Just to, like touch on a little bit of single joint stuff, depending on, uh, what my, my goals are and what my, the rest of my weeks look like, what my week coming looks like. Like, my workouts these days are not, like, as structured as they used to be when I was a competitive athlete. So, uh, in many ways, like, I have, I have an architecture in my mind of what my training program should look like that there's a template in there that I'm that I'm operating off of. It all depends on, you know, what's hurting that day from jiu-jitsu the night before and what have you. And the amount of time that I have to dedicate the training is just simply

less than it used to be between business and family and the fact that I prioritize jih Tzu over everything else. So I might actually just do one set for, you know, a handful of different movements. And then it only takes me, you know, seven minutes at the end of my workout to knock out five different movements, but at least I touched on those things, as opposed to, as opposed to doing zero sets, just doing one set a week. I feel like it's like substantially different than zero sets per week. Like the difference between zero and one is enormous. So I'll just touch on, you know, some like prehab rehab, rehab type stuff and then, you know, some other calf raise. And then you mentioned like Tibby Al Santeria. I might do that with Tibby Al Sinteri, just so that I'm not doing

nothing for it. Yeah. Nothing burns more than doing like Tib work. Like I did that this morning. I did some calf raises and I did some tibial interior work. It just burst. You're only using bodyway and just lean against the wall doing tib raises. And it's like my front of my legs are on fire. Oh, yeah, where you hook a kettlebell on your foot. And everybody's just watching you getting demolished by like a 15 pound kettlebell. Yeah.

Neck veins are coming out to move it. Yeah, it's humbling. And speaking a single choice, the smartest man that ever lived, Brett Concheris, made a living off of the single joint of the butt literally is the wisest man ever he trains nothing but fitness models getting a butt's bigger without their legs growing and so i mean so there you know that just i just told you the best reason in the world to do single joint exercise well the point i will say there which is if our goal is aesthetics then single joint is arguably one of the best ways to go about it.

Because then we really are only putting tension where we want it and not where we want. But I also want to go back to Doug's point, which is at the end of the day, if we're doing at least one good approach to failure in a given muscle group, that, I mean, you can look at the more recent research from Schoenfeld's lab and a bunch of other folks out there. You're getting like 80, maybe even 90% of the total possible hypertrophy. So all I'm doing with arguing with doing multiple sets to failure, or close to failure is another 20%, maybe 30%, it still, it'll be detectable over three months, three years.

But like Doug said, it's light years above doing nothing, though. Bingo. Right. So, you know, hence why I don't ever feel like, oh, man, if I don't do blank amounts, like if you just go in there and do one hard set of everything, you are light years head of somebody was on the couch. And you're behind the person who did three to five sets in that gift. an exercise, but the person that 10 sets, they probably made as much progress as you because

they kicked their own ass so far that is going to be so hard to recover from, you know, like you should have divided up the volume. But back to the fact that I've used, but as a verbal pause and your point about aesthetics and training, there is something to be said about, you know, whatever society is deeming to be, you know, the muscle group that looks cool at the time. And, you know, some folks due to architecture of the hips and movement patterns naturally are going to build those muscles really easily and other folks aren't. And if your goal is to look better, both clothed than uncloth, hell yeah. You do whatever movement's going to get you good soreness and activation in that muscle group. And if that's Arbell hip thrust, if that is doing a Romanian deadlift, if that is doing good mornings, if that's doing sumo stance, if that's normal squats, just because of how you're built, smoke them if you got them.

Like, I'm a long femored, short, torso person. So I've never not been able to feel my glutes when I'm squatting. But one of my best friends, the dude's femurs, I swear, are like maybe 18 inches long. And he's like over half a foot taller than me when we sit down and we're the same height. So he's like, I don't feel my glutes when I'm squatting. I'm like, how, dude? I'm like, oh, because you have quads, you have to walk around. That's why.

Because, you know, that's the move. That's what his body's really doing to solve the problem. And so if he wanted to compete in bodybuilding, yeah, he's got to do hip thrust. Like I've got to do leg extensions. It's not like one of us is a bad person for it. It's more of again, what are you trying to develop? You know, like, how do you want to look? Like the guys that all they had to do is bench press and their arms got bigger.

And you're like, how? Like, like your pecks, like cool, but that didn't grow. Yeah. Yeah. Same boat. Like short torso long arms, whenever I do compound movements talking about pressing here. Like it all goes on my torso. Like I get bigger pecks, but then I still have these like lanky arms.

And so over time, I started doing more direct armwork because it like, it helped my raw strength numbers as well. Like when my triceps got bigger, my bench press went up. Yeah. I mean, it's funny talking about that. I remember watching, you know, because Louis Simmons always talked about triceps, triceps. And I remember like thinking there was like, there was like three of us.

It was like Kenny Patterson. Then there was George Halber and then say me. And like Kenny Patterson had like no chest and huge. I mean huge triceps. George Halbert had like no arms at all, huge pecks. I feel like I was somewhere in the middle and like all of this were great. I mean, those guys both benched over 600 raw, you know, at around my weight. And I'm in the mid-fives, but like it was just so funny to see like Kenny,

I've never seen him triceps like that, just like slabs of beef on the back of his arm. But then George's arms looked so normal, but then he had this huge fat. And so, but, yeah, dude, you can look at Mike McDonnell back in the day. And the dude, Mike McDonald's, oh, yeah, the 600 plus guy who looked like he doesn't even work out. Yeah. Me, he had big packs, but that's it. And like, all you're looking at is like, congratulations.

You look at a high level strength athlete. You're seeing what muscle they are really keying in on to do that movement. Sure. So, like, it's not that they weren't trying to look pretty. They were trying to move pretty heavy weights. Yes. don't misattribute there. So hence, like there's certain guys that have got a good, uh, average bill.

Like even you look at Ed Cohen, like the dude, his pecks and otherwise his shoulders were way bigger than one would suspect. Yeah. For it to like his triceps, but it was just fucking Ed Cohen. He was a pretty good. I mean, he looks like a bodybuilder. I remember watching him compared to, uh, it was Flex magazine. He had him and Dorian side by side.

And like he, he held up pretty darn good. I guess his back even. Oh, yeah. I remember me, you know, Ed the first time, like, I couldn't even breathe hardly. When I first saw I was so excited. But, you know, then to go again and compete against him was even awesome. But another reason is I feel like, especially our listeners, I feel like one of the biggest reasons as you get older to do single joints. Because a lot of times in the very place you feel the most pain is the joint.

You should target. So, like, oh, I have elbow pain. You'd be amazed by just doing some curls maybe or some in a little tricep work. How the joints pain will go away. Or like I know when my hands hurt, if I start doing form work and some sand grabs, the pain will go away. It's just like how else are you going to like, you know, get in, you know, the blood flow or, you know, any type of like joint nourishment without doing some type of movement. but like that's like like said Ryan knees hurt oh you got weak uh you got we need for knee flexors do that bang goes away yeah isn't that one thing louis used to do is like like banded press

downs for like sets of a hundred just like just just just elbow movement just especially for like medial elbow pain which is which is super common with the strength athletes yes me me I'm a prime candidate for that. Like, I have to, like, right now I'm at the point because I've been working out hard. Like, I got to be really careful with the types of tricep movements I do. Some will just aggravate it more. But, like, by just doing some band push-outs, like, hundreds reps per day, it really tends to help me as well. But, like, I tell you, like, even, like, in my hips, by doing, like, isometric work or just simply, like, oh, right, abduction, adduction,

internal rotation external rotation those things keep my hips feeling like magic i feel like you know i'm 25 right now because i do so much of those types of movements single joint once again yeah like muscle groups or individual muscles like such as the lats like my lats when i do pull ups or rows like it's hard to feel like a genuine like contraction like it's some some like your pecks as an example like you can feel your pecks like cramping through a contraction like you can feel them contracting very easily. It doesn't take a lot of a training age to feel your your pecs contract or your biceps contract. But I feel like lats are a tough one where or even even with as much experience as I have when I'm doing pull-ups and whatnot, like I don't feel like this cramping type

contraction feel as easily. Like I can do it, but like it takes effort. But doing like a straight arm pull-down. That's a movement. Yeah, the cable straight-arm pull-down is like I can feel my lat's like like contracting and cramping through the range of motion all the way to failure and it's a great feeling number one and then number two like i feel like i really do get like of that little bit more of like extra lat specific soreness when i when i throw those into my my routine totally and you know that's where i disagree with you in that it's no it's individual based and so again the way that i'm built and the way that i've done thing you asked me to rose something you asked me to pull something since i've been young yeah i feel my lats fire immediately now i'm

How much of that is architecture, how much of that is I grew up swimming and doing other sports like that. There's so many different things in there. The key thing is the result. You give somebody a compound movement and how many guys have seen somebody do a dumbbell row and they are really just trying to do a bicep curl in a weird position. They're trying to. Oh, yeah, totally. On their shoulder as to pulling through with their elbow.

I was one of those folks that I never had to be cute there. Trust me, I'm not physically gifted. But it's more of like I just intuitively knew how to use those muscle grips because that's something that happened with me, motor development wise that always clicked. And other folks, like, I will solve my problem with biceps. You know, it's just like when you see somebody bench press, we're doing pushups, and all of a sudden their elbows are near their ears. And they're trying to do like this weird tricep extension because they don't know

how to use their pecks of their shoulders. That has been crazy. I mean, it's the body is just trying to solve a problem. And like, you know, right now my daughter's, you know, great. She's developing like she should. It's awesome. But I'm watching her try to put like the square peg in the round hole. and like developmentally when you're a little over a year old like that's right like she's still

like trying to jam it in there she doesn't quite realize it and that's what people are doing every single time when they first start working out and you know what sometimes it works it's like yeah you can stiff leg every deadlift you don't really have to use your quads to start the bar but it's probably going to help if you can figure how to do that you know just like you don't have to actually have your heels planted to do a back squat you can just squat like you're wearing the squad down there I guess yeah you can squat like you're wearing heels for a certain type a profession, like that's cool. But if you can learn how to sit back and use your hips, you're going to get better overall

development and orthopedically it's going to be more sustainable. So there's nothing wrong with that's why you program single joint exercises because then they learn how to activate those muscles better or use variations that give you no choice. Like one thing that I added to my training specifically if it was posterior adult work is I switched over my barbell rowing to like, we're talking pointers on the rings going super wide. And by going at that wider grip, it naturally makes me flare my elbows up higher on the body, which naturally puts me in a better line to pull through the kind of posterior-delt, upper-back musculature.

I know it's kind of a little nebulous. Then when I go normal, which is a clean grip, and that's where, you know, I feel my lats, you know, and feel my mid-back, so we're talking trap and rhomboid the entire time. So, again, we are pragmatic, not dogmatic. And when you get that person that, like, oh, yeah, like. I feel the I only feel my biceps when I'm doing pulldowns like okay cool let's try a pull over right so you know I will let me tell you with a group of athletes I had these two these two new athletes I'm working with and like their parents warn me they they really like to work out on their

own they don't like to listen to anybody and so so for the first half the work out I'm trying to teach them how to clean how to squat properly and like I'm really like redoing everything I can see they're getting frustrated, but I also knew both of these these are meatheads. So at the end of the workout, we did this crazy arm workout. And like, now they're my best friends. They love me. They're like, I've never had a tricep bump like that. And that's all I had to do to get them to listen.

Now they listen to everything I say. And all we did, we did rock and rolls with overhead rope, tricep extensions. And we did six sets. of both and what I did it with them and it was a good pump ultimate but now these two boys would listen to any they'll listen anything I say that all I had to do is give them a pump my all right single joint see there's another great reason that you single joint exercises sometimes you just got to give a person a pop yeah yeah you remember you'll never be as big as your pump is and at the same time it does help you know when it's like are you activating

muscle is it is it pumped up plain and simple so hence like you give somebody high rep any movement you know like if you get done with your sets of peck or sets of bench press and your chest is rising like a loaf of bread like cool but if you have them do like they get done like man my delts really pumped up and my triset but i don't feel there it's like well they might be a good canad for a peck fly sure these dudes that's what i do now at the end of every single workout we do it's you know it's it's very athletic it's performance driven but now i give them some type of body of other thing and they absolutely love it like who doesn't like to get pumped like yeah it's a great feeling i love arnold will tell you it's a great feeling

yeah i mean i will gadfly that because of a low back pump that is one of those things that it's like when you feel like you have a second glute max sitting above the first one when you're trying to walk around that is uncomfortable that's like it's like oh oh frick oh freak like i I know that was the goal, but I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. Yeah. Getting a pump like in the wrong spot.

Like if you're, if you're doing a bunch of RDLs, like you have no glute pump and all low back pump, like that's, that's also indicative of, oh, maybe I'm doing this thing incorrectly. Like I should, I should be firing my glutes consciously more than ever. Maybe I should be doing some, some glute bridges or barba glute bridges like Brett and Trera style like you were talking about earlier, MASH. Yes.

So, and I like doing this too. I mean like, and I even have my athletes. I know like, gosh, people. hate on those on the glute brs i don't know why it's such a big just so people so you're talking about people out there they're like glute bridges you don't do those i'm a power lister i'm like who cares man is just bicep curls for your glutes seriously it's fine right so i've never seen a great sprinter without big glutes i've never i've yet to see that so like there must be something to it i don't think you can hate on the movement or the exercise specifically if you are

choosing to do it over all these other things that are more important you're not doing in the right proportions and for the right reasons like there there there's a time in place for everything in a dose dependent way depending on the goal you're trying to solve that's way more important than saying that exercise is bad or that exercises the best exercise ever like it really comes down to the context and situation and why you're doing it totally it's uh and it's so easy to recover from too it's like because you don't get that great eccentric low it's like you know you just get a great glute pump. It's so like he doesn't want to go to the beats with the big bloop, right? If I remember correctly, Charlie Francis talks about how with Ben Johnson, he had him doing

essentially kickbacks on an old school like universal leg press. And that's what he did for like the glute strength on Ben Johnson. We can talk about the other things he was using to help Ben Johnson perform that well. But then he wasn't the only one. Exactly. So and I think that's the big key, which is, you know, how much of I say things about other people are stupid and how I am right is something that people use for marketing means, which I obviously not a big fan of it, because like let's holistically look at the person's program. Because, yeah, if we were talking about, you know, your same Olympic lifter, only he was one year in a training and you're telling me that you're having him leg curl and like, we probably don't have the foundational right. But like,

I mean, you put a video up the other day of him high bar squatting. He was five. For some reason, you're muted in Mesh. That happened last show, too. How did we do the show? Mike put up. But, like, I swear he was doing 500 for, or over 500 for like an easy triple. Like, it looked good.

It looked fast. So it's like. Ryan? Yeah, Grimstone. Yeah. Yeah. You told me that, you know, the thing holding it back now is the leg curl, like, potentially, because his quads are so damn strong that maybe when you do give him

anything that's not a straight leg, dead. or otherwise, he's just getting that overpowering every single time. Because at a certain point, your strength, your strong point is so damn strong, is going to try to overpower everything. And don't be wrong, back to, let's go with the MMA direction. If you give me, when we just talk upper body musculature and you tell me I can just massively increase either the peck strength of the tricep, I'm picking trislep every single time.

Because no matter whether I'm pushing someone in front of me forward, up or down, the only thing that's always in there is the tricep. We're then asking how much dealt, how much peck are we using. And that's why you can get to the argument about overhead strength, overhead pressing might be better than flat pressing, but it's all. And we're still muted. Oh, I can hear you're back. About saying that Ryan has squatted now in the 620s now, way in 165. So he's quite the free. Yeah. So we have our foundation. We didn't do any leg girls at all, like when he was 15, 16, 17 years old. But we did RDLs, we did, you know, the basics is all we had to do.

And, you know, within that, it's just something to be like, well, but I'm 40 and, like, I should do his program. Like, no, he was 16. He's probably more athletic than you, period. And he definitely had a body with far less injuries and accumulation of age. Yeah. So if you're just getting into training, there's nothing wrong with starting off of the machine circuit. and then just starting off with something is like not to denigrate a goblet squat. Yeah.

Oh, and kettlebell swings, but do that until you get a good foundation movement. Then let's switch over and do some barbell heavy squatting, heavy deadlifting. And you can still keep in the single joint stuff organically as the back end. Because you don't want to, now that's a good conversation also that we should touch on, which is where we put the single joint. And I'm a big fan of like Doug brought up earlier and same thing with MASH as we finish

with it. I want to go and do all the high speed, high coordination, complex movements fresh as opposed to, you know, some people like pre-exhaust. I've never been the biggest proponent, but that's just been my experience. I like to use like light, it's like a warm-up. It's not like, so like if I'm going to squat, I will do leg curls, legumes, not pre-exhaust. It's literally a warm-up, like very lightweight. Say like 90 pounds of the legisage system. Or like, like, definitely on the leg girl and I'm just warming my joints up it's you know I would rather do that the static stretch you know it's like dynamic warm-up or my favorite the inner out of abduction and hip abduction adduction but using the uh is it like the adduction it's really helped increase the

range of motion at the hips for me so by far in the last year using that like I've gotten you know I look at how far out the little holes, you know, you can go further and further as far as the amount of abduction you're starting in. And so definitely helped my range of motion. So I don't do it even close, nowhere near like failure or even close. It's a little warm up. Yeah. And I mean, I remember the first couple of times I went to West Side, we were dragging that sled literally around the compound, forward, backward, sideways, sideways. And then you go to the squad.

It's just like, man, my hips feel good. And this way you can run it up and like the hip circle and, you know, a number of their folks, it's just like, yeah, if you just dynamically warm up your hips, you feel better before heavy lifting. I mean, go figure. Yeah. So move the joints you're about to use. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about healthy joints and joints that feel good, et cetera.

Like the other category here that we haven't really touched on is just working around injuries. Like, if your shoulder hurts, then you don't want to lose muscle mass. Like you got to do something to train. And if you're just kind of resting your shoulder, maybe you do some types of pressing, but it's like pretty conservative overall. And then you go hit biceps and triceps and shoulder raises and whatever else like that. Find all the stuff that doesn't hurt and go to failure at that stuff until, you know, until your joint pain is resolved itself.

It might take a couple weeks or whatever. But at least you can hang on to all the muscle mass that you have. I think I feel like shoulders get hurt a lot because we don't do as much as we should. I mean, the shoulders are so like, you know, They're an interesting joint, and we, you know, we'll do presses. We'll bench and we'll do a red press. But, like, man, by just doing some lateral raises, like, doing some, you know, shoulder flexion by doing rear delts, your shoulders will definitely feel healthier, you know.

Oh, rotation. Yeah. Internal, external rotation. Like, there's so many different ways the shoulder moves. It's like a ball socket. So, like, you know, we need to treat it as such. Same as the hips. You know, like, I feel like this why it's, I feel like my hips got wrecked so early because I just, you know, all I did was squat, squat, squat, squat.

You said, I didn't do any internal, external rotation, abduction. I just squat. No, it's the same pattern problem with, like, a lot of sports, you know, like throwers, meaning like shot disc, when they're constantly doing that rotation, their hips get banged on because they're constantly spinning the same direction. It's a lot of torque. the reason I kind of laughed at Doug's comment about, you know, if your injury, do that. I've had to have shoulder surgeries thanks to a college cheerleading and getting labor misattached. And both times just to maintain a little bit of sanity while I was, as I call it, in Sling City,

I would do a lot of iron grip work. And both times I had like the Popeye forearm when my upper arm was completely atrophy. Because like my form was literally bigger than my upper arm in girth. That's why I was like, oh yeah, because I mean, you look down as like, Oh, my mind. Well, it was like, what could I do? I could at least train the hell in my grip so that, like, when I am able to do stuff again, I only have to rebuild the musculature of a smaller number of muscles.

And that's, like, my major philosophy towards every athlete I work with. Like, don't get me wrong, if you're injured, we're not going to make that injury worse in that area. But if you tell me, like, your knees out of commission, well, you still got one good leg and you got two good arms and you got a core that we can probably do something with. Lots of work to do. And don't be wrong, I will have the nuanced conversation. with their physician of like, hey, they just got a surgery when you do anything this week, understandably. But if you're going to tell me over three, four months, you only want them to be doing

light, passive range of motion rehab. And then we have to holistically get the entire body back online. No. That's exactly. That's my idea. Every time I hear the advice of, oh, I can't lift more than 10 pounds for six weeks. I'm like, what does that mean? Like, to your point, like, you had shoulder surgery.

So one arm is out of commission in some ways. and then for the rest of your body you can't lift more than 10 pounds it's a very generic recommendation that doesn't really mean a whole lot if you start to dig into it from a strength and conditioning perspective. It means zero. That's what I mean. It means nothing. Yeah.

You didn't think that statement through. It's exactly. You'd be smart about it. That's why a safety squat bar, you'll understand it's criminally missed labeled. There's nothing safe about squatting with that bar because it will make you eat rack if you miss with... It's the most unsafe bar. in the gym.

It's the one you can't get rid of when you need to. But, you know, if you cannot, you know, get those shoulders back for one reason or another for understandable, you're in a cast or anything, you can still get a really good stimulus. And you don't have to worry about trying to unrack a leg press when you've only got one use of alarm, you know? Exactly. But in all I always got gyms, but you look at all those things because, and that's where, heck, you know, as soon as you're cleared, you know, maybe we can, all we can do is some light,

dumbbell lateral raises and everything else. We can't do insert this motion. They don't want you doing a heavy compound. You can at least do something to get some stimulus on the muscle, which is moving the joints. Typically, that's only going to help things recover faster. Totally agree.

You guys ever seen the video, like the comeback video of Zach Critch after he broke his wrist? I'm talking about Mesh. Fine on YouTube. I haven't watched it in years. Zach Critch is a friend, a great dude. He's been on the show before,

not for many years, though, but he was at the show. Olympic training center and I think he caught something around 350 pounds or so on on a clean and at the bottom you know rock rock bottom caught it and then rocked on his heels fell back and and he was I think he I think he was strapped in he was so he couldn't let go to the bar and then as he fell back he fell onto his back with the bar racked on in a front rack position so his elbows hit the ground and then the bar went broke both of his wrists at the same time

so there's a great comeback video So similar to what we were talking about a second ago, not the exact same thing, but the doctors basically said you'll never lift more than 150 pounds or sorry, more than 50 pounds over your head ever again or something like that. And then he came back and won the national championship and whatever else, you know, years later. But anyway, referencing that video, which you definitely should go watch, there's some great footage in there of him, you know, with a safety bar on his back with two to cast it up arms, you know, cast it up above the elbow. And he's still out there, you know, you know, smashing squats, even though. know, even though his arms can't do anything, but there's always something you can do. And that's a, he's a prime example of someone who, you know, did some high quality workouts at the Olympic training center while being casted up both arms above the elbow.

Good for it. Exactly. Oh, yeah. No, that video is nauseating. But at the same time, you know, be smart. But, man, if you've got everything else is working fine, do something. You know, at least load up the rest of those tissues. And that means you just got to do leg extension, leg curl, because you, you know, you're

You just had an ACL? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Let the other laying out in space. Make sure it's not getting moved around with it. But you're not going to recover somehow faster if everything's out of shape and everything has back into shape than if you just have one small part of your body that, you know, like, okay, we've got to get the quads and hands ready to rock again. Everything else is good to go.

This show has proven that there's time placed for everything. There's no dogmatic statements drive me insane. But there's always, it's just, you know, these are your tools. You've got to know when to apply. Application is everything. That's what makes someone great. A great coach understands application. Except for dumbbell trisive extensions.

Friends, don't let friends do dumbbell trisive extens. Trisive kickbacks. Bigbacks. I was like, man. Backbacks. I was like, really? Yeah. I'm going to put up a story on Instagram day, me doing some kickbacks with like the pink dumbbells, you know?

Oh, no. Tag, Dr. Mike Lane. Why did those become so 65? I don't know. It's decided those were like that. I don't ever do it. A major situation, because, you know, where you want the heavy tension, like when you're doing the rolling kickbacks.

Yeah. Typical skull crushers, that's where you got a lot. It's the opposite. Where in the bottom, there's nothing. So you're almost used some of the same to just drive in the beginning. Right. And then you've got to use so much force to just stabilize your arm. But at the same time, any of you guys had ever taken, like, a cable and just, you know,

grab the extension and it's different that feels good yeah we're following the strength curve a little bit better but hey if they'll do a fucking tricep tricep dumbbell kickback but they won't do a skull crusher because they you know they don't like how it feels blah blah blah then do it they're doing something yeah you know i i'm at the point now if i see somebody doing something in the gym that's just straight up like okay that's how you get hurt i'll maybe say something if i've seen them more than once but otherwise half the time I'm like you know just be curious yeah it's like why are you do like my elbows are so banged up that I can't do skulls anymore because in the bottom it just burns it's like okay mm-hmm you know I mean some some machines are well

designed these days where where you do get a strength curve that is that's perfectly matched for the joint and for the muscle like where if you're doing like you were saying like you're doing kickbacks like the peak tension is at full extension as opposed to push downs where you get peak tension at 90 degrees or wherever it is. Like you might get some machines where if you're doing just like machine tricep extensions, the way the cams built, you're getting smooth tension that kind of matches the force curve of the muscle group. And those types of machines are very,

really, really nice where being at peak tension throughout the entire movement versus just one part of the movement can lead to greater heart-urge fee and stimulation, et cetera. Oh, yeah. And then you get into the strength curve of the sport that you're working with anyway. because let's face it, where goal is sport, like we've talked about before and mash on the speedwork,

is you want to accelerate, you want to create more force as you go out of motion. Most lifting, the hardest point, when have you ever seen somebody outside of wearing, like,

a triple-ply canvas, miss a squat in the final three inches? Most of the people miss it in that first foot. They either get a big bounce and they hit the wall or they get nothing and they're done. Yeah, the arm springs to nothing.

Exactly. Yeah, you're bottom mechanically advantageous at that point. You have the advantages. So yeah. Yeah. So, all right, we got to shut it down here. Go do some calf raises. Dr. Mike Lane, where can be you find you? Mike Lane, PhD on Instagram, and maybe I'll put mediocre videos of me doing mediocre exercises at some point in the near future.

I'm going to do tear raises. There you go. I'm frozen my workout here in two hours. Matchylead.com. I'll put some cool videos of me doing some, I don't know, wrist curls. There you go. All right. Right on. I'm Doug Larson on Instagram.

Doug Larson. We are barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. If you want to work with Dr. Mike Lane, Coach Travis Mast, Dr. Andy Galpin, on the whole team of Rapid Health Optimization, you can go to R-HATLab.com. That's A-R-E-T-E-L-A-B.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.