Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 452 - The Muscle Doc, Jordan Shallow

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Dr. Jordan Shallow aka. The Muscle Doc, is a Doctor of Chiropractics, elite powerlifter, strength & conditioning coach, and founder of Pre-Script. He began his career at Apple HQ in Cupertino, CA as p...art of their corporate wellness program, and now works both in-person and remotely with the world’s top athletes. He also is heavily involved in educating young athletes, coaches, and gym owners. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: https://drinklmnt.com/powerproject Purchase 3 boxes and receive one free, plus free shipping! No code required! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Wells Power Project podcast. Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by our homies at FreeSleeve. You know, the funny thing is the other day I was looking up LeBron James recovery because you know how that guy spends millions of dollars on his body. And I saw pictures of like ice packs on his knees. Like it's like ice plastic bags around his knees. I thought he was the best. I thought he was the best. But you know, the funny thing is like the FreeSleeve, it's this latex free ice sleeve that you can literally put on your elbows. You can put it on your knees. And it's so dope because after a training session, I go home, I do my thing. I pull the free sleeve out of the freezer, put it on my knees, put it on my elbows, walk around, do my nightly routine.
Starting point is 00:00:35 I'm not stuck sitting down with stuff on my knees and elbows. I take it off. I feel great. I go to sleep. It's perfect. So what you're saying is you don't ice your body the way a caveman would do it back in the day. Pro athletes these days. Shame on them.
Starting point is 00:00:48 You guys need to upgrade your ice packs right now by heading over to freesleeve.com. That's F-R-E-E-Z-E-S-L-E-E-V-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code POWER25 for 25% off your order and free domestic shipping. Hello, hello. Make sure you mute this guy yeah just don't turn this mic on i can still hear myself so you should probably turn it off so you guys are not getting baked on this one or i'm gonna do half half which is a one one serving which is one serving too many already.
Starting point is 00:01:27 Oh, man. Yeah, last show we got into it. God. Cheers. There you go. And one down the hatch and another down the hatch. Yeah. I'm going to save the other half for before training today.
Starting point is 00:01:49 Disappointing with this stuff. Remember a he had that extra noise in there yeah yeah there was an extra like pop yeah what it wasn't it was uh i don't know yeah it was like that yeah i don't but i didn't pop your cherry something like that yeah it was i think because like it was the bottle i don't know it was something with a bottle yeah but it was something with his lips nice sound so i've been walking with my dad every day and that's been going good hell yeah um and then my brother's been uh joining in on some of those walks, too. And my dad, the first couple days, he was, you know, lumbering around. That wasn't moving too quick, and we couldn't go very far. And each day he got a little bit better, was moving a little faster.
Starting point is 00:02:35 And then he's been lifting in the gym, too. Lauren Pappas, the Fit DJ, she's been training him up. Nice. And so he's been doing a little bit of lifting as well. And that's been going good. But then he's also he's been doing a little bit of lifting as well. And that's been going good. But then he's also had like a little bit of a setback. So like today his calf was bothering him a lot. So he's kind of like limping, but he's like, you know, getting through it.
Starting point is 00:02:53 And I just wanted to bring it up because I think it's a good illustration of what happens a lot of times when you start something new. You start getting involved in something new and you're like, oh, wow, okay, okay that was cool that was a lot of fun first first go of it feels pretty good and then you might get like sore you might get tired you might get beat up you might um even just with exercise you might just be a lot more hungry so your diet might not be great in the beginning and you got to figure out a way to just you know know, keep it going, keep that streak going. And my dad's doing a good job of that. So super proud of him. And it's been a lot of fun. And it's an interesting dynamic when he and I walk together.
Starting point is 00:03:33 We don't like, we don't need to talk. So we just walk a lot. And then when my brother's there, my brother likes to talk. And so he'll chat it up with my dad. My dad likes to talk a lot too. So we'll get some good conversation. But, yeah, it's been a lot of fun. That's really good.
Starting point is 00:03:48 That's honestly, though, like, I think it's kind of what we were talking about yesterday. You know, when you do start something, you know, you have all this momentum, but there will be something that's going to set you back. And your mind can either go to the spot of, ah, shoot, maybe I need to stop. Or what can I do to maybe get around this a little bit? So maybe you just walk a shorter distance or just do something else that's still kind of physical. You could still get something and you could still get something done. So that's awesome.
Starting point is 00:04:14 Well, and also, too, I don't think you'd be walking out there with his calf hurt if we weren't all doing it together. And so having some sort of extra accountability, I think, is helpful. You know, you have people to do stuff with. That can be huge. On today's show, we got Jordan Shallow on the show and chiropractor, powerlifter. And it'd be great to get into some conversation with him. I know he's worked with a lot of different types of people.
Starting point is 00:04:41 He works for EliteFTS.com, who we have a lot of their products in our gym. And I've done work with them as well over the years. And it'll be cool to talk to him about chiropractic. I know he's worked with like rugby players and stuff. And I kind of wonder like what those guys need, like that sport just seems brutal. You know what those guys need, how they recover from their games and all that kind of stuff. So a lot of cool stuff to get into and even talk about chiropractic you know what are your guys thoughts you guys ever had success with chiropractors um well so my my first experience i was um you know friends in high school and we got rear-ended pretty bad. Ooh, like really bad in a car. Correct.
Starting point is 00:05:26 Thank you for clarifying. Yes, we were in a car. Uh, it was, it's been rough. It was really rough. But then get this,
Starting point is 00:05:38 the truck that hit us, they just start running. Oh God. Oh, and they had like a half a cow slaughtered in the back of their truck, beer everywhere. And I was like, Oh, that's why they're start running. Oh God. Oh, and they had like a half a cow slaughtered in the back of their truck, beer everywhere. And I was like, Oh,
Starting point is 00:05:47 that's why they're running anyway. So that was a little sidebar. Wait, really half a cow. Yeah. Yeah. They like went and poached. I think that's the right word.
Starting point is 00:05:54 They just like went and slaughtered a cow and just took off. Wow. I know. So I'd imagine their insurance wasn't up to, uh, you know, it wasn't renewed or whatever they call it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:06 Wasn't active. Mm-hmm. So anyway, I don't even think it was their car. So like the owners, we were technically suing them, that sort of thing. And so like, oh, if, you know, we need to show that you guys are actually in pain. So you got to go to the chiropractor. And I swear, every time I went, i was just in so much pain i'm like this is not working fast forward to like you know training and stuff and like now like i i do
Starting point is 00:06:32 like going like i like getting everything cracked and stuff but it's not i don't know like i feel good afterwards uh but i think it's because i'm not going in with like, like a super bad chronic thing, you know, like with my back, sometimes I'll leave and I'll be like, damn, I don't know if that did the job for me. But like when I go see Dan here at a movement matters in Sacramento,
Starting point is 00:06:54 like I feel pretty damn good after that. He has some cool tricks, but it's more of like active release than it is straight chiropractor. Like ART. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's important to have, you know, that your chiropractor does more than just the snap, crackle, pop type
Starting point is 00:07:12 of deal. Yeah, and sorry I made you cut you off, but like, so I've had really bad chiropractors in the past. Like, my wife and I would go and she would have like a carpal tunnel or a shoulder thing and he'd be like, oh, okay, yeah, this is what we're going to do. And, you know, snap, crackle, pop.
Starting point is 00:07:28 And I'm like, yeah, do my back's jacked. OK, so I think this is what's happening. So here's what we're going to do. And did the exact same thing. She's like, but her is her wrist. Why are you doing the exact same treatment on me? Yeah. So we're going to hook you up to this TENS unit and then we're going to do this.
Starting point is 00:07:43 So now we're going to hook you up to this tens unit and then we're going to do this. And then, you know, someone like Dan, he'll look at you and be like, oh, your right leg is standing or longer than your left leg. So let's pull on the left one. And then he'll look at you and like, oh, your back's not, you know, doesn't need attention on this side. So we're not going to just crack you just because. Yeah. So you're right, Mark. Like if they have some extra tools in their tool belt, like that's a really good sign of a good chiropractor.
Starting point is 00:08:07 There have been times where I've had like a, cause like in the past, a few years ago, there was a point that I was going to a chiropractor like every two weeks. Um, that was before I was, I was like stretching much after I started doing more stretching more often. I didn't go nearly as much, but there's a guy I go to,
Starting point is 00:08:20 his name's Dr. Abogar from our jujitsu school. And it's usually I'll go whenever, like maybe I'll get like a pinched nerve from doing something on the mat and my neck is like, oh, you know, and he'll do some stuff in the neck and it'll relieve some pressure for that for that time. But it's it's it's those times that I usually go now. I don't find the need to go as much as I did in the past just just because I, I do stuff often, you know? So I do think it can be beneficial. I just think that like in your situation, when they do the same, because there is like a protocol that they go through on people, but when they do that same thing on everybody,
Starting point is 00:08:56 then yeah. Yeah. And they sometimes only spend a couple minutes with you, right? And they, you know, snap you here and there and they're like, yeah, we took an x-ray or whatever it is they do, you know, and they give you like some shitty news about your what they think is going on with your spine or whatever. Like I've had horrible interactions with some chiropractors, but also really great ones as well. But every time that I've had good interaction, they've been able to do quite a bit of other stuff where they could, you know, care for you and stuff. But I would also say I agree with Nsema a lot on this topic in general.
Starting point is 00:09:29 You could just take care of yourself, you know, pretty much. You can, you know, stretch and do some of the extra stuff. And it's like you don't really need it. Massage therapy, I'd put all that stuff in the same bracket. It feels good. the same bracket. It feels good. And I would say like, if, you know, if someone works on you for say 20 minutes, 30 minutes, sometimes a chiropractor doesn't spend that much time with you, but like a good massage therapist slash chiropractor would, that's 20 minutes, 30 minutes away from your phone. It's 20 minutes, 30 minutes where you're, you know, just kind of, you know,
Starting point is 00:10:03 sort of by yourself and you're, it's almost just kind of, you know, sort of by yourself and you're it's almost like meditative, you know. So I think for those purposes, it's great. Like for people that are really feel like they're working a lot and they feel like they're lifting and they're, you know, just kind of always just going. I think it's a good like shutdown, you know. Yeah. And something I just remembered. So Dr. Dan's brother, whose name escapes me. And by the way, Smokey's been going to see Dan for like, I don't know, like over a year
Starting point is 00:10:31 now. He's been seeing a lot of good results. So he knows what he's doing. But his brother was explaining to me like the whole like almost conspiracy behind like back in way back about how like a lot of people try to make it seem like it was witchcraft and like it was you know total bs so i i wish i'm gonna have to look that up because like i really want to you know learn more about yeah it was started by like one guy and you know all this kind of stuff yeah um and i think like the palmer chiropractic school is like the most
Starting point is 00:11:02 famous school and that's where most everybody everybody goes and all that kind of stuff. What's up? Hello. Going great. Great to have you here on the show today. And, you know, my neck, you know, right here kind of feeling a little something. I don't know if you can do anything via Zoom or how it works. I felt something. that was pretty good.
Starting point is 00:11:28 That's all chiropractic is really, if I'm being honest. Right, right. So how long have you been in the chiropractic profession for? Five, five years, a little over five years. Yeah. I graduated in 2015, just, just down in the, in the Bay area there, a few hours south of you guys. And it was something I recognized with going to many different people over the years for chiropractic work, active release type work, massage therapy, all these different things, it kind of appears that some people are kind of more in tune with healing somebody and almost fixing somebody than somebody else. Do you kind of feel like, uh,
Starting point is 00:12:06 do you feel like you're pretty in tune with that? You know, when you're feeling the muscles and you're, I mean, you've been doing it for a long time now, you feel like you're, you can get pretty in tune with the person and, uh, help them pretty good. It's kind of like, I mean, you can reverse the question back to you as like, you know, as a strength coach or someone who's been around athletes for so long, there's definitely like a I don't want to say like I think artistry is maybe a bit of a two of a hippie term, especially when you start dealing with Kairos. But there's a certain level of just synthesizing experience and superimposing it with science very quickly. That looks like an art to the outsider, right? the outsider right like you can look at someone's squad or deadlift or bench and then through a handful of russian soviet manuals and you know your own bench press experience and you know
Starting point is 00:12:51 talking with louis or dave or jesse or whatever and you can immediately just go hey uh you know maybe bring your feet back a little bit and try and push towards the rack and it's just all of a sudden we're hitting prs like crazy and it's someone would look at that as artistry where you're like well no like this is i've just done it so many times uh so yeah there's there's a point in which you know you just do it enough where you and if you if you're aware enough to know that okay we're gonna try to control as many variables as we can and then when we start to see these aberrations come out of these controls, we can pop up and be very aware to us and we know how to, how to deal with them really quickly. And it's just having a little bit more of a flexible thought process.
Starting point is 00:13:31 Cause it's that you don't get that experience obviously coming out of school. So just kind of being able to come up with your own thought process, have your own experience and start to weight those weight, your own personal experience with sort of the empirical research. And then also not to mention like the, the values of the person you're working with. And if you can put those three together really quickly, then yeah,
Starting point is 00:13:53 there is a certain like you know, artfulness to it that, that if you're not aware of it and you're just going and punching the clock, then yeah, you'll you'll be more on that other side of the distribution of people who just go in and crack necks and collect paychecks and all that. Um, and it's also a little bit of guesswork too, right? Cause like from my standpoint, you know, when I'm coaching somebody, I'll tell someone to do something and I'm wrong a lot of times. And then I got to go, Oh, I kind of gave them the wrong, you know, I told them, bring their feet out wider and now their hips hurt or something.
Starting point is 00:14:23 And, uh, I got to kind of change my answer. Do you find that yourself? Like you start working on something, you're like, ah, that's not really where it's at. Yeah. I mean, with a lot of what we do, it's diagnosis by exclusion, right? So we fall victim to the fact that, you know, we are held to a gold standard of structural assessment a lot, which is basically like x-rays, MRIs, CTs, diagnostic ultrasounds kind of rule the roost. And those are always there in the back pocket.
Starting point is 00:14:50 But the goal is to actually get really good at creating a gold standard of functional assessment. So as you create this diagnosis by exclusion, you're going to more likely be near the mark in your primary, secondary and tertiary potential causes of what it is that's, you know, causing pain or dysfunction or what have you. But yeah, you're always, you're always guessing. You're all, but it's just, you know, the educated guess, as it were, comes with sort of that, that artful expression of the science and the experience. So it can be tough because I think in people, especially when you're dealing with rehabilitation or pain or anything like that, especially in athletes, they're looking for certainty,
Starting point is 00:15:30 right? with rehabilitation or pain or anything like that especially in athletes they're looking for certainty right they're looking for and they're looking for the absolute surefire silver bullet like you know this is how i feed my kids this is how i'm gonna you know i'm gonna i can i can't do this forever i need to make sure i can get back to my big contracts or whatever so they're looking for certainty and and i think the just like anything right the better you become at it and that dunning kruger sort of uh overlap you go oh shit i don't know anything i don't know anything at all and then you're dealing with like a high level athlete and who makes millions of dollars and like yo you sure about this and you're like no i'm not but yolo let's do it uh so it's tough it's and the people who honestly i think uh who are successful early in like a business and are people that just are blindly confident. And on the further left of the distribution of that Dunning-Kruger effect,
Starting point is 00:16:12 you have no idea how dumb you are, but you can stand up on the tallest hill and be like, this is the, this is the prophet. The word of God reigns upon you. The commandments of rehabilitation. Can someone get this guy off this hill please but the hard part is instagram gives everyone the hill and there's just sermons on all these mounts everywhere every day so it's yeah it's difficult to navigate for sure um because you become only increasingly more uncertain of yourself as you sort of look at more and more problems you i have
Starting point is 00:16:42 no idea what i'm doing as we uh demonstrated right off the bat you can't do chiropractic you know via zoom so how has your 2020 been has it been shit or has it been good no it's been uh i mean i don't practice in the conventional sense anymore man like i don't i have uh maybe a half dozen maybe like 10 athletes right now that i work with a couple weeks at a time, NFL, NHL guys. And then I work a lot online in the education space, trying to relay some of this context to trainers and coaches and therapists. So it's hard to sit here and say that my life has been unaffected, but more or less unaffected. I don't, you know,
Starting point is 00:17:20 I don't do the nine to five office stuff anymore. So 2020 has just been similar to 2019 to a certain degree, if I'm being honest. Just some small pivots and everything's pretty good. Yeah, we were set up online on the education side of things before COVID. Obviously, I used to teach a lot of seminars face-to-face. It was pretty much all I did for two years was just travel around and teach. Obviously, that kind of took a took a backseat. But from a business standpoint, seminars, if anyone's ever done them, I mean, look, I'm talking to you here.
Starting point is 00:17:52 They should be paid lead acquisition. So, you know, the margins aren't great from a business perspective. They're a lot of fun. I enjoy them. But we had the online education stuff up for time before that. So it was really I think the one like, you know the the p word is so popular this year the one pivot we had to do was just move one of our semesters a week ahead and that was just like dodged a bullet there what made you um want to become a car because you said you got your uh doctorate in chiropractic in 2015 right right what spurred you towards like wanting to become a chiropractic in 2015, right? Right. What spurred you towards wanting to become a chiropractor versus anything else? I wanted to wear cutoffs to work and I realized I couldn't do that as a history
Starting point is 00:18:33 professor. Yeah, no, I started studying history, political science in my undergrad and I used to train in the off season for hockey. I was a fairly competitive hockey player i've grown up in canada and it got to a point where i wanted to you know train more than i wanted to play hockey and then it got to the point where i wanted to train more than i wanted to be in school i was like oh mom's gonna be pissed if i just like you know if i turn into the the venice beach king of like if i can out bench him out squat him it's like louise is going to not be thrilled. So, like, all right, how can I kind of do, get paid and still be in the gym? And I was a personal trainer at the time. It was like, eh, personal training, wages, blah, blah, blah. And, like, one of my buddy's clients was a Cairo.
Starting point is 00:19:16 And, like, looking at his business model, it's very similar. Like, time for money. He drives a Range Rover. I fucking like Range Rovers. So, like, hey, what do you do for? And so that was honestly, that was like, the impetus was like, okay, I want to work in a gym. I want to stay, I want to kind of stay active. I want to help people in a similar fashion. But I don't want to live with Mike and Louise shallow forever.
Starting point is 00:19:37 So those kind of, I put those into a Google search field and out came like, I don't know, chiropractor. And, and that kind of spurred the, spurred the change as transition from history to kinesiology and the rest is kind of kind of history and did that change the way you look at like your training as an athlete like learning all the things you did in chiropractor school how did your how because like your focus is biomechanics and you share a lot of information on instagram youtube all everywhere about human biomechanics. Was that mainly from what you learned there and then applying it to training?
Starting point is 00:20:09 Or was there other things that obviously played a role in terms of that? Yeah, it's hard, right? Because I think if it was purely the school, you could march any of the 50 other kids that graduated in my year across fitness podcasts, and they'd all tell you the same thing. Like'm super lucky i mean you know mark you guys are up the road i got to spend so much time with jesse uh in at dublin csa i worked under uh dan at boss uh you know got to know ed cone through powerlifting and chad wesley smith and then dave tate and louis and you just get this like repository of information and you also get to spend four years in a cadaver lab with a dead body and a knife and it's like well it's just
Starting point is 00:20:50 this is a little bit interesting so it definitely one hand kind of fed the other and i think both of which kind of fed my like curiosity around training um which i think that would be like the biggest driving factor was just like huh like you look at an anatomy textbook and you're like, oh, it inserts here. And it's, this is blue and this is red. And then, you know, Dave comes in and we had a social security and a wife yesterday and you cut his face off and you're like, oh shit, this is not like, this is, this is not like a textbook at all. I literally could not eat pulled pork for the first six months because you
Starting point is 00:21:24 just open up his dead body. And like every time i would smell like see pulled pork i would smell formaldehyde i was like oh fuck this is so yeah it definitely helped um but i just i would say more more helpful in like the biomechanics side was just getting to be around people who just have done it so well for so long and had like these evolved and adapt thought adapted thought processes when it comes to training and then five percent of this is just like hey remember when you cut open that dead body and you saw this or you remember when you studied for 40 hours for that one board exam and you kind of learned about this thing in the hip but so much of it on the applied side is is just being around people who've
Starting point is 00:22:05 done it so well why are people so skeptical of uh chiropractic wait what are you what are your thoughts on that because they should be they absolutely fucking it's a terrible business model that's why i don't do it anymore it's like this guy's if he gets if he's good you pay him nothing because he gets you better in one go. And if he's terrible, he makes bank and has a boat and like Tesla. So it's just, yeah, it's backwards. Like it's, I don't want to say it's unregulated, but relatively speaking, unregulated, you know, next to maybe like a more conventional Western medical physician, like a medical doctor. So from a financial standpoint, you can go in there and just absolutely crush it
Starting point is 00:22:49 as a chiropractor. If you if you wanted to do that and you wanted to just say, hey, you got to see me, you know, three times a week for the next several months. And you could string these people along and get x-rays and MRIs and really just load up your bank account kind of thing. eyes and really just load up your bank account kind of thing. Oh, workers comp, you can get into PI cases. You could be like chiropractic offers you the potential to be the biggest piece of shit on the planet. Like, no, it's, and it's terrible, man. Because you know, I, I have to be on the other, I can almost consult for people like, Hey, uh, this guy sent me this treatment plan. What do you think? I'm like, let me stop stop you right there i don't need to see it he's any way treatment plan what is this
Starting point is 00:23:27 the finances boat like get out of here with this nonsense so i think people are rightfully so to be skeptical because they chiropractors as the whole honor profession have not earned the right to not be skeptical of them right physical therapists are are a little bit more tightly controlled as they work in a in a more synergistic relationship with conventional medicine which obviously has their problems but at least the regulation keeps the business antics in check right so i it's it's it's hard for me like it's a little different here in canada but when i was in the states like you know i used to live in mountain view which is over the hill from santa cruz i was like so they're trying to sell me on this crystals package.
Starting point is 00:24:05 I was like, for fuck's sakes, man. Like this is what I'm up against. And it's so hard to discern. Those don't work. No, no. All the amethysts in the world. Yeah, nevermind. Maybe it's freebasted or smoking somewhere.
Starting point is 00:24:20 But like, so it's hard because people just see the title and they can, they don't think to discern or like contextualize that there's a difference between one or the other. And you know, it's, it's basically whatever your motivation is, you want to make money. It's like, dude, you can, you can make, and I know guys in the Bay area when I was there that were just pulling racks like millions of dollars a year. And it's like, they honestly probably helped zero people.
Starting point is 00:24:46 So if a uh so if somebody walks into a chiropractor's office and they get hit with the um like the the subscription base where it's like hey like this is gonna help but if you if you pay all up front right now we're really gonna be able to help you is that like the ultimate red flag so it's why i did a youtube video on this like way way way back in the day and i actually got like death threats it was like this old lady from berkeley i was like bring it on bitch give me my home address as they say uh so i would say big and this is literally i don't think it's changed since i made the video like five years ago it's sadly that's my most viewed video which is kind of like oh for fuck's sakes what am i doing here uh any groupon any any first free anything like that that's that's that's the old bait and switch right that's just hey we're just here to spread the good
Starting point is 00:25:37 word it's like listen jehovah's like get the fuck off you don't need this shit you're walking right into it uh second would be uh yeah, treatment plans, subscriptions. That's a big red flag. And third would be x-rays. And I'm going to put an asterisk next to that because, like, if you get in a car accident, sure, advanced imaging might be something you want to look into out of the gate, right? Like, if you just think you have whiplash or you think you're having a stroke, it's like, okay, go get an MRI, not necessarily an x-ray. you think you're having a stroke it's like okay go get an MRI not necessarily an x-ray but what if you come in with just and if you're under a certain age category like you're over the age of 55 or 60 there are different things where imaging might be necessitated so I don't want to
Starting point is 00:26:13 you know dispense with that context but if you're just a young lifter right and your back kind of hurts you did you did shako or small love or some Bulgarian shit. And you've just been training like, you know, eight days a week for six weeks a month for 14 months out of the year. It's like, all right. If a guy goes, Hey, x-ray first, it's like, no, because it's kind of what I talked about earlier, right? Like the gold standard of structural assessment. And so that just tells me this guy has no aptitude for creating a gold standard of functional assessment.
Starting point is 00:26:51 Right. Like I'm looking at three guys here that guaranteed have some level of disc herniation without a fucking doubt. But it doesn't matter because we all function really well. We all move really well. We all know how to train. We all know how to live so we can operate without pain. This idea of this antiquated notion that like the structure dictates our function is going to tell us how we're in pain is so it's so just absurd right like it's just so it's just so old school and so those would be my big things like groupon sales certificates first free whatever uh treatment plans and then like advanced imaging out of the gate if you go to see a chiropractor and they drop one of those on you your hand over your wallet don't turn backwards Keep your eye on the entire time and just slowly back out of the office. So you worked with a lot of different types of athletes, NBA, NHL, rugby players, football players, all different kinds of people.
Starting point is 00:27:38 What's the most challenging sport that you had to deal with? And what would be the reason on why it's maybe more challenging hockey hockey's tough anytime we start to deal with heavy rotational athletes which is a lot of the time the case tennis tennis is really difficult just because the systems right like the energy systems that you need to be proficient across like you know rafa and federer going five almost six hours at wimbledon it's like that's that's a different type that's that's quadruple overtime in the nhl like you don't have to prepare for that really it's like you know the dano chara might drink a coca-cola after the second overtime it's like yeah do whatever you want man there's no rules for this uh tennis is difficult any. Any special teams, football player. So I, I, one of my, one of my guys is a kicker in the NFL.
Starting point is 00:28:29 That's a very, very special shape and a very just different way to train. Like he just, his there's, there's five or six different real shapes in football, but I would say the kicker kicker was tough or is continues to be tough tennis players, the change in direction, the rapid rotation, the bilateral rotation. Like a pitcher is going to throw right-handed right over left hip, right shoulder over left hip, where the backhand forehand,
Starting point is 00:28:56 like being able to manage through the transverse plane in different levels of hip rotation. Tennis players, maybe if I had to just pick one, I would say tennis players, but there's special cases like, you know, kickers in football are tough hockey players with their hips and how asymmetrical and how different being on skates is to any other sort of field sport.
Starting point is 00:29:15 Hockey players have like a laundry list of like hip and, and more or less the tabular issues. But yeah, I would say somewhere in there exists a very difficult, not difficult. It's just, you know, if you go an O-lineman, for example, is probably an easier person to train. Right. Like you're going to each play last five to six seconds. You're going to have to have this level of capacity, you know, power and strength. It's very it's very easy to anticipate the shape and system of that particular athlete whereas as those two defining criteria become more broad the your programming becomes a little
Starting point is 00:29:52 bit more uh abstract a little bit more difficult i like the way you're using that word shape um what's the definition of it for you well yeah so i mean and this is where strength coaching gets really uh it gets lost because like a shape would just be you know what kind of positions are we finding ourselves on the field right or oh you know what ufc mixed martial arts there you go that's the most difficult one to program for that's a fucking nightmare um that takes the cake over anyone else that i've ever programmed for so any anyone who does combat sports is infinitely harder to program for than any other athlete. And what makes that so?
Starting point is 00:30:31 The sympathetic drive, right? Like, you're trying to deal with muscle tone on someone who, like, if I play hockey or I deal with a hockey player, right? Like, especially the way the game's played now, it's very much speed. Like, if I go into the corner of like the offensive zone, the other guy's going in and he's going for the puck. If I go into a cage with another guy who was 180 pounds two days ago, then he was 150 pounds. Now he's 180 pounds again.
Starting point is 00:30:57 He's not going for the puck. He's going for the heart of my chest, right? That totally changes the sympathetic drive drive your cerebellar function your interpretation of like muscular tone uh so that's just a nightmare especially like going into and coming out of like a fight you have an athlete that comes in like the day after a fight i'm not touching you for like a week go sit in a float tent turn the lights off give me your cell phone like we had no idea what we're dealing with here. But yeah, shape would just be like, what kind of position do they find themselves in the field? But I think one of the issues I see in modern day strength conditioning is we
Starting point is 00:31:34 try and too closely emulate those shapes in the weight room, right? Like it's like, if we're getting in those shapes on the field and we're practicing during the season or during the off season, how do I actually find complimentary shapes in the gym right how can i maybe offset that shape so like you know i see a lot of and it makes sense if i'm to do an instagram post and i do something that looks like something on the field and athletes are like oh that's going to make me better at doing this like you know throwing weighted baseballs or you know hooking half of the
Starting point is 00:32:05 title list up to the fucking cable stack and just ripping like 30 pound whatever it's just that if anything that's probably going to diminish the speed change your mechanics right so shapes to me like to me strength and condition comes down to shapes and systems what energy systems are we in where do we need to like sort of buffer the outer borders of other energy systems? What shapes are we in and how do we reverse those shapes if necessary or reinforce those shapes if necessary in the gym? So is that kind of like what pre-script is in terms of like the program that you build for coaches or that I think that's like a, it's an educational program. Is that kind of what that helps you with? Is it for coaches that are looking at a lot of different sports or is it for
Starting point is 00:32:50 coaches that are focusing on strength training athletes? What, what, how does that tie in? Right. So the level one course is like kind of our flagship. That's really based more around like functional anatomy and applied biomechanics. So that's kind of setting the foundational framework in which to think about these higher level thought processes in programming and execution for sports so level two is more sport specific and we have a curriculum in the
Starting point is 00:33:15 works for actual strength training uh methodologies spinning off into different sports hockey for example uh combat sports field sports things like that uh but yeah prescript is definitely more on the educational side and then we have um uh weightlifting uh and powerlifting courses that sort of take these core principles of functional anatomy and biomechanics how do we how do we cross apply this into you know sagittal sports like like powerlifting or or olympic weightlifting barbell sports like that, and then the central core tenets of applied biomechanics and functional anatomy, how do we then spin off from that and then create, you know, more resilient athletes
Starting point is 00:33:55 across different sports? So that's kind of how our curriculum is divided up. What do you see that separates out the best athletes from even just your average person? You know, this kind of stuff fascinates me. We do see people with great work ethic and we see a lot of that. But like from a physical standpoint, a lot of times, you know, an athlete might be 6'8", 250, like LeBron James, right? And there's really not much you can do about that. And obviously, LeBron James works very hard on top of being a specimen.
Starting point is 00:34:28 But what kind of like freaks do you run into? And what's, what's like kind of, what are some of the things that you notice that's a big difference that stands out amongst the kind of cream of the crop? Yeah. I want to give credit to, to Andy O'Brien for this. Andy's Sidney Crosby amongst a handful who works with the pittsburgh penguins but he's like the premier strength coach in the nhl and speaking with him
Starting point is 00:34:51 i've kind of changed my thought process and it really comes back to like control right like being able most average like most great athletes there's a handful of, of outliers, but most of like the, the LeBrons, the Jordans, the Gretzky's, the Crosby's, the, you know, the, the, the Manning's, the Favre's, the Brady's it's about control. So it's about being able to, like, if you look at most of those guys resting heart rate or heart rate during a game, it's likely 20 to 40 beats lower than the rest of the people
Starting point is 00:35:25 on the field so their ability to control this parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system obviously being in a more parasympathetic flux that allows you not only in the moment to be more efficient with your resources during during the actual competition it allows you to recover better when you're when you're training which allows you to recover better when you're training, which allows you to then train more and build a greater capacity, right? So I really think, you know, not to go straight down to the central governor theory,
Starting point is 00:35:54 but I think large in part is parasympathetic control. And some people just do it innately, right? Some people are just really good at being a little bit more mellowed out for lack of a better term. And some people know it's a, it's something that they need to work on and they focus it as a part of their training. Like, I don't know what LeBron spends. It's something to the tune of like $2 million a year on his like physical support staff. And I would imagine the majority of the implementation that that's getting spent on is inhibitory parasympathetic right like the days of just you know and that's the crazy thing with powerlifting right like i've never once seen like nose torque on the bench anywhere but yeah yeah
Starting point is 00:36:37 just the red ammonia caps behind the ears like it would not be hilarious just to see you know like uh i don't know who's who's a good pitcher the the kid like bum gardener on the mound hold on guys here comes 109 like right right it's it's the ability to go or stay low when everyone else is high right like it's like it's almost this your enemy is close so i can think you're far if you're far i think they're close like it's the art of war man like it's really an interesting subset like you know you said lebron is a specimen i would argue and i've never seen his hrv data or anything like that but i would say what makes him a specimen is if you take another guy who's 6'8 280 and you run him up and down the
Starting point is 00:37:18 court the energy and the amount of stress that that person, that, that the, the, the, the neurochemistry of a person, anyone else who does that is going to be vastly different than his. So his ability to stay, you know, cool under pressure, like those clutch guys, those career guys, those legacy guys, it really comes down to that control. Do you think it's like a, I got this type of situation, like I'm good enough for this. Like I, it's a a maybe a belief system like uh anderson silva kind of comes to mind like when he was back you know pulling off like tricks that you'd see like in the matrix and he was just knocking people out and it seemed like he had
Starting point is 00:37:56 an ability to slow everything else down i've heard jordan talk about like when he was young he talked about being like a puppet master and how he controlled everything on the court. He controlled the ball, which controlled the guy who was guarding him. Like it was crazy hearing him talk about it. And he could just he could make someone fall down if he wanted to, you know, with the way that he could dribble the skill level. So I'd imagine that a big part of it is a probably, you know, the skill set that they have and be having some of that physicality like a Shaquille O'Neal. and be having some of that physicality like a Shaquille O'Neal you know it probably makes you just feel more comfortable and then therefore maybe relaxes you a little bit I would imagine it would have to be like a compounding effect and there's there's a domino that falls first
Starting point is 00:38:37 that I think you absolutely like you know if you've ever read like outliers by Malcolm Gladwell or the where it's like you know the kid who's 6'8 like I grew up with a kid who's 6'8 he was 15 years old and he was 6'8 he got the best coaches I was a freak he broke my hand with a slap shot in the warm-up of a game when I was 16 years old and I was wearing a blocker Jesus this kid was ripping 100 miles an hour as like a 16 year old kid yeah but he got the best coaches he played on the best teams but so for him a lot of it just came from his physicality right so someone might have the natural instinct instinct to stay control he was a space cadet like this kid would drop of you know someone said something about his sister
Starting point is 00:39:15 you would kick their ass and not in control at all but he got enough opportunities that he actually became good and that built the confidence that he then could go like okay look if i needed to if i can manipulate and control these variables so i think the the change in that in that process is whatever the impetus is right i think some people have the control that allows them to build the confidence and then that confidence then further begets the control and then they're just sitting there playing a different game right like silver's such great example. I still remember when he came out to that. What was the, it was, it was Bill. It was either, I think it was a DMX version of Ain't No Sunshine.
Starting point is 00:39:51 This guy doesn't speak a word of English and he's just kind of sitting there like singing along. I'm like, that is terrifying. I literally like stood up and went in the other room and peeked around the corner to see if he was still walking out. But it's like, cause he's just no, like, like Tyson tyson right like tyson if you've ever watched the spike lee thing and i think he said it on numerous occasions was like you know you could tell before they ring the bell when the guy breaks eye contact he's already won right and it's not whatever it was with tyson it may have been a physicality thing with silva it may have been a control thing but all of these things culminate
Starting point is 00:40:25 to a point where they're literally just playing another game. You know, you know, when you, you started talking about that control aspect, it kind of piqued my ears because what we had Phil Daru on here before, and then Patrick McEwen too. And they, they were both talking about the benefits of that. And I think for myself, maybe two and a half years ago is when I read the oxygen advantage, maybe three years ago or something like that. And when I started focusing on nasal breathing, as far as like the martial art that I do, which is jujitsu, it literally just changed over time how I was on the mat. Like I was like, I try to stay calm before that I would always attempt to, but it's
Starting point is 00:41:00 like, I was naturally able to just continually be calm throughout everything that I do while training. So my question to you is, uh, how do you maybe apply that to athletes? Because I think this year, especially breathing's become a very, very hot topic. Like you, you, there's being James Nestor's book or whatever, and he was on Rogan and now it's people are even talking about it more. How do you approach that with athletes? Is it as it's people are even talking about it more how do you approach that with athletes is it as important as people are touting it to be or is it like there's importance there but there's also another way to i guess elevate the parasympathetic tone that you're talking about um yeah so for me in reading nester and reading uh patrick McEwen and oxygen advantage and knowing Phil, I, I think, yes, absolutely. It is, it is the performance driver, not the only one, but it should be up there in your top two top three considerations.
Starting point is 00:41:55 But my biggest thing with breathing that these books don't necessarily cover on is actually more the biomechanics than the biochemistry, right? Like, cause I, cause function. So at the rib cage and at the pelvis, structure and function are this transparency that they're one in the same where the shoulder and the hip, not so much, right? Like if I, I can't look at your shoulder and I mean, maybe I could cause I've seen enough of them be like, ah, I bet you dislocated that shoulder.
Starting point is 00:42:21 Maybe you have a tear in your bicep or tear in your pack. I just know what I'm looking for. But I could teach a four-year-old to look at a rib cage and be like, okay, that person's inefficient in the way they're breathing. And that position in which they're breathing and actually makes them biomechanically inefficient, not just biochemically inefficient, right? The inability to operate without carbon dioxide is one thing. But there are certain sports where that energy system, albeit still benefited peripherally from an improvement of like aerobic capacity
Starting point is 00:42:49 but the shape of being in a position that allows you to reach those levels of capacity biochemically actually improves drastically your proficiency biomechanically right so i i look at the rib cage and pelvis and their implications on breathing from a biomechanical standpoint and that's really the selling and you know honestly man like it depends on who i need to sell it to right like if i got some meathead athlete that doesn't give a baker's fuck about a bolt score or an hrv that just wants to run through walls i need to make a biomechanical argument that organizing his rib cage in this fashion will make him stronger will make him faster will make him bigger right shout out chris on that one sorry i feel like i totally ripped off the title on that so we'll just show show a bit of love there
Starting point is 00:43:34 um but so it's to me it's understanding both sides and i think the conversation that's missed in the current narrative right like maybe four years ago it was gut health and everyone was fucking eating kimchi and shit and you know then his sleep kind of worked its way in there a little bit too right like what's his name came out with the the why we sleep book and now all of a sudden it's breathing which is great and all of it matters but i think the breathing has to subdivide its conversation away from the biochemical and towards the biomechanical and that's to me where i look at it and i consider it in my own training and how the considerations of that has affected my training and the training of of my athletes you end up getting the same result six of one half
Starting point is 00:44:14 dozen of the other you're going to get the biochemical if you can fix the biomechanical because there's a transparency of the structure and function of the rib cage and the pelvis right the if you're in an extension posture i know that your your diaphragm inserts like roughly around the t10 thoracic vertebra if you're walking in like what's up bro it's like dude how can you possibly that diaphragm can't can't flatten and extend because your ribs are pulled up your thoracic spine is extended now all of a sudden i know you have to use your accessory muscles of breathing your strap muscles your neck to start to create some level of negative pressure right so i know your biochemistry is off and i know your biomechanics are off so the lens in which i look through it as doesn't really matter but for me with like the sports of the people who
Starting point is 00:44:59 gravitate towards me as as a strength coach that's that's my use my usual talking point is more to the actual biomechanical advantages of fixing your breathing rather than the biochemical. So a lot of efficiency in general is just going to come from the way that we move. If you think about, you mentioned Ed Cohn a little bit earlier, and when you've seen Ed Cohn's career or if you checked it out before, you know, like he basically just got stronger almost every single time he competed, which is really, really rare. But if somebody can master a movement and they can continue to get better at that movement and they can figure out ways of being more efficient at that movement, they can they can continually make progress until, you know, until something happens where all of a sudden they're not as efficient as they were before, or they cut a corner somewhere and then they potentially end up with like an injury or something like that. But I think that's what
Starting point is 00:45:54 makes a lot of these conversations so difficult. You know, if I say, Hey, you know, I want you to do five to five on a deadlift, uh, you know, with 70% of your max or whatever the weight is, um, somebody might, they're 70% whatever the weight is, somebody might, their 70% or the weight that they chose for that particular day, all 25 reps might be kind of difficult and they might be, you know, lifting and they might look like a fishing pole the whole time. And they might be really, you know, severely rounded over throughout the entire movement. Whereas what I was trying to convey and saying, Hey,
Starting point is 00:46:25 use about 70% was I would love to see these be picture perfect. I would love for maybe rep 25 on the last, you know, the last, the last rep of the last set, you know, maybe you're starting to get fatigued a little bit and maybe you have a small breakdown in your technique or your form, but the efficiency I think really comes through, you know, really learning how to move and learning that movement properly. And it's just something that I just don't see people. They don't practice it enough unless they have a coach, which is great if somebody has a coach,
Starting point is 00:46:57 but I think more lifters could spend time. It doesn't matter the exercise you'll spend time, you know, learning the exercise. I also think on the flip'll spend time, you know, learning the exercise. I also think on the flip side of that, you know, have a little fun here and there. And if you want to go a little heavier, you want to use some body English here and there, I think that's totally fine. But I do think you have to put a percentage devoted to practicing. And we see a lot of practicing in sports where people do drills for jujitsu, they do drills for wrestling, they do drills for basketball, they do drills for basketball.
Starting point is 00:47:25 They do drills for everything. But when it comes to lifting, a lot of times people aren't practicing their drills. And when it comes to something like breathing, that would be something that you would, you'd be like, yeah, I know how to breathe. Like, kidding me? Like, what's this coach talking about?
Starting point is 00:47:37 I was an idiot. Like, how could I not know how to breathe? But I love the way that you were putting it because it wasn't necessarily about how someone doesn't know how to breathe. It's just that they're breathing inefficiently and they're probably wasting energy in areas that they're not even aware of. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:53 Power lift is a great, aren't they? Like blessed. It's like, how many of these guys have sleep apnea at two 20? It was like, Oh yeah, I know.
Starting point is 00:47:59 But you, you do you, you breathe on there. You have fucking, I can hear you from across the room. You sound like a French bulldog, but it's to me, honestly's it's the it's the abdication of responsibility that comes with an adherence to a guided thought process a system some bullshit three-letter acronym that goes this is how you train and this is how we quantify it's like look
Starting point is 00:48:20 i'm not in the business of quantification i'm in the business of qualification i think that there's a quality to the service i provide and i expect a yield of quality from the people that i provide it to right and so because i take responsibility and ownership over like look if this goes wrong it's on me right if i got a tear a hamstring in the first week at camp right i can't be like well you know we hit our five by five at 75 it's like there's a quality to his movement that i wasn't well i wasn't aware of i wasn't looking for it right and but people that are trying to get into this and they don't respect like the quality of movement even for something as i don't want to diminish it but you know compared to like a a multi-planar athlete something as simple as a squat can be done in very like watching yuri belkin right you just
Starting point is 00:49:06 watch yuri pull or jamal pull and you're like what's going on here like there's a timing there's an artfulness to what they're doing that you know and jamal's program is actually really interesting to me because of the way he's one of the stronger lifters that uses an rpe based system although i think intuitively at a certain point yuri would would have to do something similar just to be able to manage the kind of loads that he manages but i think a large in part to like the breakdown and quality is just the abdication of responsibility that comes with creating systems that allow you to just purely track progress through the lens of quantification i'm not here to crunch numbers man like you're here to win championships like that's
Starting point is 00:49:44 really what you're after when i think you work to a certain level or work with a certain athlete and those athletes will push you to come up with answers more so than i don't know five by five at 75 percent right like there's an intent with when you said that right the intent was like look i want to see practice of skill across these repetitions and i want to see a taxing of the underlying system which we're trying to improve through that that skill that that squad is a conduit to that system that we're trying to improve it's just there's i don't know if people don't know their history people don't watch ed lift people don't watch you know like the the hat fields or or the the cones or you know insert any any person who's done it in the past,
Starting point is 00:50:27 who's done it really well, the Ben Johnsons, right? The Donovan Bailey's. And I think a lot of it starts in that and the appreciation of the acquisition of the skill of whatever it is you're trying to improve upon. You know, I don't want to like focus too much on this, but I know that there's probably a lot of listeners that are in that boat. You mentioned the 220 power lifter that's using a sleep apnea machine. And I know a lot of power lifters that are like that, like they have so much dysfunction there that they you know, they're they're recommended to use a sleep apnea machine. Now, I know we can't just plaster a bandaid on that individual and say, you need to do this, this and this to get rid of that. But for the individuals that probably over time, they could get rid of that. They could, you know, better things in terms of maybe the way they breathe or et cetera. How what are some ways that you'd go about that to maybe get an individual
Starting point is 00:51:20 off of using that machine at night? Because that would be ideal, probably. get an individual off of using that machine at night? Because that would be ideal, probably. Yes. So for me, I look at human function as how we operate when we walk and breathe. I think that's a pretty good thing. It's not shake weights. It's not suspension trainers. It's not BOSU wallets. Those two adaptations, I think, are furthest along evolutionarily. You don't do those well. You're not going to make it across the serengeti you're going to get eaten before you eat kind of thing so i think those two adaptations are the main drivers of human function so from a breathing standpoint a lot of it comes down to like especially with you know let's let's stick with the example of the power lifter how is it that the muscles that we train disproportionately to power lift affect the resting state and position of our rib cage which
Starting point is 00:52:04 will then create this transparency of function to the lungs and diaphragm beneath it. Right. So for me, a lot of power lifts present almost like this, like we're the, they were the live flat and you watch it when they walk, they have a really hard time rotating and working through the transverse
Starting point is 00:52:18 plane. Cause they just have this, this stack of pancakes. I find all this very insulting by the way. Sorry. I heard a stack of pancakes i find all this very insulting by the way sorry i heard stack of pancakes so there's an there's an ovoid adaptation to the rib cage and this is this hand gesture is obviously exaggerating it for sake example so that would be as if i was like laying flat on my back like this and we took my rib cage out and faced it in the same way, I would be like squished.
Starting point is 00:52:46 Because, of course, because you're holding hundreds of pounds. What do you think is going to happen to your rib cage? And what do your pecs do to your rib cage? What do your rhomboids and your troughs do to your rib cage? They just pull and just take this thing that would be more circular and kind of pancake it out. We have muscles on the side that would be able to kind of compress this inward right and then create a more fluid dynamic and you know for our scapula to start to work through this transverse plane for our rotator cuff to start to work as a better as a
Starting point is 00:53:15 function of that scapula's ability to work through this transverse plane like our scapulas just move side to side on this little two-dimensional tron game that we have when we have this pancake rib cage but now if we were able to create a more circular rib cage by laterally compressing using understanding how the serratus and external oblique work in the matter of you know in the inhalation and exhalation through the process of ventilation or how we breathe and how that lateral compression can help offset this a to p compression and now all of a sudden when my scapulas move, they're not just purely moving across this paper Mario sliding edge interface. Now there's a dimensionality across what's called an instantaneous axis of rotation. As these scapulas can now move through both like rise and run, right?
Starting point is 00:54:01 We can start to rotate through all three planes. And guess what's now going to be able to function better right our rotator cuff our subscapularis our teres minor infraspinatus our rhomboids we actually start to create space like when we're at rib cages like this and we're flat because all we do is bench and work through the sagittal plane our rhomboids are actually inhibiting or our scapula are actually inhibiting us from breathing properly we need to contrary to popular belief actually be able to create space between our rib cage for that air to go right because when we're walking around like this the air is going here and not back there right so
Starting point is 00:54:36 creating that posterior expansion of the air is now going to help double down on our position in creating a more circular rib cage which then will allow peripheral function to be expressed through the scapula and the supporting musculature so any drills that will to kind of double back and hopefully give an answer to your question exercises that will either laterally compress the rib cage so things where you integrate like the function of the serratus and the serratus has upper and lower fibers the upper, I would think of exercises like dips, like doing dips through full range. If you have the lats and the subscap to support the anterior translation of the humerus in which to do so, pull over. Basically, we build capacity to laterally
Starting point is 00:55:16 compress our rib cage, working towards the overhead and working low into extension. So farmer's carries into dips, overhead press into pull-ups and then until more remedial sense like side planks or you know unilaterally loaded farmers carry so laterally compressive rib cage uh more so basically we want to take ourselves and squish in from the side and start to breathe into the back right so pronated grip rows where i'm going to really exaggerate my scapular position most people like oh like, oh, why is he rounding his back? Two, why is he rounding his back? Because he's teaching his air to start to unpancake his fucking rib cage.
Starting point is 00:55:53 I got a bench right over my sternum. I can't breathe here. Tuck my pelvis underneath. My obliques laterally compress my lower rib cage. And then as I'm reaching and I'm breathing in through my nose nose this air has nowhere to go but into the back right like if you ever squished a gatorade bottle and you want to like blow it up again you just go and then all the little dents in it come out that's kind of how we need to manipulate our our breath to expand our rib cage so i really like overhead work hyper extension work and obviously you need to earn the rights through a progression of that i'm not going to say you know mr single ply fascist who walks into the fucking gym it's like
Starting point is 00:56:29 all right let's go let's get you on weighted pull-up is like i can't what so i think you know there's a progression to that but those are the kind of ends of the progression where we can begin to dose in exercises with laterally compressed from put us in positions or shapes to create that posterior expansion for most lifters. That's a pretty good heuristic or thought process to operate from. I like how you gave us lifts to do rather than stretches. You know, that's helpful because a lot of guys like as soon as you mentioned like a
Starting point is 00:57:01 stretch or, you know, I know some people like blow up balloons and different things, but you're like, I'm not a fucking clown. So I'm not going to like, you know, put my feet up on the wall and sit there and blow up a balloon and feel my stomach. And it's just like a lot of these things they feel, I think they distract you from your training. I'm not saying that they can't be beneficial. I'm sure they have their place, but i always just like to get into training so i'm appreciative of the fact that you just gave us like exercise it's like shit i can do
Starting point is 00:57:29 more farmer's walks i can do dips more often i can do some weighted pull-ups you know it makes it uh makes it easier to integrate that into my training because i think like it's the right i don't say it's the right tool for the right job at the right time. Like my sponge is really good at cleaning pots and pans. It's not good at fending off intruders. A Glock 17 is not good for cleaning pots and pans, but I can probably get someone the fuck out of my place if I pulled it out in the middle of the night. Right. And so I'm glad you brought up like, you know, the very basic blowing up balloons, lying on your back, 90, 90 hip lift nonsense.
Starting point is 00:58:02 Cause it's like you need to create a rosetta stone between corrective exercise and exercising correctly right i need to drive an adaptation to an athlete like your two central nervous systems are so wired for sound like you fight guys in house coats you've deadlifted like however many in squad sorry jujitsu i just go jive with jujitsu man i don't understand it you kick my ass house coat or not i don't want to enter into it but it'sitsu i just go jive with jujitsu man i don't understand it you kick my ass house code or not i don't want to enter into it but it's like i need to make a level a change at the level of your nervous system like both of your nervous systems have gone through hell and back i think for a second unless you're franco colombo blowing up those fucking red water bottles or something
Starting point is 00:58:40 like that's what it would take for me to be like okay this stimulus is registering at a nervous system level that you know both like really strong power lifters the sympathetic drive that comes with combat sports as mentioned before is an entirely different animal so for me to think that dude i'm gonna have a let like an effect on your nervous system with this nonsense is it's just ridiculous right and then you know like mark the same and i very similar and that was one of the reasons where i had to cross apply these concepts to actual exercising correctly. So what I'm working towards is creating an index of like, OK, we know insertion, we know origin, we know how to kind of set up on machines or with dumbbells. Index the intent of your breathing for every exercise.
Starting point is 00:59:22 for every exercise, right? To understand how we can block off certain areas of the rib cage to then expand and compress other areas of rib cage strategically to take, you know, pancake man and actually turn him into a real boy, right? That's kind of, it's an area of interest that I think has gone unexplored because breathing has taken, not that it's a bad thing, but I think as deep a dive as people look into breathing from a biochemical, as mentioned, I think there's really a lot of very immediate impact that we can derive that will cross apply to the biochemical if we focus our efforts in the biomechanical. Do you have a similar approach for mobility? Because that's another thing that every lifter knows they need, but you know, we're not going to spend time to stretch because of the, I know I'm going to
Starting point is 01:00:08 just go lift weights. Um, but the way you put it, you know, for the other rib cage, which is freaking amazing. Do you have anything like that for overall mobility? Right. So mobility is a tricky one. Cause mobility and flexibility, I think first need to be clear and defined. So like passive flexibility, passive range of motion is flexibility. Active range of motion is mobility. So the guy tries to touch his toes and he can, but he sits down and tries to touch his toes and now he can't.
Starting point is 01:00:35 It's like, well, this is much more active because gravity is not pulling you towards your toes. And so I think large in part mobility issues stem from a lack of stability. I usually look at shoulder, hip and spine with shoulder and hip being our peripheral hubs of stability. And then there's I mean, we can really if you want to pull on the string, you can really trace it back to how it is that we walk and breathe. Right. The diaphragm is going to indicate the rib cage structure and function, which will then dictate the peripheral muscular function at the rotator cuff, serratus, lower trough and so forth. dictate the peripheral muscular function at the rotator cuff serratus lower trap and so forth right and then how we walk gait cycle mechanics are going to dictate the pelvic position broadly speaking which is then going to tell us how the peripheral musculature of the lateral hip the adductors and subsequently quads and hamstrings are going to function but i would say like very
Starting point is 01:01:18 simple things from a range of motion obviously where are we looking to where do we have the potential for greatest mobility the shoulders right Because I didn't fucking rollerblade in here like gold membranes, put my foot up next to my face, right? I don't have that. I don't have that ability. So like in the sense of just in order to train stability to allow us to have good mobility, we have to have good mobility first, which is kind of this weird pair. Like if I can begin, once I get into the overhead position,
Starting point is 01:01:45 I'm going to reinforce this, you know, all day, every which way, and twice on Sundays. Right. I want to make sure that I have the capacity to express strength and power here, but I need to have the mobility or variability to get into this position first. Right. So I think a lot of people just don't understand how it is to dose and when to put in exercise and mobility.
Starting point is 01:02:05 Because like, you know, we've all read the study and I forget that. Like, hey, hold a hamstring stretch for 90 seconds and then do a vertical jump. Why? No one, no one would ever do that unless I was wearing a white lab and getting paid some NIH grant to do it. Right. Like it was in a white lab coat. And so it was just, you know, that's so silly. right like it was in a white lab coat and so it was just you know that's so silly if i had to write an equation on how to have a shitty vertical jump and a tear of fucking hamstring that would be pretty much what the equation looks like right um so i just think to improve mobility static stretching is inhibitory right it activates goalie tendon organs we sort of know this relationship
Starting point is 01:02:39 between goalie tendon organs and muscle spindle uh reflexes and then but to go deeper than that like you know it's so easy to trash foam rolling it's like well no there's there's receptors that are in there are are made for our cerebellum and our colliculus to map our body and so we have receptors for heat right we have bio biochemical receptors you could take a muscle relaxer and you don't feel shit right you don't feel loosey-goosey because there's a it's like as if muscle relaxation to improve mobility is a lock and we have a ton of different keys that turn these locks that open up our range of motion right so biochemical could be one heat could be another deep pressure which a foam roller lacrosse ball or things like that would work um vibration this is a big market now with like theraguns and hypervolts and all these you know
Starting point is 01:03:25 three-quarter inch jigsaw blade dewaltz whatever makitas whatever you guys like they're not breaking anything up they're just activating a particular receptor within your central or peripheral nervous system which then acts at the level of central nervous system to regulate tone so for me when we look at like the level of the cerebellum, which is really going to be the main driver of movement, as that sort of speaks to the somatosensory cortex and the premotor and the primary motor cortex, it's like proprioception is going to be one of your best tools in improving mobility, right? So being able to elicit a stimulus of instability, which is more of a muscle spindle reflex in positions of structural instability, right? So I want to try and just put it, just get a kettlebell over your head and just go walk that will probably
Starting point is 01:04:10 do more for you than stretching and look if you need to stretch your lats in order to do that go ahead stretch your if you get here like oh my lats are tight okay go spend 20 seconds stretch your lats or maybe hold that stretch for like four full breath cycles so we can have this flux of sympathetic and parasympathetic then grab the kettlebell just go for a walk we're integrating walking and breathing in an unstable position i think of it this way like stability is something i talk about a lot because it exists in the realm of quality that's difficult to quantify and like we kind of had that little spiel about how important i think quality is and what we do think of you know how they made smiegel in lord of the rings you're right they had smiegel in lord of the rings
Starting point is 01:04:45 you're right they had a little guy covered in fucking ping pong balls wearing like an underarmor spandex thing with that yeah so that's kind of how our body maps ourselves in space and muscle spindles large in part are going to allow our central processor to know where we are. Muscle spindles are the ping pong balls on our internal, you know, Under Armour spandex suit. So we can create real-time motion capture where we are in space, right? So if our body, if we don't have these, like if we don't have these ping pong balls all over through our shoulder, hips and spine, then outward to the knee, elbow, wrist and ankle,
Starting point is 01:05:22 our body gets pretty nervous, right? That's red wire touches the blue wire. We cannot map subconsciously this territory. That's a signal. That's a large part where we start to experience pain because everybody's like, hey, something's going on. We don't have a receiver coming in from ping pong ball number 37 at the right knee.
Starting point is 01:05:40 We need something there to tell us where the fuck that knee is. Before we go move in the rest of the surround and move moves the knee we got to know where this fucking knee is and that's a signal that can cause a signal of pain an increased sympathetic tone again through the level of the cerebellum so you know when i when you think about improving mobility it's whatever whatever excuse me it's the covid it's getting me whatever whatever mobility drill foam roller whatever all of these things are valid as they all trigger whether it's bassinian corpuscles meissner's corpuscles or phoeni ending and the case of proprioception muscle spindles or gold golden organs for static stretching each one of these will unlock transiently the range of motion once
Starting point is 01:06:21 you have this range of motion you need to elicit that proprioception. Now we need to start to lay down these ping pong balls. So our brain, our cerebellum can be, and our colliculus can begin to map internally, subconsciously where we are in space and create this real-time motion capture. So whatever, honestly, anything will do on the mobility side, whatever floats your boat, whatever makes you feel better, but more importantly, whatever gets you into these unstable positions of like, Hey, hey i need to in my shoulder to make this like actionable i want to be able to flex and externally rotate my shoulder with a neutral rib cage at the pelvis i want to be able to extend and internally rotate my hip with a neutral pelvis right so if you can do those two things which are like in a way kind of paradoxical i'm telling you to flex and externally rotate with a neutral rib cage at the shoulder and i'm going to tell you to
Starting point is 01:07:09 extend and internally rotate the hip with a neutral pelvis if you can do that and start to spend time with minimizing base support and deviating center of mass which is the two tenets of stability to say get here with a kettlebell over your head get here in a pull-up right we're going to flex and externally rotate doing both of these exercises. And do lunges. Do single leg RDLs. Do something where your pelvis needs to organize in a way where we can extend and internally rotate the hip.
Starting point is 01:07:35 If you aim your mobility sites at allowing you to get into these positions, load these positions, single leg RDL, walking lunges bulgarian split squats kettlebell bottom under press rope pull over uh pull-ups snatches whatever those two those exercises delineate things that will improve stability at the end range of joint variability or mobility that you will need once you have the stability then you start to load there and build strength so mobility drills six one half dozen the, I don't give a shit. I don't like foam roller. Okay, great. Maybe you have more receptors that are wired to receive vibration and the Theragun works way better for you. Maybe you have more of these Bissinian core muscles that are wired for deep pressure stimulus and the foam roller works better for you, right? We can take a muscle biopsy and find out,
Starting point is 01:08:28 but no one's here to become a fucking expert at warming up. Just do whatever the fuck you need to do. You get into flexing, external rotation, neutral rib cage, extension, internal rotation, and neutral pelvis. And then just load those positions with something relatively unstable. And then go do literally anything you want. What are maybe two or three things that you've seen that really help athletes with their breathing that's not overly complicated? Just some simple tips, maybe.
Starting point is 01:08:51 Yes. The big thing with me is just putting them in the right positions. For example, doing mobility drills and core work rather than for duration, but for breath. There's no such thing as static stretching because as long as you have a pulse, nothing is static, right? So a side plank for breaths is something super helpful. Teach them to organize your pelvis and ribcage.
Starting point is 01:09:14 You're laterally compressing using the serratus by driving the elbow into and like, you know, awkwardly rotating and protracting while you resist lateral flexion through the external oblique. And I'm not going to prescribe that for, hey, do this for 30 seconds. I'm going to say, hey, do this for six breaths, full inhale, full exhale, nasal breathing,
Starting point is 01:09:32 because that's still dynamic, right? It's not static. It is a repetition. How well can, because now all of a sudden it's like, look, I'm blocking all this off. Guess what? If you're an athlete, you're an athlete that frankly works with me. You know what your first go-to breathing strategy is? this on guess what if you're an athlete you're an athlete that frankly works with me you know what your first go-to breathing strategy is the lower bucket handle right we flare our ribs out
Starting point is 01:09:53 at the bottom now i'm telling you look you can't go there and now i'm telling you to breathe so your body's now having to find these new strategies in which to breathe because i'm creating this internal lateral compression right so using and even for something as basic as like a mobility drill, say you're trying to improve thoracic extension. Hey, lay over a foam roller for 20 seconds and just get this thoracic extension. But rather than 20 seconds, do that for six breaths.
Starting point is 01:10:16 Now it's dynamic, right? Because now I'm teaching like, you know, there's a way to, it's called your pump handle of the sternum. Some people that might actually need to raise this pump handle. But if i'm just sitting there holding my breath like this going am i doing it it's like well no you're not doing anything not to mention like inhalation and exhalation both have links to sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system right exhalation is parasympathetic like a sigh of relief right and sympathetic is like you know someone breaks into your place it's
Starting point is 01:10:41 like you hear like the door rattle at three in the morning, you don't go, right. It's not that sigh of relief. So being able to work through any of our mobility or stability drills for repetitions of breath rather than rapid or just arbitrary duration. I think that would probably be something that if there was a takeaway for people to try something like that, whether it's side plank, even if it's remedial, it's like, Hey, your side planks, your bird dogs, or like your planks or curl ups, whatever kind of like basic level McGillish big three stuff you want to do rather than doing dynamics through, you know, peripheral perturbation, do it internally, do it at the level of the diaphragm, allow that to be your repetition scheme. Where are we trying to breathe into? I heard you
Starting point is 01:11:22 mentioned earlier, kind of like breathing through your back. Like, what is your cue? Breathe through the stomach. This is just for just, I don't know, you're just walking around doing normal stuff, not for lifting necessarily. like you want to be like you know the warrior in the garden you want to be able to turn all have that diaphragm go all the way up and all the way down but walking around every day one thing i would not promote is belly breathing for the simple fact that we don't have lungs in our stomach we have lungs in our rib cage like this and god bless power lifting like i i love it to pieces for all of its flaws but one of the things that it needs to cut the shit with is belly breathing because it's like unless you have some sort of implanted fourth lungs or your you're like your left lung has like seven other lobes that stretch down like in front of your spleen into your it's like you can't breathe into your stomach so you might as well just stop trying right because it's
Starting point is 01:12:21 we're compartmentalized our diaphragm creates the thoracic versus the interabdominal cavity. So it's like, look, let's just worry about filling this guy up with air, and then we'll worry about compressing this guy with musculature. If this guy does his job with the air, we're going to let all the muscles, the lats and the glutes and the obliques and the core, because we're going to have a broad base. If we can breathe in well, the ceiling of this, the diaphragm is going to make for us, is going to actually set ourselves up so that the musculature is going to be able to stabilize this region of the spine better because it is it is segregated right that diaphragm separates the and i think a lot of people forget that right so they just try and make this one big cavity from
Starting point is 01:12:59 their trachea to their their symphysis of their pelvis it's like guys this is here's your main floor here's your attic here's your basement right like we were separating these floors a little bit so when you're walking around low and slow right like the old lance lance armstrong would be on like four breaths a minute or something crazy like that i forget i might be hyperbolic there but you know the idea of not having that intent but not not having the ability to go high, having the ability for that excursion to allow for, you know, that diaphragmatic contraction, relaxation to really have a significant peak in value, I think is something that's super important. So it's not virtuous to just be only able to have this low and slow. You got to be able to drive it to both ends.
Starting point is 01:13:42 So I'm curious, like if somebody's like like mark mentioned if somebody's walking around right i think uh the one reason why people only go towards that belly breathing thing is because a lot of people are breathing up here right so so what can people try to feel for do they want to feel for overall expansion in this area when they are breathing rather than just having their belly come out i think the easiest way to cue someone would just be have them organize the rib cage with their pelvis right because most people they're like this right pelvis is facing this way rib cage is facing this way if you can cue this then the low and slow sorts itself out right and that can be difficult right
Starting point is 01:14:21 because then here's the thing when we go and we walk the reason we have our pelvis do this is because we can't dissociate that extension and internal rotation in a neutral pelvis like i talked about we have to get this hip extension by anteriorly tilting the pelvis right so if we can improve the mobility so we can extend the hip by maintaining a posterior tilt in the pelvis all of a a sudden that, that remedial, you know, mobility drill actually acts as like sort of a, an associated mechanism to prove the autonomous way in which we want. So very simply, it's just, Hey, your xiphoid process, the synthesis of your pelvic bone, keep those stacked rib cage, stacked over pelvis. However you want to, you know, wings of the ilium under the lateral ribs, however you want to organize that, cue that. If you keep that, the, the breathing part sorts itself out. Because again,
Starting point is 01:15:08 there's a transparency between the structure and the function. We know if the structure is this way and the ribcage and pelvis are unique in that sense, because again, the shoulder and the hip can look a certain way, but function entirely different. I know if I'm seeing a ribcage and pelvis organized a certain way, what I'm actually seeing is like the thoracic diaphragm and the pelvic diaphragm integrating in that way that I'm seeing on the outward from the position of the rib cage and pelvis. What about for sleep? We talked a little bit about sleep. You got a couple tips on sleep that have helped because I know what these high level performers, you know, the recovery is a huge thing. Is there a couple of things where you're
Starting point is 01:15:43 like, you just recommended something and it ended up working out really well in the case of sleep? Yeah. Sleep, we usually look at like HRV and blood values. So getting a good idea, like longitude, like a single blood draw won't do it for you. But balancing the blood is probably one of the ways that we manage sleep and the expectations around sleep. Obviously, from a, at a quality standpoint, the mechanics kind of fix the biochemical. So we do start to see a shift in blood work that might indicate someone's might have some like biochemical shifts coming on from like an aberrance in breathing patterns. And then there,
Starting point is 01:16:18 you could also consider supplementation and then there's the external environment, right? That's it's the habits. It's, you know, know are they are they ripping ps5 till 3 a.m it's like dude do you need to play nba 2k whatever when you play in the nba in 2020 like do you need more of this turn the fucking thing off and go to bed man uh so habits like i know some guys have gone down like the cbd route uh in which in which places uh you know their their sporting governing body will allow them to and that shows some interesting anecdotal promise there. But yeah, sleep is it's equal parts sort of habit and science. So blood work, looking at some supplementation, looking at some lifestyle stuff. I've, I've sent guys to shrinks before. Like, look, dude,
Starting point is 01:17:02 whatever, whatever you see on the inkblot work, whatever tests that you see is a little fucked up. You need to go sort your shit out. Like, and that's been an underlying cause. So sleep is a pretty dynamic one when it comes to improvement of, of the quality of it. But I think at first having a tracking of some quality metrics, whether it's HRV, whether it's blood labs, whether you want to wear a sleep tracker, just, I think if it's not measured, it's not managed. So it's a little bit of a nebulous one that I don't think we have a full grasp on, but for me personally, with the guys I work with, HRV is going to give me what I think to be a pretty good kind of state or as
Starting point is 01:17:36 far as recovery and resting tone. And then some of the blood work will let me know some metabolic. And then there's like these, we'll call it the psychological side, which could be more behaviors and habits. It could be something where you got to go down a deeper rabbit hole that's outside my my scope of practice what do you have guys used to track hrv i know like whoop does that are there any other devices that track it well that people can think about using yeah it depends on how far down you want to go right like if it's your job that i like elite hrv and that's not a plug i
Starting point is 01:18:05 don't work with them uh i don't mind i like whoop uh and i've worked with them in the past for the sense that it's continuous you can charge it while it's on uh and it works well with most athletic pursuits like you're dealing with a combat athlete you're trying to have where a fucking aura ring it's like not really so i do like continuous data that that whoop and aura to a certain degree would give you but for my athletes elite hrv which is it's actually like a it's so it would look similar to like a pulse oximeter that you put on a finger so you actually have to buy a clip that goes on your finger and then the app works quite well i think it's like a four minute process every morning so it's not actually continuous data but I think they do the best at creating a true HRV measurement rather than, you know, because heart rate versus
Starting point is 01:18:50 pulse rate is different. So I wouldn't make the argument that, you know, a lot of the other more conventional fitness wearables, even, you know, to what degree Apple and other Garmin devices try to do it, they're probably giving you an HRV based off of your pulse rate, not necessarily your heart rate. So I think Elite probably does the best job right now in tracking HRV from a wearable perspective. You mentioned earlier
Starting point is 01:19:15 working with some hockey players and you mentioned playing some hockey yourself. What's the deal with hockey? Why are they allowed to scrape on the floor there, why are they allowed to like, you know, scrape, you know, on the,
Starting point is 01:19:26 on the floor there? Why are they allowed to like, you know, go at it and fight like that? A lot of other sports, as soon as something happens, they break it up and everyone makes a big deal. Why,
Starting point is 01:19:34 why has it become like a tradition in hockey to have these brawls? Well, I mean, now it's better now than it used to be. Cause like the average size of the NHL hockey player, when I was growing up versus now is drastically. It's a speed game now. Oh God.
Starting point is 01:19:51 I remember Scott's anyone who's a hockey fan wouldn't remember a day that Scott Stevens used to be a defenseman for the New Jersey devils. And he, there's this little player for the Anaheim ducks named Paul Korea. And he sent Paul Korea back to the Stone Age. He was about 6'4", 6'5", 260. And on skates, you can just get such better legs. You know how to use your edges and you're a good skater.
Starting point is 01:20:15 You really just end up going northbound on a southbound freeway. So fighting is just like a self-governing mechanism. So it's almost like that scene in 300 where like they got that ogre and they're just like cut them off the chains everyone's you know what it is it's mutually assured destruction that's what it is it's a cold war it's like look we got this guy from like bulgaria we don't know you don't know who does a skate i was like we got this kid from fucking cam loops alberta you hit our guy hit yeah we're gonna let him off the chain yeah you pull some shit we're gonna pull some shit right i think it's the most gangster sport in the world like don't start no shit there won't be no shit right
Starting point is 01:20:55 but um no it's honestly you grow up in hot like canada you know in the states and my time living there's better basketball football baseball it's almost hard to have all your attention solely focused on these three sports but in canada it's just how because we grew up with lacrosse and hockey and that was just it's a part as much a part of lacrosse as it is hockey so it's um yeah it's there's an entertainment value to it there's like there's a there's a culminating tension that usually leads to a fight which makes it really exciting but at the end of the day it's like they're 180 pound kids wailing on each other with fucking pillows on their hand like it's not it's it gets bad but dude imagine some of these nfl guys like you would turn into a fucking steel cage man right people would literally die like if you had you know two guys who were 280 running
Starting point is 01:21:46 four or five 40s with like a 10 body fat just teeing off at the line of scrimmage people just be like exploding skulls on like you know fox thursday night football i love those old school uh hockey fights i brought it up many times on the show before, but there's Bob Probert and Ty Domi. And they just it's the coolest thing ever. I think they fought like 14 times on the ice. Supposedly they fought like I don't know if it's just like hearsay or rumor, but supposedly they fought like even outside, like, you know, just randomly when they saw each other. But they would just like tap each other with like a stick and be like, hey let's go and they would just go at it every time yeah they i so i actually grew up in the same town as bob probert so he went his last couple years before he passed he trained at
Starting point is 01:22:36 the gym i trained at he's got to be so famous in that area right oh he's a legend like you just see it like his body just tells the story like you just look at someone's face like man you've been punched a lot you just look at his hands you saw these massive fucking hands he's like god this is like 16 ounce fucking knuckle gloves yeah it was just a different era man but even still like it's a part of the sport i think it'll always be a part of the sport uh they're more mindful now in the safety of it but i think it in it's a it's a part of the sport. I think it'll always be a part of the sport. They're more mindful now in the safety of it. But I think it's a it's a means in which the game is actually safer. Right. Like it's your conceal and carry.
Starting point is 01:23:13 If I may make an Americanism out of it. Right. You know, I have a question and I'm curious when you see a lot of athletes, especially strength athletes, come to you in terms of injury. when you see a lot of athletes especially strength athletes come to you in terms of injury um what would be i guess the top two movements in the gym that you generally see a lot of athletes come to you for my guess would be the bench press would be one maybe i'm wrong but when i when i think about it like i'm wondering when an athlete's just trying to get bigger a lot of individuals think i have to bench press i have to get really really strong with the bench press and then it ends up causing issues for them even though like you're not a power lifter like you don't have to focus on that so what do you see
Starting point is 01:23:53 there with athletes and maybe how can they remedy that yeah i mean to answer your first question i think it would be bench press and squat it's pretty easy by looking at people who deadlift proficiently that if the goal is size and strength, the deadlift doesn't necessarily require the type of size to express the strength, right? Like we see, you know, you see Kaler, you see, I mean, Jamal's a big dude. You see Yuri, for example, right? They can pull crazy amounts of weight. And well, Yuri's a bit of an outlier across the board.
Starting point is 01:24:22 But like let's use use Taylor, for example. Taylor can pull an incredible amount of weight, but doesn't look like a Dan or a Kevin Oak or someone like that. Usually, it's bench press and squat. If it's not specific to the sport of power lifting, I rarely utilize it. The bench
Starting point is 01:24:40 press, for sure. If they're in a position where they're trying to put on muscle or they're trying to have some sort of more let's skate more conventional athletic pursuit integration of gait cycle movement and what we call like scapular humeral rhythm exercises that are going to promote that i'm going to dose those more than exercises that break it apart low bar squat is not this is not how our pelvis functions or has evolved to function right so you know high bar into front squat, there's a little bit more compliment to the way the ilium moves or the pelvis moves and the femurs
Starting point is 01:25:09 move. So if I'm going into deep reflection, I want to, at a certain point, adopt a relative neutral or posterior tilt, depending on higher front squat, and then, you know, reinforcing unilateral movements. So if someone comes to me and wants bigger legs, it's like, all right, well, we want to have stable hips first, right? So if you can't lunge, if you can't stand on one leg, you're sure shit not going to squat with two. Right. And then it's just and then with the building chest and shoulders, it's like, all right, let's let's get these scapula moving in a way. You know, let's let's try and build some capacity through the rotator cuff and serratus. Maybe it's a landmine press. Maybe start with you know cable flies or something like that there is a fundamental difference between challenging muscles and challenging movements
Starting point is 01:25:49 right but at the end of the day the the stability that precedes the skill to both of those pursuits is going to set the foundation for how high you can go with each of those right you don't have a stable pelvis and you're trying to build 40 inch legs well you're not going to put much effective tension through your hamstrings while you're just swinging and kicking your ass with a hamstring curl right if you don't have an unstable pelvis and you're trying to squat heavy well that pelvis is going to anteriorly tilt and the adductor magnus is going to over override the glute max to extend the hip your knees are not your knees are going to knock it right so i think regardless of the pursuit whether it's strength whether it's size looking at some of these tenets of like function and stability at like the pelvis, the ribcage, the shoulder, the hip and the spine.
Starting point is 01:26:29 That's usually where I start. It's basically finding, meeting them where they're at rather than like, all right, man, bird dog. It's like, what the fucking size? Yeah, you pick up and throw people. Why am I going to start you off with like one of these little numbers? You know what I mean? Like, what is this going to do? So it's like finding the most apt apt and sometimes you'll miss the mark but i i
Starting point is 01:26:50 find it like if you can index and scale your exercises based off of the desired intent you can start to be all right like i'll look at you fuck you're 270 jacked out of your mind i'm gonna maybe put you at this level of anti-rotation drill this level of you know pelvic instability drill rather than just having a system i follow like yeah bird dog side plank curl up which don't get me wrong there are people you know elderly populations that i work with are super detrained populations i work with that my thought process would superimpose one-to-one with a mcgill big three for pelvic control but very rarely outside of those geriatric or very detrained cases. Will that be the case?
Starting point is 01:27:27 Like, I'm going to try and meet them where they're at. I'm not like, all right, everyone, the starting line. It's like, what the fuck's the point of that?
Starting point is 01:27:34 Gotcha. Um, how does it feel nowadays, you know, to be, uh, you know, assisting and helping so many people,
Starting point is 01:27:42 you know, through the stuff that you have online in comparison to, when we looked up your name, a bunch of other stuff popped up. And I think you've talked about it maybe in the past a little bit. So how does it feel to kind of be on the other side of things nowadays doing such positive work? Yeah. Weird. It's weird. I don't know how to describe it my life makes no sense it's a lot of pressure i think and so it's something i dedicate a lot of time to but uh yeah because i hated school anyone who went to grad school with me was like wait jordan the kid who just played pool through four years like did he even go to class so like to be more like the education side now is is not ever what i thought
Starting point is 01:28:25 i would do um but i think both like you know with the athletes i work with and kind of with what i do on the education side both of it just is this is the this is the level of discomfort and pressure that i can handle right now right like the clinical stuff got a little bit passive i don't say a little bit boring but it wasn't a high enough risk. It was just like, ah, you know, you rub some shoulders of a software engineer at Apple. It's like, okay, see, uh, like I, that doesn't, that doesn't really, that's not a fulfilling endeavor. Um, so yeah, it's, I, I don't, I don't know how to make any sense of it, man.
Starting point is 01:28:59 Like I could, I could ask you the same question and be like, Hey man, growing up where you grew up, like, look at your life right now. Does it make any sense? Do you ever think that you'd be sitting in a studio with a giant picture of your own head behind your own head wearing the same headphones? Like, is that to scale? You just you're literally out angling yourself. So I don't know what to make of it. It's it's cool in the sense that, like, I treated it like it could all be gone tomorrow.
Starting point is 01:29:25 So definitely super, like, appreciative that, that you know i'm able to do it i talk and for some reason people listen uh but yeah i i i don't know i don't know what to make of it it doesn't make any sense to me i saw you say something i think i was like scrolling through your ig and i saw you say something i was like damn that actually that's makes a lot of fucking sense and i was just wondering where you were you're like where you got it from or what made you switch your thinking there you said when you come to making decisions it's either goes like you think of two things is it going to kill you or is it going to put you in jail I think that's what you said at least correct yeah what like like when did you switch your thinking in terms of decision
Starting point is 01:30:03 making to that because that makes a lot of sense. Like a lot of people, when they're trying to make a decision, a lot of times when they don't do it, it's just because they're scared. It's not because it's going to kill them or put them in jail. But when you put it in those two perspectives, it's like, oh, actually, that's that. That makes sense. Yeah, I mean, last going off when I was in California, I was like sleeping in my car. off when I was in California I uh I was like sleeping in my car uh like I was living in my car out of the parking lot of boss barbell and every now and then when like the last iron maiden playing power lifter left at like three in the morning I would go in my office and like sleep for a few
Starting point is 01:30:35 hours so it's like when you're gonna get stripped away of like you know the social media stuff doesn't really matter because like I remember having this point in which it's like okay I could walk to the grocery store and have more money because I wouldn't need to pay for gas for my car so I could buy more food. But I would expend more calories in the walking to and from and it would have to take two trips because I couldn't carry all the groceries that I could buy with this extra money. I'm like, dude, I'm like 26 years old and I went to school for a long time. And how the fuck did I end up here? Like my mom's like, go to school and you'll be fine. I was like, okay.
Starting point is 01:31:09 I went to school and I finished. I was like, this is where I get the money now. Right? Like mom, the money is not, I don't, I don't have. So I think when you get to the level where it's like, you don't, you have to make decisions based off of necessity rather than just like, you know, just some arbitrary pursuits. Like that for me was where you, you know just some arbitrary pursuit it's like that for me was where you you were just forced to strip away kind of like what mattered so in that case it
Starting point is 01:31:31 was like all right like you know i think of like a maslow's hierarchy of needs there was a point where i was very much at the base level of the pyramid right where it's like i just need to worry about like getting food and kind of like being able to get enough money somehow to get more food and so you don't really think about oh man i hope i'm not wrong on instagram today and so it's like then it's like wait does it ever matter if i'm wrong on instagram like do the youtube comments really matter like oh fuck it i don't give a shit let old ladies like throw out death threats at me i don't give a crap uh so yeah i think it was just being in a position where that was that would have been a luxury for me to worry about yeah that when i kind of got out of that position
Starting point is 01:32:10 i said fuck it just say it who cares whatever like people have such short attention spans anyways it just it doesn't nothing matters if i'm not dead or in jail tomorrow then whatever it'll be okay out of the uh you know high level performers that you've been around, both in business and in sports. What's the, what are some things that separate them out from a mindset perspective? Oh, good question. I think their attention to detail,
Starting point is 01:32:39 like a real, like nuanced perspective on things. And I had a lot of kids and that, and that usually finds them in positions where they laterally think. Like in positions where people are like their directors or CEOs or, you know, they're starting five or starting 11 or whatever. They seem to have a breadth of interest, even though on the outward, they're sort of known for a super specialty. Like, you know, they're the best quarterback or the the the richest whatever they're the director of some company they seem to
Starting point is 01:33:10 be kind of renaissance people like they can kind of talk about anything because i think in order to go deep into the thing that they're specialized in or they've had to go far into a cross-apply concepts to get them to that depth and it's kind of like this orthogonal way of like tracking thought processes from like you know going and i know i know people that are a mile wide but an inch deep right but i think a lot of people really impressive people seem to be a mile wide and a mile deep so i think there's something to be said about you know removing yourself from like kind of the the your focal point in order to gain perspective on what it is that you actually are trying to do. So they do seem to be like very lateral in their thought process. And they, they know more than just sort of the field in which they're, they're presented
Starting point is 01:33:55 as whether it's a pro athlete or someone in business or someone in music or whatever. Can you think of anything in particular has happened where you're like, Oh, okay, well, that's what makes that guy, that guy, when they did something or said something and it kind of like really struck you. And maybe it's something that has stuck with you that you, uh,
Starting point is 01:34:12 now incorporated yourself. Yeah. Uh, it's weird. Dan comes to mind because Dan's just insane. And I think he's trying to like love him to pieces. I think he's trying to, there was a point where I was certain he was just trying to kill himself with a barbell, right? Like it's just insane. And I think he's trying to love him to pieces. I think he's trying to, there was a point where I was certain
Starting point is 01:34:25 he was just trying to kill himself with a barbell. Right? Like, it's just, I think it really comes down to the point is if you love what you do so much, it's that Bukowski quote. It's like, if you love it, let it kill you. Every person who does it,
Starting point is 01:34:38 whether they've heard, they've read a Bukowski, Charles Bukowski quote in the past or not, seems to have that level of dedication to it and Dan comes to mind because like dude he sent me a picture once of his fucking hamstring and it was like the Mendy it was like the Mendy peck oh yeah yeah yeah black and he sent it to me and it's like and you know the number of text messages I got from him that said hey does this look torn it's just like i could make a calendar of like just gross pictures of like bruised parts of dan and then the little caption
Starting point is 01:35:10 hey does this look torn and so just like you know the ability to just overcome is usually the biggest expression of something that you see of any top performer right whether it's psychological physical like i have athletes who had like crazy amounts of family trauma or like unexpected deaths or things like that go on their personal life but come sunday they're there and they're on their game so i think you know their ability to compartmentalize and their ability to overcome is something that whenever i see it i only ever see it in people who are like top performers and whatever it is they do other people it lets them it's an excuse they let it derail them they they they they rest on it they they can't compartmentalize it but the really like the best of the best go okay i have a job to do this is my fucking job and this is what i'm going to do regardless of circumstance for you you you were mentioning earlier how like a lot
Starting point is 01:36:01 of top performers you you talk to or you've seen there they have a lot of width along with a lot of depth so for you obviously as we've talked to you we can see that your depth lies within the you know the field of biomechanics and working with athletes but outside of that like i think you just mentioned uh what was it mckowski mckowski mckowski charles mckowski all this shit's real dark yeah like for you where do you find that your width is because it seems that you bring in a Charles Bukowski. Charles Bukowski. All this shit's real dark. Yeah. For you, where do you find that you're with this? Because it seems that you bring in a lot of like different types of ideas into what you do.
Starting point is 01:36:35 Yeah. I mean, I just I like stuff other than training. I can only train for so many hours a day and write about it or talk about it for so many hours a day. So, I mean, I don't read fast, but i read a decent amount just stuff that interests me i've played guitar since i was a kid so i always look at that from like a lateral thought process of learning a skill because like i'm still for how long i've done it for like i'm not exceptional at it so like that helps and just like a sort of a tactile tangible crossover so i don't know it's just i guess you're always even when it's almost like the einstein in the post office thing it's like whenever you're doing anything remedial away from it you're sort of freeing up cortical space
Starting point is 01:37:15 to actually start to draw these links that you're working on so like everything i do i just need to fill the time it is like a process in learning called interleaving where it's like you know if i were to cram for a test i could sit there for an hour and just cram away and then you know the next day write the test and hopefully go off of recall and rope learning but if i really wanted to learn something it would be an incremental process of like you know hey you're gonna study 20 minutes a day every day and that interleaving period would allow me to retain more uh so for me it's like i just need to if the goal is to whether it's training and we know the importance of recovery or whether it's academics and we know
Starting point is 01:37:50 the importance of like retention and actual learning i just need to do stuff in the time between to actually derive a benefit of the thing i'm trying to do if that makes sense yeah so it's like it's complimentary now where it's like when i train you know i'm not working i'm not in front not in front of my computer. I'm not writing. I'm not researching, but I keep a little note on my phone and I have it linked through my iCloud to my computer. And by the time my workout's over, I have a million synthesized thoughts that will then, when I sit down on my computer and like the next morning to work, I now have this note that's like, you know, it's spelt wrong because when I hit the thumb thing, there was sweat that fell and the H turned into a T. I was like, what the fuck did I mean there? I was like, what the hell? And so it helps. And then when I'm writing about it, I'm like, oh, shit. Like, obviously, it's me.
Starting point is 01:38:36 I'm away from the gym. I'm recovering. It's more of a parasympathetic thought process. So I think for me, it just started with training. I'm like, okay, I can't train every waking hour of the day. I would like to. Okay, do I sit there twiddling my thumbs? Do I learn how to play hacky sack?
Starting point is 01:38:49 Like, what do I do with the other, I don't know, maybe 16, 12 hours a day that I'm awake? And it's like, oh, like, oh, what's this book here? I don't know. Okay, we'll read whatever on truth and untruth Nietzsche book. And then say, what are you reading over there? I'll read that. And then it just, you, you're in something so far away that whether it's just the fact that you're distant or the fact that something draws your attention,
Starting point is 01:39:13 those little like cortical links start to get made. So, uh, yeah, it's basically stems from the fact that I just can't train all the time. So I got to do something else with my time and the, I found a complimentary sort of system at the stuff I do over here helps the thing over here and vice versa. You need some lighter stuff over there bro you're gonna drive off a cliff juji gave me a good one actually i like this one daily rituals and it's like really small and it's just like have you read this i have not no it's it's really and it's just like tells like how because one thing that really frustrates me is like everyone with a podcast talks about their daily rituals of like i don't know like they
Starting point is 01:39:49 wake up and meditate for three hours like you know benny's the worst for this fucking b-pack love ben to death but his morning ritual makes me want to punch myself in the face so like you'll read about just just to like lighten the mood like you'll read about guys that just wake up and start like this first thing up. First thing they do is just like a rail up their nose and then it's absent till noon. I was like,
Starting point is 01:40:11 all right, time to party. Right. What's that book called? Oh, it's called daily rituals. Yeah. Shout out.
Starting point is 01:40:20 John call. Juju gave me that. Sounds dope. Nice. Where can people find you, buddy? Uh, so Instagram at the underscore muscle underscore doc,
Starting point is 01:40:32 uh, most of the education or all the education stuff is www.pre-script.com. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. It was cool to do this,
Starting point is 01:40:41 man. I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your day. All right, man. Catch you later thank you see ya great stuff man great show yeah oh actually oh that's okay it's okay if you're still there yeah no i just need to look ahead yeah yeah it was that was um you know very informative and you know i think uh a lot of people are going to get a lot out of that.
Starting point is 01:41:06 And he also gave you like, you know, intangibles, things that you can actually go and do, which I think is really important. Yeah. It's interesting. Like when you look at a lot of his stuff versus like Phil DeRue or other coaches, like everybody has like their specialty specialty which they then put onto their athletes that they work with it's like the biome the depth that he goes into biomechanics i really don't see that in terms of like even even though there are other great coaches they don't have that depth of biomechanic like knowledge or i guess maybe they have the knowledge but they can't explain it like he does you know so it's just really interesting seeing the angle that he takes to get everybody towards i guess the the same type
Starting point is 01:41:49 of destination yeah have you guys ever heard of anybody uh explain like the rib cage thing the way he did kelly stirret oh okay yeah that makes sense yeah yeah um kelly stirret like i think he he explained it too but back in supple leopard, the rib cage over the hip. I don't know why I don't hear many other people really talk about that. He was someone that didn't. I'm like, finally, I heard it again, but I don't hear many people. People speak about that because that's like that. That made the biggest difference for me when I started fixing my squat years ago.
Starting point is 01:42:19 Sturette talked a lot about like kind of the relationship or the distance between your belly button and your sternum and how it shouldn't be like really short and it shouldn't be really far away. Some people can arch really well. Some people are really mobile and they can get in this kind of overextended position, which sometimes with heavy weight, that overextended position can become a neutral position. And so that gets to be confusing too, because you're like, I thought I need to arch into it. And it's like, well, some people do and some people don't. It depends on where you hold the bar
Starting point is 01:42:50 and then you don't want to over arch into it because whether your back is in the shape of a C going one direction or in the shape of a C going the other direction, you're still going to end up in either case, you're most likely are going to end up inflection anyway. That's with your back rounded over. So even if you start with your back, super arch, you'll see this.
Starting point is 01:43:09 Sometimes people try to get in this perfect position and then they get all fired up and they go to do the lift. And then they ended up in this position where they look like they're throwing up into a toilet. Anyway, it, your back is, you're just not as strong. And so neutral spine is, is what you're always after. We didn't even talk about like head positioning, but your head and your neck, man, that's, I, I would say that
Starting point is 01:43:30 I can't think of anything more important to your breathing than where your head is. Because if your head is down, you know, you got a couple of pounds, depending on how big that noggin is kind of pulling you down that direction. We're looking at our phones a lot and that's where you can make an argument for something like a foam roller or even just getting yourself over a bench and just trying to get in that, um, like pullover position, maybe not even actually doing the pullover movement, but just, you know, getting your body to really open up, uh, in that direction. It really makes a lot of sense. And I think it could help people with their breathing. And then on top of that, he talked about movements that you can do in the gym to like enhance all that. And I loved it.
Starting point is 01:44:11 I thought that was great information. He talked about Bulgarian split squats and lunges and walking with the weight over your head. And those are all I mean, those are all things that are available to all of us. We can all we can all mess with that and see how it works for us. Yeah. The easiest way to like really understand the whole head placement thing is try to like make a double chin and try to breathe. It's like, see, you're like, oh, okay.
Starting point is 01:44:40 That makes sense. Yeah. I forgot the, the book that we all read that that came out of but yeah i don't remember it's too far gone now look the yeah the breathing oh oxygen advantage is that what it was well if you shove your head back obvious one too much you shove your head back too much or you're too uh or if you're mobile um yeah then you can kind of stifle your breathing a little bit but if you get your head in a neutral position, I find myself a lot of times I'll kind of like I'll do it here, like I'll lean forward here.
Starting point is 01:45:12 Right. But when I lean, when I lean forward, I kind of break at the neck and then I'm kind of like this and my chin is forward and it's like, well, that's a shit. And I won't realize it. And I'm like, oh, wait, let me see. It's going to organize that a little better. You don't have to get in like this really stiff position and you don't realize it and i'm like oh wait let me see you kind of organize that a little better you don't have to get in like this really stiff position and you don't want to like over exaggerate your posture but i find myself throughout the day i got to check myself often
Starting point is 01:45:34 because of all the years of bench pressing and building up your arms and just having heavy arms they're they're forward and you kind of like walk around like you're posing all the time like you're flexing all the time you know like you're trying to do the cobra on everybody it's those invisible invisible lat syndrome can't help it but it's really awesome how you mentioned like first off all those movements but like again single leg single arm type of movements um that's something that a lot of us tend to just kind of skip. Like we'll do our big three. We'll maybe do biceps, triceps, and then we'll dip. But those single leg, single arm movements are really super beneficial for those bigger, strong compound movements.
Starting point is 01:46:14 They're really great for stability. They're overall just necessary to do. So I'm really happy that you mentioned that. Maybe that'll get more people to start focusing on that. What do you think in terms of a caloric perspective um you know you could make the argument that you might use more weight if you were to do you know if you were to use a regular bar and do let's say 10 reps right but you can also make an argument if you were to do 10 reps single arm that you would actually be doing 20 reps per set because you'd be doing 10 and you'd be doing 10 and you wouldn't really need to rest.
Starting point is 01:46:48 And so from that, from that standpoint, I mean, you would rest a little bit, but one arm would literally be resting while the other arm's going. And I know, I know we're kind of like nitpicking here, but like for me, from my perspective, I'm thinking like, I like doing those movements more when I'm trying to, you know, get a little bit leaner. But first of all, you know, a lot of times like you try to go from seated to standing as much as possible, you know, just throughout the day and throughout your training. You know, anytime you have an opportunity to stand, I would say stand. Anytime you have an opportunity to do single arm or single leg, you know, I find it beneficial.
Starting point is 01:47:23 What are some of your thoughts on that well i feel like especially like you're the i guess the demand you're going to feel from that type of movement is going to be more just because you're not as used to it so if you're doing something like a bulgarian split squat you you know that if you haven't done a bulgarian split squat in a long time no one wants to do them no one likes to do them but if you haven't done in a really long time it like you feel it a lot during the workout and you feel it a lot the next day, even though it's not as much load as a squat, like you might actually feel more sore than, than you're squatting just because you don't do that much. Um, so I think like there's that initial demand, you'll get used to it. It won't be as bad over time, but lunges always suck.
Starting point is 01:48:05 you'll get used to it. It won't be as bad over time, but lunges always suck. Bulgarian split squats always suck to do. So, um, it was like when you're saying the, I think calorically, like, yeah, metabolic from a metabolic perspective, I think it might be a little bit better, but you could also make the argument that, Hey, look, if you just did a squat, you would use a lot more weight and that would have a metabolic demand as well. But I'm, I guess I'm talking about accessory movement versus accessory movement. I think, you know, if you have an opportunity to do lunges over leg extensions,
Starting point is 01:48:32 I think the lunges are going to have more caloric demand. And then again, we're nitpicking like how much more, probably not crazy amount, but there'll be something in there. I think they'll just be more useful for you to, right? But like,
Starting point is 01:48:44 doesn't your heart rate work or go a little bit uh harder if you're doing like single arm stuff at the same time like left and right or something like that i remember well you're so your heart your heart rate from what i remember and i could be way off but from what i remember is that your heart rate will increase a lot will increase more with upper body stuff than it does with lower body stuff it depends i mean it would depend on the movement obviously but i think it has something to do with how close it is to your heart so just moving your arms like that that's the way i was taught and that's the way i was taught to like warm up no matter what you're doing if you warm up through the upper body it's the quickest way to get warm it's quickest way to
Starting point is 01:49:24 wake yourself up. Just go in the gym, grab some dumbbells, do a couple lateral raises, do a couple curls, even if you're just squatting for the day. If you feel tired and you feel dead, do some lateral raises, do a couple sets of pull-downs. They feel great. You get your biceps, you get your back, and it will get that heart rate up. It's an easier, quicker way to get your heart rate up but obviously if you were to go in and squat and do like a set of like 30 reps your heart would be going bonkers it would it would yeah i find the uh single leg stuff um like on the leg press that that hurts pretty bad um like my legs do get sore but like i feel that
Starting point is 01:50:02 a lot in my back like it's i don't know if it's because of the well. Well, that's a fixed thing. So you'd be better off probably with like a lunge or something. You know, it's a machine, right? So the machine is kind of like it's probably shoving you into position that your body. And it seems that the key thing there that you may be not used to it. And from what he was saying about like stability, too. it and from what he was saying about like stability too so maybe it's i'm like having to torque my body a certain way to get that you know like you said like that that stationary thing to
Starting point is 01:50:31 go this direction where my body is like that hurts so like i start twisting all weird and but and sema what do you think about just like writing off exercise and being like fuck that i'm not doing it like it just because you don't enjoy it. And because it just doesn't feel like it works well with your body. I mean, I think it kind of depends on the exercise. So like an example would be if we're going to use some exercise that a lot of people do. The reason why I brought up the bench press when I was talking to Jordan was because I see a lot of people get injured when they're bench pressing because it's, it's, it's, it's a very, it's a good movement, but it's also like a difficult, a difficult movement to get the hang of. Um, and if you're not a power lifter,
Starting point is 01:51:13 like if, if you're, if you're benching and you're like, God dang, every time I bench, my shoulder hurts and I'm, I'm, I'm creating an arch, I'm retracting, I'm doing all this, but I still just can't do this movement without always coming out kind of just feeling like shit right maybe you should just focus on doing maybe dumbbell incline presses or flat dumbbell presses i think sometimes you can just write off and exercise i kind of have to write off like the bench press currently because my ac joint right it's still it's still not where it should be, but I can dumbbell press and I can regress that and I can incline dumbbell press. I can still do all those movements. So I think that if, if, if an exercise is continuing to give you issues and you just
Starting point is 01:51:54 can't get it, I figured out and you're working with other people and it's not working for you, maybe you just got to do something else. That's going to hit the same muscle groups. I agree. And I think sometimes with something like a squat, you know, it might be for somebody else or deadlift. People just have a lot of, you know, they've had, I know Andrew's had a history of some back issues and stuff. Now I would say that doing the movement with lighter weight would be a good idea or some representation of the movement.
Starting point is 01:52:20 So I think, I hope people don't, aren't getting us wrong here. We're not saying like, just cause we say, don't bench press.'t bench press, when we say maybe you need to write off the bench press, we're talking about a barbell bench press with a regular bar. Maybe there's a different bar you can use. Maybe you can slingshot bench press. Maybe you can bench press with your feet up. Maybe you can do a floor press. Maybe you can do incline dumbbell presses. Maybe you have an option to do some flat dumbbell, you know, there's gotta be, you're trying
Starting point is 01:52:47 to figure out a way to work your chest. But in SEMA is correct. I think in saying like, if you're not power lifting and you're not responsible for a bench squat and deadlift PR in a competition that's judged by, you know, you got judges and stuff like that there, then, then I think you don't need to really worry about it. You need to go back to, what's the reason why I'm doing this for? Oh yeah, that's right.
Starting point is 01:53:10 I want to be more fit. Okay, I want to be more fit. I don't necessarily need to bench press with a barbell as my first movement, as heavy as possible. Maybe I can see what kind of weights I can move around that I don't have pain with. And then maybe the bench press is the last exercise you do on your way out the
Starting point is 01:53:31 door, just because you, you want to be able to get back to it at some point. And maybe you're like, you know what? I'm just going to do a, I don't know, five sets of 10 with a plate.
Starting point is 01:53:40 It's going to be my, that's my finisher for the day. I'm going to go in a range of motion. I know Sandra was mentioning when he benches that if he goes down too low, it hurts his shoulder. And I was like, well, just go to wherever it doesn't hurt. And he's like, okay. You know, he's like, but isn't this cheating?
Starting point is 01:53:56 I'm like, cheating for who? This is your body. This is you doing the movement. It's for you. You know, it's not for, no one else cares. You know, so do it in a way that, uh, doesn't hurt. And, you know, if you can get to a specialist and have a, you know, chiropractor or somebody, you know, ART specialists or somebody work on it and you, you, you don't want to like
Starting point is 01:54:17 just shove these things off to the side and never, ever think about them again. Yeah. And then you don't want, like, I think a sure sign that you need to not avoid them is when it starts to creep into other exercises. So if you're like, I can't bench press and then maybe like a year later, you're like, man, I'm really struggling with pushups. Well, now we got it. Now we have an issue and you, you might need an MRI, you might need a surgery, but you probably need to address it so that that way you're still moving around and still functional. I guess that answers my next question was like, where do you draw the line or is there a line when, you know, it's like, OK, I can't I can't bench because it hurts my elbow, whatever it is.
Starting point is 01:54:55 So, OK, now I'm going to dumbbell bench. It's like, well, shit, if I have this grip hurts my elbow. But if I turn this way, it feels fine. It's like, okay, now that hurts. Should I go lighter? Like, like, is it just like, Hey, do you need to address this as opposed to like, kind of working around some of the, uh, issues that you're finding? Well, I think it's always necessary to figure out exactly what's going on. Like for me, after we figured out it was my AC joint, like I figured out what I could do with that. I can still bench really light but i can when i work with dumbbells i can still progress the hell out of those i can still work pretty
Starting point is 01:55:30 heavy weight there right but my it's like that ac it's going to take a while for that to fully go away if it ever does so i think at at the end of the day you don't want to just have something like in your knee or your shoulder or your hip and you just don't know what it is but you're just working around it forever if it's something that continues on i mean you should try to figure out what it is yeah i've cut out i've cut out certain exercises for weeks and months on end deadlifts squats i've cut them out i mean i cut out i cut out squats for a while and my legs just got way bigger you You know, like it got bigger. I know, right?
Starting point is 01:56:07 Like I hate it when that happens. Well, it got bigger because of the change of movements. You know, I did other movements and built up more volume through that. Yeah. Because every time I would try to squat, it was just bothering me. It was just hurting. I don't even remember what was bothering me at the time. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:56:22 And now I've been a little bit, I squatted last week or this week a little bit. But the whole point is, is like, you're going to find other exercises to really, you know, try to get some stimulation. And, you know, when you're, when you're trying to, when you're trying to get caught up in an exercise that hurts, you end up taking a lot of time with it. You try to warm up and you keep, you keep, you know, quote unquote trying and we're not, we're not trying, we're doing right. And it just might not be that productive for you.
Starting point is 01:56:53 I mean, if you normally need a training weight of 315 or 405 to where you feel like you get a good stimulus from that and you can only use a plate or two plates, you're probably kind of wasting your time with the movement. It's not so bad to do it again at the end of the workout. Maybe it's an off day and you just want to do the movement because there's always a benefit to do the movement. But it was not going to elicit what you're looking for and it's not going to give you what you want if you can't do appropriate weights with it. And so therefore you should probably discontinue it and get rid of it for a period of time and come back to it. This, you know, we're in this thing for the long haul.
Starting point is 01:57:32 And I think when I got rid of the squats, how much easier is it to get into a workout, to get deep into a workout when you're leg pressing and using the belt squat? That happens immediately. That happens really, really fast. Whereas when you're squatting, you know, you go plate, two plates and so on, and it takes a little bit. Sometimes you got to, you might have to stretch or move around or warm up, do some mobility drills, maybe even psych yourself up a little bit for a squat workout because they're difficult.
Starting point is 01:58:00 But if you come in, the first movement you do is like a leg extension, get some blood flow in your legs, and the first big movement you do is a leg press. And then you progress on to the belt squat. And then you finish the workout off with some sled drags and farmer's carries. You just fucking crushed yourself. You had a great workout. That's going to most likely elicit some hypertrophy without you having to kill yourself on, you know, a particular movement. Yeah. I'd say this though uh jordan is super funny that's that's that's the only thing i'll say he really reminded me of mike isertel
Starting point is 01:58:34 a little bit yeah he's smart too yeah he's smart too yeah and um i don't know the the i can't get rid of that when he uh mentioned you over here fighting guys in trench coats fucking demolished me that was pretty damn good I hope we have him on again because I feel like there's a lot more we can dig out of him oh yeah for sure Andrew want to take us on out of here buddy sure we'll thank you everybody for
Starting point is 01:59:00 checking out today's episode I sincerely appreciate it if you guys found some value in it please share it with a friend. And also please hit that like button subscribe. If you're not already here on YouTube and please follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB power project on Twitter. And like I say, we got something pretty cool coming out very soon.
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