Barbell Shrugged - Moving Through Injury with Dan Pope and Ryan DeBell - 273

Episode Date: August 16, 2017

What’s more fun than working out when you’re in crazy amounts of pain? If you answered, “Uh, like, everything,” you are correct! Injury is the biggest factor that can keep a person away from realizing their full physical potential. So today, we went to Physical Culture in Encinitas, California, to meet up with Dan Pope (@fitnesspainfree) and Ryan DeBell (@themovementfix). Unlike other strength and fitness coaches we’ve interviewed, Dan is also a physical therapist specializing in pain management. His business is Fitness Pain Free. And Ryan is a coach and chiropractor specializing in making sure you don’t mess yourself up. He’s the man behind The Movement Fix. Their forces combine on this week’s podcast to help you heal, keep you from hurting yourself, or both, all while getting an awesome workout. Listen in to hear about specific modifications for specific injuries or differences. Every body is different, and the ideal squat isn’t going to look exactly the same for everyone. Learn about the squat technique that both helps pinched hips and has caused our guests to receive hate mail! Listen in as Ryan and Dan talk us through backs, hips, knees, and ankles, and how to get the best performance out of all of our often uncooperative bones and muscles. This Week on Barbell Shrugged, We Interview Ryan DeBell and Dan Pope to Discuss: Specific modifications for common injuries How natural differences in body shape can create different “neutrals” Squatting. All about it. Differentiating a workout for competition or overall fitness For a special promo code to get the movement modification course for $100 off, go to http://daily.barbellshrugged.com/moving-through-injury-273

If you are never training tempo or pause or one and a quarter squats, and you're only doing these bouncing out of the bottom, out of the hole, you're missing a huge component of training. And so I think there's a huge place for making sure some of those things aren't always done for time. Because again, the incentive is there to, let's avoid the eccentric phase so we can get down through the rep faster Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson.

We're hanging out with Dan Pope and Ryan DeBell here in Encinitas at Physical Culture. And you guys came out here basically to talk about pec tears. Oh, I love it. Mostly pec tears. Flew you guys in just for that one conversation. They knew months in advance this was going to happen. They heard about the programming.

They were like, you know what? We're going to Encinitas. Yeah. The world needs to know. Yeah. And we predicted the whole thing. You guys created the Movement Fix, and it's a great resource for people to go to if they're training and want to figure out, well, tell me what it is.

Yeah. Or tell everybody what it is. You want to take that one, Ryan? Well, I don't have anything to do with movementfix.com necessarily. That's the brainchild of this gorgeous man over here. But, yeah, we collaborate on a little product together, but my main website is fitnesspainfree.com. So check it out. It's pretty sweet. Um, but if you want to talk about movement fix, go for it. Yeah. So the, the movement fixes, the, uh,

the website that I created essentially the, the educational brand, I guess you could call it. And what, what we worked on was a, um, a project together on modifying workouts. So that's, I guess you're involved in that way. But yeah, it's a place where people can go to learn about more than just stretching or mobilizing. But how do we bring a lot of pieces together from accessory training and workout modification and mobilizations as well as rolling out? And how does that fit together with training programs? So it's really a place for athletes, coaches, trainers, and a lot of clinicians to learn. Yeah, and one of the things we want to dig in today

is how to select movements that are going to be safe when you're injured or not feeling great, or even if you may not be injured now, but you have a history of, you know, when I do this, this tends to happen. Maybe you shouldn't be doing that ever because there's about a million things you could be doing, right? Dan, we'll start with you. Can you fill us in on just like a quick bio why people should be listening to your advice? Okay.

Sound smart. All right. Here we go. My name is Dan, and like I said, fitnesspain advice. Okay. Well, sound smart. All right. My name is Dan. And like I said, fitnesspainfree.com. I've been blogging for eight or nine years. I'm a physical therapist, strength conditioning coach. I've been doing strength conditioning full time before I became a physical therapist. And when I was doing personal training, strength conditioning, I just, I really wanted to help people that were hurting. Right. And I felt like I didn't have that information. So it drove me to go into physical therapy.

And the primary audience I work with is fitness, right? I've been strength and conditioning, like I said, for a while. I was CrossFit coaching for six or seven years. I've been to the CrossFit regionals twice, so I'm a competitor with that stuff. And I deal with mostly athletes and people who want to get better. So it's my main gig. I do that every single day of the week. So that's me.

Sounded smart. You did a good job. Really smart. I'm impressed. I do that every single day of the week. So that's me. Sounded smart. You did a good job. Really smart. I'm impressed. I like Lamp. You what? I love Lamp. Love Lamp.

What's that from? Anchorman. Anchorman. Yeah, yeah. Man, where you guys at? Oh, yeah. You were on that quick. Okay, so if someone, you know, training's really easy.

If you don't have any pain whatsoever, like, you just, you write your workouts, you go in there, you do it, you get a good's really easy if you don't have any pain whatsoever. Like, you just, you write your workouts, you go in there, you do it, you get a good result. Like, it's not that difficult. What people run into trouble is that they end up getting hurt. They get aches and pains, like they can't handle the volume. And then they, now they're going through kind of the roller coaster of like, I'm training really, really hard and then I get hurt. And then I kind of have to back off and then I feel better, I train really hard. Now you're up and down, up and down, up and down.

If training was linear, we'd all be amazing athletes, but unfortunately it's not linear. Five pounds a week for Rover. That's right. Yeah. But unfortunately it's not even close to linear. A lot of people, the injuries are really the things that hold them back. It's not necessarily a lack of motivation necessarily. Maybe the injury causes a lack of motivation, but motivation itself isn't really a problem. Injuries tend to be the things that really pull people away from really hitting their full potential. And so there's two parts to this. They can either avoid the injuries before they occur by having adequate movement selection and volume programming, et cetera, and or after they get hurt, they need to know what to do to work around those injuries

because inevitably almost everyone I know that is a competitor at any level, they're dinged up here and there all the time. It's not like, oh, I've been perfect and then I had an injury and I had to back off. It's like, no, no, no. My elbow is always hurting. My wrist is always achy. I had shoulder surgery. My knee bugs me when I do too much of this, you know, too many pistols or front squats or whatever it is. They're always working around something.

And that's what you guys are experts at is how do you how do you still how do you still train effectively while you're hurt you're not necessarily injured but people are always hurt and they have injuries which aren't necessarily the same thing so today we want to talk about you know if you can't squat if you can't deadlift you can't do cleans for the moment how do you modify those things to where you can still get a really good training effect and not exacerbate any current injuries that you happen to have. There we go. I like that. So if we start with something basic like squatting, like if you can't back squat, and you love back squatting, and you're great at it, but now your knee hurts, and now your back hurts, or whatever, what do you do?

What are some modifications someone could do if they say, say we start with a back injury? You've got back squats, you love back squatting, but your back hurts. What do you do? Yeah, that's a good one. So there's a couple things I think about when people have low back pain. So some people just can't handle a lot of load, right? So some people just, when they pick up a bar out of the rack, just the actual load presses down their spine. It's just a bit too much. They just, they don't, they don't handle

that well, right? So if you think about a back squat translates to a front squat, excuse me, a front squat, usually you can't, it's a little less load to the spine. They feel a little bit better, right? For something like people that can't handle sheer, so when you bend forward, the more and more you bend forward, there's more sheer force that goes across the spine. For people who can't handle that, if we just change the torso angle, a lot of times it helps a ton. So someone who can't back squat, maybe they can front squat a little bit better, right? The other piece is sometimes when people have low back pain, they don't handle the position of their spine, right? The very bottom of a squat or a deadlift, there's always going to be some sort of lumbar flexion,

which is not always a bad thing, but when you're in pain, sometimes your body can't handle that very well. So if you're taking a variation where you're going very deep and you get a little bit of flexion in the spine and it hurts a bunch, then we can very easily change that depth, right? Or we can try to do things like add a heel to an Olympic lifting shoe.

So now your back's a little more neutral. We could pick a front squat or a goblet squat, something that keeps you in a more neutral position. So like you said, if you have a low back injury, it's one of those things where you have to be careful not to continue aggravating that in order to get better, right? Because a lot of getting better is just time and not irritating things. So if we can train for long enough and get a training effect and we're not irritating the back and we're training

and we're working towards our goals, then that's a win because over time we're going to get less sensitive, we can go back to some of the things we weren't able to before. And you're not going to be continually going up and down, riding this plateau back and forth. So for someone who's been doing this for a long time, it might sound really obvious that adding something like a weightlifting shoe that has an elevated heel might make it easier on your back. But you're changing your shoe, and all of a sudden your back feels better. That might be counterintuitive to someone who doesn't have a lot of experience in this world.

So why would something like that really make a difference? Yeah, so it's a little bit weird. So if you're going into a deep squat, right, let's say we want to hit depth, we want to go all the way down to the bottom of a deep squat. And the areas that are really important for getting that are going to be the ankle, the knee, and the hip, right? So if we don't have mobility in one of those areas, then another area has to make up for it. And that's kind of the whole butt wink thing. So if you don't have mobility, it's ankle, it could be knee, it could be hip,

then a lot of times low back will round more. So if you add more mobility to the system by adding a heel lift, then all of a sudden, it's gonna be easier for you to maintain a more neutral position of the spine. So if the lumbar flexion or that wink is what gives you pain, if we add a heel lift and make it easier to keep a neutral spine,

then we have less pain because of that. Should we be, you know, should we be just moving to a weightlifting shoe or should a weightlifting shoe be something we want to move away from over time? I think it really depends on your goal. If we're talking about CrossFit specifically, they're going to need to be able to train in a regular shoe. It's one of those things. It's kind of like a crutch.

After you have surgery, you have a crutch. You use it for a while, then you progress to one crutch maybe, then you're off of crutches. I think it's something that allows you to have pain-free motion for a bit and then as this area rehabs for work for someone who's giving you specific movements specific manual techniques and make it better then over time we want to get away from that shoe but it might be a way for you to train pain-free and keep working on your goals in the meanwhile so for that person they in this example they might not have adequate ankle range of motion so you're kind of giving not have adequate ankle range of motion so

you're kind of giving them like artificial ankle range motion by giving them a little bit of a heel lift now they can push their knees a little bit further forward because they can push their knees further forward they can get the hips more under them gives them more vertical torso and that takes the load off of their back because now they're not so bent over you got it more or less so what are some other things if you if you have back pain are there any other things you can do besides having a different type of shoe and having more heel lift that can help take the stress off your back for something like like a back squat or or other modified types of squatting yeah and a lot of times this is it's not as nice as we're making it out the seam right so a lot of times people come to us because pretty

much everything hurts right so any type of loading for your low back generally doesn't feel good even something a goblet squat you know to a box doesn't work out you know and if that's the case a lot of times i like to try single-legged exercises. Generally, your torso is much more upright. So, again, you don't have the same shear forces. If you're using dumbbells and it's a single-legged exercise, you usually can't load it as much. So load is not that big of a deal. Plus, we're not getting into as much hip flexion, so we're not getting as much rounding the low back.

It's just a friendly lift in general. So if we're still trying to get some sort of training effect for the lower body, for the lower legs, then it's a great option. So dumbbells, a lot of times people can get away with doing a barbell loaded exercise It's a single leg as opposed to a squat so it doesn't necessarily have to be a dumbbell but single leg exercise in general I talk about this all the time, but I think we need more of those in our program generally If you're doing a lot of single leg stuff say I'm experiencing some back pain or I'm avoiding back pain by going single leg squat Do I need to be doing additional lower back work? Because, I mean, your back's now not getting loaded. We're intentionally avoiding it.

Yeah. And so is there a possibility like, oh, let's do a bunch of single leg work. Six months down the road, you start back squatting, get hurt again. Well, I think you should probably be evaluating and figure out exactly what's going on. Because like we said before, things like mobility limitations can lead to this. Maybe it's a core stability issue um there's a lot of things that can lead to that we always want to make sure we have a good ramp so if you have low back pain one of the first things you want to do is stay away from things that bug you for a little bit

and then ramp back up again a lot of times that's enough to get the majority of people better right yeah the problem i see is that if you start doing a whole bunch of single-legged exercises the back feels good now it's like okay great five by five back squat we get on our heavy 500 Yeah, you're doing like six pounds. Yeah, you're right back to where you were So obviously you know what I've done I've done a couple months of single leg work before and then hop back under a squat. Fuck it feels heavy For sure, but yeah, you just need to make sure you have a nice low ramp period back up again Which could even be the course of several months I think some people they just want to get back to training as fast as possible.

You guys know this. Your body doesn't always behave the way everything else in life behaves. There's no easy button. It's not fast. It's not high-speed internet. It's slow, and you just have to be patient with it. Yeah. Okay.

Well, what if we transition away from the back for a second? What if your knees are bothering you during squats? I mean, about direct this to you, Ryan, since you haven't spoken as much yet. Say something. Yeah. Jeez. dan was on such a role i didn't want to interrupt that dan keeps buttoning in that thought process so yeah so if your knees hurt what do you do yeah so if your knees hurt um you know the more vertical we can keep the shin in a squat typically that makes people's knees feel better so we'd be thinking instead of doing something like a front squat or an overhead squat where your knees have to come forward in order for your torso to stay vertical then we might have to transfer to a box squat a low bar

back squat or getting into back into the single leg like a rear foot elevated split squat. So a lot of times, again, it's, it's that issue of, are you resting it or are you modifying it? And it's not always such an easy thing. So I, just because we're not doing a front squat and letting the knees translate over, it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to be weaker. And, um, but those would be the main, the first ones that I'd go to. The other thing to think about for the knee is ankle mobility. If your ankles are stiff and they can't easily go into dorsiflexion, that can create a little bit more stress at the knee joint. So that might be another time where you think about lifting shoes

or a heel lift of some sort to take stress off the knees. But I'd go right away to some sort of vertical shinned squat variation. Now, the problem you might run into with that is, what if someone's kind of dealing with a back issue and their knees hurt because people are allowed to have more than one thing going on? No. Yeah, right? It happens.

The person's bill of rights, they're allowed more than one painful area. That's where I'd be thinking even more about something like a rear foot elevated split squat or maybe a sled drag or a sled pull where they're not directly compressing their spine with a sled drag and they're not going they're not getting a huge knee stress like they would in a front squat and I think that it would also be to speak to the back issue doing sled drags is a phenomenal way to train your legs without stressing your back I learned this firsthand I had I had back pain for like 24 months when I came out of chiro, chiropractic school and I couldn't do any weight, like spinal compression lifts, back squats, anything. So sledge regs can be the best training option for that person. Cause you, you're getting

incredible leg training, but literally because the strap is around your waist, if you did it that way, there's no spot, there's very little spine load. Yeah, so that could really be a good option for somebody if they're, you know, none of these things are allowing them to train without pain in their back. What do you think about the knee? Yeah, so I think that shin angle is real important. And, again, it really depends on what's going on inside your knee. I think what the majority of people are dealing with is more of a, we call it patellofemoral pain syndrome, or just pain on the underneath, excuse me, undersurface of the kneecap. And just a lot of that stress is probably irritating potentially

the bone. There's a lot of structures in there that can get irritated. But what ends up happening is that the more your quad is active and the deeper you go into a squat, the more compression is on the undersurface of the kneecap, right? So what ends up happening is we send the hips back a little further in a squat, front squat, back squat, whatever that is, there's going to be a little less of the knee bend. And what ends up happening is there's less compression force. The quad is not as active, right? The deeper you go, the more compressive force you have.

So automatically you can say, okay, I'm going to send the hips back a little further, have something that requires a little less knee bending or knee flexion. So something like a low bar back squat might be good. What's a little tough is that we talk about this too. It's kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul. And all you're doing is redistributing where the forces go, right? So if I'm in a back squat and I'm super upright, it's high bar back squat. That's going to be a little more stressful on my knees. I send my hips back less stress on knees, more stress is going to probably fall on the spine. And there's probably more, um, compression going on the hips. So you just have to think about those variables when

you're trying to help someone because we can easily make a tweak that might make it feel really good, but just keep in mind you're stressing something else. Yeah, I've had that experience when I was competing in weightlifting, and I wouldn't say I had too much of a movement flaw, but there were points in the year where my knees were just aching. But my hips felt fine. My back felt fine. And then I would go to only doing pools and doing a low bar box squats and just really

letting that shin be nice and vertical. I gave my knees a break for maybe three months at a time. I mean, three months, I think I ended up finding out on average, I needed three months out of the 12 of that type of training. my hips would get a lot stronger. And then next thing I know, I'm hitting PRs on my lifts. I was like, oh, I was actually distributing all the weight towards my quads, not enough to my rear, and now it's more even and I'm hitting bigger lifts. That's good. Yeah.

That's enormous. I think it's important that people think about their training year like that. Like you had said, if you do too much of a given type of lift your knees get achy that makes sense you know i see a ton of this people start like a small off program or hash right and they're trying olympic lift on top of that everyone loves to reference the small off squat program it's good i mean i hate to say some of the stuff because it just seems like i'm a hater in general well it's because everybody like sees it and wants to do it. Yeah. Oh, I got crazy results off of it. Yeah.

And then you hear people come in from the same gym, and they're like, oh, my hips are getting pinchy in the front. It's like everybody came from the same place. Yeah, they're like, man, we started small. We started small. And it's because they had this volume that just went, phew. And now suddenly it's like, oh, I'm getting pinchy in the front of the hips, or I feel tight in the front of my hips, which isn't always tightness. Oh, yeah.

Actually, I'd love for you to touch on that, because like you're saying right now, a lot of people have that issue. They don't know what to do about it. What do you do if you feel that pinchy feeling in the front of your hips? You're impinging or what have you. Yeah.

I feel like you should start with this one. Quit. Quit. You've done so much. Ryan was kind of a pioneer with this. He got a lot of hate mail for a while. Oh, I did get a lot of hate mail. You should definitely talk about it. About the hate mail or the reason? Oh, the reason. So you get more hate mail for a while. Oh, I did get a lot of hate mail. You should definitely talk about the hate mail or the reason.

Oh, the reason. So you get more hate mail. I like, yeah. I mean, I don't like hate mail. Thrive off of it. No, I wrote this article probably like three or four years ago on my site it can be torsioned or retroverted or antiverted based on how it's kind of twisted through the shaft of the femur. And then also the variation in the socket on the pelvis. And it's incredible the differences there can be from people.

Even if you had a group, like let's say you had a group of of 20 people in a class in that group of 20, there will be differences. Um, and that kind of seems almost hard to believe at first. There's a lot of, uh, kickback from this article, as I mentioned, and people thinking that, you know, maybe it's not as common, but when you get, when you go and evaluate lots of people's hips, it's incredible how much in a group of 20, there, there could be differences. Now, the implication of that is's incredible how much in a group of 20 there could be differences now the implication of that is if you put someone in a toed forward or maybe only five degree toed out stance that may lead them to run out of space in their hip joint at 90 degrees or maybe even above 90 degrees for some people and so if they're squatting that way at first it's not going to get irritated that would be like when i stand on my feet I'm compressing my feet it doesn't hurt right now because I haven't

irritated it now if I go run a marathon and I suddenly increase the volume standing on my feet which is something that shouldn't be painful is now painful because it's sensitive so if you put someone in a non-optimal squat stance they will close down their hip joint before it wasn't painful because it wasn't sensitive yet. They increase their volume, those tissues, whatever they were, and that would be speculative. The capsule, the tendon, maybe the actual bone, it becomes sensitive. So now they go into that same squat stance and suddenly it's like, ah, it feels tight in the front of my hip. And I want to stretch it because it feels tight. But I think that stretch sensation that we get like, or the tightness sensation is that's just what it feels like when that tissue is

irritated from compressing it. And so it's not a, it's not that the hip flexor needs to be stretched. Maybe we need to consider playing with your squat stance, either toe out a little bit more or take a wider or narrower stance to find the combination that allows you to squat pain-free and uh i've heard some really great weightlifting coaches their their cue for squatting is just just find the one that's comfortable like and that's it and i think that is that bad you know i mean not everyone's going to fit in this in the same have to be you know this many inches apart and this degree toe out no matter what right because there's so many variables people who have long femurs when you have a long femur your weight is going to be

shifted farther back when you squat and you will have to have more ankle range of motion to make up for that or you'll have to go in a wider or more toed out stance to make up for it. So when you start thinking about all the combinations there are in the length of levers, hip joint architecture, it just isn't so easy to say, just do it this way. But that is one of the first things I would look at for pinching in the front of the hips. Let's evaluate the stance.

And I know you're big, too, on evaluating the tilt of the pelvis. Maybe you could speak on that. You got it. So I guess biomechanically, what we, what we think is going on is that when you're going deeper into a squat, you run in a range of motion within the hip, and then you end up having some pinching of the ball up against the socket, right? And that pinching in the front is not tightness, it's end range of motion. And then maybe you're a little stiff in the backside of the hip or something. the ball is not able to translate posteriorly or something along those lines. But what we do know is a lot of times those issues are actually bony in nature. So it's a bone problem and you can't stretch through that. So I think people need to think about that in general, because it might just be

injuring their hips because they don't have optimal hips to squat with toes straight ahead. Like Ryan's saying, we can change the depth pretty easily and keep that from occurring. We can also go a little more toe out, a little external rotated. What happens is that maybe we'll bring some of that bony deformity out of the way so that when you go deep into a squat, we're not getting that pinching anymore. The other thing to think about, and this is a little bit, it's a little tough to understand, but so you have a ball and socket joint in your hip. So the socket portion is part of your pelvis, right? The femur is the ball and one of the things we can do is that we can go deep into a squat we can maybe change your stance a little bit to reduce some of the ball coming up into the socket we can also

change the orientation of the socket a little bit so one of the things I think is getting more popular now is people starting to learn about overextension of the lumbar spine or just doing too much of this too much in anterior pelvic tilt so if we get someone and we put them in a more neutral position what's happening is you're taking the socket and you're bringing it away from the ball, right? So if I'm going deep into a squat and I'm the person that I'm really, you know, aggressively trying to pursue this extended position that I'm bringing that socket down into the ball and I'm creating the same exact problem. So one of the things we can do is we can mess around a little bit with that, right? So kind of going back to the way you can modify it,

if you have an individual that has pain in the hip, we want to try to modify those variables. So we want to try to get the stance taken care of, right? A little more toe out, a little bit wider, more narrow, whatever it is. We also want to fix the hip position, right? Because that's important. But if you think about something like a back squat, when I'm doing a back squat, it's going to incline my torso forward.

And that's essentially bringing the socket down into the ball, right? So what you'll find a lot of times is folks is like, you know, I first, and this is what I have, this happened to my hips. My hips first started hurting doing back squats because it's just a little bit more of a forward torso inclination. You're bringing the socket more into the ball. It requires more hip flexion than something like a front squat. But lo and behold, if I go front squat, it wasn't hurting my hip at all. And we think it's probably because there's a variety of reasons why it could happen, but we think what we're doing is we're just taking the socket away from the ball a little bit so when people squat, they're a little more upright, it requires less hip flexion, and they end up feeling a little bit better because of doing that, right?

So along with that, if you're getting a little bit more posterior tilt, as in you're not anteriorly tilting, you're bringing yourself back into a neutral position, which requires you to posteriorly tilt back to normal, right? To do that, you can, as a part of that, you're getting a little more glute activation. And then by getting more glute max activation, the fact that your glute max is contracting, it's pulling the head of your humerus back a little bit where you're not getting that anterior femoral glide. So you're not pinching into the front of your hip because your glute is working. If yourute's not working then you're more likely to impinge in that way yeah well that's a that's a good question right um so i was talking to a guy by the name of mike voight he's just a really prominent physical therapist with the sfma guys if you got familiar with like great cook and

those guys he works with a surgeon named uh dr bird right who does a ton of hip surgeries he's a really good hip surgeon and one of the things they're talking about is that how much does that ball really move in the socket right so the thing about the ball and socket joint in the hip is it's it's got a deep socket and the ball fits right in and the shoulder is kind of like for the golf ball on t analogy it moves quite a bit we think that the same thing is probably happening in the hip the other thing is that how much motion is really occurring in the hip right so one of the thoughts that goes through my head is like yeah if we get the glutes to fire a little bit better, maybe we're getting a little bit better posterior glide,

you know, that might be happening. The other piece is that how much motion is really occurring. And what ended up happening was Mike was trying to do some joint glides to an individual while they're under anesthesia, right? So in the surgery room and they weren't getting much motion, right? They weren't getting any glide of the joint necessarily.

So I'm not really sure if that's occurring or not, but it's a good idea. It's just that I just just I don't necessarily know if that's going to fix people by trying to apply those rules I'll still try it but I think it's more of a positional problem than it is a muscle activation problem I guess so my understanding with that is it wasn't necessarily like the the ball was sliding around in the hip it's that if it's if it's facing like this it's it's rolling like that and pinching with kind of the neck of the femur is that is that not accurate um i guess i'd have to kind of think about that a little bit um but in general i think what ends up happening is people are getting some pinching on

the the front tops of their hips right so right where the ball goes into the socket right there not necessarily as much on like the neck area, but more right on the top. And then people that have, it's called a cam deformity, they have an extra little chunk of bone that's on the femoral head, and that's probably going right up against the socket there. So like where the ball meets the neck? Yeah, it's kind of like a little extra ridge kind of thing in that area. Gotcha.

Kind of like a cam shaft, I guess, is what they named it after. Okay. To rewind a second to back what you're saying about anti-version and retroversion, most people probably don't know what that really means. Yeah. Gotcha. Kind of like a camshaft, I guess, is what they named it after. Okay. To rewind just a second to back what you were saying about anti-version and retroversion, most people probably don't know what that really means. Yeah. So to rewind even further, a friend of mine, you know, he used to squat, you know, like kind of not really narrow stance, just kind of shoulder width apart, and he was towed out a little bit.

He did that for a long time, and he felt great. And then someone got a hold of him and said, no, no, no, you need to, like, be narrow, and you have your feet straight ahead. And then once he did that for a while, he was doing it quote unquote correctly then he started having a bunch of problems he was like i never squatting never bothered me until i fixed it and started doing it right you know that doesn't make any sense to me and i was like well how'd you do it before and you know watching him do it the way that he was taught to do it versus the way that he used to do it i was like well actually it looks it looks better to me the way you used to do it

and he said it feels better so just go back the way you're used to there's the way you used to do it. And he said, it feels better. So just go back the way you used to. There's no way you have to do it. And then we kind of had that conversation about, well, like you might not actually be in a neutral hip position with your toes straight ahead like you would think. So can you just kind of explain what anteversion and retroversion is and how that might affect somebody when squatting, which is a little more detailed and practical examples? Yeah. So if you think about, let's say this is the top of my knee. So from here to here is my femur. So it'd be like this. Okay. Through the middle of the bone, it can literally be twisted. So if this was the, if this was the ball of the femur, it could be like this and, or it could be like this and anywhere in between. So in, in all,

whether this is a person, this is a person, this is a person, their knees are pointed in the same direction. But as you said, they're not in the best hip position to go into flexion, which would be what we need for a squat. So if somebody's toed forward, they go like this and they run out of space. Now another person, they're twisted, which would be torsion or version of the femur, and they can easily go like that. And it's because the middle of the bone is twisted. So certain lifts, I think, can be taught a little bit more standardized than others.

For example, if you're doing a push press or a push jerk, you could say go toed forward, feet under your hips, and go dip and drive. Because you're not going through enough hip flexion for it to matter. But when you're thinking about bottoming out a squat, the position of the hip, it matters more because you get to the end range of motion, and it's not a hinge. It's shaped differently.

So that's when you'd have to be more okay with one athlete doing it differently than the other. Do you see a difference between legs on the same athlete at times? I do. And I think that I don't know of any research on this, but there is a lot on the shoulder for throwers where their throwing arm is twisted. So that would be humeral. The actual bone. The actual bone.

Has experienced some yeah some twist it's it's twisted through the shaft and um but like but it's semi-permanent i mean you could say it's permanent and you're not gonna most people aren't gonna go through whatever it takes to reverse that but once it's done it's done so my theory is this if i was going to try to untwist my femur i would have to repetitively mobilize my hip or twist it internally or externally. But I think I would Welcome to my Monday morning.

I think what would happen though, if you were to play this out, I think you would end up having a bony impingement in your hip joint before you would get the femur to untwist. I don't know that that would really be possible. It would be like, can I press on my cheekbone and get it to change shape over time i don't know that that's possible sounds like a long process yeah but i think you'd end up it's all about commitment it's kind of like having braces

you got to have those things in there pulling on stuff for for i don't know how long but years before you make like any noticeable real change yeah so but all that to say that like any any person that just stands here you know feet hip feet hip width apart, toes straight ahead, you might not be in a neutral hip. That's right. That's right. You might be in a neutral hip with your toes pointing towards each other, or you might be in a neutral hip with your toes pointed out. Like, you don't necessarily know unless you have somebody test to see if you're anteverted or retroverted. That's right.

So if you are someone who, you know, you're toed out and you squat and you feel totally great, maybe you just have a slightly different hip shape than someone else that does toes straight ahead. And all the stuff you said earlier about long torso, short femurs and all that definitely apply here. Like it's easier to squat to full depth with a long torso and short legs with toes straight ahead than it is if you have long femurs, but it might also be the shape of your hip. Yeah, and I think to speak to your point too. So think about this. If I went feet forward and knees out like this,

for another athlete who has a different hip, to create that torque that they want, they would have to literally go like this and do that. And no one's coaching that. No one's coaching toes in. No one's coaching that, but that could be essentially the same hip position for somebody if I was retroverted. No coach will do it.

Yeah, don't do that. I'm not saying do that. I'm just saying, like, if I have an athlete, I teach them that, and then they go out in the world. Yeah. Who taught you that? Mike Bledsoe. That's right.

They're not going to be able to explain why they're doing it. It might be very specific to them, and then they say, oh, yeah, he told me to do this. And the people are like, oh, that dude doesn't know what he's talking about. That happens in coaching a lot. One coach is like. And the people are like, oh, that dude doesn't know what he's talking about. That happens in coaching a lot. One coach is like, why the fuck are you doing it like that? And it's like the inexperienced coach thinks everyone else is an asshole.

Yeah, and I think something you mentioned earlier that's interesting is the squat looks better to me. So I guess we should talk about what should we look for to know that that is a squat we would want. That's a great topic. Let's hear it. And so I think we should take a break. It's a good hook. That's a good hook. We'll hit it when we get back.

All right. Hey, everybody. Marcus Gersey, co-host of the Barbell Business Podcast. If you're a gym owner who's looking to fix, build, or just take your gym from good to great, tune in every Tuesday to the Barbell Business Podcast. You can find us on iTunes and anywhere else you can download a podcast, or you can watch the video version on YouTube on the Barbell Shrugged channel. Tune in to find Doug, myself, and Mike Bledsoe talking about the latest tips and tricks to take your business to the next level. We'll see you Tuesday. And we're back with Dan Pope and Ryan DeBell, and we were about to talk about what does a good squat look like?

We all know what bad squats look like. We see it. We criticize. We hate. Hate. It's like porn. Yeah. You know it when you see it.

Even if there's no solid definition for it. Right, right. Yeah. But, you know, we've all been on Instagram. We've seen it. But what's a good one look like? You want to start there? Yeah.

Big Ryan. Yeah. No pressure. Yeah. I don't feel pressure. That's good. I look for a couple of things. I look for what is the position of the low back in terms of is it held in neutral?

Is it really rounded? So ideally we want to hold it in neutral. What about seeing people be very hyperextended? Yeah, I don't want that either. That can lead to what would be called extension-based back pain. If you're arching really hard in your squats and your deadlifts and you're doing a lot of overhead lifting and arching back, that can become sensitive.

You're just loading different joints when you do that. So, yeah, I'm looking for both are you too rounded or are you too arched. And to know if somebody's too arched, you really have to evaluate them doing something like a cat-cow, you know, like the yoga pose, or watch them go into full flexion and full extension to get an idea of what is their spine capable of because people's spines can do different things in terms of how far someone else, someone may look extended and that's close to neutral for them. So that's one thing I'm looking for. The other thing I'm looking for is where's the knee pointing in relation to the foot. So ideally it would be over the middle to kind of the outside of the foot. And then I want to make sure the heel stays flat on the ground. So if I see those three things, and, you know, I mean,

there could be like a thousand other things, right? Obviously, I don't want someone tilting their head. Anyways, a million other things could be, you know, going on, but those are the main ones I'm looking for. And then if somebody has to be a little bit more, a little wider with their stance or more toed out, and that allows them to meet those, the back position, knee to foot orientation and heel and feet staying flat. I think that's what makes it look better.

And also there's, there's probably some, it's almost hard to describe like the smoothness of the lift and the ease. Like if someone's feet, if someone's too narrow, maybe they go onto the outside of their foot and their foot rolls up. And when I see that, I go, I kind of think that means just point your foot out a little bit. And then suddenly it just stays planted. And it looks smoother and it looks better. Do you have any other? Go ahead. I was going to say, what looks good to Dan Pope?

Oh, boy. It's really important. I think it really depends on someone's goals, right? I mean, we tend to work with a lot of Olympic weightlifters. So in Olympic weightlifting, you want a really kind of upright torso, which is really important. We talk to Chad Vaughn a lot. Chad Vaughn, two-time Olympic, he's a power monkey guy. He likes to have just a little bit of toe out.

He doesn't like to have a bunch of toe out. And one of his reasons being is he thinks you're stronger, more powerful for the receiving position of, like, a snatch or a clean because of that, which makes sense. It doesn't mean everyone can get into that position, you know, but in general, if you're, if you're trying to get in a good position for Olympic weightlifting, the torso is very important. So just making sure you're getting adequate motion from the ankle, staying upright. So if someone's really inclined forward, they're never going to be able to snatch well. So that's a big thing. That kind of takes us back to our goals. You know, someone who just wants to squat for fitness doesn't, doesn't really matter that much. much you know you never need to hit depth you know

there's never a reason necessarily to get super deep i mean getting deep is going to do a variety of things for you but if your goals are just to get a bit stronger and work on your legs you know you may not need to ever hit that really deep position you may not need a super upright torso so again i kind of like ryan's definition's, there's going to be a lot of variance in what works well, but in general, we want a flat back, right? We're going to get some flexion in the bottom. Can't control that. That's okay. We want to make sure the knees are over the toes, right? I don't have a great number for you as far as a torso inclination, but you definitely don't want to see someone so far bent forward that you could eat like, you know, lunch off their back and the bottom of their squat because they're so far forward.

Good morning. The good morning squat. Yeah, we don't want to see that. And then also on the way up, we want to make sure that mechanically things stay good too, right? So you were talking about when we come out of the bottom of the hole, a lot of times the knees come in, which is not necessarily ideal. We think that's happening. I think this happens potentially because your body is trying to find a stronger position, right?

So maybe it's getting those adductors to fire a little bit harder. Maybe you're getting a twist or a stretch on the knee and some of the passive structures, maybe the ligaments or the outside of the knee is getting compressed, and that gives you a little more strength to get out of the hole, right? But it's probably not ideal from a health perspective, right? The bottom of the squat, a lot of times you see people whose hips rise too quickly, right? Kind of that stripper squat, which is not a good thing.

You want to see things rising. There's one place for the stripper squat, and that's at the club. Keep it there. There's definitely a good thing. That's good for him. I yell. That's good for him. See, it's all about context and goals.

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so I agree with what you're saying, Ryan, about neutral spine, heels on the ground, knees, overtoes. If you have those three things done well and they're done right then it doesn't really necessarily matter like where your feet are or or how how toed out you are especially with context like what you said a second ago there's no depth you have to hit you're going more or less as low as you can with those three things in mind so if you can can only go to parallel with a neutral spine, heels on the ground and knees over your toes, then that's all the farther you need to go. If going below that, now all of a sudden your knees are caving in or your heels coming off off the ground or you're going into lumbar flexion,

then well, now you just cut it off at that depth and come back up before those problems occur. Yeah. And then special consideration to certain performance uh circumstances the stance may matter a little bit more there um but yeah and then you know if you squatting with a bar on your back is a relatively new thing in terms of the human absolutely actually i don't remember where i saw it i was uh i saw someone having a conversation online it It was like humans have been squatting since like the beginning of time. And, you know, this whole loaded squat and then being in a certain position. Like if you look at people that are squatting around a fire, it's not the same squat that's happening in a gym. Yeah, they're not keeping their back flat.

They don't need to because the loads aren't so high. I mean, if you think about it before, I don't know how we want to get here, but if you think about it before modern exercise, right, when people just did stuff, I have to move this from here to here, it was a lot more pick something up once and then carry it. You wouldn't stand like, oh, I need to move this rock over there. Let me do 10 reps and then move it over there. Or let me put it on my back and then, you know, squat it down.

It would be almost like you're doing single deadlifts and carries more than anything else. And, you know, hanging from things and climbing. I mean, this is something I've been in consideration a lot recently. And I've actually been doing more just hanging from things for training, which I didn't do back when I was doing CrossFit, you know, all the time. You know, now I'm just doing things that aren't necessarily competitive in nature, like hanging from a bar. And then the other thing I've actually been thinking about lately, too, is I've never done a lot of carrying, unless you're a strongman competitor.

Yeah, you're not going to. And I've noticed that when I have done carries in my training, I got fucking strong. My entire body just felt like it could do more. Yeah, I bet. Or like grabbing onto something and walking backwards and dragging it. Yeah. Talk about like getting back to the squatting thing. If you wanted to, if your knees were bugging you because the pressure on the kneecap

and so you wanted to not go as quad dominant, you could do a lower bar back squat and then do some backwards walking sled drags. That'll blow up your quads and it'll make your knees not hurt during the during the squat i mean granted that's pain free because you're not bending your knee so you're not having to kind of take it around the corner of your knee which is going to change how the the knee is loaded and the pressure and stuff so that's a good point i mean there's a lot of ways to make your legs really strong a lot of work you can do that doesn't mean that you stand in a rack with a bar on your back and go up and down. And I think the more that we can vary the things that we do, the better. So, you know, is modifying a workout bad?

Is it good or is it just the training options and constantly changing things? Like, for example, like what you said, when you changed your programming from, you know, being dominated by this kind of thing and then you changed it to more hip dominant or pole dominant. And what you mentioned, too, think about your training for the year. Going through these cycles where you're focusing on this kind of training and then this kind of training and this kind of training, you're constantly changing how your body is stressed. I think that's the best way to stay long-term healthy and strong and not get injuries. Yeah. Don't overload it the same way all the time for years and years and years and years. Yeah.

There's one thing I want to touch on in regard to the squat, and that is the speed at which people are bouncing out of the bottom. And so, you know, coming from weightlifting, the idea is, you know, for me, it was like, if you can catch that bounce, good on you. Catch that bounce on that clean or even that snatch if you're that good and then come out of the bottom and ride it up. And what I found over time is in training for a sport like weightlifting, you don't want to do that all the time. But then I look at a CrossFit class where it's a bunch of people who are doing general fitness not necessarily competing in anything and you know i watch them drop to the bottom and squat and bounce out of the bottom and what i what i witness a lot as well is

they're not even staying tight through their core while they're doing that. So that's another layer. Any thoughts on that or things you guys have seen? Yeah. So if you look at, and this is in weightlifters, right? This is not necessarily in the general fitness population, but where a lot of Olympic lifting injuries occur is out of the hole. So catching something really heavy like that bounce, right? And that may help you lift more weight,

but the thought is that might be opening you up to some more injury, right? And I thought about this a lot when I was trying to research, like, is squatting safe? Is a deep squat safe? Is it really going to bother your knees if you go too deep? And I really couldn't find a lot of evidence that was either really pro or con, right? So it's a little bit tough. As you go down to a squat, different parts of the knee joint are stressed, like different part of the meniscus, wherever else you have different contact with different areas of the bone as you go down. And the very bottom is where most Olympic, excuse me, weightlifters get hurt. So it makes sense that you have to make sure that area is really strong and prepared if you're

going to go down there, you know? So for the general fitness population, if they're going to be doing rock bottom cleans and snatches, they probably need to squat at rock bottom, you know? Cause otherwise they're going to open themselves up to have some injury, right? Do they need to do that? I don't know. You know, you know it's it's it seems like crossfit is generally pretty safe in comparison to other sports right with the literature that's coming out again there's a lot of variation on who's writing the programming the coaching all that stuff is super important so it's a matter of whether or not you actually want to go down to that bottom position is that going to leave you more open to having knee injuries i'd say probably yes you know do you

need to go down there no if you substitute with different movement or you're more at risk um from getting hurt from a different movement than with deep squats maybe maybe not you know so i would say for the general fitness population you probably don't need or want to do that bounce in the bottom right if it's causing problems with elite level lifters have prepared this this area for years and years and years and still causing issues and i would say you probably don't want to do it from a fitness perspective either but i don't want to vilify squats and cleaning um in the process of saying that you know yeah having the experience i have at this point i i like to have if if i'm going to train for that super deep squat doing a lot of pause squats at the very bottom spending

some time there doing a lot of slow eccentrics all the way to the bottom staying tight throughout the entire time i've witnessed people also and i've done it myself, I'm guilty of doing a pause squat and letting myself relax down there. And it's almost like a bone on bone type deal instead of letting the musculature take care of the work. And so spending time tight at the bottom of a squat can really prepare you to not get injured when you're bouncing out of the bottom. Yeah, for sure. One other thing that I like that a lot of people don't do that I really enjoy is doing tempo one and a quarter squats. Oh, yeah. A little

sick, so I'm all kind of raspy. So you squat all the way down. Enough with the excuses, Doug. I'm so sick. So you squat all the way down, and then you come up to parallel, and then you go back down, and then you come back up. And I feel like for people that aren't very comfortable in that bottom position, going down all the way, come up a little bit, and then going back down into that hole, they just spend more time in that bottom position. They get a lot more comfortable with it,

and then they get further adaptations specifically in that bottom position. So if you've never done one-and-a-quarter squats, I highly recommend you try them out. So much fun. It's horrible. They're not fun at all. I think there's also an issue with only ever doing workouts that are timed because you're incentivized to not do eccentrics. Right.

It's to your benefit to avoid the eccentric phase. So then you're only ever training the concentric. I mean, an isometric in certain places, like in a deadlift, your back is essentially an isometric. But if you are never training tempo or pause or one and a quarter squats, and you're only doing these bouncing out of the bottom, out of the hole, you're missing a huge component of training. And so I think there's a huge place for making sure

that some of those things aren't always done for time. Because, again, the incentive is there to let's avoid the eccentric phase so we can get down through the rep faster. Yeah, intentional strength, skill, and or positional work is highly valuable. If you just met Con all the time, then, yeah, you're really missing a few key aspects of training. Yeah. You probably notice your times improve if you have not been doing eccentrics and static holds. If you throw that in, you'll probably see a huge leap in strength. The older I get, the more my training is eccentric and static holds and less concentric even.

So I would say at least, I would say my concentric loading is like a third of total training at this point. All right, cool. So we covered squatting in some detail. Let's move on to a new movement and kind of apply these same concepts so people can get a perspective on the same concepts but on two separate motor patterns. So we covered squatting. Now if we look at hinging with something like deadlifts, let's go through the same phase.

Like if you have back pain with a deadlift, or if you have knee pain with a deadlift, how do you modify deadlifts where you still get a good training effect, but you don't exacerbate your back and or your knee pain? So starting with back pain, what are your thoughts, Dan? All right, so my back hurts, and then deadlifts are popping up today.

I guess we'll start with the problem. In general, what ends up happening is people try to do that lift, they get frustrated, they get hurt more, and then they can't continue on with the goals, right? So obviously we want to make that modification. For a coach, you've got to make sure you ask if anyone's hurting before the class starts because a lot of times athletes are not going to communicate that. So make sure you establish that relationship and athletes feel like they're comfortable saying this. But let's say I have low back pain and we'll go through kind of that same process. So let's say that the more I bend forward this way, the more my back tends to hurt. So the more shear in my spine, so my vertebrae are actively doing this, I guess,

and the muscles are trying to keep my back from doing that, it tends to hurt me more and more. And you'll get a flavor of this based on how the athlete is behaving, right? So let's say something like a deadlift really hurts, back squat hurts, and then a front squat feels good. You're like, okay, well, it seems like that position of your torso has to do with some of that problem. So a couple of things we can do. For one, for that same athlete,

we want to be a little more upright. So there's a few different exercises. I'm a big fan of like a trap bar deadlift, if you guys have seen those before. So what happens in a trap bar is that you're able to be a little more upright. So you're still loading the spine, but it's just not the same position, right?

The other thing is that if we elevate the apparatus, so it's like a high handle trap bar is that you're able to be a little more upright. So you're still loading the spine, but it's just not the same position, right? The other thing is that if we elevate the apparatus so it's like a high-handle trap bar or you just don't go down quite as deep, so the further I go down, the more sheer my spine is exposed to. So what I can do is go for a trap bar, go a little bit higher, and I can probably get away with not hurting my back as much as I would with a heavier load. The other thing we didn't talk about yet, but I think is really important, is it kind of segues into the whole tempo eccentric that we were talking about before. So let's say it's just a matter of load.

Load hurts, right? I did this the other day with, I was supposed to do like a heavy set of three on a close grip incline press. My shoulder was just killing me, right? So I moved over some dumbbells, and I just lightened the load, and I just did a tempo for sets of 15. So two things happened there. One, the load is decreased decreased so it doesn't really hurt right two i raise the repetitions so i can't do as much weight and three i added a tempo so now i can't use as much load at

all right so if i have someone who has a back pain i might not be able to trap our deadlift but hey let's lighten the load and let's try to add an eccentric pause like a earth or a three second lower or something along those lines. So that way that person is getting a nice training effect. They're working very hard, but they're not experiencing that same pain. So that makes sense. Absolutely. You said very similar things about squatting.

There's ways you can modify the movement where you can use less weight but still get a good training effect. So by doing higher repetitions, by changing your torso angle, by selecting a movement that's similar but not the exact same, you can still get a lot of progress. You can have good results from your training without hurting your back. You got it. Yep. Do you find with the longer eccentrics people end up moving more efficiently?

Maybe not efficiently, but better? Well, I find especially with, like we were talking about with squatting, I love tempo work. I love Paul's work. I love the one and a quarter stuff. I think it's awesome. What it forces people to do is to think about their position a little bit more. You're going down in this position.

You've got to hang out there for a little bit on the way down. You can think about your positions a little bit better. If we're talking about spinal position, some people overextend. Tempo is awesome because you have to think about where you are at the entire time as opposed to dropping down and being really concerned about getting back up again so load's not as heavy we're more focused on skill and position work and then we're also getting a training effect and then if load is the real problem the reason why you end up having pain it's a solution right yeah and if you're if you're an advanced athlete you might not be um gaining much much ground as

far as strength goes if you already squat 5, you're not going to be, like, making a lot of progress on your one rep max by doing sets of 15 out of tempo, you know, maybe moving over to single leg work. That's true. But in this example, you might be limiting the amount of loss. You know, you're not going from 530 to 500 to 470 to 450. Maybe you lose 30 pounds on your back squat. And then once your back is healed

then you can ramp back up a little bit easier because you didn't lose so much ground so you know that's not ideal necessarily but that that's the reality of of having an injury is that yeah you might lose some some one rep strength like you're the hardest contraction you possibly could do in a competition setting might go down but maybe not as much because you did something rather than nothing or you push it which is what most people tend to do and then get hurt more and then their weights start going down because it's so painful and that's the slippery slope that i think a lot of athletes go down is that they feel the need they really have to train i mean this is like a one week thing right i go in the gym next week like oh i can do three reps again and then

chances are my strength didn't go down very much but But if I try to really push that, there's a chance it'd be even worse. I'm like, oh, it's hurting even worse. Then I have to make another decision. Do I want to try to press again? Because that didn't work out last time. Or do I want to try to modify again? And maybe, like you said, I'll lose a little bit of strength. But in general, I'll maintain.

And I'm also doing things like building more muscle mass. There's a couple of good things that go along with adapting a tempo. So you're progressing in that session, and you're not losing i guess potentially right yeah i feel like a lot of people that they will just push through it they'll keep squatting they'll keep benching they'll keep doing whatever they need to do and then they'll have a surgery and then they take a lot of time off and they try to come back and then now the second time around they're like okay like my my shoulder is really hurting maybe i will try this like five sets of 12 at a tempo you know with dumbbells instead for a little while that way i don't have to have surgery again because they learned the lesson the hard way the first time yeah it's good i mean a lot of a lot of times

injuries are uh they're the best teacher you know it forces you to really pay more attention to these things so it's just unfortunate that it has to always get to that point before we start going, okay, let me reconsider. Is this the best decision right now based on how things are feeling? I think to add to what you're mentioning about the deadlift, so we can consider overall compression of the spine, which would be, you know, what's the load? What's the weight that we're doing? We can think about the angle of the torso.

So how much shear are we having to control? And then the other thing to think about too is and this relates to the trap bar as well as what's the what's the lever arm like how far in front of me is the weight so one of the things that's nice about a trap bar and they measure this with force plates and stuff is which joints are contributing to me lifting that weight so when you do a trap bar you're getting more distribution in the ankles knees hips and hips, and back versus a, um, just a, like a standard bar. Um, and the reason, one of the reasons they designed the trap bar was to bring the weight so that you're literally standing inside of the bar. So it's not in front of you like a conventional bar. And so that's why sometimes too,

that can be helpful. Now, if you didn't have a trap bar, you know, doing something like a dumbbell Romanian deadlift or, or dumbbell deadlifts or kettlebell, where you didn't have a trap bar, doing something like a dumbbell Romanian deadlift or a dumbbell deadlift or kettlebell where you can keep the weight even closer to your body, that decreases the lever or the lever arm on your back. And that could be another consideration as well. the eccentric thing, I think a lot of times athletes will feel, depending on obviously their experience level, when they get down into a deadlift, as soon as they feel hamstring tension, they're like, oh, I got to bend my knees. I got to, I shouldn't feel that. So I think going slow and doing Romanian deadlifts or single leg, either single leg double arm or single leg single arm deadlifts teaches people how to feel their hamstrings load without always just coming

right off that by bending their knees tap the weight and come back up so there's definitely different things being trained there muscularly as well as the the timing yeah also if you have an asymmetry and you've never done single arm single leg rdls you should try it out because you'll you'll probably very quickly realize that you do not do it symmetrically on both sides, not strength-wise, not movement-wise either. You might look completely different. One leg you might feel really comfortable. The other leg you might feel like you just can't keep your balance the whole time, and that's a problem.

That's likely one of the things that's contributing to the fact that you're hurt in the first place. Yeah, and if doing symmetrical lifts like a standard barbell deadlift was going to get rid of that, it would be gone if you've been training that for any length of time. But most people, when they start testing this, as you mentioned, it is different side to side. The other thing you're getting to when you go single leg deadlifting is you're getting essentially half the load of the spine for the same leg training. And this is true for the split squat as well. Like if I was going to be deadlifting, let's say 200 pounds pounds i have to hold a bar that's 200 pounds that goes through my spine and then into 100 pounds each leg if i'm perfectly symmetrical

if i go 50 pounds in each hand now that's 50 pounds through the spine or 100 pounds through the spine and then 100 pounds per leg so you're getting twice as much leg training first so you think about almost like leg to spine ratio of loading yeah yeah i mean you're also having to worry about uh the core is now having to stabilize against rotation. Right. Which, you know. If you're not trained for that, it's an issue.

And most strength sports, it's very sagittal plane. We're not working with a lot of rotation. And adding this in for assistance work or during warm ups can be fantastic for preventing injuries. Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how many stories I've had of people who are like, yeah, I snatched a 245 at the gym, and then I went and played flag football,

and I twisted my ankle. Yeah. Yeah. Tore my hand straight. Yeah, because you're never training the rotation, single leg work. So how many of those injuries are not happening in the gym because of things that we aren't doing in the gym to help

translate over? I've been training a lot more rotation in the last year or or two and it's interesting that just when i feel like i'm like oh i you know i think i got this rotation thing figured i discover something else that's like i'm like oh like another layer of rotation i go never mind i'm gonna keep working on this all right yeah all right so we mentioned regular deadlifts we mentioned trap bar deadlifts we mentioned rack pulls kind of indirectly without saying the word rack pull, just the elevated deadlifts. And then we mentioned single leg RDLs.

What about sumos? We haven't really talked much about sumo deadlifts. How do they play into this? I like sumo deadlifts. I've been doing quite a bit lately. But it's very similar. It's the same idea. It's kind of like a trap bar.

It keeps you a little more upright. With the sumo stance, you're trying to get a little more upright and trying to use your legs a bit more. So think about that ratio, the whole thing we were talking about before. you're trying to get a little more upright and trying to use your legs a bit more. Think about that ratio, the whole thing we were talking about before, we're trying to distribute more of the weight towards our hips and a little less onto our spines. It's nice. I write a lot of programming

for different gyms, and it's one of the things I wrote into the programming is an off-season portion. Nice to unload the spine. The spine is taking a beating. Like you said, we're using all barbell work, so we can unload it a little bit by trying to do something where we're a little more upright upright a lot more single leg work a lot of carrying it's just a great exercise and it's going to fit into that whole spectrum kind of similar to a trap bar the only thing about a sumo that's a little challenging is that it's it's it's a skill

just like anything else but it's a little tougher to learn and for people to do well in comparison to other barbell lifts i think deadlift is a little bit easier than a sumo, just position wise. If someone's having trouble learning a sumo deadlift, do you have any ways that you progress them into that? I don't really have a good answer for that. It's honestly something I've not done for about 10 years or so and just started to get back into it

and learning more about the coaching of it myself. So besides just coaching the lift, I don't really have any really good cues off the top of my head. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Something we've done over the years back when me and Mike were a faction coaching athletes more on a daily basis, just, you know,

starting people in a rack pull and then just getting them in a perfect position, top down, and then as they achieve a perfect position, just taking more and more mats off where they can get lower and lower and lower. And I feel like that works really well for getting people in a perfect position, just taking more and more mats off where they can get lower and lower and lower. And I feel like that works really well for getting people in a perfect position from a shorter range of motion towards a longer range of motion, getting them eventually down to the floor. Cool. I love that term, top down.

Because a conventional deadlift off the ground, that's really, you're trying to get in the most challenging mobility, I guess you could say, position, and have to set there and then come up versus if you do a rack pull or Romanian deadlift starting at the top, you can set and then challenge the set as far as like the set position as far down as you can. And a lot of times that's a great way to get people back into deadlifting too, is start them in an easy position to establish. Um, as far as the sumo deadlift goes, the other thing thing to think about too is it brings your hands closer to the ground so you don't have to bend over as far yeah and like dan has how long you have a long they called me condor in high school so depending on someone's

i think that someone told me recently this was called the ape ratio like eight like ape is the your uh your wingspan to height i guess that's somebody named it that like I have short arms. So for me compared to Dan, I have to bend forward more. And if I run out of, I mean, yeah, if I run out of space in my hip joint or knee joint or ankle joint, I may have to elevate the bar or go sumo or find some variation. And it ends up being the same overall mobility in the hip and knee joint. It's just that, uh, you know, it's just, yeah, exactly. In other sports, I think this is more appreciated. You know, I was watching the, I don't know who you guys are rooting for in the NBA finals, but, you know, if somebody's... All the teams. I'm like a real big fan of all the players and the teams and the coaches. They're good. In other words,

I have no idea who any of those people are. But if you think about a guy who's 7 feet tall and the hoop's 10 feet, barely has to jump. Someone who's 6 feet tall, they have to jump way higher. So it's obvious that limb length and height and those things play a huge role in that. And I think we don't appreciate that always as much in lifts, where it's like how far down is it versus how high is it. How come you can't dunk? 5 feet tall.

Yeah, geez, Dan. Work on your – get some jump soles and do some drills on your jump soles. Oh, man. I remember those. Yeah, did you use to – Oh, yeah. I never used them. Did you?

I remember seeing them in the magazines. Was it supposed to be your calves used? Oh, huge calves. I wore them to track – I did a whole track practice in junior high. I can't believe my coaches let me do this, actually. They didn't know either, though. That's what I mean. I did the whole day of track practice in jump soles can't believe my coaches let me do this actually i didn't know either yeah i did the whole day of track practice in jump souls oh fuck so just google this stuff if you don't know we're talking about keeps you on your toes the whole time yeah it's huge yeah all right

what do you think about that what the jump souls yeah i'm not i mean from your from your perspective now i think that i shouldn't have worn them for the whole practice. But I did okay in high jump, which is my event, so I don't know. Worked out. Maybe you did well because of the jump soles. You should think about that. How do you modify jump soles? Are people still using those? I remember seeing them in the back of magazines.

That's right. That's where I saw them. I haven't seen them in a long time, though. Yeah, I don't know. I was just like, I've got to jump higher. I've got to jump higher. I don't know. I don't know if anybody uses them.

Big calves. That's the secret. It was probably like, I got to jump higher. I got to jump higher. I don't know. I don't know if anybody uses them. Big calves. That's the secret. It was probably more like the plyometric program that they put you on rather than necessarily your calves getting jacked. Yeah, wear this and then do this program that you weren't doing before. Right. It's like buying the Thighmaster and then they send you like a book of nutrition and then like you lose a bunch of weight. Yeah, yeah. Which one was it really?

So before the show, we were talking about scaling and that terminology and kind of what that means. And just a second ago, we were talking about rack pulls and, like, you know, the diameter of a bumper play or the radius of a bumper play is the same for everybody. So if you're 7 feet tall, you have to, like, go so far down, where if you're 5 feet tall, then it's, like, right just below the knee. And so the 5-foot-tall person, of course, is going to be much more likely

that they can get to a perfect position because it's just simply easier for them. They're doing a rack pull in a sense compared to the seven foot guy. So from your perspective, in your opinion, like using the word scaling, is that hurting or helping at this point? Because a lot of people, they don't want to scale something. That's like you're fucked up and you got to do something different than everybody else because you're a wuss. You're not as good as them. Yeah, like if I scale a workout for somebody, what I'm really doing is I'm like, I'm optimizing this workout specifically for you.

It's like it's a good thing. I'm making this workout better for your very specific situation. And then I get resistance. Like I don't want to do this workout that's like specifically tailored to me. But, of course, that's like the best thing I could have possibly done for you. But still people don't want don't want to do because they want to feel like they're an outsider or they're not as cool as everybody else so like what do we do about that well i think scaling could be used in the like when it's an actual competition there's going to be the main competition competition and then there will be the the divisions that aren't doing that so i think in that term in that sense scaling my i mean maybe that is the best word. But for training, I really like the optimization.

I know. Can I get you to program for me? I really want that. And then Ryan and I looked at each other like, well, fuck. I mean, he took it. I think of them as training options rather than scales. So, yeah, let's say today we're doing, we're doing deadlifts and I just, my back hurts. I can't do deadlifts off the ground without it hurting. What's the better training

option that's going to still allow me to get a benefit. And that's, I wouldn't call that scaling. So I think this, the term scaling, there is a connotation there of, I'm just not actually able to do the thing I'm supposed to be able to do. Whereas it's really not about that right now, because this is a training session. This isn't a competition. This is training. What are we going to do today to have the best training session? And that's really, it's like a service. As you mentioned, I'm doing the best thing I could do for you by giving you this training option rather than make the workout easier. Yeah. I'm sorry. It's like sorry. It's like, it's not, I'm not giving you a different, a different workout. I'm sorry. I'm not giving you a different version of that workout.

I'm giving you a brand new workout. So it has nothing to do with the old workout. This is a brand new workout. That's similar, but better for you. Yeah. I think people need to be educated about it. You know, they'd have to know that it's a good thing to change things, um, to make you a better athlete, not get hurt in the long run. You also have to create a gym culture that's okay with that. Most people, they want to do the workout on the board. As a coach, you tell someone, hey, look, what's on the board might not be the best thing. We can't write the best programming for every single person here.

We have to modify. We have to change. We have to adapt. Everyone has different goals. Not everyone wants to go to the CrossFit Games. It's all different. People need to know that their training is going to be different on a regular basis. I think the coaches just have to... I don't think coaches

are against that in any way, but I think sometimes the athletes feel that way. What ends up happening is that an athlete will get hurt and they come to me and I was like, did you tell Eric that your shoulder hurt? He's like, no, no, it's just tight. Just do this. I'm sure we've all seen that. Someone comes off a pull-up bar and they're like this. They do this a couple times and they're like, how's your shoulder feel? They're like, no, no, it's just tight. Just do this. I'm sure we've all seen that. Someone comes off a pull-up bar and they're like this.

They do this a couple of times. And they're like, how's your shoulder feel? They're like, it's good. It's tight. They go and they do more. It's weird because you look internally rotated all the time. Yeah, right? So I think it's really important that the coach is just open.

Someone hurts, tell me. Because you can see it. Coaching, I just walk around like, does your shoulder hurt? They're like, yeah, it's going to hurt me a bunch. And I think that a lot of times coaches just don't hear it right because they're not asking about it and we're maybe it's a Little intimidating for the athlete to say that but you create that culture within your gym and say hey if something hurts got to tell Me you know, this is we're gonna hurt you further further So people keep on banging their head against the wall, you know day after day week after week

And I'm sure you've all seen it right be like oh, there's Joe his shoulder always hurts always You know, I think you you got into it at the beginning of your explanation right there and uh what sounds like to me is setting the expectations when athletes come in the culture piece right so setting the culture in your gym as a coach a lot of that has to do with setting expectations from the very beginning because what people are experiencing the first month or two that they're in the box is pretty much going to set their impression of what the culture is so from day one you're you're approaching it and setting expectations that things are going to be changing for everyone all the time in the workouts and that's okay i think that's really good but if you're already running a gym or you're coaching at a gym where

there's 200 athletes and that's never been the culture it's going to take a lot of work to get that shifted and it's probably going to take a lot of work to get that shifted. And it's probably going to take some turnover to get new athletes in there. And I think it's a really good idea to set those expectations from the very beginning. Yeah, I mean, you could definitely do that. One of the easy things we did at Verve when I was coaching over there is just at the start of every class, like, who's hurting? Does anyone look at this board and feel like this is not going to be a good workout?

And then, like, all the coaches know, like, oh, Joe's got plantar fasciitis. We can't really run. We got to make sure we get the row out for him or something like that. Yeah. And you have meetings about the same stuff that we're trying to talk about. It's like, OK, what are your modifications for a guy that has knee pain? Right. Quick on the spot. We need to do this fast because you're coaching and you've got like 15 athletes. You can't sit down and what should we do? All right. You know, you got to be quick about your modifications, the stats, the reps, whatever it is happens on the spot, you know, sit down and, all right, what should we do? All right, you know, you've got to be quick about your modifications, the sets, the reps, whatever it is happens on the spot, you know. And then what happens is that athlete, you'll get a flavor of what they can handle

and what they can't. And then the other coaches are on board with that, and we know just based on the people. At Verve we had like an Excel sheet or something of people that were hurt and what was going on so they could catch up on these people if they were having problems too. So it's important, right, because we want to make sure that people are getting better and not getting hurt.

And from a business perspective, you've got a lot of members that leave because something hurts, you know. One of the most valuable things I think I do for coaches is I keep people in the gym, and if they're gone, I get them back, you know. You were talking before we hopped on the mics about, uh, Paul, who he's a games athlete and he almost always changes the workouts. Yeah. Paul Bono, if you guys don't know, he's a good buddy of mine. He's a real cool guy. Um, he's currently in CrossFit Verve and, uh, I kind of got to know him there, but I actually competed at him in New Jersey. Quick story. I beat him in a

competition once. So you guys don't know about this what about paul on so you can talk shit back paul's like five four five five he's a pretty short guy right and he got like first or second place in all the events except for a triple brawl jump snuck in past him on that one which was good but anyway i mean he was on crossfit milford 2015 when they won the games. He was a team captain I was like 165 but you can clean and jerk like 330 I think snatches around 260 He's got a great engine to just a phenomenal athlete, you know at the time He's being coached by Jay Lydon

I think he follows a lot of Matt Chan's programming now or he was at least at the time But anyway, this guy he always said I modify every single workout, you know and uses the term modify But in reality he looks at a workout. He's like, you know, this is not feeling great today. And keep in mind, it's like a 24 year old guy, right? So it's not like it's a 42 year old who's been beat up. It's a 24 year old who's pretty fresh. I got those fresh joints, right? So every single workout he went into, he looked at, he's like, you know what? This has not been feeling very good lately. I need to make a little tweak here. I need to change this. It's been feeling very good lately. I need to make a little tweak here I need to change this is a little too much volume We need to and it's just he learned about his body over time to the point that he knew what was probably best for him Right and his coach can still say like look Paul. I think you need to push this

You can't just skimp on this like row piece whatever is here, but it wasn't that necessarily It's just that he knew that certain things a little too much volume in certain areas and he's been down that path before where he Would do too much squatting his knee hurts or did too much overhead press back starts hurt whatever it is so he made that change on the spot that was best for him to continue um so i guess the analogy you're making is like you got a guy in front of you the guy's like man i really want to do rx right the person's like six months into crossfit it's like well do you know paul right coach paul they're like yeah i know coach paul was like you know he modifies every single workout. And I was like, oh, I had no idea that was happening. But once they make that connection, like, wow. So the best athletes in the world are making changes on a regular basis

that are going to optimize my training. I'm like, oh, well now they're much more likely to do it because it makes that connection to them. Yeah. And, and Paul is more than likely going to be competing for a lot longer because of that. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I think to bring it back to what's the person's goal and why are they going to the gym? And if you can say like, we're changing this workout because it actually helps you meet that goal better. And to switch that rather than like, oh, you have to, you know, we got to make it easier for you. We got to change it.

But you bring it back to the thing that's helping them and how it's helping them. I think then they go, oh, yeah, okay. Well, that's what I want. You know, I don't want my shoulder to hurt. And this is going to help my shoulder feel better sooner. So, yeah, I want to do that. Definitely. So bringing it back to that is, I think, incredibly valuable psychologically.

That's great. Yeah. So the two of you, you guys collaborated on a course together. Is that correct? Yep. We did. We were at OCF, O'Hare CrossFit with Angelo Cisco I know you guys oh yeah good buddy of ours Angelo and once a year he has a

essentially a coaches summit for his his staff and I think you've done that three times I've done it twice and yeah this most recent time we wanted to collaborate to bring something that would be a really valuable resource to their staff. And we, after a lot of discussion, decided it would be how do we teach these modifications for back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, et cetera, for different lifts so that the coaches and trainers can quickly reference this and go, oh, this is bad or painful. Let's find the one on this list and go through this order so we can quickly figure out how to change it for this athlete. And that way, too, the staff could all be on the same page where they're kind of following the same system. So that's what we did over there.

And we filmed the whole thing and made it into an online course so that we could make it available to anybody who wants to learn more about that. Yeah, very cool. I've seen the course. I love it. It's all really good information. If somebody wanted to check that out, where would they go? Yeah, they can find that at the movementfix.com and forward slash modifying. So if they go there or they just go to the movementfix.com and go to the shop button, it's the top listed item there. That would be where you can find out more info. There's some videos on there too to show like kind of what it looks like so people can get a feel for what it is. And yeah, you have anything to add to that?

I gotta tell you, it's basically the product that I wish I had when I was a trainer, right? And it's just, you know, it's this huge gray area, right? No one wants to talk about it. So basically what we do on a daily basis, physical therapists, chiropractors, we're with people in pain all the time, right then as you know personal trainers coaches what do people tell you about pain refer out refer out you know that's not your place don't do anything with this person

but a couple things happen you're going to work with that person in pain right you're just modifying things you're changing stuff so the good coaches kind of figure it out on their own right but what ends up happening is that people really don't know what they're doing and no one is saying like look these are the steps you have to take in order to get better right obviously still work with professional but i still need to work with you we have to make sure that we're not screwing you up further right and we're still trying to reach your goals you know just because you're in pain doesn't mean we have to stop training completely just we need someone to help us out along that spectrum and as therapists chiropractors do every day and there's some simple

basic easy things about biomechanics the way you lift and some of the pathologies or injuries we see, we can make these easy tweaks, and you can make someone continue getting better, better, better without hurting them in the process. So that's it. Very cool. If people want to reach out to you, what's your social websites, et cetera? Yeah, so on Instagram, at The Movement Fix, and then Facebook, also cetera? Yeah. So, uh, on Instagram at the movement fix and then, uh, Facebook also the movement fix and contact info is on, uh, the movement fix.com. If people have questions, want to reach out, Dan, Dan. Yeah. Fitness pain-free.com. I've been blogging for probably

eight or nine years is a ridiculous amount of stupid information on there. There's a lot of great, there's a lot of great information. There's so much on there. Remember we were going through that. It's kind of crazy. But Instagram, Fitness Pain Free. I'm also on Twitter, but I never check that. I'm on Facebook, too, but I'm real bad with Facebook as well. Don't tell people that. We've given up on Twitter as well.

Twitter's like the auto post. Just have the thing auto post to Twitter. It's the bitch out of all social media. I'm the only one on my team that's active on Twitter. I have conversations there every day. I don't know. It's good. I just don't stay up to date.

That's where the good shit's happening. Yeah. That's the good shit. Thanks for joining us, guys. All right, fellas. Thanks for coming on the show. You bet. Thank you.

Make sure you subscribe over on YouTube. Go to iTunes. Five-star review. Positive comments only. And what else? Yeah. Sounds good. And we'll see you next week.

Yeah.