Barbell Shrugged - Bret Contreras: The Strength Coach Empowerment Model vs The Rehab Dependency Model — Barbell Shrugged #361

Episode Date: December 5, 2018

Bret Contreras has become known in the strength and conditioning industry as the Glute Guy because of his expertise in helping clients develop strong, shapely glutes. As the former owner of Lifts Studio in Scottsdale, Arizona, he has worked closely with hundreds of clients ranging from sedentary people to elite athletes, and he invented a glute-strengthening machine called the Hip Thruster.   Bret currently trains figure competitors, writes programs for clients from all over the world, and consults for various professional sport teams. He is the author of the bestselling book Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy and co-author of Strong Curves: A Woman’s Guide to Building a Better Butt and Body.   In this episode, we talk about why corrective exercises do not work, why a qualified strength coach is more important than a rehab specialist, how to find a strength coach that understand proper progressions for injuries, why strength training is so much safer and healthier than being weak, and more.   Enjoy! - Doug and Anders ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_contreras2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Please support our partners! @bioptimizers: www.BiOptimizers.com/shrugged  “shrugged” to save 37%   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged  

Shrugged family, this weekend's podcast road trip through Boston and New York was heavy. We recorded eight shows over five days for Shrugged, plus a show for Paleo Magazine Radio with Ashley Van Houten. Six of those eight shows were over two hours long, over 16 hours of recorded conversation. That is a lot of talking, but I also think it is the way podcasting needs to be. At this point, any guest that is worth having on the show can spit a one-hour webinar at you. That stock one hour is barely scratching the surface on the breadth of subjects that they are experts on. These guests are also very good at podcasts. To do an hour, the guest barely even needs to think. They can ramble on their highlight reel, hit you with some hot research topics, and close with their products and programs.

I want Barbell Shrug to be the cornerstone content of people's lives. I want the content to weave in and out from complex to comical and challenging to simple. I want the guests to walk away and know that every ounce of information that is in their brain is now a piece of strength and conditioning history. I also don't really care about what our guests already know. It is important, but these people are famous and go on shows all the time to talk about the things they know. I want to know what these people are learning and how it will influence our industry for years to come. When you focus on what people are learning, you reshape the idea of a podcast.

It is no longer an interview, but a conversation. I'm no longer asking a question, but offering a story, experience, and depth. I like learning with people. I like thinking out loud. Shrugged is shifting and we are going long. We are going to create cornerstone content in a conversational manner, pushing people past their comfort zones and we are going deep. This week, Brett Contreras is back on the show and we are not talking about glutes. We are not talking to him about glutes because he has done 7,000 other podcasts on training glutes.

Glutes are boring. He doesn't even need to think to give me 90 minutes of getting a bigger ass. In this show, we talk about why he thinks rehab, corrective exercises, and the Cairo world is BS. And guess what? He doesn't know the solution. We talk about it, dive deep and come up with countless solutions that we as an industry need to address. In order to progress the conversation, we can't always stay in our comfort zone. We have to play at the edges

of our experience, research and what we are learning. I'm proud of this show, my partner Doug for believing in this vision, and our audience for letting us challenge the status quo of podcasting. If you enjoy this show, please take a screenshot, tag me on Instagram at Anders Varner, tag the Shrug Collective at Shrug Collective, and write, go long. I just made that up right now, but I think go long matters. Make sure you get over to douglarsenfitness.com. He's got a ton of awesome products over there. And if you are looking for some business or online coaching, consulting, you can hit him up douglarsenfitness.com also really want to give a special shout out to kenny santucci jen widerstrom and strong new york we had a phenomenal time hanging out at solace new york

this weekend the gym is absolutely beautiful the people the clients everybody that showed up this weekend was beyond helpful, informative, fun to be around, just an amazing weekend. And I look forward to being a part of that event for many, many years to come. Make sure you go and follow the show at Shrug Collective. You can follow me at Anders Varner. Follow Doug Larson at Douglas E. Larson. And get into 30daysofcoaching.com. 30 days of making you a better Olympic weightlifter, answering all your nutrition questions. These are the biggest, best pieces of content, interviews, articles, and technique wads over the last six years combined into the foundational principles of understanding

strength and conditioning, getting you to a bigger, stronger, healthier human being. 30daysofcoaching.com, T-H-I-R-T-Y, daysofcoaching.com. That's enough out of me, Brett Contreras, not talking about glutes. Enjoy the show. This is also my joke every time somebody gets on the mic because we have to like shove it in their face. I'm like, you know, the glute guy touched that mic. it goes really well, and they're like, ah, that's funny. And sometimes they're like, who? And I'm like, like the ass trainer of the whole world. And they're like, you're a fucking creep.

We interviewed three CrossFit girls that had no idea who you were, and that joke bombed so hard with all three of them and then I forgot their names. Oh, God. And it was just like... That's something I do. Yeah, oh, God. Well, after the joke bombed...

You bombed a joke and then forgot the names? Yeah, and I was like... And they're like the three most popular girl CrossFitters in the country. They're like the hot CrossFitters and I was like, I fucking forgot all of your names. I'm old and I don't care.

Is that where we should start the show? Let's do it. I'm old and I don't care. Welcome to Barbell Strong. I'm Andrew Varner hanging out at the Glute Lab. Doug Larson's in the house. Brett Contreras. We just got done watching the Glute Squad, the world famous Glute Squad in the Glute Lab with the Glute Guy. I feel like we got backstage passes to the concert over here. Sir, you have developed a craft that expresses itself well

on Thursday nights from 6 to 7 p.m. Thank you. It's a phenomenal thing you've built here. I see books on lifestyle design and I'm like, what is their life actually like? Do they have Breckensturter's life over here? No. That'll be your next book.

Yeah. That would be a good place to start. That's what if I ever. Did you really know that this was going to, like, happen? Like, did you know Instagram was coming, and you were like, you know what? I need to find this thing where, like, just the picture and the pose go so well together, and you know what? I'll be the best in the world at it.

No. In fact, my twin brother encouraged me to get on Instagram. And I was like, you can't monetize it. You can't link it. And he's like, just trust me. And I was combative. And then I just did it to humor him. And then I'm glad I listened.

We're glad you listened too. Totally. Actually, the same deal. I remember having Facebook. And they're like, you've got to get on Instagram. I'm like, why? You can actually the same deal like i remember having facebook and they're like you gotta get on instagram i'm like why you can do the same stuff i already have facebook like i can already post pictures to everyone i know like why do i need to get on instagram i didn't get it at the time but now that's all i use yeah i just yeah took i just started looking at instagram and being like all right i need to commit to this thing only like three years later three years i used to to just take a picture and then write the date under it.

Be like, it already does the date for you. This is the worst marketing you could possibly do for yourself. That's all. I don't know. So we had you on the show months ago, and we talked all about glutes because you're the glute guy. That just kind of makes sense. But today is actually kind of, in a way, to me, a cooler topic

because it's a little more technical in a lot of ways, and I feel like you have a unique opinion about moving to Paramount Syndromes and compensation and how all that works. You feel like a lot of the world's getting it wrong. Is that kind of where you're coming from these days? Yes. Tell us about that. What's your perspective here?

So I don't think a lot of people understand what a big deal this is. In my opinion, this is the number one most important topic in fitness that nobody's talking about. And we all need to jump aboard this movement. And I guess I need to come up with a stop the dysfunction movement. You need a sexy marketing name. Basically, I feel like it's very it's very popular the glute guy thing for this i know i need a moniker or a tagline or something but they're the popular model right now is this debilitating model where you label people and

you know get people full of doubts and insecure insecurity. My model that I've always used is an empowerment model that gets people, uh, you know, that gets people loving exercise and feeling good about a healthy relationship with exercise and feeling good and confident. So let me just so people have context, like what's an example of each one of those things. So they know kind of more what we're talking about. talking about so okay so every person that comes to me like i would say not nine out of ten ten out of ten ten out of ten people who come to me and by the way i would venture to guess that i work with more people than anyone in fitness because i i have all these clients here uh in my actual gym.

And I'm here all day long. I also have my personalized programming where I'm writing like 350 programs a month. And I have my Booty Bite Brett program with thousands of members. And then I'm dealing with these people every single day. I also have 450,000 followers on Instagram. And every night I spend two hours answering DMs every single night. So I hear this. I'm interacting. I also don't have kids, and I'm not married.

So I work all day long. So I don't think there's a single person who works with more people than I do. It's not possible because I don't sleep much, and I work all the time. So I see it more than anyone. Ten out of ten people are coming to me before we begin on our fitness journey. They want to warn me just, Hey, FYI, heads up. I have, and they give me this list of perceived dysfunctions that they have. And it can range from, I have a leg length discrepancy. I have, you know, gluteal amnesia, I have pelvic torsion, I have sacroiliac dysfunction, I have a weak core, I have an inactive TVA

or multifidus, I have breathing dysfunction, I have, you know, scapular dysfunction, I have whatever, whatever they say to me, I have anterior pelvic tilt, posterior pelvic tilt, whatever. And if you look at, so take a step back and look at, you know, you can look at vehicles, you can look at bicycles, you can look at machines and be like, that would be better suited for this, you know? But people have a hard time doing that with humans. Look at Michael Phelps is amazing at swimming. He'd be a really, his body type would be poorly suited for sprinting. And conversely, Usain Bolt, great, you know, body type for sprinting,

but would be very poor at swimming. Now, Usain Bolt had, he has a leg length discrepancy and he there's a study showing that he produces way more ground reaction force with one leg than the other and i think it's like a two one legs two inches longer than the other and his ground reaction forces are very asymmetrical and he's the fastest dude on the planet, you know, or was. Fastest guy ever. So we need to stop thinking in terms of dysfunction. Everyone has some dysfunction.

So what even is dysfunction? You're dysfunctional. Why? Because you're in pain? So, like, if you don't have good movement mechanics, you're dysfunctional. What if you just haven't been taught the right way or you never took it seriously or what if, so the reason why this is so important is there's something called nocebo effect. It's the opposite of the placebo effect. And it's, it's just like the placebo, how the power of words or suggestion can have a physiological effect.

If I started telling people, oh, my God, do you have back pain? Like, Anders, do you have back pain? Because your glutes aren't activating. No offense, bro. You have weak glutes. You don't. I've trained you. But if I did that, if I did that.

Very strong. Yes. They're very nice. A really firm contraction. I've seen it. But if I did that enough times, this plants seeds, and it can manifest itself down the road and actually lead to low back pain because you think it should. Think about all the studies. There's dozens of them that show uh tissue damage the the correlation between

tissue damage and pain and it's you can see it across all the major joints you know the the discs 50 of people have you know disc degeneration but no pain 30 of people have a herniated disc and they don't even know it because there's no pain you can also have someone who's in massive pain that has no tissue damage. I mean, think about phantom limb pain. Your arm got chopped off somehow, and you have pain in your hand, but you don't even have a hand. So pain is very complex. And so a lot of the times in weight training, we're psychos.

We love to lift weights, and we push the envelope especially with the lifts that are the most important to us you know you never go and like you know you're never so gung-ho on sitting a seated row pr that you use the worst form and get injured with it you do that with bench press squats deadlifts yeah and you lie to yourself i mean i've done it a million times throughout my career where it's like i i'm especially if you utilize progressive overload you plan on prs you you did everything right you slept you ate big over the weekend you should be recovered you should crush it now it's a monday and you're going for that big lift

you're warming up and you don't have it. But you can't lie to yourself. You've committed yourself to the process. You've committed yourself. You don't go, eh, I'm not going to go for it today. I'll take an easy day and I'll try again next week. And a lot of times you can set PRs through just stubborn brute force. You know, just muscle it up using crappy form. And sometimes you survive that.

You do that enough times and you're going snap something up you get injured and a lot of times in the gym we just were we're the what makes the like the three of us what makes us stay fit is we love working out so sometimes we make bad decisions it's not that we have dysfunction it's we like training hard tell name me one athlete that doesn't have no doesn't battle nagging injuries they do their whole career it's not until you actually give up on the fact that you might pr or never pr for the rest of your life that you start doing it intelligently and you don't feel pain anymore you're like i feel amazing everyone should do it like this like i'll try not to squat 450 and magically you aren't in pain anymore but also we need to understand that pain is normal it's not yeah we shouldn't think that we're gonna go the rest of our lives and never have pain but anyway the the reason why i'm telling this story is like every physical therapist chiropractor uh athletic trainer a manual therapist um god i

just yeah so hold on a second before we get before we get too far calling all the things out i think a lot of this stuff comes back to like the education process of that rehab profession as a whole so all of those going into one thing we can just call them like rehab like rehab right anybody that is a physical therapist is going to hate chiropractors and vice versa and athletic trainers. That's like it's a whole other thing. But everybody's trying to make their athletes or their people healthier and live less pain-free. That's like a general definition of that group that you just laid out. Could we agree on that?

Right. Their job is to get people out of pain and back into the gym or back to doing whatever it is they're doing. definition of those kind of that group that you just laid out could we agree on that right their job is to get people out of pain and back into the gym or back to doing whatever it is they're doing so in school all of those people have to have a common language which then more or less changes their brains to constantly be focusing on focusing on whatever the specific diagnosis is right and labeling people as you are this and that is the only way that they have to talk to people and you don't have that way of talking to people at all which is kind of maybe the basis for this thesis of like we should reshape the way education happens so that the

professionals aren't forced to discuss diagnosis and they should discuss more what you're talking about right so but but the the biggest thing is there's this huge red flag in that their profession their their money comes from getting people to keep continuing coming back to them by thinking they have something wrong with them and so i i know a ton of physical therapists that read research and they're not they don't debilitate people i know a lot of chiropractors who and there's always the creme de la creme in every group there's also the bottom two-thirds in every field and this includes personal trainers and strength coaches too most of them that that fancy themselves as functional trainers and corrective exercise specialists, they tend to fall into this group too.

And even NASM has a certification, corrective exercise specialist. It's like you fancy yourself a corrective exercise specialist. You start looking around for dysfunction. You want to label people. You want to show off how smart you are. And you want to tell someone, hey, you have gluteal amnesia. So I can't tell you how many people come to me and say, just letting you know my glutes don't activate.

I'm like, okay, get down on the ground. Let's do a glute bridge. Oh, your glutes are activating just fine. They might not be as strong and dense and activating as highly as they will be in three months, but they do activate. You're fine. You're just unfit. You're not as fit. you in three months you're going to be killing it do you think that you see more of this because of your specialty in training glutes and understanding like pelvic

health and low spine health is so important to the global system that is the systemic health of like dealing with pain and pieces like that more of it because i'm i work with a lot of people but i think i think the trainers and the coaches that listen to this are it's gonna i think i'm gonna start planting seeds that this is not the best way to follow the best model to follow because with these with these people who are doing this if everything if all you have the hammer everything looks like a nail. If you're looking for dysfunction, you'll find it. And I'm sure you could look at me, you know, take me through a workout. You're going to find some things. But here's what's annoying. Every lifter I know, every bodybuilder,

every powerlifter, every strength athlete, every athlete, every serious lifter I know has some things wrong with them and so it's not just fun it's a normal you're gonna have certain things like i can't do weighted dips anymore they hurt my shoulder every time now i they were a great lift for me in my 20s every lifter i know has to work around things it's just how look at your skeletal system and your you know look if you look at functional anatomy and the way different bodies are designed, you're going to have, everyone is going to have certain areas that, you know, they get, receive concentrated stress, and that's going to be your bottleneck where you shouldn't do these movements because the way your skeletal system

and muscle, you know, tendon attachment points are, you're going to get a lot of strain on this region when you do this movement. So you have to learn, and we all have to learn what exercises and variations and postures and setups suit us well. When somebody comes to you and says, I have a, I'm experiencing pain, what's like the general idea of what goes, like what goes on, what's the first thing that cues in your head of okay you have low back pain or shoulder pain what is it muscle imbalances like you're saying gluteal amnesia is not a thing and we shouldn't be talking about it but something definitely triggers in your head when somebody walks in and says like oh i have a short leg and you're like yeah right okay

this is what i have so let me this is what have. I want to answer that in two parts. So first pain is so complex. I have friends that just study pain. There are pain journals. And like these guys will tell you like they're like, they call it the neuromatrix. And they're like, it's the brain's map of what it thinks is going on. It doesn't really represent the real physical body. And it's so influenced by beliefs, past, previous injuries, perceptions, and you get sensitized.

You can get peripheral and central sensitization. And you can, it's so complex, I won't even pretend to understand it. I've read a lot of the journal articles about it. And it used to be in our field, we all were champions of the PSB model, the postural structural biomechanical model. And now it's the B-psycho, BPS, biopsychosocial model is actually way more accurate. And while I happen to think that biomechanics does play a bigger role than a lot of these people think, especially with heavy weight training and explosive athletic training, it's still like you have to know that tissue damage

is not well correlated with pain. And so it could be that they are depressed. They don't have a good support group. They smoke. There's all these factors that, and you have to know this because, for example, my twin brother, I have an identical twin. He has low back pain, and it's chronic. And when I was 15 years old, I went to a doctor. I got an MRI because I'd gotten a really bad car accident, and the doctor said, oh, my God, Brett, you have the spine of a 90-year-old. I've never seen a spine this bad. You have the most degenerative discs I've ever seen on someone who's 15 years old. You should never, you're probably never going to play sports

or be able to lift weights again. You say that to a 15-year that that crippled me i thought that at 25 years old i would be in a wheelchair i didn't even know you know i didn't like cry or anything i just i remember going home and just staring at the wall going my life is over yeah and then it was like when i was in a situation too where like the doctor sees something like that that he believes is true in his mind, and then he kind of is obligated to tell you his opinion there because if he doesn't, and then you hurt your back, and then you go back to him and say, you got the scan, you didn't tell me, and now he's being sued for malpractice.

So I feel like doctors are always, to play devil's advocate, they're always trying to be as conservative as possible where if he tells you you're going to be fucked up and you aren't fucked up he's fine but if he says you're fine and then you then you do get hurt then now he's in big exactly deep trouble they're trained because of so many sue happy people to be extra cautious and tell you you shouldn't lift weights you shouldn't do any weight training because people are stupid and if you let them do something they'll go crazy with it you know a lot of times people say don't donate anything lift anything heavier than 10 pounds and i'm like you can have something real close to your body a 10 pounds close to your body

versus 10 pounds way out in front of you and the moment arm the resistance moment arm goes way up and the torque the lumbar spine goes way up you're gonna have way more compressive and sheer forces but people don't know that that That's biomechanical. But let me get back to your question. When someone's in pain, what I try to do is say, okay, that's normal. I've been in pain many times in my life. And I don't claim to be the world's expert with this stuff. There's people who are better than me at how to – because the bottom line with this podcast is words matter. And I strive to get better at my words, but I feel like I'm pretty good at it. Because I'll say pain is normal. I'm in pain

sometimes. We all have pain. But what's important for you to know is you should always be exercising. So today I'm going to help figure out the exercises that are really good for you to be doing right now. They can always do glute bridges, especially if you have a posterior pelvic tilt at the top. They can do abduction movements. They can probably do single leg movements. I'm always going to give them a good workout. And then they're thrilled. They're like, oh my God, I didn't think I could do,

I could work out. And here's a bunch of exercise I can do. And I work with their stance, their setup, their posture, their mechanics, and toy around with all these variations, and you will leave equipped with an arsenal of exercise that you'll be able to perform from home, and when you come in here, I will get you stronger at them,

and we'll build up strength and fitness, and then as you build confidence, the sensitization goes down. So a lot of people are in pain. It's like irrational they're it's like you light a match and the sprinklers go off you know um and the way you get out of that is by changing their perception of and getting them to be confident again i'm not the pain expert but it's very complex i've read a lot of the studies on this, but nowhere close to some of my friends who know 50 times more than me. Look up the biopsychosocial model, learn about it. But let me tell you more specifically to what I do in the gym.

So if people come to me and they say, I have glute amnesia, I put them in a glute bridge, I palpate, and I go, oh, nope, your glutes are activating. I did, I will say, the only time I've never felt glutes activating was with my 88-year-old grandpa like two weeks before he passed away. Are there glutes in there? I had him doing glute bridges. I'm sure there'd be a glute in there. We found one person two weeks before he died. If you don't have glute activation, just start digging. Yeah. So my gramps, I could not detect any glute activation whatsoever.

He was 88 and sedentary. But anyway, everyone else I've ever worked with did have. But they'll say, okay, I have a leg length discrepancy. I always lay them down because I'm curious. I always want to find that person whose one leg is five inches five inches longer than i've never found it you usually line up perfectly and i say who told you this my chiropractor um i have a weak core who told you this my physical therapist and i'm like what um did they put did they run through you through a battery of tests i'm curious what test did they give you i'm i want to know like did they give you

a side plank for time do they give you like I want to know. Did they give you a side plank for time? Did they give you a back extension hold or some plank? Did they see how many straight leg sit-ups you could do or how many hanging leg raises? Anything quantifiable. Nothing quantifiable. He could just tell. You can't just tell. Yeah.

You can't just tell. If you work with people for a living, you know that you can have the most jacked dude who has a very weak and then a guy who looks like he doesn't lift who's very strong so it's very easy assessment that you do for for your in-person athletes like every time you meet with somebody that you have like a protocol i don't and here's why um guess what exercises every person does who comes to me glute bridges. No, like we do. I mean, look at all the stuff you saw tonight.

You saw hip thrusts, squats, deadlifts, lunges, back extensions, abductions. For the upper body, you're all going to be doing military press, push-ups, bench press, chin-ups, rows. You know, they're all doing the same movements. It doesn't change the exercise I give, and I'm going to find the variations and the setup that works best for you. So if I say I give someone some screen like the FMS or anything like that, like the FMS, say they do poorly in the active straight leg raise, I'm going to find that out by giving you a deadlift and realizing that you actually flex your lumbar spine when you

go all the way to the bottom so i'm going to give you a block pull instead or i'm going to give you romanian deadlifts but we will work you have the same outcome so i don't have someone you are constantly assessing them it's basically what you're saying that's the whole the whole first session is a complete assessment and we're we're it's a movement pattern assessment and it's based on movement pattern continuums. I call them MPCs. You have this continuum, and this goes into the model that I want to tell you, the empowerment model. But right before I get into this, I want to tell you what I tell people when they tell me I have this.

I will never allow you to make an excuse to me. And I wonder if the people are like, this guy's dumb or he just won't let me have any excuse. They'll say, I just want you to know I have anterior pelvic tilt. And I go, huh, you know, I actually don't know. Never heard that one before. I'll go, I actually don't know exactly how to measure that. Like, am I supposed to get a protractor out? Which two things do I?

But I know that seven degrees I think of anterior pelvic tilt as normal. You don't look like you have anterior pelvic tilt to me. But if you do, sprinters tend to have anterior pelvic tilt. And have you seen Usain Bolt? He has crazy anterior pelvic tilt. And they're the fastest people on earth. So good for you. You're in good company of fast people.

And then they're like, huh, okay. And then if they say. You're world class. Congratulations. Right, right. If they say. I feel like that's Congratulations. Right, right. If they say. I feel like that's an advantage for sprinters. They get more hip hyperextension and like they can push on the ground for just like a half second longer or whatever it is.

Actually, I think it's because you're stronger in hip flexion and anterior pelvic tilt. It makes it, you're stronger in that range. But that hasn't been shown to be the case. We don't know the answer to that. I'm real big on the sprinting. I'm doing all the things. Flexion and tilting and pushing.

Walking through, miming this out as you say it. But it is an advantage and we know that sprinters tend to have that. But anyway, no matter what they tell me, I just won't acknowledge it

and give them, I'll just brush it off and make an excuse and show them i'm not going to let you have excuses you're going to get a great workout so then i start their workout and i'm going to give you know say i start with squats or bridges or thrusts whatever i'm going to find i'm going to start you out a little too easy you know and because if you start about too hard, this is what you see the commercial gym trainers. They put people with barbell squats, their first session throwing like, you know, one 85 onto the barbell. And then the people do quarter squats and it just sets them up for failure right away. You begin with a body weight

squat, you know? And then you go. So I always start off too easy. begin with a body weight squat, you know, and then you go. So I always start off too easy. They do a body weight squat. I go, okay, let me see you squat. Great. Okay. You look good. Okay. Do this. I want, okay. Knees out a little more at the bottom. Take your stance in a little bit. Okay. That looks good. Go a little deeper. Okay. I like that. Now I'm going to give you a dumbbell in the goblet position. Okay. Let me see this. Great. Okay. I like how you look there. And then i'm complimenting them and i'll go oh sorry i started out too easy i underestimated you and there and then i'll always find a way to compliment them so i'm like you know then then we move to front squats or high bar back squats or something and

i'm like wow you're and i i always, I've trained so many people. I know the norms, and people are always going to be good at, like, one movement. And that's where I'll be like, wow. Nobody wants to back squat 135 and then have you go, oh, shit. No, take the weights off here. Go back to the 25s. Hold this 10-pound plate. And they're like, ah. I'm like the kid with the dunce cap in the corner.

Like, I just got in trouble. Boo. So that's's why that's this whole movement pattern continuum idea where you have a list with each movement squats what's the easiest type of squat it's probably a body weight box squat then a goblet squat then a front squat

and then a high bar back squat then a low bar back squat then whatever like you're adding chains or you're doing Zurcher or you're doing something crazy, a pause squat, whatever. But you know you have your, and we'll have different opinions, but you should have your own philosophy on which, or like your own structure with that, and you start people off at the easiest, and then you quickly move them to the next and the next,

and you find out where they belong. So that's the first session. Your job is to figure out where they belong on each on each movement pattern pattern continuum and then you where you give them a good challenging workout and then you build from there but because you start them off too easy you're complimenting them the whole way so then they go home to their spouse or their friends and they're like hi honey hey how was your personal training session well guess who's built to squat? Guess who was put on this planet to deadlift?

Yours truly. You're looking at them. Guess who has glutes of steel? Yours truly or whatever. You compliment them and then they go and brag and they feel good about it because you made them feel good about this session. How the hell do you make them feel good if you tell them you have all this dysfunction? In fact, I would argue that if you go tell people they have a bunch of dysfunction, you're a piece of shit and you don't belong in this industry. Well, hold on.

I want to go back to all of the specialists, though. So, like, they do have a problem. And the thing that bothers me the most about the specialists is their job is to, like, put this limitation. So my mom has frozen shoulders. She's like, I can't go past here i'm like well when did that start right about when somebody told you you shouldn't bring your arm past here and then you stayed inside that box and then it just continued to go down and down and now we don't raise our arm ever like how did we just get frozen it's a progressive thing it didn't just

happen overnight but you go to do you like chiropractors? I like my chiropractor friends. Okay, so tell me about your chiropractor friends. Why do you like them versus the masses of chiropractors? I don't like chiropractors very much at all. Well, okay, so all the rehab people who I'm friends with, they understand that movement is the key not not so if it's not a movement based practice it doesn't matter what it is and i think that sometimes

physical therapy is let off the hook a little bit because that is supposed like they do load you like they'll do like well single arm kettlebell squat or something like that there are different ranges of like so i remember going a guy back in the day who would god this guy this guy was such a crook and he he was so proud of his system that he actually pulled me aside and he confided in me how he had just figured out the ultimate system he's like look he's like brett this is amazing i have learned that i can have four rooms going at a time and i put i know i learned all the things i can charge for the insurance companies you can charge for ice heat electric muscle stim ultrasound uh correct corrective exercise he gives every person every single thing and he's got one person in a

room doing with the heat pad on this person with ice this person with the muscle stim and he's just moving around and he can do five rooms at a time at a time but he this guy i went to him with uh i think it was probably my multifidus this was like you know 15 years ago and he he kept he'd work on something for a couple weeks and then he was like, oh, I think it's this muscle instead. Like he never had a clue what the hell was going on, but he – Well, it's so easy because people are in pain. They want an answer. Like people want to know something is wrong with them.

So somebody has to feed them what they want. If I'm going to Doug and I need – and he's my PT, I'm like, dude, my back hurts. And he's like, well, I've got the answer for you. Here's the answer. Once they hear the answer, then it's not their fault anymore. No, exactly. Something happened to me. It's not my fault.

And the person that's going to the Cairo or whatever, most of them don't want to work for what the answer is. They just want to, like, I've got anterior pelvic tilt. Like, I just can't fix it. So they're just going to show up. I didn't do it, and now I just got to deal with this thing forever. I just walk around, and my ass is out. You're so right. Like, people love labels.

Yeah. It's comfortable to live inside that because now you don't have to actually go out and explore to find the answer. You just have it. Yeah. Because I like being victim. Got that in my back pocket now. They like having labels. They like feeling sorry for themselves.

They like having an excuse. And so you don't give it to them because then they'll run with it and they'll plant seeds. And so anyway, back to my twin brother. I was told that i had this this this terrible degeneration i can only imagine that it's gotten worse since i was 15 now i'm 42 27 years how are you even alive deadless right but but think of what happened my i at one point i accepted it i think when i was like 21 i remember going fuck this guy.

I actually have a very strong back. And I made that conscious decision to say, I don't believe this guy. My back is actually strong. It's stronger than I ever imagined. And I pulled 620. I bet you I could probably work my way up to 635 or 650 if I wanted to. And, you know, I'm stronger than I ever imagined. Back then, if you would have told me you would have done that,

I would have never believed you. And I have achieved more than I ever dreamed of. And I bet you if my twin brother who has reoccurring back pain, if we MRI'd our discs, I would have way more damage than him. So what's the difference? It's beliefs. It's things you've been suggested. It's nocebo effects. It's things like that that enter the mind. And so all we're

doing is weakening a country, weakening a world with these labels. And so these people need to know the power of words and what you're doing. And so I always say this, okay, I am a strength and conditioning specialist. I strengthen people's minds, bodies, and spirits. I have no time and no place in my repertoire for labeling people and making them feel insecure and self-conscious. I am here to empower you. I'm here to get you fit and stronger, you know, beyond your wildest dreams. And you train with me for a year and you will achieve things you never thought possible and if think if think of the movie 300 okay you've got gerard butler's character um you've got leonidas and you know he's about to send his army off with 300 men and he's like all right uh okay guys you ready

um now anders you're on the front line. Now, let's be realistic. You know what's going to happen. I think we both know what's going to happen. Regardless of effort. You're going to get bugged up. We know you're good with the sword, but... But that anterior pelvic tilt is going to get the best of you, buddy. You're going to be faster than them, but they're still going to kill you. There's a million of them.

Doug, that leg length discrepancy is going to get the best of you. Just try and take one or two people out before you get taken down. That's not what you do. That's not how you make an army. That's not how you strengthen people. That's not how you get them fit and confident. So in my 22 years of personal training i have never labeled anyone ever not once it doesn't even occur to me just like i've never talked smack on instagram or social media it

never occurs to me to be a negative prick that's why i can't believe these people and they say mean things it doesn't occur to me it doesn't occur to me when as a personal trainer to ever tell someone they have something all i do is work around it and i practice that movement pattern continuum and i compliment them and then the next session they come in and i get them you know to set a new record and every step of the way so every time they come in they're beating prs and i let them know last time you got three sets of ten on this let's see what you can get this time oh my god and then i remind them before they leave, you got stronger today. You're kicking butt. And when you get stronger, you're making

little changes over time. You're re-comping. You're building muscle, losing fat. Just for clarity's sake, for people that don't know you, if someone comes in here and their shoulder's fucking hurting, you're not like, okay, barbell overhead press is for you. They're like, no, it's really hurting. You're like, it's all in your mind. You're making it up. It's totally fake. Fake news.

Your shoulder doesn't hurt. I'm glad you... You just believe it's totally fake fake news your shoulder doesn't hurt i'm glad i'm glad you just believe it hurts no no get over it i'm glad you said that what i will do is say let's land my press let's see if there's an angle somewhere that you can do things let's see if you can do land my let's see if you can do floor press let's see if you can do rows let's do rows but hey look your left shoulder is hurting you. There's like 13 major joints, the two shoulders, elbows, wrists. Like you've got your spine, the different regions. You've got your hips, your knees, your ankles. I don't know how many that add up to.

But my point is we can train 12 of those 13. You know, if your left shoulder is hurting, we could train the right shoulder if we wanted. And there's good research on the crossover effect, you know, preventing strength losses in the other limb. We can try eccentrics. We can try isoholds. We can find something that lets, usually you can train that shoulder, like that left shoulder still with something, but even if you couldn't, we can train the lower body. We can train the core. We can figure some stuff out. We'll get your abs strong. We'll get your legs strong. We'll hit your glutes.

This will be a time to really get your glutes strong, and this will lay the base for future gains once your shoulder is feeling better. I actually find that strength training and understanding the mechanics of the body is the best thing, like getting strong. So the other day, didn't warm up. I'm an idiot. Needed to hit a workout. I had like 20 minutes to go and do a bunch of like burpees and thrusters.

Next thing you know, it's like my shoulder. You wake up the next day and it's just killing me. Well, it's really simple. I can just go do a bunch of pulling and get my shoulders reset into place and having an understanding of good strength conditioning principles and how the body works and how to turn muscles on and actually be strong move the proper way strength training is it's not even it's not rehab it's just being strong makes a gigantic difference it's all it's not just working on the muscles it's working on the brain

yeah you know we talked about sensitization earlier. A lot of the pain is irrational in that going through a workout, I mean, how many times do you feel like crap and you're achy and then you go to a workout and you feel better? You didn't have all this damage and then it eliminated itself. It was just in your head, but my point is we need to focus on empowering people, getting away from these labels because half the time the labels are wrong. That's what annoys me more than anything. Because that's when this first started mattering to me was in my old gym in Scottsdale, Lyfts. I had this client and she had back pain when she came to me and she was like, I have a weak core. Well, I gave her, so she was my star client with like, I used to train a lot of core back then.

I don't do as much now, but hanging leg raises like with strict form. I'm talking like knees to chest where you lift the legs, but then you continue bringing them up. She could hit 20 perfect reps with that. Straight leg sit-ups, she could do 30. She could hold a freaking 10-minute plank. She could do side planks for like 2 minutes, 30 seconds. She was, in every measure of core strength, she was amazing. I think she had back pain because she tended around her low back,

but that doesn't mean you have a weak back. A lot of times that means you have a strong back. You want to use it. I could actually talk more about that, but it would be boring. But anyway, that's – I've got all night. I have things to say about that. We can go down the road.

We should totally go down that road. Stu McGill's research, he says a lot of people have – He loves just people walking like a robot. Don't move. Don't move a robot. Don't move. Don't move it. Please don't move. A lot of people have back pain. It's because they have strong backs.

They use them too much, and they need to learn how to use the hips. But anyway, I realized that that physical therapist who told her she had a weak core was so wrong, completely wrong. It couldn't possibly be wronger. She had more wrong, not wronger. That's all right. She couldn't possibly be wronger. She's very wronger. She's wronger.

She's very wronger. The negative labels, too, are going to stick. Like, Anders, if you went to your wife and you said that she's beautiful, she'd remember that shit for like 25 minutes. But if you told your wife she was ugly, she would never forget that the rest of her life. I'd be so cold sleeping outside. The negative labels. But, babe, 20 minutes ago I said you were beautiful.

I just told you. They stick around in a different way. The emotional impact of something that's wrong with you is very hard to shake. Look at you. You're talking about your week back 27 years later or whatever it is. It scarred me. So that's what the the these professionals not all of them it's in my profession of personal trainers and strength coaches we do it too in fact

i have this theory that like 80 percent of strength coaches want to be physical therapists and 80 percent of physical therapists want to be strength coaches. Just stay in your lane and stick to what you do. But they don't know this. They don't quite understand this, but they unknowingly perpetuate this problem because of the competition and the need to tell this person, you know, your financial success depends on you labeling people and telling people you have this, so then you should come to me eight times or whatever.

And there's a better way. And those people will come back to you if you empower them, if you give them movement, if you teach them what you can do and avoid that. You don't have to go down that road. It is such a mental and emotional thing, though. I actually lived in the rehab space for like a year and a half to two years and it drove me crazy because the people that you work with are so unhappy and you realize like anytime someone would walk into the gym and they'd be like oh i'm dealing with pain and i'll just look at them like they like say it to you and you nod your head yes and in the back your brain

you're like oh i just need to make you strong and move better. Like you could tell me whatever it is. The answer to me is always we're just going to get a little stronger and move a lot better and we're probably going to get out of whatever pain it is until you realize there's a lot of mental and emotional things that are going into.

They probably had nine PTs tell them they've got nine different things wrong with them and they're completely scarred. So two things with that. Number one, go to a chiropractor. He's going to tell you the solution to your ills is me adjusting your back. Go to a physical therapist. He'll give you corrective exercise or whatever.

If another chiropractor does the, oh, you've got forward head tilt, you owe me $100 an hour for the next nine weeks or whatever it is. If you go to a manual therapist, they say, oh my God, you are so tight. These muscles are tight and all bound up and knotted up. If you go to a person who does cupping, they'll tell you you need cupping. If you go to a person who does, it depends on your tell you you need cupping. If you go to a person who does, you know, it depends on your tool that you like to use. If you have some special laser tool, you're going to want to use that on everyone. Tell everyone that's the secret. Now, those things can get you hooked.

And a lot of times it's just time. Every week I have some little thing going on and I have to train around it. And if I lay off of them, it heals up and time heals all wounds. The problem is if you're doing something unique during that time, you might falsely attribute it to that thing and it's really not the, and now you're hooked on that and you're paranoid. If I don't foam roll every single day, if I don't go do cupping every week, if I don't get a massage every day, my my if you view the body as this tin man that's constantly falling apart and you have to be doing all this stuff you know if you think that your fascia is always you know you're always building up all these adhesions

and trigger points and your fascia gets unaligned and you have to constantly do things you're like fighting this war with your own body that you're always having to that that's not the way it works and i'm not saying foam rolling isn't good i'm not saying stretching and all these things aren't good i'm just saying if you have a good program design no one talks about program design so here's the problem you go to the chiropractor so let's say let's say i decide i'm gonna deadlift three times a week for the next you know two two months i can't i can't recover from heavy deadlifts three times a week i can't from two times a week yeah or i used to in my 20s i could pull twice a week heavy so let's say i'm just give this i just start doing

the dumbest routine. Oh, hell, I wrote an article years ago, squat to a max every day. It was when I interviewed John Brose. And one of the people who I had tried that, a lot of them developed knee pain for the first time in their life from squatting. When they squatted twice a week, they were fine. They start maxing on squats every every day they start getting knee pain um how many times do you then go to a physical therapist and they say tell me about your program design you lift weights tell me about your program and they go oh you're fine you're just pushing the envelope too much you

should try squatting one day a week instead and instead of doing the second squat day try doing rdls in place of that and back extensions and nordic ham curls instead they don't know strength and conditioning like that so they're they're going to tell you they'll find some dysfunction that you have instead of actually analyzing your program design or movement mechanics and so a lot of times they're just dead wrong and not only are they wrong uh then they send you down this you know this rabbit hole where you're exploring areas that aren't necessary, and they're giving you nocebo effects and planting seeds of self-doubt along the way. And it actually makes us weaker. And so that's the whole point of this podcast. A lot of time,

time heals all wounds. And so you just need to learn how to train around your issue. And I'm telling you, as a 42-year-old lifter who's been lifting weights for 27 years, week in and week out, I've never taken a full week off of lifting. And you're going to have stuff every week where something doesn't feel right, and it's normal. Even if you don't lift weights, you're going to have stuff that doesn't feel right. Even if you don't lift weights. It's not a weightlifting thing. It's like getting older thing in a lot of cases.

Absolutely. Good point. In life, being sedentary isn't good. There's kind of like a U-shaped curve for activity where too inactive and too active you have more incidences of pain and injury and stuff like that in this sweet spot in the middle and it's most of us you have the sedentary people who have their issues and then you have the psychos like us who have their issues who love resistance training and getting stronger.

And we have to learn how to train. You guys, we talked about this last time I was on, how you guys have been doing dynamic effort squats and deads. And you found that you don't get beat up from it, but you retain most of the strength and you feel explosive. They always make me feel good. I feel 95% as strong as I've ever been in my life. And I lift less and do significantly more of the dynamic stuff. We just got lost. You're fully on the Instagrams.

Instagram story. I lift less now but feel like I've maintained literally 95% of the strength that I've ever had in virtually every single movement. And it's that extra 5% is the part where you get hurt all the time and dealing with pain all the time if you're pushing it to those limits. But most of the time I view lifting weights now is just focusing on structural integrity like making sure all the muscles move the way that they're supposed to move and the joints move the way that they're supposed to move and if i can just do that piece and check in and make sure my arms and shoulders and hips and knees are doing the thing that they're supposed to do everything feels pretty good good. I just train because I like it.

Yeah. That's what it comes down to. It's just fun. Well, yeah. I mean, we all enjoy it, but it's like the thought that you put into it of like, well, what am I going to do today? Got a dinged up shoulder. What are you focusing on while you're training?

Yeah. I just want all the structural things to just work the way that they're supposed to work. Lifting weights helps that a ton. If you're strong, it's got to be easier to make sure everything's in the right place and moving the right way. So listen to this. I've been running experiments over the last couple years. I'll do these two-month experiments because I like being strong at squats and deads, but as I get older, they beat me up more and more.

Back squats might not be the best. No, we're going to do this now. Last time I was in here, you shied away from the back squat conversation. How many people should be back squatting and how often? Now, after thousands and thousands of clients later, do you think a barbell back squat is the way you would be going about the majority of movement well okay let me tell you for for glute lab we've been open since what january so 10 months we've been open we haven't had a single injury in here and that's i feel like that's some sort of record with the volume that comes in and out of here.

Now, here's why. We don't give a lot of barbell squats and deadlifts. We always do squats and deadlifts, but it's goblet squats, lever machine squats, and we've got that new – see that guy? I saw that over there. I want to play with that. You guys got to try that out. But that pendulum squat.

Squat pro? Yeah. And we've got – but we do kettlebell deadlifts. We do straddle lifts. We use the belt squat to do the deadlifts off that. We do all sorts of stuff. But it's not just that when you have the load like at the goblet position for the squat or in a lever situation on the machine because you could say oh that's not functional these people don't my my

clients don't do heavy barbell squats and deads and they can still squat and deadlift a lot they get strong at them not as strong if they were doing specificity, but they still can squat. Some of my girls don't even barbell squat and can squat 225 and pull 275. And they don't do them. It's kind of like saying pro bodybuilders aren't strong, but then you see them doing flies, like dumbbell flies with the hundreds. You're like, well, I don't know. What do you mean?

He's not powerful for strong. Does he bench 750? No, but does he bench 400? I don't know. Yeah, pretty easily. He's pretty strong. You just watched he bench 750? No. But does he bench 400? I don't know. Yeah, pretty easily. He's pretty strong. You just watched the Ronnie Coleman documentary that just came out because I've watched it twice. A new one?

Mm-hmm. Oh. I've seen the old one a million times. Killer. Brand new. Well, this is the one about. My sister told me to watch it. This one's about how crippled he is now.

Really terrifying. Double hip replacements and all that, right? He's still super yoked. He still does all the same stuff. He's still in the leg press machine. But it shows him. Lightweight, lightweight. He said he can go anywhere in the world, and all he has to do is say,

lightweight, lightweight. And everybody knows exactly who he is. Ronnie's here. Yeah. Yo, this just got derailed on the rehab side, but there is a picture of him eating when he was a cop, and he had only won Olympia like three times. The plate of chicken that that man was eating, it must have been 15 chicken breasts at one time,

and just dumping barbecue sauce all over them. Like the amount of potatoes going into that man's face. I was just like, that guy's doing that like seven times a day. Terrifying. That was in his DVD back in the day. What was it? Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable, yeah. Go on YouTube, look up Ronnie Coleman, unbelievable. Watch a dude do bent rows with 495 for like sets of 12. Do you remember Brian Dobson, the owner of Metroflex, talking about him? He said he'd never done a steroid. He came in just totally green to bodybuilding. He'd been doing powerlifting. He had leggings on, and he had such huge legs and these veins.

You could see the veins through the leggings. They show the video of it in the new documentary. Literally, it's like a roadmap through his pants. It's terrifying. I mean, he was more jacked naturally than most people could ever get, probably using a ton of stuff. You know you're a savage when, like, all of the savages are talking about who's the most savage, and every single one of them is like,

Ronnie Coleman, that guy is the only one that matters. Like, just the sheer size and shreddedness of a human being. The Olympia is so interesting. There's only been like seven or eight champions in like 30 years. It's like everyone wins it for like five years in a row. Yeah. And then Jake Heldler showed up and did what, six? No.

Phil Heath got eight. Phil Heath at eight. Who won it last year? He was at eight right now. He lost to Sean Roden, I think. No. I'm not familiar with him. I'm out of the game. eight phil he's at eight who won it last year or is that eight right now uh sean rodin i think so i'm not familiar with him i'm out of the game arnold run it won it however many times six or seven or something like that and um then cutler won it many many times like any yeah any yeah they everyone wins it for multiple years it's not like it's not like some sports where it's like a

new champ constantly new guy is more classical, not quite as jacked, but more symmetry. His midsection is a little easy. The bloated gut got weird. They spent a lot of time talking about the bloated gut when Ronnie Coleman's gut

was just so distended and just juiced up. Someone was was telling me i think it was phil heath they saw some interview with him or something he said i don't like to even go in public because um and this could be complete bs because i heard it like second hand like but anyway he said if he like you know they they have to suck in because if he's relaxed and someone snaps a picture, it goes viral. So he's fat. Not just fat, but look at this roid belly or whatever they call it.

So that pregnant, yeah. But I think it's from, I don't know if it's from insulin and growth. I don't know because the steroids have been popular for a long time and they didn't have that in arnold's era well they're not just doing like steroids like arnold did it's even when we interviewed pakulski and he hasn't been on stage and since probably generation iron two was shot and we asked him we were like so like what does a normal like day of supplements look like and he was it was like a five minute conversation i had heard of none of them and it was like those guys are on all kinds of things and he's i don't even think he's like still on like state i mean he's definitely not on stage but he's not like fully juiced up like mr olympia people i remember seeing this i wrote a blog post

about this i saw this ryan kennely um was a i guess he's still a power lifter but he went he went away to prison for um stealing drugs i guess i think he was selling steroids but anyway while he was in prison he was trying to get out and he made like a video to i don't i think he was to help in his chance of getting parole and he's basically saying if he gets out he won't he's going to try and help i think he was to help in his chance of getting parole and he's basically saying if he gets out he won't he's going to try and help people but he came clean about his you know what he was using and i maybe this is just common but i remember just being shocked and i i actually he starts listing all the stuff he does and i remember writing it all down and adding it up

and he was taking like 4500 milligrams of stuff a week and i remember writing it all down and adding it up and he was taking like 4,500 milligrams of stuff a week and I remember learning in anatomy physiology that your testicles make like 7 to 10 milligrams a day of testosterone so like you make you make like you know 50 milligrams a week of your own testosterone versus taking 4,500 milligrams of different stuff. And he was talking about how, you know, when I was taking, I can't remember, say like three grams a week of, I got to an 800 pound bench press. And then when I upped it to, you know, whatever, four grams a week, I got to a 900 pound bench and then to get to a thousand meters he seemed to suggest it was just linear related to the amount of stuff he was taking

which is just crazy they're juiced up we're going to take a quick break we're going to get back into this rehab thing because i want to know what we do with the rehab space because it can't go anywhere and you're kind of saying that we need to, I think that there's like an issue with the education plan and like the chain of events that someone goes through when they feel pain and how do we actually get strength coaches to the forefront before you go to the chiro or you go to the PT or you go to the athletic trainer.

How do we get somebody to show up here before they go and get their brains filled with a bunch of crap? We'll be back in a minute. Shrugged family. Hope you're enjoying the show. Wanted to give a special shout out to our sponsors, BioOptimizer. I've been taking this product, Masszymes, along with HCL Breakthrough. And let me tell you something.

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with brett contreras doug larson yeah how's life bro dude you just got some new some new squad i feel like my glutes are pumped just standing here in this gym. My glutes are – I saw the nicest glutes of all time today. I know that. I very well did. My osmosis helped my glutes. My glutes were turned on by the glutes that I saw. Brett's glutes?

Yes. Brett's glutes. Definitely Brett's. Brett's glutes and these ones. Specifically these ones. We'll keep that a secret. Before we left, how do we change the education system?

So if I am Joe Schmo off the streets, I go to the gym and I have a trainer that has only been around a couple years, doesn't really have this beautiful system that you've laid out on how to squat properly. They throw a barbell on my back, they put 135 on the bar. It looks pretty decent.

Next thing you know, the trainer gets excited. I'm going to have this guy lift it. 185 goes on, tweaks it back. Very first thing they do, they go right to the physical therapist or they go to the chiro. How do we get the education system and the natural way of thinking away from I need to go to a doctor or a specialist and the conversation more aimed to i need to go find a strength coach that actually knows what

the hell they're doing and whose responsibility is that is it like and and knows actually how to train people or should they be going to a doctor and like where do we start with the education system first and then we can get into kind of building the education of all strength coaches to actually so they don't suck at their job. So that's a great question. Imagine when you don't know much about, say you were trying to find a good lawyer in your area. How the hell do you Google a lawyer? How do you know if one's good or not?

You can't go find their record, I don't think. What if you wanted a good counselor or psychiatrist or anything? I'm trying to think of a good doctor. Any service business. Any service. How do you find the good ones? It's really hard. And a lot of times the best at marketing will come up.

They're not usually the best. The best article with the best SEO pops up first on Google. Right. So it's hard. And you also don't know. I mean, hell, I'll tell you, just having a PhD with research, half the time, whatever you're trying to research, you can't find it because you don't know the scientific terms. Like, if you want to learn about the muscle pump, it's called cell swelling. How would you know that if you weren't embroiled in the field and and so like if you're trying to find a good strength coach how would you know if you're just a beginner how would you know to you know how would you know how

to find a really good local strength coach who knows proper form and program design. So we've got a challenge ahead of us in that regard. And then just to change, currently when people get hurt, they want to go to a doctor, a physical therapist, a chiropractor, because they think these people are the experts with getting me fit. These people are the experts in pain. But really, you shouldn't assume that because you got hurt in the gym that you have, that you need a chiropractor, that you need a massage therapist, that you need, a lot of times it's you need a good strength coach who knows how to look at your form for your body and give you the best exercises and variations in form for your body and also can design programs for your body and give you the best exercises and variations and form for your body and also can

design programs for your body. You know, I can tell you a million. So I can, in my glute lab seminars, I have slides of a lot of my clients and I say, check out these results. Phenomenal, right? Well, that's my client, Sammy. She was doing 12 sets a week of lower body. I gave her one set of six exercises twice a week. That's all she could handle. She was so strong. But if I tried to give her more than that, the next session, she'd be weak.

She couldn't recover from it. Well, I can sit there and tell you, I gave her these exercises. Here's this client. I gave her these variations. Sammy did best with heavy barbell hip thrusts. And I measured her EMG activity with heavier and heavier hip thrusts and glute bridges. It went up and up and up as she went heavier, as long as she locked

out. I have this client, Aaron, and then my old intern, Andrew, their glute activation topped out at 50% of one rep max. It didn't go higher. So they could get the same glute activity with 50% of one rep max compared to 100%. So why would I ever give them heavy hip thrusts? I would give them lighter hip thrusts. But Sammy would do goblet squats, kettlebell does. She got more glute activity with 50-pound goblet squats than 205-pound back squats. She got more with the 106-pound kettlebell deadlift than a 225-barbell deadlift for reasons unknown.

I can speculate some of the load being centered. But also she's lanky. And sometimes you look at like lankier people with long legs and shorter torsos, and they fold a lot when they squat, and it's just the essence of having longer femurs. And, you know, you have to work with the client, not only with the exercises in form, but also with the program. Some people, so there's all this research now on, there's this, I think it's like AMPD1, the recovery gene. There's all these different genes associated with the muscle damage. Some people experience way more muscle damage than others. And they've narrowed down the reasons why.

Think about, you know, the dude that you trained with who's never sore. Think of that person you trained who you do a wimpy workout and they text you the next day, I'm crippled. See, all of this stuff sucks. It sucks for our profession, right? So one of the most terrifying things somebody can ask me is, what do I do to get in shape? I don't know.

I really don't know. it took you 20 years of knowing before you decided you didn't know though yeah like i don't know all i know is that we should go to the gym together and then i can watch you move a little bit we can play with some things we'll go through these progressions but it's really really hard because say 80 of the trainers suck they just haven't put the time in they're half-assed part-timing it down at 24-hour fitness they're just here to live near the beach and whatever it's probably 80% of all strength coaches trainers that have ever been trainers in their lives then the next 10% are lifers but they're they're not great then there's breck and trey is 10 those people

if you're part of the general population you only are hanging out with the bottom 80 that never give a shit about getting better at all and they know it's a dead-end job for them they just don't know what else to do they went and got their nasm they can train at 24-hour fitness they don't care if they hurt you they don't't care anything. So it's on the people. Is it on the people to do their homework to find you? And Doug, I'll be in the 80% to 90% range. But is it on them to do their homework to find the people? Do they have the resources to actually be able to hire you?

And now we've got a real problem because it's like, well, they could just go get the online program. Well, the online program's cookie cutter. It's templated. Is it actually for somebody? It's terrifying because I don't know what's the right exercise for everything. And then you go into, well, some people's muscle tissues break down too fast. They can only do 12 sets a week. They're only doing one exercise, and that's how they grow the best. and that's how they get the strongest well it takes a while it's a

conversation it's a relationship that you have with these people so it's incredibly hard because now you've got the doctor down the street that says i know the answer your glutes don't work let's do bird dogs and that sounds like somebody because if somebody asks me my most honest answer to them is i don't know what the best fitness thing is for you it's going to be kind of expensive if you want to do one-on-one training so like we're probably not going to end up doing it but i don't know but if the dude down the street that's got a doctor next to his name and he's a pt or a cairo or whatever it is i'm going to crack your neck and things are going to be beautiful because you've got this that's jacked up so whose responsibility is it is it the guy down the street that's charging 100

bucks an hour to crack people's neck in five minutes and then kick them out the door is it the person on the street that's injured that's not doing their homework whose responsibility is it to find the right thing because I've been in this game for 22 years and i don't know the answer to what the best thing for you is outside of pay the money and show up at this place every day it's probably going to be really expensive and we're going to have a conversation about working out and i know i can help you i just don't i can't tell you i can't feed you the answer we have to go on this little journey together. So I haven't put enough time and thought and energy into this actual solution. You'd think I would have given that I've identified the problem.

But it's a multi-pronged approach where the rehab people need to step it up and learn the power of words and suggestions and start realizing that the things they're saying might be causing harm. They need to learn about nocebo effects. So they need to step it up. We need to step it up as personal trainers and strength coaches in terms of having better progressions,

starting people, you don't start people with a heavy squat and then they do quarter squats and then they try to go deep and they snap some stuff up. You start off with body weight, then you add load, you know, then you add range of motion, then load and reps and stuff like that. But we need to step it up in terms of designing programs that they can recover from and not forcing round or square pegs into round holes or whatever this thing is i remember when i learned west side when i was like 25 probably or something 24 or something years old and i i took my buddy rob my like long the guy i trained with the longest

in life he's he's in phoenix now but like i'm like rob i gotta get you squatting wide and you'd be like this doesn't feel good like this hurts and i'm like yeah you just gotta get used to it poor guy keep hurting yourself keep hurting yourself you just gotta get used to no one cares about your femur it's in your head I didn't know enough at the time to know that, you know, I've seen pictures of different people's hips, and oh, my God, it's insane. I wrote a blog post once on it with all these pictures and the different sizes of femoral necks, the different sizes, shapes, and angles of the acetabulum and hip socket,

the different width of the ilium, width of the hip bones, width, the sizes, the shapes, the angles, and they're so different. The depth of the hip socket, the femur angle, like the Q angle, all these things. And just when you see that, it just makes trainers make sense of it all. Wow. This is why one of the girls that you saw in here today with really nice glute development. I probably noticed her.

I was choking on my words when she walked by. We were talking about, yeah, I know. Well. What were were talking about, yeah, I know. Well, I've done research on, so I can tell you with the masses, like which stances activate the glutes best. For example, if you're doing glute bridges, frog pumps lead to the highest activation, followed by wide stance with mini band, followed by, you know, the least is the narrow stance. Now, that's on average.

And I will also tell you that probably at least one out of three people don't like frog pumps. They don't feel them much because that abducted externally rotated position doesn't work well for their hips. And this lady that was in here, her name's Kiana, her glutes activate best when she has a narrow stance with her feet pointed inwards. And she does that with hip thrusts and squats. And that, on average, gets you the lowest glute activation. But for her, it gets the highest. And she's got some of the greatest glute development i've seen so you have to just you have to match the the variation and the setup and the stance width and the foot flare and the

postures and the range of motion to the individual i have my my client massa she can't squat deep and she had some of the best glutes ever i do you know i wouldn't even squat her to parallel a little bit above parallel she had great great gl great glutes. It's okay. We can still get you strong. There's, um, there's strong men and, uh, like Highland Games champions. A lot of those guys have deep hip sockets. They're very stable, but they can't go rock bottom. They, you know, they, they start to butt wink a little bit past parallel. So they're not going to make good Olympic lifters, but they're very functional and strong at certain things. You just have to find the right variation for the person and the right frequency, volume, load, effort, and all that. So I don't think people know enough about that.

So our side of the profession needs to step it up with our understanding and knowledge of program design and mechanics and biomechanics. And we all need to get better at communication and networking. And so I think it's the three. They need to get better at this. We need to get better at this. And then we all need to work together to find people who get it and then refer people to that to them well and what do you do with the bottom 80 percent of specialists that suck at their job but they're making a buck 50 a year living in pb just crushing it and living this beautiful life cracking people's necks and they got people

on recurring billing for rehab for the rest of their lives right what do you do with them well that's on the people because the art so but the people don't know like that's probably not the majority of people in those professions where they're just looking at the system like he was talking about earlier like but there's a lot of people that maybe they need better at their jobs but they're trying to do a good job but they're not just stealing people's money i think that the uh the chiropractor world weirds me out. I've had many of them that were at my gym, and it bothered me a lot because they would bring people in, and they take these x-rays. And it hits a little closer to home because Ashton was a part of one of these things. And she'd be like, where'd my thousand dollars go?

Like, why did I just get signed up for a recurring billing? And you'd spend five minutes with me cracking my neck. And like, what am I doing here? But I'm in a position, I can't say anything. Like, these are people that I am around all the time. And like, you just see it and you're like're like man that's super gnarly that that's happening and they're not the only ones that's that's happening a lot i think that's happening a lot more than the the 10 that are talking about like movement and strength and well you have

certain fields that are completely based on pseudoscience and that's my problem is that the people it's like the opiate of the masses well religion is but like this this this uh constant quest for this magic you know this magic pill that's gonna and and people need to do their homework they need to read the research they need to it's so easy to think oh if i just go to this person or do this thing, I'm going to feel great, feel amazing. But, you know, I can tell you horror stories with, my friend knew a chiropractor who would position people and then go, okay, turn this way, lean this way. Okay, yeah. Now, take the snap, the x-ray. Oh, my God, look how jacked up you are.

He would position people in a jacked up position and then tell them how jacked up they are. How messed up is that? I've definitely gone into places before. He's got a beautiful house on the water. I've definitely gone into places before, taken my before picture, which if I'm going to take your before picture and I'm a chiropractor like you, Brett Contreras, you kind of know the things that I'm looking for generally. And so it's hard to stand normal, quote-unquote normal, because you know you're being scrutinized. So you're trying to stand as straight as possible, as neutral as possible,

shoulders back, shoulders down, everything's even, toes are straight ahead. You're very aware of the position you're standing in in most cases you even talking about it made me squeeze my butt right like i just stood i stood better just you discussing it right so i've gone into places you know where they they have no idea if i know anything about anything and so they're like here take the before thing you get my picture they do a couple exercises with me i go back back. They take the next picture. And I'm thinking the same things. Like, I'm still trying to stand as straight as possible, et cetera, et cetera. And then they're like, okay.

They show me the iPad or whatever, two pictures side by side. I'm like, you see here where you're tilted and this and that and the other? And I've had it before where they got screwed up just for a second. And they were like, see here? No, no, no. Sorry, you were doing that on the other picture. They don't – it's like it's all confirmation bias, no, no, sorry, you were doing that on the other picture. It's like,

it's all confirmation bias. They want to see something. They're trying to explain to you where it was. The whole thing was like a big sham. As the person was explaining it to me, I was like,

you're making all this up. I'm not doing what you're saying. You just don't think I know what I'm talking about. And culturally though, we do it all the time. It's like,

you have tech's neck. I don't know. Did people never have their heads forward ever? Have you seen that meme where it was like, I'm so bad at these, I have no memory, but it was like 1900s and it showed like 20 people on a train and they're all reading. They're reading the newspaper with their heads down, but everyone was doing it. And now everyone's looking down at texting, but we always been reading and and unless you're reading like this right but it's a function of volume i think it's like all sometimes i actually see you texting and it is

here and i'm like what a weirdo what's he doing great posture i've got a little story it's a kelly star at they give you like it should be up here. My kids do it. You're like, your kids are texting like this? It's so weird. Yeah. I've got a little story about. I actually do have issues with my neck, though. Yeah. From like being chin to chest, doing MMA and jiu-jitsu and all that.

So actually, that is a provocative thing for my neck to go chin to chest. Yeah. So I actually do try to look straight ahead and not be looking down all the time because it will aggravate my neck. Yeah. So I have a little story of an interesting story when i stopped uh personal training so much so i could start blogging more i was so worried that i was my glutes were gonna shut down from sitting too much because yeah this was like 12

years ago i sort of bought into the whole and this is kind of like the nasm model like you and and it sounds legit it's like okay i'm already sitting typing a lot more and while i'm sitting i am going to you know get some mechanical you know some adaptive shortening of my hip flexors and that's going to lead to these are big words right like adaptive shortening then that's going to lead to, these are big words, right? Like adaptive shortening. Then that's going to lead to reciprocal inhibition of the glutes, you know? Yeah. And gluteal amnesia. And then because of that, I'm going to start using my hamstrings more to compensate for my weakness.

And that's going to lead to synergistic dominance of the hamstrings and the adductors and the muscles that help out for the glutes, you know, the other hip extensors. And I want to start you. And then you've got these, you know, movement distortion patterns where up and down the chain, you're just all jacked up. And I, you know, I put some stock into that back then. I was kind of worried. I'm not training people as much. I'm not on my feet as much. I'm not as active. I'd be sitting a lot more. And I set so many PRs that year because I wasn't on my feet all day long, and I wasn't loading plates and also the mental energy. When people lift heavy, I'm flexing muscles with them.

I'm like, you know when you put a ball and you want the ball to go to the right, you're like leaning, leaning? When people are going for prs i'm like flexing the muscles and things like it's mentally draining when you actually care it's like watching the olympic weightlifter coaches they're always to the side like tweaking their head they've always got like the forward the side head lean to see the bar path but But my glutes grew that year. Best year ever. Yeah, so that's when I was like, I don't think this is legit. I think people get weak and active glutes just from life.

If you're not lifting weights and being active, this is going to be a muscle that tends to shut down more. Because if you have electrodes on your muscles in everyday life, you'll notice some muscles get highly activated. For example, the quads. Every time you stand up from a chair, every time you climb a step, the quads activate to like 60% of MVIC, of maximum capacity. Just, I mean, feel the quads when you get up from a chair.

They're rock solid. When you stand up, when you climb stairs and things like that, the glutes don't activate very highly no matter what you do, unless you climb stairs and things like that, the glutes don't activate very highly no matter what you do. Unless you're lifting heavy, squatting deep, no one does frog pumps in everyday life. In everyday life, you do not use the glutes that much. So some muscles get used more in just daily living, the glutes not being one of them. You don't go explosive or heavy hip extension in everyday life.

And so to develop the glutes, you need to be in the gym. And so it just makes sense from that perspective. These terms aren't needed. You don't get adaptive shortening. Think about the whole adaptive shortening thing. When sleeping, undo it. And if people are sitting down, they're actually in posterior pelvic tilt. Everyone sits like this. So wouldn't you, everyone be stuck in posterior pelvic tilt? No, more people are in anterior pelvic tilt. Seven degrees is normal. These things don't really happen. Um, well, people will say, well, when your knee is at 90, 90, the hamstring is, is, doesn't change length. It's actually slightly lengthened because there's a longer moment arm of the hip than the knee.

But, yeah, these postural effects would undo themselves. I do think you can feel like crap from sitting too much. But you can combat that by getting up, walking around, moving more, and just try not to sit so much. But we shouldn't fear it. And as long as you're lifting weights and being active, your glutes and other muscles will remain strong. And there's this coolest study. It's one of my favorite studies.

It was like a NASA-funded study, I think. And the subject got paid very well. But they had to do 56 days of complete bed rest. That would be brutal. Brutal, right? I would go totally crazy. They didn't even do hygiene stuff. I like to think there was a French maid that came in and was like,

time for... Fluffer. Time for your cleaning. You need a friend? Time for your hand job they didn't even want the muscles being used for anything like so the guy's like i do it myself but i'm not allowed yeah i really just need a hand here i can't so i would mess the study up the goal is to see which muscles atrophied and to which degree if you did this intervention. In space, you can't lift free weights because there's no gravity.

So you need to use things like flywheels, and this was a leg press machine. So they did leg press. We did two full episodes with NASA at NASA. If people want to see actually how they trained in space, we have dope videos on YouTube awesome yeah but this so this study looked at they did basically one set of like the horizontal squat like a basically a leg press um once uh one hard set three times a week the set lasted one minute so 12 minutes a week the glutes were being 12 minutes a month, the glutes were being activated. It's like 0.09% of the time of the month.

I calculated the amount of time that is for an entire month. 99.99% of the time, your glutes were inactive. And their glutes, they measured through MRI. The glutes actually grew because the people were doing progressive overload. They were only activating three sets a week, one set three times a week, and their glutes grew. Other muscles shrunk, but that just shows you the glutes don't need much. They just need, think of like the lion or the jaguar or something.

They're resting a lot. They get up and sprint every once in a while they stay jacked well that's probably not a good example to use animals but yeah they're moving a lot but i i think that that's one thing that i learned most or maybe not most but a lot in my training now is how little you actually need to be doing and that's why i talk about like just structural maintenance like go in and do your thing but pick something heavy up and then the rest of it should just be taking care of the bare necessities and and you're going to be doing pretty well yeah people over the course of their

careers typically as strength coaches do less and less and less i mean with their clients there is a piece to it like we have enough strength in the savings bank that even if we lost 10 we'd still be in the 99 percentile of all humans but um yeah you don't really lose it that much i think even the majority if you wanted to go and get fired up one day and go pull some heavy dads or squat really heavy it's more of a mental thing and checking into the wiring of the aggression. Do I really want to go to that place and really want to push it right now? And like, what is the motivation behind sitting down and standing up with,

I don't know, you squatted like 450 the other day, didn't you? 425. So listen to this. Well, I do. Yeah,

I do like deep squat, full squats, but this, I started talking about this earlier and then i went off on a tangent i forgot to close this off i've been doing experiments so because squats and deads beat me up lately so for eight weeks i didn't do a single squat dead not even a body weight squat or like light deadless all i did was i did four sets of hip thrust twice a week, either off the Smith machine or this glute drive right here, the Nautilus glute drive, because you can go deep with it. And I thought

when I do barbell hip thrust off a bench, I don't quite go as deep, but with a Smith machine, I ended up going deeper and I wanted that deep strength. So I did four hard sets twice a week. And then I followed up, I'd walk to crunch. And I did four sets of leg extensions. And I'd either do four sets of lying leg curls or I'd come here and do four sets of Nordics. Okay. I did that for eight straight weeks. And my strength on, like, my hip thrust strength went up a lot. Because I was doing four hard sets twice a week.

So my hip thrust strength on those machines went up. My leg extension strength, I was doing 200 hard sets twice a week. So my hip thrust strength on those machines went up. My leg extension strength, I was doing 200 for sets of 10. I could put it on the stack and do 240 for sets of 20. So my leg extension strength went through the roof, and I got so strong at Nordics. I mean, I could lower myself all the way to the ground. I can't do a concentric rep, but I went up on all those. But most importantly, I got out of pain.

My knees felt amazing after the two months. And my low back felt amazing. And I retested my one rep maxes on squats and deadlifts. And first of all, it felt like I'd never done a squat or deadlift before in my life. Like you lose that coordination a lot. I felt so like uncoordinated. But I didn't go down in strength. I hit a very easy 405 full squat.

I know I could have probably hit 425, maybe even more. And then I pulled five, Sumo pulled 565. I think I could have hit 585, maybe even 605 if I really, like you said, went to that place. Is there a piece of just context to where we all start? Like, what if we all started only doing glute bridges or hip thrusters? And nobody ever really – and like powerlifting wasn't a sport, so we didn't have this thing to compare ourselves to, which is the back squat.

But everybody was – there was some reason that we were like testing hip thrusters and there was a sport and an event. Right. So it's all context on what's needed. You don't have to back squat to be really strong. Right. You should probably just pick up some heavy things and get your hips below your knees. The way you do that doesn't really matter.

Your body doesn't know that back squatting makes the most difference. You can actually do it one leg or two leg at a time. Yeah. I watched a video that you guys put out many, many years ago about the history of the back squat, and it was super cool because the back squat for a very long time didn't even exist because people didn't have squat racks. It was like the Steinborn lift.

Yeah, so you had to pick it up off the ground, hold it up. Imagine if you made somebody, you're like, okay, we're going to back squat, but the only way that we're going to do it today is if you can pick it up off the ground and put it on your back yourself. Holy shit. Like, the whole, if you put that lift on Instagram right now, you would be the dumbest person that's ever existed. Picking a 135, 185-pound bar up off the ground, contorting your body to get underneath it,

using a side crunch to get it on your back and then doing five reps and then setting it down on the other side safely from probably a full squat like shimmying your hands up so it doesn't break your neck you'd be the dumbest person on the internet that's until they invented the squat rack that's how you squatted and before that there was no such thing as the back squat. No, but it's interesting you talk about that because I sit there every day. Like I've gotten the barbell hip thrust popular around the world. And not a day goes by where I go, how the hell didn't someone think that up before me?

And I've had people tell me, oh, I was doing that in the 90s. And I go, do you have a picture or a video? Because I want to post it. I've had 10 people tell me that. I go, do you have a picture or video? Because I want to post it. I've had 10 people tell me that. I go, do you have a picture or video? They go, no. I go, then I don't believe you. And they go, oh, you think I'm lying? And I go, yeah, I do. Because if you were doing this, why didn't you take a picture or video? It never occurred to you that no one's doing this and you would have been the rightful inventor? You've been the creator of this? They go, everyone is everyone is doing it okay if everyone was doing it

how come not a single picture or video exists before 2006 when i was doing it and people sometimes i've been tagged in this picture of um uh i think it was um uh george hackenschmidt doing he's like it looks like he's doing a glute barbell glute bridge but it was actually he was doing a pullover and press. They did it from a bridge position. They did a pullover and press. But there's not a single video or picture, evidence of anyone doing it before 2006. Of course, they were doing bodyweight glute bridges and things like that, but no one ever put a barbell on their hips, like a padded barbell, and started going heavy with it.

What if that just coincidentally became popular before squatting and deadlifting did? And if you look at the tool like itself, the barbell is just so perfectly balanced. You put it as close to your spine as possible in the strongest place on your back, and now you've got people that don't move that well with not great mechanical, like kinesthetic awareness. And now you've got, like, an ability to move way more weight because the tool that you're using is really, really good and well-balanced. And it's like a recipe for people getting injured when there's significantly better ways to go about getting people to get strong. Well, it's funny you say that because I just have that BCT bell right there, but we also use the belt squat right there.

We don't do hip belt squats off that. We do that straddle lift right there, the C to row handle. Yeah, we did that last time we were in here. It's awesome. Super deep hip hinge, a little bit of a squat, quarter squat. It's like a squat where you're going real deep and leaning more. It's kind of a little bit of a squat, quarter squat. It's like a squat where you're going real deep and leaning more. It's kind of like a combination of a squat and deadlift,

and we get them super strong. No one's ever hurt themselves off that. And it's the emotional attachment more so than, yes, I think squats and deadlifts are two of the most dangerous lifts, but I love them, we all love them, but they're also the lifts that you lie to yourself. When you go for PRs you shouldn't on a day you're not feeling good, our emotional attachment is the highest. Therefore, whatever lift you're most emotionally attached to,

like I showed you that lever squat on our break, you don't care about hitting five plates on that. It's the barbell squat. You get the most street cred on Instagram and you want it too much. You want that 500-pound squat, that 600-pound deadlift. You want it too much, and you lie to yourself. Well, I think the deadlift, too, is another one that, like, why don't we have more trap bars and regular gyms?

Trap bars and heavy kettlebells. Heavy kettlebells are awesome as well. 300-pound kettlebell. That's why I liked that straddle lift, that T-bell. You load it up, and it's so much safer to have it in between your legs and have that same movement pattern but the loads in between legs rather than having a straight barbell. And you start thinking, I want to load up this movement pattern.

What is the best tool to use? Is it a straight barbell? You have these barbell aficion if you suggest that the barbell isn't the best tool for everything they freak the heck out you know like mark ripito's crowd and in the toe yeah it's so like um you know yeah barbells are super versatile yeah you can have one tool for a million things but doesn't necessarily mean if you have access to other things that you should still just use barbells. Well, I think the barbell is the best tool for building muscle, but any good strength coach should have dumbbells, barbells, apparatuses, bands,

and all these things. Is it the best tool for building muscle? I mean, I've always thought that. Are all the tools equal to building muscle, and that one just happens to be the easiest one for people to use. Or they like it the most because it's the most impressive. You go heaviest on it. It's easy to go heaviest, and also it's the easiest to manufacture.

They're the most obvious. You can walk into a CrossFit gym. It used to be impossible to get a really nice barbell. Now there's 15 of them in your gym right here. Right. Super simple. You know, I have this theory that, you know, we all become these functional snobs. When your clients, most of our clients don't come in going, I want to become more functional.

They say, I want to be, I want a better physique. You know, if you train people, probably like 80 percent of your clients want a better physique and then we are bored as trainers so we're we'll scoff at these exercises that well that's not functional the client doesn't care we'll go i've had all these these first of all doing curls is a very functional like in life you have to carry heavy things out in front of you heck you saw me during the the glute squat session carrying that pit bull. The thing was heavy. I'm like holding it for my biceps to start fatiguing.

Doing curls is functional, but you'll hear people go, no, you wouldn't catch me dead in my gym doing a curl. Wait until you have a kid. No kidding. 100% bicep curl. It's like bicep endurance. That's a conditioning muscle. That's not a strength muscle.

Right. I don't know how people i hold a baby for two minutes and i'm done and this woman will take it for 45 minutes and i'm like what the hell is going on why are you so yoked but uh can you teach me about it's too much by the way i got three kids under four years old i carry them everywhere i go it's like be carrying one kid and then another kid will walk up to me and be like up and i'll be like okay i'm setting you down picking you up i just carry kids with my arm bent at 90 degrees all day long switching arms switching arms switching arms like i got all problems because of it yeah i think

that's too much coaches we lied we we um we want to think that we have everything in our facility for giving you the best possible workout no matter what the goal so we say oh all these stupid like people a lot of coaches would come look at my gym and they'd go that's stupid these lever machines just do barbell the oh the you don't need these you don't need these look at all my little gadgets and things i have and they're very convenient for glute training but a lot of coaches would say they're not needed and they're stupid just do barbell and i've telling you i'm getting a lot of success moving away from that because i went through my powerlifting phase

and I love powerlifting but I started becoming that trainer that pushed my goals on to my clients and I wanted them all to be squatting 225 to be deadlifting 275 for reps and I had more injuries

then and we weren't building glutes as much because to get good at one rep max strength, you've got to do a lot of one rep maxes, and like Brad Schoenfeld and I did a study. We looked at three sets of three versus three sets of ten. For squats, the three sets of ten group grew a lot more muscle. It's more reps.

Earlier you were talking about emg um and you said you're testing someone that was training here regarding emg because i know you've done a lot of that in the past especially around glutes and hip inches and squats and which muscles get activated and whatnot when you're doing that are you looking for the highest emg activation with the highest weight that has maximum EMG activation? Because say you said someone was doing a hip thrust and beyond 50% of the weight that they could possibly do, their EMG activation went down. For that person, do you want the heaviest weight they can do where they get maximum EMG activation? And that's the sweet spot where they're getting enough mechanical tension, but at the same time, they're getting all the fibers to fire and they're not getting, you used the term earlier, they're not getting some other synergistic dominance that's kicking in to help move the

weight, but they're not getting the proper muscles to fire, in this case, the glutes in this example. So when I use EMG, so there's been a lot of criticism of EMG and people wrongly saying, like inferring the EMG, basically saying higher EMG infers higher motor unit recruitment. It doesn't. Or greater hypertrophy. It doesn't automatically mean that. But I always argue with those people. And you've got leads on my glutes and I do a max voluntary contraction just standing. Well, I get maximum glute activation, but there's no mechanical tension.

No, there is. And that's actually a new study with Lineke's group. I wrote a blog about it a couple years ago saying, do we even need to lift? So they had one group. Each subject was its own control. So each subject did dumbbell curls with one arm. So like four sets of eight to 12 dumbbell curls.

Yeah. With the other arm, they had no load and they did four sets of 20 flexing through the whole range. Four sets of 20 with 30 second rest periods. And they were squeezing. Now in, I was actually a peer reviewer for this study. And what they said was it's hard to get high activity until the end squeeze.

So you'd see this big spike at the end, but throughout the range. Now, interestingly, this group gained way better strength, the dumbbell group. They gained better strength, but the hypertrophy was equal, except this group grew their tricep because what provides the resistance for the bicep? The tricep does. And so they saw equal growth. So do you need load? So Brad and I, we're like best friends, but we bicker like an old married couple.

We get in these arguments, and it's really funny if you're around us. But he's saying, well, it was beginners. You would not see that with advanced people. And I said, I think you would. And he's like, so what you think you could maintain all your muscle mass, just flexing and posing. And I said, I see your point, but I actually do think so. But here's the caveats. When I do, when I lift weights and I'm training for a whole hour, maybe, you know, maybe 12 of those minutes, I'm actually under tension. Most people, when they go flex in front of the mirror, you do it, you know, maybe 12 of those minutes I'm actually under tension. Most people, when they go flex in front of the mirror, you do it, you hit a couple of poses, walk away. If you

actually had 12 minutes under tension, but you actually got creative like we do in the gym, you make sure if you're doing, you have pec day or something, or like you're doing upper body one day, lower body the next, and you're actually hitting all the angles. So you use like immobile things to do. I'm going to flex my pec as hard as I can angles so you use like immobile things to do i'm going to flex my pec as hard as i can from this angle from i'm going to do basically like a pec deck and then i'm going to just do like a most muscular pose then i'm going to do it in a stretch position more and flex and i'm going to hit different angles and you actually had the 12 minutes of time under tension or somewhere close to it, I think you could

maintain most of your muscle mass. Now, Brad's point is how do you know if you're utilizing progressive overload, which is a good question. But I think you could maintain or build muscle doing that. But would it work for advanced? So we plan on doing a study to examine whether additional flexing and posing is additive with heavy resistance training. We're going to figure this out. I do most muscular to my daughter all the time. She thinks I'm yoked. You know, Mel Siff in the book Super Training,

Mel Siff called it loadless training. Steve Maxwell talks about it all the time. Isometrics, pushing a wall that you just. Bodybuilders, a lot of them would notice. I felt more definition when I would start posing more before a contest. And I don't think, I think they were growing muscle. But I know that early on when I was 15, I could never, I'm like, how do you flex your lats? I could not. I remember trying to flex my was 15, I couldn't ever, I'm like, how do you flex your lats? I could not. I remember trying to flex my lats and I couldn't.

And so I started posing in the mirror for like 15 minutes a day. And I know that helped with my mind muscle connection. And then it transfers over to exercises because I could know how to, you know. Well, you see all the professional bodybuilders spend so much time posing and creating that mind muscle connection like just they're in that little ballet room like trying to make it all happen and there's got to be something to it like just being under tension all the time even if they're not training but back to what you were saying there's a lot to that like try try to flex your lower traps or your rear delts like it's it's hard yeah you gotta it out. But back where you were saying with EMG. So I've published probably like five to 10 EMG studies in journals.

That's different. When I use EMG with clients, like if my, my EMG is, isn't working right now. If I did, I had you guys come in. I could hook up different, whatever muscles you guys cared about. Let's run you through 20 different exercises and different loads and let's just learn from it. And you'll see interesting things with every single subject where, wow, this exercise doesn't normally work with most people that well, but with you, it worked very well. Or I didn't expect this to get so high with this. So I use it to just learn which exercise are best for them and i always learn some cool things not just with exercise but also loads and things like that

so it's for that reason it's very effective for me and i've one of my other in my seminars that i give i show this client aaron and i'm like aaron got the highest glute activation with the band seated hip abductions cut as high as a one rep max squat. How many one rep max squats can you do a week? Versus how many band-seated hip abductions can you do? So I said, Erin, you should do this every day. Throw the loop around your knees and do these every day. You know, seven days a week.

Well, she rolled with it. She quit doing any barbell lifts. The only thing she did was hip thrust off of a leg curl machine and the seated hip abduction machine. And then tons of band work five. I wrote a blog post on her back in the day. She did five minutes to one hour a day. Sometimes it was just five minutes, sometimes up to an hour, usually around 30 minutes. And she just throw the bands around and do all sorts of things. And her glutes, I have her glute transformation. It's phenomenal. And that worked best for her because she got super high and she was the one who didn't get

high glute activation with heavier loads. So high reps were good for her. So this suited her well. Would it work for everyone? I don't think so think so but with her her training frequency was very high i told you about sammy who had 12 sets a week aaron probably had 100 sets a week but different strokes for different folks and i think that's the wave of the future is learning how the hell do we learn this stuff is it through genetic testing are we going to be able to one day look at genes and say, you respond better to more frequency and volume but not going so heavy and intense?

I think nutrigenomics and training genomics is going to be the wave of the future. So we're probably like 20 years out. I can't wait. If someone takes my DNA out of me and tells me exactly what program i should be doing sets reps exercises that'd be wild well what we were talking earlier you don't even need to be right you can just pretend to know it and base your whole

everything on pseudoscience and make a fortune there There it is. Dude, this is awesome. It is 9.36 at night. You're probably just getting ready to start training. I need to lift. The rest of the world goes down. You're going to lift. I'm going to grab an energy drink. I love that.

Not me. When did Monday start? 2 a.m. I woke up early today. Yeah. We've got to get on flights to come out here. We're heading to L.A. at 6 a.m. tomorrow. We early today yeah we gotta we're going we gotta get on flights to come out here we're heading

heading to LA at 6am tomorrow got three shows gonna smash it's gonna be it's a good weekend bro weekend killer

we're working if you can't tell yeah dude where can people find you Brett Contreras Instagram Instagram

everything yeah like that's all I pretty much do now. I try to be active with my story. Oh, you're very active with your story. It's a full-time thing now. They made the repost thing so much easier. It keeps your phone cleaner, doesn't it?

Yeah. That's nice. But yeah, so Breck and Traeris 1 on Instagram. If you can't remember, you can just Google. Have you talked to the real Brett Contreras? Not BrettContreras1? Yeah. What does that guy do?

How many followers does he have? I think it's like 80 or something, but he doesn't use it. He's made like two posts, and I wrote him, but he doesn't check it. So I wrote him saying, hey, we want to name your price, and he doesn't check. Interestingly, I've... If you're out there, Brett Contreras. Brett Contreras 1 would like to talk to you.

Instagram.com slash Brett Contreras. Watch him just start doing hip thrusters. Fuck that Brett Contreras 1 guy. He stole my shit. He could actually make a profitable business off that. He definitely could. Download my e-book. Yeah.

I think, yeah, it's crazy when you go to actually get a URL and you go, why did this person nab that before me? You know? Glut Lab. Someone took Glut Lab? Everything. Everything I ever think of, someone gets it before I do. Interesting. It's crazy.

So what are you now? GlutLabOfficial.com? Yeah. Or no, I had to buy GlutLab.com, but on Instagram, I had to buy it for like $1,200. Would you buy GlutLab? Oh, $1,200. $1,200, yeah. I've only sold one website domain, WODHub.

W-O-D Hub. Worth it. I'll tell you a funny story. $1,500. That's a good day. Nice. Oh, nice. Yeah, it cost me $7.

That's a good turnover. So hipthruster.com, some dude in Ireland has it. And I wrote him and was like, you know, I would love to buy this from you. And he's never used it. And he's like, no thanks, I'm not interested. And then four years later, I wrote him again. And he's like, yeah, still not interested. No, thank you.

I'm like, but you've never used it. You just keep renewing it? He's never used it. Yeah. Interesting. It's mine. Why? It's mine.

Well, that's like a whole business that people used to do. But he's not. Own all the websites and then sell them to people. You'd think he did the right thing. He did it. If he's trying to all the websites and then tell them to people you think he he he did the right thing he he did it he's trying to make money he bought the thing then now the person who wants it is coming to him saying i'll give you a thousand dollars for it yeah sorry no thing he writes back and he's like no thanks i'm not interested he's from ireland and i'm like you don't like money maybe what's wrong with you maybe he's playing the long game yeah i'd love it if

somebody just wrote back he's like you know what i'm gonna keep it i got this idea i'm gonna have people lay on their back and use a barbell maybe i'll put some bands on the side what do you think of that idea call the hip thruster started doing it in the 80s yeah i have a picture i would i would actually love it would be hilarious if i saw like especially if it was from some different country or something they were doing hip thrusts and was there never like an arnold or like uh like old gold's gym like in that culture nobody's ever got a picture of just like somebody with a bar on their hip and squeezing their butt? And the reason I'm so certain of this

is in 2009, 2008 maybe, I was writing my e-book and I'm like, I'm not going to claim this if I'm not really the rightful inventor. I spent, imagine if you spent an hour on Google searching around what you can, the depths you can go to. I spent a week of my life.

I thought of every name, every, what could, what could this be called? The first word could be hip, glute, pelvic, supine, floor. The second term could be lift, push up, raise, bridge, thrust. And I thought of everything. I made a list and I typed in every combination and went like 30 pages deep I went on forums I went read through books and I have this hip hip thrust wiki page on my blog that I really like it's so it's the only blog post that I update to include all the recent research and things like that um they're. There are now over 30 studies published on the hip thrust. But I have the history of, like, bridging and things like that. But, yeah, like, the first loaded bridging I saw was in super training.

Mel Siff and Yuri Virgoshansky talked about it, but it was, like, partner-assisted, like a partner pushing against the hips or they're doing single leg and the other leg has a kettlebell on the foot and you're like doing single leg hip thrusts and you're like hanging so you can do full range and they used it as a special exercise to develop sprinting,

to develop the simultaneous hip extension on one leg and hip flexion on the other leg to mimic sprinting. Do you feel like you're the only American that's invented an actual exercise that we didn't steal from Russia or some Easter block country? In my e-book that I wrote years ago,

I said when I came to name it, I had a... I bet there's a whole school of Russians that just look like, fuck Brett Contreras. We invented all of the exercises. Well, I talked about this. I said you could name it after yourself because there's like the Jefferson lift, the hack squat, the Palov press.

Or you could name it after the country. There's the Romanian deadlift, the Bulgarian split squat. The American thrust. That american thrust so that's that would be that's all it's got legs so i i was i could have i could have named it the american hip thrust they're like the american thrust the contraris thrust and it wouldn't have gotten as popular yeah because it's tied to a person or a country and so i just called it hip thrust yeah but i do think i'm the only person that invented a very popular exercise in the world since like in the last several decades yeah there's a lot of jealousy that comes along with

that i never knew what to expect i thought it was just coming you just have a cool exercise that works and people are gonna parade you around and you're like yay this guy taught us something cool and show some emg evidence they're gonna be to be thrilled. Well, a lot of exercises get invented on Instagram daily. 99.9% of them are totally ridiculous, completely useless, and I hope they all go away. But the hip thrust can stay. Right. You can end on that. At Brett Contreras, Doug Larson, talk to me.

You bet. You can follow me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larsonreras, Doug Larson. Talk to me. Yep. You can follow me on Instagram, Doug Larson. Also, DougLarson.com. Sorry. Doug Larson. Fitness. Because DougLarson.com got taken by somebody else. Did it really?

Doug Larson, the motivational speaker? I get credit for that guy's shit all the time. I love that. Some guy named Doug Larson has a bunch of great quotes out there, and I get texts and Instagram DMs. I love that. You're in my textbook. I actually have Googled your name.

I just sent him a thumbs up. God, that guy is smart. I get to hang out with him all the time. I get tagged on social media for someone who's not me all the time. That's great. Keep tagging me. I like it. Yeah, do it.

At Shrug Collective, at Anders Marner. Make sure you get in six shows a week, five shows a week. We're putting out two shrugs a week right now. I'm almost like just set on that forever because we get to hang out more, do more stuff like this. Get into iTunes, YouTube, leave a five-star review, positive comment, all the things. We will see you next Wednesday.

Okay. you next Wednesday. Shrug family, we made it. That's a long show. You did a lot of listening. Want to say thank you. I appreciate you guys listening to the show so much. It's been a phenomenal 2018. We're just getting started. And the new direction of the show, the length of the shows, the depth that we're going to be digging into can only elevate the conversation in strength and conditioning, health, fitness, and make everybody better.

We are going to be covering some really deep topics coming up. We've got incredible guests from this road trip in Boston. Doug and I are filmed basically through February right now. We're going to be in Guadalupalooza doing even more shows. The train is rolling. I am so appreciative that you guys are paying attention. The numbers are crushing. The downloads are up.

Everybody is starting to feel the good vibes. And I appreciate you becoming comfortable with my voice every Wednesday and Saturday. If you would like to hang out with Doug Larson, get over to DougLarsonFitness.com. Also want to thank our sponsors, BioOptimizers, B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.com forward slash shrugged, biooptimizers.com forward slash shrugged, saving you $101 on all four of the products,

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