Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Fix Muscle Imbalances and Asymmetries - Conor Harris || MBPP Ep. 1050

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

In episode 1050, Conor Harris, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about what it takes to fix an asymmetrical jaw and what it could cause if not addressed.   Follow Conor on IG: https://www.instagram.com/conor_harris_/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Humans are naturally asymmetrical creatures. If I cut you down the middle in half and I put you on a scale, your right side literally just weighs more than your left. Most people can't shift to one side. And when you can't do that, there's generally predictable compensations that you're going to do. So what's the problem with just like, I'm just going to stand perfectly straight? The thing is, is that your body is a lot smarter than you are in that regard. You might do it for five, ten minutes,

but then your body is just going to go back to doing what it's going to do. that regard. You might do it for five, 10 minutes, but then your body's just going to go back to doing what it's going to do. The position of someone's jaw and other cranial bones are reflective of what's going on with the rest of their posture. Facial asymmetries oftentimes are reflective of poor positioning of the jaw bones. That can lead to potential issues with the neck, the airway, and that can feed all the way down to the rest of the body. Mastic gum is very popular. Do you think that that can be beneficial? I don't think, again, it's like solving the root of what's going on. The fuck is this? I've heard that you actually sound differently to yourself because of the way that your voice resonates within your skull. There's some weird thing too about like you can't actually see yourself.

Yeah. Have you ever heard that before too? Wait, what? No. You can't actually like see like a real image of yourself. Really? I don't know why. I forget. The only, so yeah, no. The only way you've ever seen yourself is just a reflection. You actually have no idea what you look like because it's only a reflection.

Oh, that is true. You've never seen yourself. I didn't expect to be fucked up like that today. The kratom hasn't even kicked in yet. I know. It's really weird. I think like a video can sometimes give you some good perspective of what you look like or what you sound like. But yeah, it's probably still different like to you, right?

To you versus like what I see if I see a video of me. Definitely. Yeah. It's strange as hell. think they're another crazy thing i think everyone knows this but just thinking about is weird like how your brain fills in the space where your nose is like you shouldn't see what's there but your brain just like automatically assumes what's there it's fucking nuts man it's like one of those 360 cams somehow it puts it all together I was just like what? you can't like chew on your own teeth

you can't see your own eyes kind of stuff and just because we're going down this path none of us have actual proof that yesterday happened we can look back at pictures but we have no way of knowing for sure

that we were there for those pictures. This could all be fabricated. Oh, like it could be like a simulation, so to speak. We're just starting over. Yes. Just make the podcast this. Yeah. That is my world.

I go down these stupid rabbit holes for no reason. Keep hanging out right here. Connor, how'd you get started just in like fitness? And I know you help a lot of athletes and you help a lot of people with injuries and sports performance and all that kind of stuff. But where did some of this, what's the origin story? The origin story was back in the day when I, I've always loved fitness. I've always loved working out, but I came from more of a sports performance background. So when I was first starting off as a personal trainer, my ultimate

goal was I wanted to work with elite athletes as a lot of people do. When you first get into the industry, you're like, I would love to work with NFL players, NBA players. That'd be great. But you kind of find your niche as you go through it. And I went to Oregon State University and I got a bachelor's in kinesiology. And through there, I did several internships. And my internship journey was a little bit different than the average person's because usually what you do is you work with some sports teams. You might work at the gym and take on personal training clients. And I did some of that stuff. But I had a mentor at the time, and he told me to take this one internship during the summer. And this internship was, it just, as soon as I walk in the door, uh, the guy's like, are you from,

are you from this guy? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. He's like, okay. Uh, good to have you here, but I just want you to know that I disagree with almost everything that this guy says. It's like, what? It's like, all right, day one. Here we go. Here we go guy says. I was like, what? It's like, all right, day one. Here we go. Here we go. Yeah. He's like, I have the utmost respect for him. Uh, he helped me out a lot in my career, but, uh, this is going to be a little bit different. I'm like, okay, well, let's, let's see what happens. So at the time I actually had a hernia disc from ego deadlifting. I mean, we've all been there, you know, sumo deadlift, brace, pull, pop. Where? Lower back?

Lower back. Lower left back. Kind of serves you right, you know, sumo deadlift, brace, pull, pop. Where, lower back? Lower back, lower left back. Kind of serves you right for trying to cheat on the deadlift. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, I was trying all these different rehab exercises for it. You know, McKinsey extensions, core stuff, bird dogs, you know, everything under the sun that you would find on like generic YouTube and also like through a couple of different physical therapists and just nothing would work. And the most frustrating thing to me at that time was I was talking to, again, my then mentor and he was giving me some rehab stuff. It wasn't really going anywhere, but he said this one thing that just kind of stuck with me. And it was like, don't worry about things you can't control as if the back injury is something I can't control. And I

was like, that can't be right. You know, there's no way that we can have no influence on our ability to be injured or not. Like, I just couldn't wrap my head around that. So going into this internship to make it a full circle, I found it really empowering to have this guy say like, you know what? Like there's a lot of information out there, but this is going to totally change the way you think about things. And so we did some exercises and within two hours, my pain was gone. And I was like, that's alarming. You know, like how is this possible? I've been dealing with this for months and nothing really made any sort of difference like this. So, I mean, obviously, nothing is like a magic pill, so to speak, but this felt as close as anything ever was.

So I was like, okay, I got to learn more about this, even though it's more of a rehab methodology approach. So, you know, I proceeded to go and do my sports performance internships and I love it. I proceeded to go and do my sports performance internships, and I love it, but you start to realize that strength and conditioning coaches and people that work with these high-level athletes tend to be very overworked and underpaid. It's really kind of a dead end at the end of the day if you're really looking to make a long career for yourself and make a decent bit of money and a living for yourself. So I was like, okay, you know, I could go and pursue this sports performance stuff. Or what I could do is I could go and learn more about this thing that really seems to interest me and has really just changed my life. And I've seen change a lot of lives around me in that internship. So I was like, okay, you know what? I'm going to send out an email to every single clinic in the country that has this methodology or like is, is, um, what's the

methodology by the way? So the methodology originally was, uh, called postural restoration, postural restoration Institute or PRI for short. And it was not very well known. This is probably like, gosh, at this point, eight, nine years ago. And no one really heard about it at the time. It was just up and coming because it got started in the early 2000s is when it really started to become an official organization. And we'll get more into what the actual methodology entails as we go on. But I sent out an email to every clinic that ran this methodology to any extent. And I heard back from a couple, one in particular was in North Carolina. And so I moved out there, I learned it, and then I started posting about it on social media. And this was

just before COVID happened. And I didn't realize that people weren't really talking about this stuff, you know, because I was in the bubble, right? I thought it was all out there. People knew about it, but really they don't. And like, to this day, still a lot of people haven't heard about it. And it's less so about like the methodology. I think it is more so about the principles behind it because there's a lot of different schools of thought around the principles and there's different, you know, name your acronyms and, you know, little systems or whatever. But the principles are what I really want to talk about and what really underpin a lot of what I think people aren't aware of and what drives movement patterns, postural stuff, pain, and their ability to recover from pain. So after I started talking about it on

social media a little bit, I was like, oh yeah, this is, people aren't really familiar with this. And so I was, I didn't understand social media at the time. Like I was, I was younger. So I was just kind of like spouting off maybe a little bit more confidently than I should have at the time. Like this is- Well, you're excited about this new thing, right? For sure. Yeah. It's like, this is the thing, this is the way. And, you know, obviously I don't fully believe that, you know, there's some magical thing that's going to fix everyone, but I still really, I believed in it and I still really believe in it. And so to this day, like,

that's been the thing that's been able to differentiate me. And I work with a lot of people that have been to all the different physical therapists. They've tried all the different rehab methodologies. And they're like, OK, I've tried everything underneath the sun. And this seems to be a little bit different. So, hey, let's check out this YouTube channel. Let's go down the rabbit hole because it is a rabbit hole. It's complex stuff. But I try to make it simplified, but I try to make it simplified

and I try to make it relatable for the average person. And I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit today, but that brings me to where we are. And it's crazy to think about how far I've come in just a couple of years and to be on this podcast with you guys and Mark. And I remember I was talking to Mark about this earlier. Like I watched Mark on YouTube 15 years ago. So it's just humbling to be here and

it's a privilege. So thank you guys for having me. What were you taking through on that day where it helped your back pain? Because that must've been like a kind of a traumatic experience in some way to have this pain that you're going through every day. And then someone just shows you these things and you're starting to feel better. And did you feel better like instantly from that day forward? Yeah, no, my pain was never the same after that day. Now, of course, like I'm not trying to say and sit here and be like, you know, I never had pain again, because of course, like things come and go. But that day, what I was introduced to is the idea that humans are naturally asymmetrical creatures. And we have certain patterns associated with different presentations. But at the end of

the day, like we have this underlying pattern. And it was originally first discussed in the late 70s by a guy named Zink. And this guy came up with the idea of a common compensatory pattern. And it was based off of different asymmetries that humans and his patients tended to present with. So according to his model and paper, he noticed that people that fell into this common pattern typically were able to resolve their injuries and manage stress better and disease better than those that did not fit this pattern. Now, whether that's true or not, that's up for debate and we can talk about that. But what I think is really important is that he set the foundation for how humans tend to look in an asymmetrical fashion. Because if we can all

agree that we have a heart on the left side of our body, a liver on the right side of our body, we have a diaphragm. If you ever see a picture of the diaphragm, it's so asymmetrical. The right side is just so much bigger than the left. Then of course, we're going to be naturally asymmetrical within our movement and our posture to some extent. So what that tends to look like is that we have a right side that we're a little bit more weight bearing on. We have a left side that's a little bit more open. So we tend to be sitting in our right hip a little bit more than our left,

even if we're left-handed or left foot dominant, we still have this natural gravitational bias. Because imagine if your body just literally weighed more on the right side, which it does because of our organ asymmetry. Then if I cut you down the middle in half and I put you on a scale, your right side literally just weighs more than your left. Even if it's not by a hugely significant amount, you're still gravitationally pulled over to the right side. Like I'm sitting in my right hip right now. It's just more comfortable. So I encourage people like

just stand up, lean on your left foot, lean on your right heel, then find your left heel and just see which one feels more comfortable. And most people are going to say their right side. Now, on top of that, we have an upper body that tends to, because of our diaphragm asymmetry, we tend to be in a position where the right side is pulled down because we're sitting on our right side and the left side tends to be a little bit more opened up. Now, there is more nuance to it, but the idea is that you typically see the standard human presentation where you're sitting in your right hip more. Your right hip is hiked up a little bit more on your left, right shoulders a little bit lower. And I just so happen to fit that pattern perfectly.

Not everyone does, of course, but this is like the standard stock human being presentation. Everyone does, of course, but this is like the standard stock human being presentation. And so what I did that day is I learned how to shift into my left hip. And I learned the power of actually shifting properly into a hip rather than just using my low back. So that's what I was doing on the sumo deadlift. I was just cranking my back into extension because I couldn't shift into my hip. So learning how to do that was just so powerful and it just profoundly helped my pain. And so that was sort of the root how I was executing it. Because I couldn't shift into my left hip, I was using my back and extension to put force into the ground rather than actually producing that force through my hips. And so there's multifactorial, but the overall thing is that,

to summarize it, most people can't shift to one side more than the other. A lot of the times, it's the left. And when you can't do that one side more than the other. A lot of the times it's the left. And when you can't do that, there's generally predictable compensations that you're gonna do. Like, I think we all are familiar with the idea of like, if you don't have mobility at your hip, you're probably gonna find it at your low back

or your knee or your foot. And so that's what I was doing. And until that was resolved, I was always gonna have that issue. I'm curious about this, because some people, you know, maybe they're listening to this podcast while sitting or even standing, but they're probably going to try to, okay, I'm just going to even everything out right now. Okay. So what's the problem with just like, okay, I'm just going to stand perfectly straight, even it all out. I'm fucking good.

Totally. I mean, it makes sense, right? But the thing is, is that your body is a lot smarter than you are in that regard. Your body is naturally going to self-organize itself into a position that it deems is ideal based off of your previous injuries, your movement options you have available to you, and above all else, how well you can breathe or what is the most efficient way for you to breathe. So think about it like this. If breathing is necessary for our survival, then wouldn't it make sense for the 20,000 breaths we take every single day to organize ourselves in a position which allows us to efficiently breathe. So that's what the body is going to do. That's one reason

why we have typically a lower right shoulder because that opens up the left's going to do. That's one reason why we have typically a lower right shoulder, because that opens up the left chest wall to expand, because that allows us to properly utilize the asymmetry of our diaphragm. So your body's like, hey, this is pretty comfortable. I'm going to sit here for a little bit. I'm going to hang out here. But obviously, you know, you can have compensations on top of that. Again, I know not everyone watching this is going to have this exact presentation. This is just the start. Now, if you try to override that manually and you try to just like stand perfectly straight, you might do it for five, 10 minutes, but then your body's just going to go back to doing what it's going to do. You're going to go, you're going to go to sleep and your body is going to find a position where it can breathe in effectively. So you can't override what your body's trying to do, nor would I actually

encourage that necessarily. I think a good intervention for improving these asymmetries is to give the body a reason to change rather than forcing it to change. So instead of like, hey, have you ever thought about just dropping your left shoulder and leaning on your left? It's like, hey, maybe you can show your body, this is how you can effectively shift over to the left side. Let me show you how you can effectively shift over here with the right muscles and joint positions. And then your body's like, oh, I know how to do that now. I'm just going to naturally incorporate it as I get more exposure to this. There's so much going on when it comes to posture. You know, think of like the way that someone can see, someone gets a little bit of pain in a particular area. Maybe they get forward head posture, maybe from lifting, you know, maybe from years of lifting, maybe you start to kind of get a certain posture. We see a lot with grapplers,

wrestlers, they're kind of rotated forward, you know, kind of stuck in this position. You also see some real high level wrestlers. A lot of times their feet are pointed out quite a bit. What do you think about some of these situations? Like for, for the most part, if someone doesn't have like a negative symptom of the way that their body is moving and the way that they walk and stuff. Are these still things they should explore? Or if you feel okay, then you just keep on keeping on. That's a great question. And I would answer that two different ways. One, the research is very, very clear that posture is not associated with pain. Just because you have quote unquote crappy posture does not

mean that you are going to get pain or that it is necessarily even a cause of your pain. However, I think this is the part that a lot of people miss is that posture is representative of your body's potential movement capabilities. It's representative of how your body has self-organized into a position to allow you to do the things that you need to do. So let me give you an example. Let's say that the feet are rotated out, right? Like these wrestlers. Well, why are the feet rotated out? Well, that's probably so that they can do something they couldn't do before. Your body's not just going to wake up one day and be like, I'm going to turn my feet out because that sounds like a good thing for me to do today, right?

It's going to turn the feet out. So that way you can find the inside edge of your foot better. Because if your feet were perfectly straight ahead, you might not be able to access the inside edge, the inside edge of your foot. And hence the wrestling shoe, allowing you to like grip and push off of the inside of your feet and so on. Yeah. So maybe for that person, they can't access that position effectively. So the path of least resistance is to turn out your foot so you can access that. And that's called internal rotation. Internal rotation of your hips is really important for accessing the inside edge of your foot. And that is force production, generally speaking. If I turn my feet out,

that is externally rotating my hips all the way down to my foot. But what that's making it easier for me to do is then move into that internally rotated position. So think about external rotation as like force absorption and the ability to move into a force produced environment. Kind of going in two different directions and you might blow out your knee. Potentially. Right? Because you're externally rotated at the foot, but you're internally rotating the hip, and now the knee is pinching inward and the foot is going outward.

Not saying you can't do it because we see people that are anomalies that can do all kinds of stuff, but potentially there could be an issue there. And I think maybe for wrestlers, I don't know a lot about actual grappling and wrestling, but I do just observing over the years, they tend to want to round their lower back. And so maybe the feet being externally rotated is to allow the lower back to kind of be a little rounded. Yeah, there's definitely a correlation between foot position and hip position. And ultimately, the body and hip position and foot position is just representing center of mass control. And that can occur in an upright environment that can occur on the ground with crawling, sitting, whatever. But ultimately, the body is concerned with keeping an even center of mass. So imagine like a line going down the midline,

like right through here, all the way down to the midpoint of your foot. Think about every different postural presentation where you could have a sway back, you could be extended, you can be tilted to one direction or the other. Ultimately, something is going to be pushed forward like your hips, but that's going to require something else to come back. That might mean your hips are back, but then something else has to come forward. And it's all about finding balance. So your pelvis position is going to be indicative and reflective of where your center of mass is, but then your feet can also present like that too. But then that will also make sense as to how your upper body is as well. So this is why I don't think you can be like, well, you know, your posture is being caused by

tight muscles or it's being caused by this singular isolated thing. It's like, no, it's your posture is an entire representation of how your body is carrying itself through space, how it's holding itself upright against gravity. So we can't just look at one thing and be like, well, if you just stretched your pecs from this position, you'd have better posture. It's like, no, you're not addressing the root of the issue at all. You're just looking at one thing. Whereas your shoulders could be rounded forward simply because your weight is too far forward on your toes. Or maybe you're not a confident person. Yeah. Right. So maybe you're kind of just holding everything here and you don't want people to see you too much. So you kind of head down and keep everything in. And then that will affect your biomechanics over time.

So what's the, I guess, what's the starting place for a lot of people? Some people tell you to start with your breathing, right? Some people tell you to start with your feet. I know it's different with individuals, but what are some big things that they should be trying to pay attention to? Good question. I think where people can get the most bang for their buck is to start with their breathing. And I know that there's a lot of different schools of thought around like what is good breathing, but ultimately like going back to that conversation, we're taking 20,000 breaths every single day, then that is going to have an influence on how we are managing the big structures like our head, like our rib cage,

like our pelvis. And so if I want to put myself in a position to efficiently breathe and I can't breathe very well, like most people have some degree of an inability to properly breathe. And that comes from so many different things, even phones, like sedentary lifestyles, whatever it is. But people tend to organize themselves in a position where they can more effectively breathe than they did before, because as time goes on, they start to lose their ability to properly use their diaphragm. So if you give your body an ability to properly breathe, what you're doing is you're setting

it in more of a neutral position. And if you're in a neutral position, that means your head is stacked over your rib cage, which is stacked over your pelvis, which is stacked over your feet. And so that in of itself can make a massive difference in how people feel. When you have poor breathing patterns, that extends to the rest of your body and can take different shapes and forms. But I think starting with that is really important. And that will also help you with your center of mass control. And we can get more into the breathing mechanics if you want, but I think like that is the foundation. And until that's in place, I think people have a really hard

time changing other things. Why do so many people get hurt on a deadlift? I remember Robert Oberst was on Joe Rogan's show and he said, nobody's deadlifting. He said, when you go into the pro, when you, when you go into see a professional football players and you see professional athletes are not deadlifting. He's like, when you go to the division one organizations, you see these beautiful weight rooms. Like they have all this weight, they have all this stuff, but they don't deadlift. And I think it was a shock to a lot of people, especially because he's a world's strongest man competitor.

I think they were like, what is he talking about? But he's just saying that a lot of times people get hurt deadlifting. The risk to reward could be too high for certain athletes. So what, in your opinion, why do people get hurt deadlifting? I think the coaching is poor. I think people don't know how to do it very well. And I think that many people come from an old school background and there's a lot of old school influence on how the deadlift is coached.

And I think that that can lead to a lot of overextension patterns. So think about like, what do people try to avoid on a deadlift? Don't round your back. Okay. I agree with that, but let's not go so far in the other direction where it's all chest up and butt back. Like this right here is going, like, this is how I hurt my back. This right here, this puffed out chest position, this over hyperextended position, in my opinion, is just as problematic as the other way. So I think people are really overly relying on their backs to create extension for them to stand up rather than genuinely moving through their hips. And the deadlift, I mean, obviously,

you know this better than most, Mark, it requires skill and it requires a lot of competency, even though it's a pretty straightforward thing. So I think requires a lot of competency, even though it's like a pretty straightforward thing. So I think that a lot of people are just seeing advice on the internet posted about the deadlift and their idea of what a neutral spine is in order to correctly execute the deadlift is misguided because natural human spine curve isn't a stick. It's not a PVC pipe. Like a lot of people think it is. It is this natural S-shaped curve. And until we respect that, it's going to be hard for us to understand how we can properly stack these structures, the head, the ribcage, the pelvis together to properly execute

a deadlift. And it's actually a little bit different than most people think. The way I like to cue it personally is I like to have people get tall. I like to have people reach their arms forward and actually get a little bit of protraction. So that way they can get a little bit of that S-shaped curve. And then I'll have them exhale. And I'll have them exhale fully until they feel like they're going to get a little bit of that brace. And then I'll have them inhale on top of that exhale. And that will pressurize their ribcage and their thorax. And I'll have them maintain that relationship as they go down.

That's not the same thing as reaching and slouching. That's not good. That's not what I want. I want them to stay tall and get a little bit of that protraction. Now, I think that that is a better and more effective bracing strategy and a better strategy to get their spine in a good position that reflects the true human spine curve. Many people brace, breathe into the belly and hold it. Well, what does that do?

That just promotes a better extension pattern, which might help you in the short term. But over time, that's just compressing your discs more and more and more. And in my opinion, that is a primary reason why the deadlift is so problematic for people now i want to ask you something not to be uh combative or argumentative at all but stuff that i've heard from like uh functional patterns and and people from that camp in regards to like the s curve of the spine. I don't know the exact terminology that they use. Maybe Mark, you can help me.

But basically they're saying like it's not necessarily supposed to have that natural S curve. And they mentioned that you can look at babies and they will be born without that S curve. And I look at my son and he does not have your typical S curve. Back is flat. His back is flat. So my question is just like, where does that even come from? Like, how do we develop this natural S curve if we aren't born with it? Well, you're not born with a lot of the things that would make you a functioning full adult, right? So I think what they're looking at is two different phases of a human life. At the beginning, you're not going to have that curve because, well,

A, you don't have the length in your spine to totally represent that curve. And B, that curve is really important for you to, well, let's think about it a couple different ways. If you're just going to be a natural upright human, your airway is really important for you to be able to breathe and take in air, right? If you don't have that lordosis, as we call it, of the neck, that extension of your neck, then you're not going to be able to put your airway in a good position to breathe. What is snoring? You're stuck back like that, right? You have to have some degree of lordosis in that neck for you to be able to live your life as a functioning

human. So if this is extended, well, then that means that something back here has to be relatively flexed. Your shoulder blade is this rounded, very slightly rounded concave structure. So that way, it can sit on that slightly flexed spine. So that way, it can rotate effectively. If you squeeze your shoulders back and down and you try to move your scap, it doesn't do very well because one reason is that you just extended your thoracic spine and that's going to limit your proper scap motion. Also, if that's flexed, that means that your lumbar spine should have a degree of extension to balance that out. So that way you have that nice, even center of mass going down the midline of your spine. And we need that slight

extension, 30 degrees is normal in most humans. So that way we can create what we call a closed packed position of our pelvis, which is a stable position of our pelvis to stay upright. So all these things are interconnected. And if you take one away, then I think that that's problematic, but a baby isn't there yet because they're not having to fully deal with the demands of gravity. They're not having to fully deal with the demands of an upright human who's, you know, five, six feet tall. So they haven't expressed that quite yet. Got it. For for this month only all of your barefoot shoes are 20 off for years on this podcast we've been talking about the benefit of barefoot shoes and

these are the shoes i used to use back in like 2017 2018 my old metcons they are flat but they're not very wide and they're very stiff and they don't move that's why we've been partnering with and we've been using vivo barefoot shoes these using Vivo Barefoot Shoes. These are the Modest Strength Shoe because not only are they wide, I have wide ass feet and so do we here on the podcast, especially as our feet have gotten stronger, but they're flexible. So when you're doing certain movements, like let's say you're doing jumping or you're doing split squats or you're doing movements where your toes need to flex and move, your feet are able to do that and perform in this shoe, allowing them to get stronger over time. And obviously, they're flexible. So your foot's allowed to be a foot. And when you're doing all types of exercise, your feet will get stronger, improving your ability to move. Andrew, how can

they get their hands on these? Yes, that's over at vivobarefoot.com slash power project. And again, for this month only, receive 20% off of all your barefoot shoes. That's at vivobarefoot.com slash power project. Make sure you enter the code that pops up so that way you receive your 20% off of all your Barefoot shoes. That's at vivo barefoot.com slash power project. Make sure you enter the code that pops up. So that way you receive your 20% off links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. So then you started talking about the neck and that's something I really wanted to talk to you about is cause I think you have a couple of posts

about it, but you know, I fit the typical stereotype. I got glasses. I'm always in front of a computer and I have that nerd neck. I don't know where it came from but obviously it's probably mainly from like playing video games and stuff i i if i try to straighten myself out my lower back will go with it you know so that's the only way i can try to simulate that that posture or whatever so is there a way to kind of like reverse out of that because like with mine it's not so much that like my, it's like an S curve in my neck, you know, it's like pushed out forward. And I do snore like a mother, like I snore a lot. So it's not like out all the

time. Cause when I pass out, it just, I've snore like crazy. So is there any way to like help either? I guess I'll say prevent that or like reverse that. I think so. And I think it's important to ask how much of it is the video games, the glasses and everything. And yeah, I'm sure it's, it's, it's a good bit of it, but also like, I think it's important to appreciate there's other factors that are influencing that. Right. So let's, let's assume that the video games are a major influence on that. So if you're in this position all the time, then, well, let's think about how that influences your rib cage and your airway. If I'm here, my sternum is depressed. My ribs are down. I can't inflate them very well anymore. So what I need to be able to do is engage something else so I can take in air because

my rib cage isn't going to inflate. I need to help kick on a compensation strategy. Usually that would be my neck at this point because the more forward my neck goes, the more these muscles gain leverage to then pull something up. So what you're really training yourself to do is, yeah, your head's forward, but you're really teaching your neck to leverage yourself to breathe in that position. And so you can then go and try and self-correct or whatever, but that's not going to fix the root of the issue, which is that your airway is now relying on your neck to create space to breathe. And so when you go and sleep at night, your airway is in a compromised position for several different potential factors, but then your tongue is now falling in the back of your throat and you're choking to some extent, and you're suffocating because you have this compensatory

breathing strategy that's being reinforced throughout the day through what you do with your tasks and your job and recreation with the video games. So it's really important. And that goes back to the foundation of learning how to properly breathe. And then that is going to set the stage for so many other things to fall into place. And I'm not trying to say that that's the end-all be-all for everyone, but I think that it's important to appreciate that the airway really does drive the show for a lot of people. And without that, it's really hard for other things to work well. How do you usually teach breathing? I usually teach breathing in a position that's very comfortable for the person to understand what I'm looking for.

A lot of the quote unquote corrective exercises that I use with people have a breathing component because the breathing component allows the body to become more parasympathetic, rest and digest rather than fight or flight. So I need to put them in a position where they can feel like they're in a rest and digest nervous nervous system state. Usually that's on their back or on their side in a 90 90 position. So what I'll do is I'll just have them lay, let's just go on their back because it's probably easier that way. So imagine you're laying on your back, your feet are up on a chair or on the wall. And I'll say, okay, I want you to take your hands, link them on your lower ribs. And I want you to keep your neck in a neutral position, which represents that neutral cervical spine position and keeps your airway in a good

position. Maybe I'll put a little towel roll underneath the neck as well. So that way I can keep the chin directly up at the ceiling, good airway position. So I'll say, okay, now I just want you to just exhale through your mouth and just sigh, just kind of like, a lot of people end up doing, but that's not, in my opinion, what I want. I want to get a sighing exhale, like a, and do that for about five to eight-ish seconds. At the end of that, you're going to find that your side ab muscles, your obliques are going to want to kick on. That's good. I want you to pause at that point, and then I'm going to have you place your tongue on the roof of your mouth. That creates a suction to allow you to have a good nasal inhalation on top of that. If your tongue doesn't sit at the roof of your

mouth in a resting position, that is problematic. So we need to reinforce that. Tongue up, close your mouth, and then very silently inhale through your nose. Because what people will often do is they'll have this idea, there's so many myths around what like a good inhale is, but one of them is that is better. A deep breath is better. No, that just kicked on my neck and that facilitated a lot of the issues that we're talking about. So a silent inhale is key. It's the hardest thing for people because everyone wants just more, harder, faster, stronger with everything, including breathing. And that is just so far where we need to start from. We need to start easy in a position

where people can really sense that without kicking on their neck, without kicking on a bunch of muscles that they don't want. It needs to be really chill. And that's the hardest thing for people is to understand that, hey, you actually need to relax and not feel anything too crazy right now. And we can build over time,

but right now just learn how to just sigh, exhale, and then pause and then maintain a little bit of side abs as you inhale through your nose silently. And what you'll notice as people start to do that, they start to really get those ribs moving. Oh, this is pretty nice. And it feels really relaxing. I've had people literally start crying because they don't know what it feels like to become parasympathetic.

When they do that for the first time, that physiological response is really powerful. You and Andy Trouta, actually, because we've had him on the podcast multiple times, you're two of the people that I've heard speak about the ribs so much. When we were in the gym, you mentioned the ribs. Here, you've mentioned the ribs multiple times. What have people been missing about that? And then I have a second question on the side of grapplers specifically. They injure their ribs a lot, whether it's because of pressure, et cetera, but I'll let you handle the first part. Sure. Yeah. So with the rib cage, I think a lot of people overlook it and they start placing blame on the shoulder, so to speak, where the shoulders foundation is, is the rib cage. Now a rib cage needs to be able to do two different things.

It needs to be able to expand and it needs to be able to compress, expand upon, think about it like inhalation, compress upon exhalation. So the whole rib cage needs to be able to expand, expand upon, think about it like inhalation, compress upon exhalation. So the whole rib cage needs to be able to expand and compress. And it needs to be able to do that on one side at a time, depending on the task or the environment. The issue is, is that many people are stuck in a position of the rib cage that is in an orientated position, meaning that the whole thing is in one sort of position. And that means that it lacks the ability to properly expand and compress or expand on one side, compress the other side, because a good rib cage is a mobile rib cage. So what people end up doing who are very stiff, think about like your big jack bodybuilder

dudes. Think about your people who walk around like this. These people have a very rigid orientated rib cage, which cannot properly shift. It can't properly move into different positions because it's stuck. It's very, and these are your people who then want to kick on their neck and kick on their back and all that other stuff. So a good rib cage first and foremost needs to be able to move into those different positions, but it won't be able to do that if your ribs are stuck because you can't expand them.

So we've got to be able to get that first. And a lot of the times people's training or their sedentary lifestyles or whatever further facilitate this because ribs were designed to move. And a lot of people don't do stuff where their ribs move. So my first order of business is usually like, hey, let's just be able to get some expansion and compression back. Let's just not be in this situation where you're just relying on your neck and you're just like breathing into your belly all

the time, which is what a lot of people do. Let's get some movement here. Now let's start to train this and let's start to maybe in the weight room, we're doing a little bit more alternating work. Maybe we're doing instead of a bilateral dumbbell bench press, we're doing a single arm. Maybe instead of a bilateral row, we're doing a single arm alternating row. Maybe instead of a plank, we're doing a side plank with a reach. Just anything you can do to start to get those ribs moving is key, but that will come after you can properly expand them in the first place, which is why I think that's a foundational thing. That's what I mean by getting that in place first allows for other things to then start working better. So with grapplers, you know,

you guys are generally pretty strong and pretty buff dudes to some extent, right? Relative to their size. At least you are. I mean, like, no, you can arrange. Yeah. Tons of body types in grappling. But they tend to be relatively strong individuals, right?

And they tend to lift weights. Maybe strong when it comes to grappling. Strong when it comes in grappling. But they tend to be relatively strong individuals, right? And they tend to lift weights. Maybe strong when it comes to grappling. Strong when it comes to grappling. Many grapplers, actually, I would probably say a majority do not lift weights. Yeah, oddly enough, especially jujitsu athletes. And it's because of the culture. Many are starting, but most, I would say, don't lift weights. Would you say grapplers are the same thing as BJJ, or is this a different thing? Wrestlers are also grapplers, right? Wrestlers are grapplers. And I think within wrestling, there is more of a culture of some strength training, but with jujitsu, which is also grappling, jujitsu is built around the smaller guy will build the technique to beat the bigger

individual. It's all about techniques. So a lot of jujitsu athletes don't lift. Wrestling might even have like a different history too. Like wrestlers just beat the crap out of themselves. Not that jujitsu athletes don't work hard, but the wrestlers kind of are known for smashing the crap out of themselves. Yeah, especially like at the level I'm at where like I'm rolling with a lot more like casual people, not so many competitors. Yeah, it's not normal if you train after going to jiu-jitsu and stuff okay so

i guess what i had in my head was the idea of like the wrestler who is like a pretty meaty dude who you know doesn't like move or rotate all that well that's the image i have in my head but we're talking about a different population i'm not talking about alexander carell in here okay there are a lot of wrestlers like that there are at least they look that way and then they might surprise you maybe they can move a lot better than you think because sometimes the guys end up developing a huge uh neck and traps and they they look yeah they might look a particular way but i bet you they can probably toss you they could probably move pretty goddamn good right yeah even if they can if they have the wrestling background they can come in and

like mop me all over the floor. It's pretty easy for them. Okay, so we're talking about the ones that actually move pretty well. All right, so now that we're on the same page. There we go. The question is, why do these people tend to get rib injuries a lot? Is that right? Well, in grappling, in jiu-jitsu, let me focus on jiu-jitsu. A lot of those athletes end up getting certain rib injuries because maybe somebody was putting pressure.

I don't know if you ever watched any jujitsu. When somebody takes their back, there's something called a body lock where they lock their body around their torso. And then that can cause a rib to pop. Or they're doing something and then they get an extension and then boom, they cause their rib to kind of go in and out of place. So rib injuries are something that you see a lot of grapplers end up getting. So I'm just wondering what you think they need to be thinking about. I think you probably hit some of it. Breathing, movement of the rib cage, right?

But what else should they be trying to think about to get those ribs to orient better? Because a lot of them, like one thing you'll notice is a lot of them don't have the greatest breathing, right? You'll notice that a lot of individuals end up mouth breathing very soon. They're not really breathing deep. So that's one thing, but what else do you think they should try to think about to improve that? Okay. Yeah. I see where you're coming from here. So we understand that a mobile rib cage is generally a healthy rib cage. Yeah. So let's just imagine for the purposes of an example that my right rib cage didn't move as well as my left. Let's just say I was in a position like this. So like these ribs are pinned down right here. Now, if I get put into

a position where my right side's pinned down and my left side's open, well, okay, that's good for me, at least to avoid injury because I'm used to being in that position. But if I get then thrown into a position where I extend and I'm pulled back on my right side and these ribs can't separate from each other and create that relative opening, then you're basically relying on your spine to orient yourself back because you can't let go here. And now something can give because you might be pulled into a position you don't have the relative capacity to open up into. And so what I think you're seeing a lot of the times in that sort of situation

is that those ribs are kind of stuck together and you can't actually get that space to open up. But with good training and with the ability to get the rib cage a little bit more mobile, then maybe there would be less of a chance of that because they wouldn't be orienting their whole rib cage as a unit

when pulled into a given position. And I'm sure there's unavoidable things as well on top of that. Like sometimes you just get pulled really hard and shit just happens. But I'd imagine that if people had the ability to get that, what we call relative motion back within their rib cage,

then you would see less of that happen. It's gotta be tough too when you're tired, you know, you're, if you're breathing really hard, your conditioning's not great. And then somebody does certain things to you in jujitsu, you got all that pressure on top of, you can't breathe very well. Probably makes it more difficult, I would assume. Yeah, there's that. But I think like it honestly does come back to the breathing part that you mentioned, because I grappled with a lot of people through the years. I've watched a lot of people do jujitsu, and the thing that a lot of people, even though they're doing jujitsu, a lot of people don't breathe well. They're not breathing into the diaphragm. Immediately once the round starts, 30 seconds in, they're up here already, and most of the time they cannot access that.

here already. And most of the time they're there, they cannot access that, but you know, it takes time to feel comfortable breathing deep into your diaphragm and having expansion all through here. It takes time and practice. So I think like, that's, that's what, like you mentioned, that's the first place people need to head. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think you're hitting on an important subject and with the breathing thing, it could be a conditioning thing too. Like they could just, like Mark was talking about, like you could just train your breathing, and then like as soon as shit hits the fan and you get tired, you're going to default back to your original compensatory strategy,

which, you know, that could not be good. So it's multifactorial, and we have to be able to appreciate that. Like just learning how to do it in the first place at the foundation. I don't want people to watch this and be like, oh, this guy just wants people to lay on their back and breathe all day long. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm saying we got to learn what it feels like first. And then we got to incorporate it within training. We got to make sure that we can actually have this carry over and there's some specificity to it. And you can do that in the weight room. You can do that in different types of conditioning. You can do that with different types

of more specific corrective exercises, so to speak. But the foundation's gotta be set first. I don't think we think about our breathing that much when we're exercising, like when we're lifting. I know that it is taught that you breathe out when you exert some force, but we're not really taught any other strategies. I don't think we think about it that much. I know for myself what's been a change.

I think I saw Ansema kind of mess with this and maybe a couple guests mentioning something similar was to breathe almost the opposite. You know, let a bunch of air out when you're, if you have some dumbbells and you're bench pressing, let a bunch of air out intentionally when your arms are all the way back to see if you can let your arms go back even further. And now we're talking about a completely different exercise with maybe a completely different intent. Maybe you don't have the 150s for that exercise. Maybe you're just using like 40 pounds and you're trying to really open up and you're trying to move better. Or like what I was doing today, where I was just doing some Jefferson curls, trying to get my back to move a little bit better. My lower back doesn't move great. So I'm trying to get that to actually be able to express, being able to round my lower back. Otherwise it's pretty stiff. And so I'm intentionally breathing out, trying to breathe into these things as I'm moving. Yeah, totally. I think with, there's so many different

ways you can incorporate the breathing strategies, but ultimately like the more rigid you are, the more you're going to have a hard time breathing. The more tissue you have, the more you're going to have a hard time with this breathing stuff. That doesn't mean you can't see great things happen from it. It's just going to be harder. So for like you guys, you're going to have a hard time with this breathing stuff. That doesn't mean you can't see great things happen from it. It's just going to be harder. So for like you guys, you're going to have a harder time getting your low back to not be as stiff because you just have so much tissue. You have so much strength built up. And it's like the conversation we were having earlier.

I think a lot of people end up just learning how to push, push, push, learning how to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. But they never think about the other end of things, about how do we actually create expansion? How do we actually get things to loosen up a little bit better? And it doesn't take a lot. Like you can adjust the breathing strategy on certain exercises. You can simply just place an emphasis to breathe through an exercise. You don't have to brace on every single exercise. When I see someone that's in pain and they have a belt on and they're doing curls and I'm just like, dude, what are you doing? Like that's, you might do that for some temporary relief or whatever, but you are just consistently driving home the thing that's making you tight and probably in pain in the first place. So I think a good training program has some degree of things that are going to require you to brace and lift really heavy,

but other things that are still going to promote some sort of fitness or physiological anatomical adaptation, for physiological anatomical adaptation, but still allow you to get that natural human movement of what we call alternation and reciprocation, doing things on one side, the other side's doing the other and incorporating that breathing component. I honestly genuinely believe that people incorporated that stuff within their weight training, they would see a massive difference as opposed to everything being just squeeze, produce as much force as you can, tighten up, do the same thing on both sides of the body at the same exact time, you know, bilateral exercises. Like that's what most people do, honestly. But if they just were to incorporate a little bit of this stuff, they would see a pretty big difference. And think about the way like a boxer breathes, you know, they, they breathe a lot of boxers anyway. They breathe

out pretty aggressively with each punch that they throw. Yeah. Do you think that that is something people should is, should it be a focus on how an athlete breathes like during certain drills and certain things or your thoughts on that? That's a good question. I think that's going to vary depending on the task, but I think ultimately what is my goal for someone is we need to consciously think about the way we're breathing and the actual exercises where the goal is to restore that. But my goal for you is like, I don't want you to have to think about how you're going to move. I don't want you to have to think about how you're going to breathe necessarily. Like if you're running, I want you to run. If you're doing a split squat, I want you to do the split squat.

But if you're thinking about too much, like stuff's just going to break down. You know what I mean? So ideally, and what a good corrective intervention is, in my opinion, is one that subconsciously repatterns you. So while you're doing it, you're obviously aware of what's going on, but you're teaching your body like, hey, like this is actually maybe a better way of doing things than you were before. It's more efficient. It feels good. So that way, when you get off of the ground or you're done with the exercise, your body's like, oh, yeah, I'm actually able to shift over here more. So I'm just going to start doing that. I have the association with what this should feel like. I have the access

to these joint positions. I have the access to use the musculature in those joint positions. Now I get up and I'm kind of self-organizing into that already. In my opinion, that's an ideal approach. I have a quick question and we can come back to the breathing stuff, but you have a very symmetrical face, right? And you made a video for a lot of the Fuggos on your channel that don't have symmetrical faces. I'm fucking with you guys, right? We all got some asymmetries, but you made a video helping people with that. So can you actually fix facial asymmetry and what does that process look like over time? Yeah. So facial asymmetries, there's good news and bad news. The good news is, is that it can absolutely be improved. The bad news is, is that it's going to take a little bit more than most people want to initially either put forth in

terms of effort or time. So there's a lot of people out there on the internet that when they talk about facial asymmetry, it's like, oh, you're sleeping on one side of your body more. You're chewing on one side of your bite more, like whatever the case is, something that's very like overly simplistic, a little bit reductionist. But that's not how it works. The way that the face becomes asymmetrical is having to do with the structural of the cranial bones themselves. So as a very basic example, you have a bone in sort of like the middle backish portion of your skull called the sphenoid bone. And this bone is very important for how your face is oriented and how it looks visually. So like if it was tipped down on one side, that eye would probably be lower.

And these bones do move. A lot of people think the cranial bones don't move. Well, they do. They absolutely do. And when they don't move, that actually creates a lot of problems. So when it comes to these cranial bones, they need to have the ability to shift and they're like micro millimeters of rotation. But when they get locked into a given position, well, that is actually kind of reflective of the rest of your body's position and pattern too. So you actually see, and there's actually some research that's starting to come out on this, that the position of someone's jaw and other cranial bones are reflective of and looks maxi, the position of the tongue. Hey man, some of those before and afters are pretty wild. They're pretty impressive. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think the idea of mewing is really important. Like we can get into the tongue.

I'd love to. I think that's awesome. But the thing is, is that it's not always that simple for people. And that's why I think some people do it and they don't really get results. Like you can have the right approach, but you know, the tongue going to the roof of the mouth and staying there, which is the idea behind mewing for those that aren't familiar. The idea is like, if you have poor tongue posture, that's going to throw off the position of your cranial bones. It's going to narrow your airway. Now we're back to that discussion. And it's going to basically just create a very traditionally unattractive face, but people that have these wider palettes, people that think of like all the best athletes you've ever seen, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, like those kinds of guys, they have these big palettes, they have these wide teeth. And I don't think that's by mistake. I think that's because those people have very well-developed faces and airways, and that's very optimal for athletic performance. And also we naturally find that attractive because I'm not trying to say LeBron James is hot or anything, but I'm trying to say is we find that

facial structure good because that reflects a human that's very robust and adaptable. And they have a great respiratory system, which often carries over to other physical traits and qualities as well. But back to the idea of mewing, I think that the idea behind it is good, but I think that's also assuming that people have the capacity to get the tongue to the roof of the mouth without any problems in the first place. If your airway is narrow, so imagine like this is the roof of your mouth and this is your tongue. If your tongue can't get to the roof of your mouth because your airway and

palate is too narrow in the first place, you can do all the mewing shit in the world, it's not going to matter because you need the space for it to be able to rest there properly. Or let's say you have something called a tongue tie. A tongue tie is the tissues in the bottom of your tongue are basically holding your tongue down and preventing it from going to the roof of your mouth. Is that something that some people have? Yes, you're born with it. So, you know, like let's say this is your tongue. This is the roof of your mouth. You have tissues on the underside of your tongue, right? So every time you lift up your tongue. This is the roof of your mouth. You have tissues on the underside of your tongue, right? So every time you lift up your tongue, those tissues are holding it down, and it can't properly, fully get to the roof of your mouth.

So if you have a tongue tie, you can do all the mewing in the world you want. It won't make a difference because you're never going to allow your tongue to properly, naturally rest there because you have tissues that are pulling it down. So there's a lot of different things that can go into success or not success with mewing interventions. But the question is, are you the type of person that has those limitations? And if you are, then it's not going to work. Gotcha. Well, how about the stuff that you tell people, that you've suggested that people look into? Because in your video, you said this takes a long time for people.

Don't expect to do an exercise and a month later you fucking look like you. But what are some ideas that you have for people there? So the way that I think the true addressing of the root cause of facial asymmetries is it has to do with repositioning the cranial bones into a better alignment. But also what that has to do with is,

and it gets complicated, is a lot of it's the tongue. And so if you have, again, let's imagine you have one of your upper jaw is oriented to one side and your lower jaw is turned to the other side. So that is going to look like, so for example, if like my left side was lower and my jaw was deviated to one side or the other, that's obviously going to make my face look asymmetrical, right? So what we need to be able to do is we need to be able to align the upper jaw with the lower jaw. There's a bunch of bones that are affected because of that as well. requires some sort of appliance or some sort of intervention that allows you to reposition your upper jaw, allow your tongue to be in a better position and even out that space over time and

also your lower jaw. So the thing is, is like, I don't really think that most people can fix this on their own. And that's just my honest, my honest answer. I'm not going to sit up here and like, say like, Oh yeah, just a couple of exercises. You're going to get it done. Like that's just my honest, my honest answer. I'm not going to sit up here and like, say like, oh yeah, just a couple of exercises. You're going to get it done. Like that would be me misleading people. And I don't want to do that. I think facial asymmetries when they're really out of control, oftentimes are reflective of dysfunction and or poor positioning of the jawbones and the TMJ as well. And that can lead to potential issues with the neck, the airway, and that can feed all the way down to the rest of the body. What's really cool is you put one of these appliances in someone's mouth,

they should instantaneously unlock range of motion from their head all the way down to their foot. Wow. Literally. Literally, you should see their hip mobility improve. You should see their shoulder mobility improve. You should see their neck mobility improve. And it should be a pretty noticeable difference if it's the right thing for them. And that just goes to show like the power that this stuff has over the rest of the body.

And, you know, it can go both ways. Like sometimes you work on someone's hip mobility and their bite changes. Like it really can be like that. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. But you know, the thing is, is that these things are complicated and it's not always an easy fix. And there's not a lot of people talking about this stuff right now. My goal is to make it more popularized. I want different practitioners to be able to diagnose these things and then refer out to the right person who can help with it. But what I would encourage people to do is don't believe the people online that say like, this thing is going to fix your facial asymmetries. If it's just like something that's, you know, kind of gimmicky or just like one or two exercises, like it's not going to happen. What kind of device is it? It's called an ALF device. It is basically, it was originally,

it's this very light wire thing that wraps around sort of the back of your teeth and hooks into other teeth. And what it was originally designed for is palatal expansion. It was originally designed to widen out the upper part of your palate, but that's actually not what I think its best use is. It's actually designed, in my opinion, in an optimal way to attract the tongue to the roof of the mouth. And in a way that can help you very, very slowly expand your palate over time, which in my opinion is a better way to go. Because many people get these things called paddle expanders, where they just like pry open the top of their, you know, palate. And that is going zero to a hundred real quick. And when you go zero to a hundred real quick with your palatal expansion, you're not properly training that good

tongue position and you're throwing things off too quickly. That's like, imagine if you put yourself in a cast or some sort of thing that would stretch out your bones really quickly, your body wouldn't be able to adapt to that quickly enough, right? So it's the same thing here. You would cause a lot of issues if you rapidly expanded your palate too quickly, which is a lot of times what happens. So ideally, it's a slow process that happens over time and that wire attracts your tongue up there. So that way, now you're mewing all the time

and you don't even realize it. You have to think about it. Is there a way to tell? Like, how do you know if your jaw is misaligned? I mean, some people, yeah, maybe you can just look in the mirror and be like, but is there a way to tell? Like, how do you know if your jaw is misaligned? I mean, some people, yeah, maybe you can just look in the mirror and be like, but is there a way to tell by biting or anything like that? We usually use a bite test.

So what I'll do is I'll have someone just bite down and then you can put your fingers in the back of their teeth and then you can have them very gently bite down on those fingers and you just try to pull the fingers out. And one of the fingers will ultimately just try to pull the fingers out and one of the fingers will ultimately come out faster than the other one if it's a noticeable difference it's like okay your jaw is probably deviated to one side could you put your own fingers in your mouth and do that same sass and have it good i suppose you could but i think it'd be like you'd

have a natural bias you know like you wouldn't know like what neutral is. Yeah. For those of you who just did it right now, gotcha bitch. You need to be breathing through your nose at night for better sleep quality because your nose humidifies the air you breathe. It filters the air you breathe. And when you're breathing through your nose, it allows you to be more parasympathetic, which allows you to be calmer. But a lot of us and myself in the past included, breathe through our mouth when we sleep. And when you're breathing through your mouth, you have a higher heart rate, you wake up with a dry mouth. It actually makes your dental issues worse and your sleep quality becomes much worse too. That's why we use and we've partnered with Hostess Shape for such a long time. Because no matter if you're using a CPAP, if you have a beard or whatever you're dealing with, if you're able to

breathe through your nose when you sleep, your sleep quality will be better and everything else in life will get easier. Your fitness habits, your nutrition, et cetera, because your sleep is quality because you're breathing through your nose. So get hostage tape on your mouth. And Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at hostage tape.com slash power project, where you can receive five packs of hostage tape for the price of three. That's almost half of a year for the the price of three that's again at hostage tape.com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes i would imagine the three of us are just gonna be sticking fingers in each other's mouth so i mean um what are your because okay so anecdotally there have been again in the community of people that do mewing, mastic gum is very popular for people to, you know, mastic gum, it's a very hard gum to, right?

Do you think that that can be beneficial or could it exacerbate problems? What are your thoughts? Because even our guy, our guy Wyatt, who's the producer of Anabolic Activities, he has a whole thing of mastic gum because he's like, I'm going to build this fucking jaw. Right? So what do you think? I don't think it's inherently bad or good i don't think again it's like solving the root of what's going on like that's not gonna reposition things necessarily like that might build up those muscles to give you the appearance of a stronger job but i think that's about it honestly okay. Okay. Good enough.

We were talking in the gym a little bit about being able to handle force, you know, being able to handle your own force, doing something like a jump, or being able to handle somebody else's force as in like football or something like that. What are some ways you train some people to be, you know, strong enough to be able to handle some of these forces that some of the athletes are under? Totally. That's a good question. Yeah. So it's like what we were talking about earlier. A lot of people are training, you know, there's two phases of a muscle contraction primarily, right? You have your elongation, your eccentric, and you have your contraction or your concentric phase. A lot of people are just promoting, and I see this all the time in sports, just like

more harder, faster, stronger, like squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, produce force, but they forget about the idea of yielding. So what is the human movement cycle? It is the ability to turn into one side and then get in that side and then get out of that side. So there's three main phases. A third of that is getting into that side and turning into that side and being able to yield, right? So if athletes are constantly training propulsion, but not yielding, then that's going to be pretty problematic, right? I think you get to a certain point where it's like, you're probably strong enough. You know, if you're a sprinter, you're a football player, you're doing 405 for like a five by five,

I doubt you need to get much stronger. You actually would probably benefit. And the lowest hanging fruit is from training some of that yielding capacity. Now, the way that you do that, it could vary. You know, there's different types of plyometrics that you can do. There's different types of lifts that you can do. But

ultimately, I think where people are going to benefit the most is training more so on their heels. So when we are yielding, generally more of our weight is on our rear foot relative to our forefoot. So doing things in a unilateral motion, like imagine you're in a split squat and imagine this is your foot and this is your shin. Doing things in more of a negative shin angle, I think are really helpful for that because that's representative of when you are starting to put the brakes on and your shin is going more forward. And then once your shin goes vertical, you're pushing off more, right? So I think doing things where you are in more of a negative shin angle with your weight more on your heel can be beneficial. You could do things where, let's say you're doing a,

it's hard for me to describe this, but imagine you're doing a plyometric, but the emphasis would be on the idea of the drop and the catch rather than the propulsive activity. I think the propulsive activity is very important, but it's only going to be as good as your ability to absorb that force. So we have a, you guys know what your pelvic floor is. So your pelvic floor and your diaphragm have a very intimate relationship. When we absorb force, these things should drop together synchronously. When we produce force, they rise synchronously. So you should have this action like this. So if your pelvic floor can't yield and it can't descend along with your other diaphragm, then that is going to create some sort

of inherent mismatch and you're going to have to find yielding somewhere else. So what's important is being able to access different shapes of your pelvis. And the easiest way you can do that is just train in a bunch of different positions and have the emphasis being on being able to control that getting into deeper squats, being able to even go in higher squats. Like the more variability that you have in your training where you're controlling the eccentric and concentric, the better off you're probably going to be without having to go into too much complexity about it. I think people just ultimately spend, again,

way too much time trying to produce force rather than actually yielding. So, you know, if you want to think about it back to the original discussion of internal versus external rotation, external rotation is yielding. So, you know, if you want to think about it back to the original discussion of internal versus external rotation, external rotation is yielding. That's the position where you're going to get that pelvic floor to drop. So putting yourselves in positions where you're going to be getting that external rotation is really helpful in this context. What do you think is one of the biggest challenges you have in working with people to get them to comply, to get them to kind of buy in? Because I'm sure there's stuff that you can work on in your gym that you have now and you can work directly with people, but I'm sure they have to do a little bit of their own homework as well.

like breathing, like movement is that you have to give your body a reason to change. You can't just be like, all right, let's do two sets of, you know, a minute of this stretch or exercise three times a week. And I bet you that you'll be, but no, like there's no way that's going to work. It's got to be like, yeah, yeah. There's got to be real input. And some people don't like to hear that, but it's like, Hey, you know, if you want to make real change, give your body a reason to change. So do these things with enough exposure. And that can vary depending on the person, but do these things with enough exposure. So that way we actually create meaningful adaptations. And what's cool about the approach that I use is I use objective testing. I am never, ever going to have someone come into my gym and let's say they have a shoulder issue.

It's like, all right, here's three sets of 15 on this rotator cuff exercise. Let's see how you feel in two weeks. Let's see how you feel next week. I would never do that because I need an objective assessment and a way to determine whether that intervention is going to be successful. So what I use is generally just basic table tests because that's something the average person can understand and relate to. So for example, if I do an intervention and this shoulder's internal rotation is like 10, 15 degrees, it's like, well, yeah, you got shoulder pain. That makes sense, right? But if I do something and that doesn't change that, then why should I expect that person

to feel any better? Because this, you need to have requisite mobility at your shoulder for the muscles to even do their jobs in the first place. How's your rotator cuff gonna work in rotation if you can't rotate your shoulder in the first place? So like, it really is that simple at the end of the day. So if I give someone an intervention and that dramatically increases their range of motion to a meaningful extent, that's how you get buy-in.

That's how you help people understand what you're doing is meaningful. If you don't get a change, then you would just find something else that would, right? So that's the thing that I really like to promote to the people who take my course, for example, and they are like, I'm doing this entirely different intervention

with someone that they've never seen or heard of before. How do we get this person to understand? It's like test and retest because those tests won't lie. And they'll tell you whether or not you're going to be successful or not. What are the practices that you have around the feet? Because one thing I saw you actually worked with a football player and you, maybe it was a hip issue he had and you went to his feet, you helped him out with that. So what can people do to improve the way their feet functions to help the rest of their body? And how can fucked up feet fuck up the rest of the system? Totally.

Let's start with that one first. So when someone's foot is in a certain position, that is reflective potentially of what the hips are doing too. Like we talked about the turned out feet earlier. Let's imagine you have someone that has a very high foot arch or just a high foot arch, right? We all know these people. Those feet need to be able to change shape for the hips to interact with the floor and produce or absorb force as necessary. Generally speaking, when our foot arch is high, this is a position of more external rotation. When our foot arch is low, this is a position of more external rotation when our foot arch is low that's a position of more internal rotation and we're probably putting force into

the ground so as that foot arch drops that allows our hips to access internal rotation and also you know vice versa it's a two-way street you You can't have one without the other. So if my foot arch is high, I can work on hip mobility all day long. I can work on my hip rotation all day long, but it will never make a difference unless I can get my foot arch to drop. I can put force into the ground and my foot can interact with my hip. And that needs to happen from the hip all the way down to the tibia and shin, down to the foot. If one of those

links is broken and that can't access the internal rotation, then what's going to happen and what most people don't do and they don't realize is they'll work on their hip mobility. Let's say they're working on hip internal rotation and they get an improvement of, I don't know, like 15, 20 degrees. Have that person get up and walk 15 yards and then lay on their back and remeasure their hip internal rotation. It's all gone instantly that quick, because if your foot can't interact with the ground in a meaningful way, then your body doesn't know what to do with that hip mobility. And so that's the connection there. So if I've got someone that has a really high arch and their hips are all locked up, I need to make sure that that foot is then able to appropriately use that rotation that I'm trying

to restore. If that makes sense. Makes sense. Is it worse for someone to have like a flat foot or a high arch? So, you know, both have their pros and cons. A lot of people look at flat feet as if they're problematic. I actually not sure they are. So a flat foot is representing one that is stuck in that propulsive position, right? Like we were just talking about. Kind of just looks gross. Kind of looks weird, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a little bit of that too. So, you know, you're probably not going to be on OnlyFans with that thing, but you actually might be a really good athlete. We know a guy. We actually do. But yeah, keep on. So if that's your thing, man, more power to you.

But you might actually be a better athlete with a flat foot. Master race. Let's go. The reason. She went so silent for a second we'll let you celebrate alright keep on alright so

I actually forgot what I was going to say you said you might be a better athlete if you have a flat foot okay I didn't forget better athlete if you have black feet flat feet thank you thank you for saving that do you guys know like lebron james foot you guys see a picture of that everyone's

seen that that ugly foot right everyone's seen a basketball player's foot and you know if you think about usain bolt's feet too are another great example of this. Now, the more propulsive and the more force you need to produce as an athlete, the more you are probably going to have a flat, uglier-ish foot, quote unquote. Now, why is that? Well, think about what we do when we're running or sprinting or producing force in a high level

in a very short period of time. We need to rapidly transition from that point of early stance where the arch is higher to more mid stance where the arch is lower and then back to push off when the foot arch rises. That's the movement cycle of the foot arch. So it benefits people that need to produce force very quickly and a lot of it to more immediately enter that movement cycle in a position of a pronated foot because that will allow you to better access that flatness to then push off quickly rather than having to go through the whole thing of like, okay, now I'm here, now I'm here, and now I'm here, back off. If I instantly enter with that flat foot, that

allows me to find the inside edge, that allows me to push off much quicker. And so that is one advantage, but actually it could be problematic in some cases, because the more flat your foot is, the less you're probably going to be able to access certain rotations at your hip. So it's, it's like a, it's like a push and pull sort of thing. So the question is, is like, your foot might be flat, but can it also allow your hip to access other positions? Or if your foot is flat and your hips are really locked up, your feet might be actually the thing that's inhibiting you from being able to feel better. So it depends on the person ultimately, but if you got a guy like LeBron James and he has the ugliest feet

you've ever seen, but he hardly ever gets injured, then it's like, okay, you know, I'm not sure that's like a really big problem. But if you have someone who has flat feet, has zero hip mobility whatsoever, and their back is killing them all the time, it's like, okay, maybe that foot is something that we need to address. But doesn't the arch of the foot act as a bit of a shock absorber as well, though? Can it actually help some of the pain? In like a lower back pain, sorry. Yes, you're saying like the arch of the foot when it's in a normal position?

Like a normal arch because you're saying that if they have a flat foot and everything's fine, but they do have some pain, maybe it's in a normal position? Like a normal arch, because you're saying that like, you know, if they have a flat foot and everything's fine, but they do have some pain, maybe it's not a good idea. And so my thought was like, well, yeah, it doesn't act as like a shock absorber. Yes, the shock absorption, if we're thinking about the same thing, as that arch drops, that's that yielding. So that allows you to properly shift into that side of your body. And that's that like mid stance position. So that is necessary for that

absorption rather than like, if you couldn't get that arch to drop, then you would just essentially be here and then nothing would yield. So then you have to find yielding. Okay. Now I'm understanding now. Okay. Gotcha. Context on the master race joke. It was about the foot. It was like master race, flat feet, not black people or white people. It was a foot thing. I know you did, but there's going to be someone who's like, oh, shit.

That's true. You hear people talk a lot about flared ribs and it causes a lot of problems. What are some things that you do with people to help with that? Okay, this is a good one because it's going to really tie everything we've been talking about together. So if everyone try this, put your hands in your low ribs and just feel, I bet 95% of us feel our low ribs poking out to some extent, right? At the beginning of this podcast, I talked about how

everyone has some sort of breathing compensation strategy. Now, do a favor and just flare them a little bit more. Now take a breath in, just like naturally. When you say flare them, you want like extend? Extend, yeah. Just like poke them out more. Now breathe in through your nose. Where did you feel that expansion happening? In your lower rib cage and in your belly, right?

That's where you felt that opening happen. Well, okay. This flared rib cage is a representation of you doing that all the time. You are constantly in a position where you are expanding these ribs and your belly. Now, I don't think that's the best thing ever because what that's representing is an inability for you to expand other areas of your rib cage. Normally when you breathe in your entire rib cage, 360 degrees should expand front, back, side to side. But if you're stuck in this position right here, what that's telling me is over time, you've lost the ability to get that expansion. So what you're doing is you're finding a compensatory strategy for you to create a semblance of inhalation. And that's via the path of least body. And then it might get to a point where it's

like, okay, now I'm really far forward. So I got to do something to help push myself back. So that's why you can have people who look like this, but their lower rib cage is still flared because their body is looking for balance. So it's altering the spine curves to do that. So you might say, well, that person is in an overly rounded position right here. I'd say, yeah, maybe right there, but the rest of their body is actually in an overly arched position. It's just that this is the compensation for that. So it builds on top of itself. Now, really what I want that person to be able to do is get a full exhale. is get a full exhale.

See how that brings my ribs in? Now that my ribs are set here, when I inhale on top of that, I can actually get stuff to open up back there. You have different areas in your rib cage called your mediastinal cavities. And maybe we can put up an image or something, but your mediastinal cavities. And maybe we can put up an image or something, but your mediastinal cavities are basically areas in that thorax you have to expand into. Your posterior back section of this mediastinum is so much larger than the front one. People think that they need to

breathe into here. No, you actually have way more opportunity to breathe into your back than you do the front. And most people don't realize that. So people are like, belly breathing is diaphragmatic breathing. I'm like, no, no, no, no. You need your belly to simultaneously rise with your rib cage, but you also need to expand your back just as much, if not more. Where in the back? Mostly between like here and here. Between like the mid low back to the trap. Sort of like the bottom ish area of your scapula to just below the top ish area. So in there should be able to expand. And if you don't have that, then you're going to

be in some sort of extension. I actually will do that when I'm running. I will actually sort of almost like body build, like flare my lats as I'm running. Like just, I don't know, it's just a cue. It's not like, I'm not really like breathing into my lats necessarily, but it's just a little bit of a cue because I have a tendency to kind of like, I'll run with my head down for a while,

especially if it's like getting miserable and I'll kind of be stuck there and I'll just kind of open back up again and try to breathe into the back. Case in point right here. So if you're really tired and you're on a long run, what does your body naturally want to do? Yep. Just slouch. Hands on the knees. And the reason for that is because that's opening up your back rib cage. People do this. We were taught this when we were growing up, you know, coaches said this like, Oh, don't look defeated, be tall and all that good stuff. This feels like shit.

Not what MJ did. MJ held on to his shorts and was on his knees. Totally. Hands on his knees. Hands on the knees. There's actually a study that came out, I think in 2019, that showed that hands on the knees was objectively better for your recovery than hands on the head. Yeah. Yeah.

So that image right there, if you click on that one, you're on right there. That one shows you how right there that one shows you how much larger that back area is then look at how pathetically tiny that anterior part is your ribs have a lot more expansion capabilities in the back so most people are thinking breathe forward no not necessarily you want to feel that back expansion and the more you can get that the less you're going to have to rely on flaring your lower rib cage to make up for a lack of back expansion. What's happening when we're like injured or really tight in the morning and you bend down

and like pick something up and you kind of like you, you like intentionally like brace yourself, especially if you're already hurt. Like, what do you think's going on with that? Particularly in the morning? Not necessarily in the morning, but I get, you know, just if you're in pain, you tend to, when you go to do something, you tend to seize up and you, you tend to like contract your muscles a little bit and you tend to like, I guess, hold your breath or at least I do my experience. like, I guess, hold your breath, or at least I do, my experience. So I think when someone is in pain, like the idea is protection. So when I have a back injury, I'm going to be more likely to squeeze things around that area to prevent movement. So that

way I can go about and do whatever I need to do. But unfortunately, like that makes sense in the short term, but in the long term, if that's my adaptation strategy, that is going to limit my ability to access genuine movement. So I think what your body is doing in that instance is like, I can't move through here. So I need to find somewhere else to move while I squeeze this to then, you know, pick something up or whatever the case is. But what that actually promotes is that orientation, right? That doesn't promote that relative motion is what we're looking for, right? We want things and segments to be able to rotate relative to one another, but the more you're hurt. Hold my breath and like move like a robot. Totally. Yeah. The more you're hurt,

the more you're going to rely on your whole body moving as one unit. And if that's what you keep doing, then you might actually hurt something else. And now you're going to squeeze that area. It's like this cycle that never ends. So really, it's important to allow for the healing to occur. But we need to start introducing rotation back. I think that's a big missing piece of a lot of people's rehab is like they get so focused on stability. They get so focused on like just being able to do basic things front, back, side to side. But they forget about humans always rotate. They always rotate.

Even me flexing my elbow like this is a bunch of little mini rotations that make up elbow flexion. People think like the knee is this hinge joint like this. It is absolutely not. The knee needs to go into different rotations to allow for that locking out mechanism. are dumb and just so plain and boring, but really every single joint rotates and there is some capacity for that. So by restoring rotation, we ultimately restore the ability to do what humans need to do. And another thing that might be kind of interesting is our muscle fibers themselves. Like many people think like muscles contract like this, you know, sliding filament theory, it's, it's kind of like that. Well, the things that make up your muscle fibers are actually helical in nature. So you guys know like DNA looks like, it's like that kind of twisty looking cylinder thing. That is what your myosin and actin look like. They're helical structures. So if everything is helical, that makes up a muscle fiber a muscle fiber itself is helical so things

expand and contract like this muscles do this they don't do this and so the more you realize that this action is running the show in your body the more you realize the importance of rotation and the more you realize oh yeah like all of my movements are literally just rotation. So why aren't I training that? You and your lady just had an awesome night. You got dinner or you just came back from the gym and it's time for that fun time. But you look down at your willy and well, it's not working the way it should. Where's that blood flow? Well, that's where joy mode comes in. And I can read you these ingredients right off the bat because they're all natural ingredients. L-citrulline, arginine nitrate, panox ginseng root,

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Again, usejoymode.com slash powerproject. Promo code powerproject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. I want to ask you, going back to what you mentioned about the extension pattern for the rib cage, a lot of people try to do that because they want to fix their posture. They want to stand straighter. So what they'll do is they'll come here and they'll set their computer like this and they'll do everything like that.

Why can't they do that as a solution? What should they try to maybe attack first? Even though, again, everyone's posture issues are individual, but maybe there are some big themes that people can try to tackle first if they have bad posture. If someone has, yeah, like quote-unquote bad posture, right? Like bad posture can mean a lot of different things.

Let's just say they want to improve their, there's nothing wrong with trying to visually improve your posture. So let's say that's the goal. Now, trying to just stand up straighter, what is this doing? Well, it's basically just creating an extension position of my entire back. It's not respecting the fact that my airway needs to have some degree of a little bit of that curve forward like that. It's not respecting the fact that I need to breathe into my back like we were just talking about.

It's not respecting the fact that my pelvis needs to be stacked underneath a rib cage. This is creating an orientation forward of my entire spine. I can try and hold this all day long and I might look taller, but over time, what I'm really just doing is compressing my back more and more and more. This is going to restrict your shoulder mobility. It's going to restrict your hip mobility. It's going to restrict your hip mobility. It's going to push you into a forward pelvis position. But ideally what we would have is we would have this stacked, stacked, and we would be able to keep everything more so aligned here. So that's why I think if you're going to want to try to stand tall, that's cool.

You can do it. You can imagine like that string is being pulled up here, but just don't let your rib cage flare excessively. Just make sure those ribs are staying down. So if I'm going to sit or stand tall, generally I want to feel my whole foot flat, but I want to just exhale, feel my ribs come down and just not depress my sternum with it. feel my ribs come down and just not depress my sternum with it. That will allow me to create as much relative height is as possible for me without needing to rely on just shoving my spine into extension. And then, you know, you get a whole host of problems from there. But I think that finding where you're limited in your breathing and working on

improving that and also being able to improve your center of mass control, I think, is also huge. So if you're constantly stuck on the front of your foot, then maybe we need to do some stuff to improve the position of your pelvis and rib cage. So that way you can create more alignment and more centered center of mass over your rear foot and your midfoot. What about training some like violent movements, really explosive movements? I'm not recalling the guests at the moment. The baseball, he coached a lot of baseball guys. Brady.

Yeah, there you go. Deck performance. Yeah. Can't remember his last name. This guy does a lot of really explosive movements. He coaches a lot of baseball and obviously throwing a ball in baseball is a pretty violent movement, pretty explosive movements. He coaches a lot of baseball and obviously throwing a ball in baseball is pretty violent movement, pretty explosive movement. What are some of your thoughts on

that style of training, like trying to attack, you know, I guess what someone might be recognizing as a blind spot in a particular sport that's not getting trained? Because a lot of times when we think of training in the gym, we're thinking of benches, squats, deadlifts, bent over rows, kind of the normal type of movements. But this guy in particular, he kind of took it to a different level with some of the extremes that he does stuff with. One example is he hopped up on this podcast table and then jumped down and landed on one foot. Wow. Because he's trying to build this big capacity. The other thing that we see from some other professionals as well is kind of this ugly training, I would call it, like getting yourself in compromised movements and then being able

to move from those. So he's doing a lot of these loaded, but the question is kind of, you know, what do you think of this? But what do you also think of like doing some things unloaded where it might be agreeable to some people like, ah, those are kind of sketchy, iffy movements. I don't know if I would do those with weights. inherently problematic movements, only ones that the body is unprepared for. There's a reason why many people can deadlift with a crazy rounded back, you know, 700 pounds, have no pain. It actually feels kind of good to them. It's because like, that's what they've created in terms of a adaptation and a movement pattern within their body. I think the downside of an approach like this and posting it on social media is it promotes

the idea that either a, this is something that is attainable and good for everyone, or B, this is optimal for everyone, or this is like optimal for a lot of people for optimal athletic performance. And I don't think that's necessary. A lot of the times I think good training is oftentimes quite simple, but you know, to do like that plow box job, like that was really, that was really impressive. That was really, really cool. But a lot of people aren't ready for that. And I think that if you were to have a lot of people try to seek that out as a primary goal for improving their sports

performance, they would be spending a lot of time on something that's probably not going to move the needle that much. And so it's cool and it's going to attract attention, but I don't think that it should be a bar for a lot of people. And I think if a lot of people spend a lot of resources and time on that, it would probably be better spent doing other things. Not to say that that's not inherently going to help in some ways just that that's a pretty impressive physical feat and i don't think that's necessary to be good at your sport and maybe perhaps some of the things that brady is doing maybe those things would benefit somebody that has all the basics covered right yeah yeah like once you get into the very elite upper, you know, like 5% of athletes, like that stuff can become more and more helpful. But to what extent would be my question? Yeah. I get what you're saying there,

because like, again, most athletes will be able to reap massive benefits from doing things that are much simpler than what Brady's doing there. But when you mentioned the optimal thing, the thing I wonder is a good video that andrew pulled up is brady showing his progress over four years for a movement and then over two years for a movement so obviously there's a time investment that's gone into building these skills but you wonder an athlete in whatever sport let's say it's a sport like basketball where they're jumping and landing what if a basketball player improves their ability to fucking jump off of something and land like that off of a foot, right? Like right now they might be doing well, but let's say now they're coming off of dunks and now they're landing. The resilience of their ankles is massively improved, right?

With the investment into something as, you know, unorthodox as that. So I understand what you're saying and I agree with you in terms of the simpler things will get you 90-something percent of the results. But a lot of this stuff seems like it could really unlock a different level of resilience that most athletes have not even tested yet. Because most athletes are doing the common stuff and it's not bad. It's good, the stuff that's tried and true. the stuff that's tried and true. But maybe stuff like this will improve their resilience to a point where certain types of injuries are much, much less common. There probably would be some merit to that. The question is, is it these movements or would it just simply be doing things that are going to be like training ugly in general? You know what I mean? Like, I think there's a lot to be said for exposure to positions.

And I think injuries occur when we're not exposed to given positions. So for example, like let's say you did that single leg depth drop and you land, but what if you do that single leg depth drop and you land in a slightly different position in your knee and your knee doesn't land over your toe. And now your knee collapses in and that single leg depth drop, or you're doing a dunk and you land in a position where your knee's not going over your toe in the right way. Now, all of a sudden you did all the work in the world, but your knee just blew out because you haven't trained that specific position. world, but your knee just blew out because you haven't trained that specific position. So I think that there's a lot to be said for training in an unorthodox way. But the question is like, what, what positions and variability are you getting exposure to? And I think if we have

that mindset, that will be really helpful. So like that stuff, like I'm, I'm, I can see where there'd be value in that. Yeah. But I think we need to be able to, on top of that, appreciate that, you know, it goes back to the idea of there's no bad movements, just ones that the body's unprepared for. So let's prepare it for all different types of stuff. Yeah. And in Brady's case, he's a high level athlete himself. a high level athlete himself. He's not necessarily advocating that everyone do these protocols, but over time he does work a lot of athletes into being able to do a lot of these movements that he's showing. What are your thoughts more so on like, you did mention like exposing yourself to certain movement patterns. And so what are your thoughts on like, not just like Ben Patrick,

but I guess he kind of made the thing popular with the knees over toes. People previously, you know, taught in a squat, you know, God forbid that your knees go past your toes or you're going to explode or die. What are your thoughts? I mean, I've seen some people doing, I'm not sure who you can pull up, Andrew, maybe Encima can think of somebody, but there's some people doing some really crazy wild things on social media where they're internally rotating their knee and then touching their knee on the ground while they're in some crazy position.

I know that we can overdo it, but as a general practice, do you think it's good for people in general, I guess, just to put themselves into a sticky situation that otherwise looks like a poor position, but over time they are preparing themselves for it. I think with the sentiment of what you're saying, I agree with you, yes. But there are certain biomechanical things to appreciate on top of that. So I think Ben's program does a good job of progressing people and regressing people as necessary. But let's say that, you know,

in order for the knee to bend optimally, there has to be some degree of what we call internal rotation of the tibia. So the shin needs actually rotate in while the femur rotates out against that. And it's not just like I said earlier, that hinge joint. So if you're treating the knee like a hinge joint and that's all you got, and you don't actually have the ability for that rotation to occur and that shifts fluid around in your knee, then you could try and shove your knee into a really going to feel that much better or it's not going to necessarily be prepared for deep knee flexion until you can get that rotation back at your tibia. Or maybe your foot needs to pronate more. It needs to be able to drop

to allow for that shin to go forward. So like you can work on this stuff all day long, but there are biomechanical prerequisites for these movements that need to be able to take place. It's like you're trying to fix your knee or something with the knee, but as you're pointing out, prerequisites for these movements that need to be able to take place. It's like you're trying to fix your knee or something with the knee. But as you're pointing out, there could be something in the foot. There could be something with the tibia.

The story is always like a lot bigger than we want to give it credit to. Yeah. And it's not necessarily that like you can't naturally improve those things with a program like the knees over toes approach. Like some people can do that stuff and their rotation will naturally improve. But for those that run that type of program and don't see the success they're looking for, it might be because there's just a box you haven't checked or you're able to check biomechanically in order for you to then get the successful outcomes with that type of a program. If that makes sense. Gotcha. Uh, how about myofascial release? Because a lot of the things that you've

been talking about have been movement based, which which does a lot, and breathing-based, right? What are your thoughts on myofascial release, smashing tissues, et cetera? I would group that in the same thing as stretching as for what I'm about to say. And it's all just opening unbelievably large amount of force to make a meaningful change. But what it can do is it can help downregulate tone. And we know that that's what it can do. So if I have someone that's got some issues, they're all tight and shit, whatever is going on, but I can do whatever. I don't care whether it's foam rolling, sauna, stretching statically, or just like taking a Theragun, whatever. My goal for these things is for them to be able to do something they enjoy that they feel like helps them, which will help downregulate tone within certain areas to give me a window of opportunity for something to be more successful. So if that involves

myofascial release, then that's great. But I don't want people to have the idea that they're actually changing the structure of their fascia because they're not with something like that. It's just, it's not what's happening. So use it if it helps you, but understand that you're going to get a very short window that will then help you educate better movement or better motion within a joint or better use of a muscle in a given joint action with that window. But it's going to go away at some point. So the way I generally like to go with things in this, like let's say I had tight hip flexors, for example, and I couldn't fully extend my hip without arching my back or whatever. So maybe I can do some release quote unquote of stuff

around this area. I can improve my ability to access hip extension, but then I actually have to train that hip extension. I have to be able to move into that position. It's the same thing with stretching. People just stretch stuff out, but then they don't actually educate their body what to do with that new space. And it's like, well, of course you're going to go back to what you were doing before. You didn't actually change anything about your movement or your posture. I love how you explain that because I remember years back, my traps have been tight in the past, right? I utilized some softer, they're called tune-up fitness balls we have in the gym,

smashed my traps and, like I'd use something to smash my traps and then I'd go and do work with the traps. Now I don't hold, I don't really hold a lot of tension anywhere in my body nowadays, but I can then create tension when I need to. Whereas in the past, I'd be holding tension in a lot of areas. And then when I'd go and try to smash those areas, it would hurt when I would smash them because I was very tense. So it helped me learn how to downregulate, relax those tissues, use those tissues in settings where they needed to be on. But when they need to be off, they can be off. So I'm not perpetually fucking walking around with traps up here and a lot of tightness

everywhere. So it's been very helpful in that sense. No, totally. I think there's a lot to be said for just learning what it feels like to relax a given area and then not have to rely on that area for stability. Maybe your traps were really tight because they were elevating you. So that way you could push yourself forward to control some sort of center of mass issue going on up here. But if you can learn to downregulate the tone and be like, oh, okay, well now all of a sudden I am in a position where I feel more stacked, more safe, more secure. My body intuitively knows these things. I think we just need to give the body an opportunity to figure it out because the body's very smart. I think if we give the body an opportunity to figure it out with the right

context, it's going to figure it out. And I think a lot of people treat their body like it's stupid and it needs to be just pushed into a given position. It was like, no, your body knows what it's doing. Like it's not in the position it's in for no reason. It's not just like giving you tight traps because it wants to give you tight traps. It's doing that because like, this is going to help me survive better in some way, shape or form. Yeah. I think sometimes it's like an inconvenient truth, you know, like myofascial release or having a body worker work on you or stretching. Those are all things you can immediately feel. Yeah, totally.

You can feel them right away. When someone says, well, you know, your lower trap is not firing properly and you need to train your pec and you got – it's like now I just gave you a bunch of homework. But I'm like, no, but it hurts right here, man. Like, fucking help me. Help me out. Don't give me a bunch of homework to do. So I think that sometimes it's a hard sell. It is a hard sell. And that that's the thing, like, you know, for me personally, I like to work with people that are motivated enough to like actually fix the root of their issue. Like I've had to fire clients before because they don't want to do the things that I'm going to tell them are actually going to make a difference.

And if you're the type of person where it's like you just want to get worked on and then you're going to reset tomorrow and you have to get another chiropractic adjustment in two days, then that's you. That's on you. You got to kind of come around enough to the point where it's like, okay, this isn't actually making a long-term change. And sometimes one chiropractic adjustment, you're good to go for months. And that's cool if that's the thing. I'm a fan of things that work. If it works, whatever.

But if it's not working, then you have to have the power within yourself to actually want to make a change. And no one can do that other than you. And so if someone wants to come in and they have that mindset of like, I just want to be worked on and that's it. I'm like, it's not going to work.

I wanted to get your take on this. This is from Human Garage and he's talking about digestion. So if Andrew can pull this clip up. Hey Gary. Why do you squat when you eat? Oh, very simple. When you squat when you eat, your digestive system is every breath you take is actually moving stuff from your stomach, helping your stomach turn and moving stuff through your digestive system.

Because when you squat, you can't breathe with your shoulders. You can only breathe with your diaphragm. And that is actually the only movement mechanism because you only have out of 10 organs, three of them, your heart, stomach and bladder have muscles. The rest of them require this movement. So by squatting, it forces the movement here. So I'm helping my food digest, process, and eliminate. I think there's some truth to that. Yeah. So when you are in a squatted position, you know, like how we talked about how a lot of people have rib flare, they're stuck out here. When you're in a squatted position, You are naturally going to put yourself in a ribs down diaphragm up position

instead of being in a diaphragm down rib flared position. And I think there's a lot to be said for that, for getting yourself to be in a better position for your organs to move and for your digestive system to function. The only thing I would disagree with is that you, he says you can't breathe with your shoulders and a squat. You absolutely can. Uh, I see it all the time and you can, if you don't have the capability to open up your back and be able to relax tone in there to allow you to be in that squat in the first place, you're going to get in that squat and be real

uncomfortable and start shrugging to breathe and using your neck. So it might be helpful for people to, as a prerequisite or a precursor to that, to do something to like get some flexion back and really open up that space and downregulate that tone. Cause you gotta be able to be in a squat comfortably in the first place, or just, you could be in a short seated position too, where your butt's on something very low to the ground and your knees are in towards your chest. So there could be something for that for sure. What do you think your niche is? Like, uh, who do you work with mainly when it comes to like particular sports or something like that? I work with, you know, at the end of the day, just humans. And I know that's such a cop-out answer, but it's that honest truth. Like I work with just humans in general because ultimately like humans are individual. Like we all have our little

intricacies of our different sports exercise, the way we sleep, the way we breathe, our hobbies, et cetera. But we all have a predictable general way that we're going to organize our body. Some people are shifted over to the left side. Most people are shifted over to the right side. Now, there are different twists that occur within our posture and our head and everything else. But at the end of the day, you're still a human being and there's only so many different ways that you can present in terms of compensation. The way that I like to make it very simple is I like to think about it like a Rubik's cube. Imagine you have a Rubik's cube and there's three layers. You can have your hips twisted to one direction, your torso twisted to one direction, your

head twisted to another direction. And there's different combinations of that, right? And so that's generally where most people are is some degree of twists in one direction or the other. And that can be all on one side or it can be, you know, all over the place. And so because of that, that will affect your movement and certain biases you have within the gait cycle, for example. So yeah, I got this video right here. That's the original compensatory pattern we were talking about at the beginning of this podcast.

But you're either shifted left, right in one of these areas or these different areas. And that has an effect on the rest of your movement capabilities. That's why posture is an expression of what you're capable of doing, but it's not necessarily reflective of pain because some people can be in that position and be totally fine. They could be totally fine for the rest of their life. Other people can slip into this for one day and their back totally goes out. As to why that happens, I have absolutely no idea because I think pain is so incredibly complex. But I do think that the more asymmetrical you are, the more

likely you are probably going to have a higher chance for injuries potentially. So I work with anyone because anyone is going to present with these different asymmetries, but the people that tend to click with what I do the best, just psychologically are people who understand they're asymmetrical or are asymmetrical athletes. So a lot of golfers, a lot of baseball players, uh, football players, honestly, too. And also basketball, like really a lot of those rotational athletes primarily. And then other athletes tend to follow suit after that. But the more asymmetrical you are, generally speaking, the better this stuff works. In actual training, like when somebody is actually, you know, going through a session,

is this something that you're like focused on or does the breathing and a lot of other things take care of it? I guess what I'm asking is like, are there specific exercises that you have people do that are like one arm or they're on one leg or things of that nature that you've seen really help improve? Because that, that individually looks like it was slanted over quite a bit and had some really massive improvements. Yeah, definitely. So there's a lot of different things you can do. But let me put it to you this way. My goal for people

is to be able to effectively shift into one side of their body and then get out of that side and go to the other side effectively. Now, if you have these different twists in your body that's showing that certain parts of your body can go to one side and then the other part of your body cannot go to that side. So what I want is synchronous ability to effectively shift into one side and then back into the other. That I've never met someone that can do that super well. That has a lot of pain. It's just not something that you see. The better mover you are, generally speaking, on a genuine level, the less issues you're probably going to have. So what I want to do is I want to give people the ability to access those positions. And I want people to have the ability to self-organize into those positions.

So if someone is unable for their hips to shift left, then I need to give them the space to shift left. Then I need to train them what it feels like to shift left. And then I need to give them the space to shift left. Then I need to train them what it feels like to shift left. And then I can incorporate that within the weight room. So there are specific corrective interventions we use, but also within the weight room itself, it's like, okay, if you struggle to shift into your left hip, maybe I'm going to give you some sort of left single leg deadlift. So that way you can learn what that feels like to hinge and shift into that hip and feel your foot working with that. If you're struggling to push out of your right side, for example, let's say you're shifted too far into your right hip, I might give you some sort of split squat variation where you're

forcing yourself to push out of that right side. And then you can integrate that with what your foot and the rest of your body is doing as well. So there's different ways you can go about it, but no matter what, my goal for you is to shift into one side, be able to genuinely stay there as necessary and be able to get out into the other side. I don't care if it's the left side or the right side. I don't care if you're twisted in one direction or the other, but my entire approach involves doing exactly that in an efficient way. So you're moving from Oregon to San Diego? I am. Moving your whole operation.

You have a gym in Oregon currently? I do, yeah. I have a gym there for the last three years now, I guess. And we're now moving down to Southern California because we want to be closer to the sun, but also we want to be more integrated with different types of practitioners there. My ultimate five-year vision is to have a facility where I have all different types of practitioners there.

And usually when someone says that, they're like, I want physical therapists, I want chiropractors, I want athletic trainers. I want that stuff too, but I want optometrists. I want podiatrists. I actually want a dentist that can make those types of appliances for the people with sleep apnea. Absolutely. I literally want all of that underneath one roof. I want to be the first person in the world to do something like that. So that's hopefully coming in the next few years. And my vision beyond that is to then help personal trainers, strength coaches, all different types of people be able to identify these total body compensatory patterns and be able to be like, okay, this is your issue. I might not be legally qualified to help you with this,

but I know someone who is, and let me send you their way and be able to effectively develop that network. Because, you know, I'm sure as people who have been listening to this realize the body's complex. There's a lot that goes on. But if you have a lot of issues, oftentimes you need multiple disciplines to really get 100%. But in some cases, all you need to be able to do is just learn to shift a little bit better. For most people, the takeaway points are a lot of people are stuck in, in some pattern of an orientation where they're locked up and they can't effectively rotate just by simply improving your breathing, improving the ability for you to shift side to side, loosening up your ribs a little bit, doing some unilateral lifts in

the weight room. Like it'll go so far. And I have a ton of information on that on my YouTube channel, my Instagram, it's all free. There's a lot of good stuff there and it doesn't take much to see a pretty profound difference. Is it going to be a lot easier to help people you think with the sunlight right there on the beach? Yeah, I sure hope so.

You have any thoughts on red light? Not a ton. I'm not too hip into the red light stuff, honestly. So I don't want to like talk out of my ass necessarily, but I've heard anecdotally some good stuff. What about cold? Cold? I've seen some mixed stuff on cold, honestly.

I saw a really interesting post the other day that the cold exposure thing is actually a bunch of bs but i don't know if that he cited his research extremely thoroughly i want to see his name on instagram is no bs physio i'm like i'll show you do you know him i i think i'm yeah if it's who i'm thinking about i think i've seen his stuff before he's uh he's no bs he's a funny guy yeah yeah yeah but he uh is honestly like kind of hard to refute i was i was i was reading i was like oh shit like this is okay but basically like his his argument was that like you know with the dopamine exposure and everything uh there there's some research that

suggests that just simply standing up and and staying in place increases your dopamine like three times more than the cold exposure does. So what he was saying is that like, there's a bunch of different stuff that increases your dopamine to a dramatically high level. And cold exposure doesn't actually do that to a very meaningful duration for a long enough period of time. And also there's the idea of like, okay, well, your metabolism will increase. Well, what they did was they looked at rat studies and human studies and the

people like Huberman that are talking about the, the different metabolism benefits, like conveniently chose to overlook some of the human studies. And what some of those studies actually suggest is that you burn on average about like two calories more per day with the cold exposure stuff relative to just a resting metabolic rate. And when you're exposed to cold, you actually are more hungry. So you just end up eating more. If you just give people the option of like, here's some food after cold exposure,

you end up eating more because your body is hungry for whatever mechanism I don't fully understand. Is this supposed to frustrate me? Yes, it is. Is the end and now I'm gonna like, okay. I mean, I don't like to bring it up to people because I don't want to be like a contrarian and like just talk about stuff like that

and just piss people off. But I thought it was a- I think it's great. Pretty enlightening. It's great. We need to learn, you know? Yeah. I'll send you guys the post.

It's pretty alarming. Well, congratulations on your gym and your new spot. And I'll have to come visit you when you're in San Diego sometime. That'd be awesome, man. I'd love to have you there. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.

Bye.