Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1262: Why Fitness Assessments are Important

Episode Date: April 2, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss why fitness assessments are important if you want to reach your fitness goals, how to perform them and exercises to fix less than ideal movement patterns. The value of a good assessment to reinforce better movement patterns. (3:02) The importance of having a specific goal and direction you want to go. (6:27) Why you must honestly assess your fitness level. (14:23) The significance of addressing the areas of pain in your body to create better recruitment patterns. (17:20) Why we get chronic pain as we get older. (23:42) The extreme value of MAPS Prime/Prime Pro for the masses. (27:21) Mind Pump’s 3 favorite movement assessments that address the entire body, how to perform them and exercises to fix less than ideal movement patterns. (29:15) #1 – Wall Test. (29:34) #2 – Windmill Test. (47:19) #3 – Squat test. (57:44) Related Links/Products Mentioned April Promotion: MAPS Prime/Prime Pro ½ off! **Code “PRIME50” at checkout** Mind Pump 1237: Why Most Group Exercise Classes Suck Mind Pump TV - YouTube The Wall Test | Mind Pump TV How to Fix Rounded Shoulders (GONE IN 4 STEPS!) | MIND PUMP Day 23: Mobility Workout + Exercises - 30 Days of Training (MIND PUMP) Squat Like a Pro!- 10 Primers to Improve Squat Form & Depth- Handcuffs with Rotation (Video 2 of 10) Correcting Upper Cross Syndrome to Improve Posture & Health-- Prone Cobra The Windmill Test – Mind Pump TV Squat Like a Pro!- 10 Primers to Improve Squat Form - Lizard with Rotation (Video 3 of 10) How to Fix Anterior Pelvic Tilt (BECAUSE SIT HAPPENS!) | MIND PUMP Try This For Managing Acute And Chronic Back Pain - (FREE BACK PAIN GUIDE) Day 25: Mobility Stretches - 30 Days of Training (MIND PUMP) Day 6: Mobility Exercises - 30 Days of Training (MIND PUMP) Squat Test – Adam's Post on Instagram Combat Stretch – Mind Pump TV Activate Your Glutes & Accelerate Butt Development with Butterfly Floor Bridges Adam Schafer's DEEP Squat Mobility Secrets | Behind The Scenes at Mind Pump Mind Pump Free Resources 

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about fitness assessments and why they are essential for everyone. Okay, an assessment is what's gonna give you your map to get to your goal. So you know where to go, where not to go, what exercises to apply and which ones to avoid. Without a good assessment, you not only will not progress

nearly as fast as you could, but your risk of injury goes through the roof. So in this episode, we talk about assessments, we talk about our favorite three movement assessments that address the entire body. We talk about exercises that you can do to fix your movement patterns. If you can't do these assessments, by the way, because we talk a lot about specific exercises and movements in this episode, we are making sure to attach links to videos for most of these movements and exercises in our show notes, which you can get at mindpumppodcast.com.

So when you go to mindpumppodcast.com, it lists all of our episodes, and it lists show notes so you can watch videos. So if you here is talking about, for example, in the episode, we talk about what's called a windmill test, and we explain it and you're thinking, I don't really need to see what that looks like. Go to the MindPump Podcast.com website, look at the show notes, there'll be a link where you'll see one of us explaining it on video on how to do it. Now if you're a trainer, you definitely should pay attention to this episode. If you're not doing an assessment for your clients, you're doing them a huge disservice.

In fact, if you're going virtual right now, like most trainers are because of this lockdown, you definitely should get your hands on the programs, maps prime and prime pro to really help your clients out. And of course, anybody listening right now, those two programs can really help you, not only self-assess yourself, but correct muscle

imbalances and really set your body in the right motion for better results. Here's the best part, both maps prime and prime pro right now are 50% off. These are two of our most valuable programs for everybody. We think everybody should go through these two programs, of your goals regardless of your fitness level regardless of which maps program are following or whatever other workout you're following everyone should go through these two correctional exercise programs and if you're a trainer you for sure should own these programs because then you can help your clients with them again both programs 50% off. Here's how you get the

discount. Go to maps fitnessproducts.com that's M-A-P-S fitnessproducts.com and use the code prime 50 that's P-R-I-M-E 50 no space for the discount. I actually think this is a really cool topic because we discussed this off-air a long time ago when we first created all the programs and I remember Sal had already had maps and a ballic and then performance came and then aesthetic and when we did that one of the things that we all agreed on is that in a perfect world, if we were to create them in the order that we think they're most appropriate, maps prime what it came before, all of those.

And the reason why that is is when you think about the very first time you meet a client or a potential client, the very first thing I do is not take them through a MAP Santa Ballack workout or a MAP's performance aesthetic type of workout. I do a full assessment on them. You have to. It would be like taking your car to the mechanic and you never tell them what's wrong with the car and he never does it like taking parts away. Yeah, you just drive it up and be like, all right, I'll be back tomorrow, you know, figure it out. It's impossible. And one of the most valuable things that a trainer can provide a client, a potential client,

is a good assessment, is the ability to assess the individual, the person, not just through movement, but also through questionnaire, to help figure out what the best approach is because the medicine has to be right for the person. So if you're going in and you have specific goals and time frames and how your body moves and hurts and a lot of stuff, if we consider all of that, we can create or direct you towards a program or a way you should work out that will give you phenomenal results. If we don't do that, we're shooting in the dark

and at absolute best, you'll get some progress, at worst, you'll hurt yourself or cause yourself to progress. Not only that, and I love that you've used the car analogy of bringing it to the mechanic because how many times do you guys remember this, where a client comes in and either one, has no idea really what their goals are, what they wanna do,

or two, have no clue of what they should be addressing first before they ever even consider trying to lose 30 pounds or building 15 pounds of muscle. So I remember the first part of my job with a client was convincing them of what they need to do first and the analogy of the car mechanic. It's like someone coming in, like someone like me who knows nothing about his car at all

and trying to tell the mechanic what to do. Like how often did you get that? Like how often did you get a client being like, this is what I want you to do. I don't wanna do this, I wanna do that. And you're like, and we're in a service-based business. So you're kinda caught in this dichotomy of, okay, what the client wants and what I know is best for them.

Like how do I, yeah, well, I just think of it like this, like they come in and they want their car just faster. They want a bigger engine, they wanna get, you know, super fast and powerful. And, you know, the mechanics sitting there will like assessing the car and seeing potential hazards, potential things that are immediately stand out that need repair or need to be reinforced in order to then even drop into new engine and to super it up more so that it's even safe on the road.

Well, let's go back to what you said about goals, because I think a lot of people listening are like, I don't know what my goals are. You would be surprised that you might not have a specified goal because the vast majority of the people that I'll ask, what is your goal when they would come to hire me as a trainer? The vast majority would say what?

Lose weight. Yeah, no, or getting better shape. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just want to get better shape. You know, I just want to lose weight. Well, how much? I don't know, you know, 2015, 20, you need to have a specific goal and really understand the direction

you want to go. What does better shape mean to you? Okay, I want to lose how much weight, I want to be how much stronger, how do I wanna feel when I move? This is very, very important because if you don't have a specific goal and you just think, I just wanna improve my shape,

how you apply your workout is gonna be less specific, it's gonna be less effective. Well, not only that, to Justin's point, I love that you made the point of fixing or reinforcing. A lot of people come in and they just want more horsepower. I think of that as like, oh, I just want to build more muscle, right? Or I want to lose a certain amount of body fat or weight. But your body's not reinforced to handle what you want to do to it quite yet. And a lot of times, that's the case. A lot of times, especially since a majority of clientele

that I think most of us trained would be, you know, north of 35 years old, normally, deconditioned and looking to get into better shape. And, you know, part of that process is making sure that we reinforce their joints and make sure their body is moving and operating properly before I slap a 400 horsepower engine on it, right? Before I decide, let's rev this thing up

and see how fast it'll go and see how much weight we can lose or how much muscle we can build. I need to first make sure that it's working properly and running properly and reinforced properly to handle what you want. It is just the order of operation. That's all it is. I mean, if you want a really nice paint job on your car, there's got to be a base coat or whatever primer that they put on it first. Otherwise, it won't look good. If you want to lose weight or build muscle, get stronger.

You may be thinking, well, I don't want to do all that correctional exercise stuff. I just want to get to the muscle building of fat burning. Let's just get there. But you won't. So that's the thing. You won't get there because you didn't correct these issues because you didn't establish good movement patterns.

So it's not taking time away from you getting your goal. It's not like you're going to get your goal slower because you're focused on the proper order of operation. You'll actually get there faster. If you if you ignore those things, not only will you get to your goal slower, you may never get to your goal or you may hurt yourself. So it's not it's something that we're saying that oh, you know, yeah, you could do it this way, but this is a better way to do it. Well, we're saying is this is the way to do it. And that's why an assessment, one of these questions. Well, you get there and it's very short-lived, which is, I think, is probably the most common

what I see with a lot of these fitness plans and diet plans out there. They're really just trying to cater to people coming in like exactly what they want. And, you know, a lot of trainers fall into this sort of mentality of like, I want to, I mean, the service business, so I want to produce something as quick as possible for these people because this is what they expect. And to be a better trainer, to evolve as a trainer is to then account for that, but now show them the proper way to do it. Well, this is also one of my biggest knocks on the group training because most group training

classes don't offer some sort of an assessment. Yeah, they can't. Yeah, they can't. It's a class full of 30 people that are all different body types, all different goals, all different age, all different fitness levels, all getting thrown into one class and, you know, running on a treadmill, rowing, and then doing some lifting weights. And there's a small percentage of those people that are that was perfect for them at their point in their fitness career and it worked out for them.

There's a much greater percentage of people like Justin is saying that get temporary results that because yeah, they're expending a bunch of calories and their goal may have been to lose weight that they end up losing weight. But you know what I mean? The number one reasons why someone cancels like an F-45 in orange theory or CrossFit classes, right? It's injury. And whether that is a major injury,

when I say injury too, a lot of times people think, oh, I've never heard of someone breaking an ankle or just breaking a hip and in one of these classes, it's not normally chronic pain. Yeah, stuff just starts to bother. Oh, I can't do that anymore. Should I do this? Shoulder hurts when I do this.

And how much shoulder's been bothering? Yeah, like good. Shins, blends, shoulder issues, frozen shoulder going on. You've got hip problems, percitis. Like, you start to see a lot of this. And what that is, that's an example of somebody who tried to build all this horsepower,

push this vehicle without reinforcing all the other things to support that. And that's one of the biggest problems I have with the group training because they don't do that. Now, that's me picking on group training. You see this too in the virtual world of coaching and training. You see a lot of coaches that will, you know, here's your workout, and it's like, okay, wait a second. You know, is that person ready for that workout yet,

or is that the most ideal workout for them, or could we do something that's less and still achieve just as much results, or do something even better? Yeah, fitness assessment is your map, and you're trying to get to a specific destination. having a good map is gonna get you there faster, you're gonna know which routes to take, the which routes not to take, and a map is very individualized. It's for you, that's what the assessment does. So some of the questions you wanna ask yourself,

well the first one we talked about was what your goal is, what is your specific goal? By the way, the more specific you are with this, the better. Okay, so try to keep it specific in that super general. So what does it mean to you to get in shape? Okay, you wanna lose weight? How much weight are we looking to lose? Okay, you wanna build some muscle?

How much muscle do you wanna gain? So get very specific there. And even more, right? So sometimes you, when people say a generic goal to me, like, oh, I want to lose 20 pounds at them, a lot of times I'll look back at them and I see the scale. And I'm like, you know, they don't even realize that I could keep their weight exactly the same

and completely alter their way their body looks. So understanding that is even key. Right. So I want to look leaner. Right. I want to be leaner. Right. Is it really about the scale or is it you want to look a certain way that you don't look right now and you want to achieve that because understanding that's important. Understanding that maybe you're 140 pounds right now and you're a 55 female and you're

like, man, I think I look way better when I was 115 when I was in high school or well, that was your high school weight when you were a kid still. I could take your 140 and you can have an incredible physique. And that that seems crazy to you right now because you think, oh my god, I feel so sloppy or I don't like the way I look. But that's because you have a high body fat percentage. A majority of your weight is right now is is more body fat than it is lean tissue. And if we actually build a lot of lean mass on you while we also lose body fat, you may stay about the same on this kit.

But you look way different. Right. Yeah, when people don't realize, it's like specificity is key when it comes to training your body. The more specific you can be about those types of adaptations or things that skills are losing very specific amount of weight or body fat percentage or whatever it is, the more specific you can hone in on that, the quicker you're

going to get there. The more general training is going to look, it's going to take a lot longer for you to produce a result. Right. So another good question would be, what is your current level of fitness? This is a very important part to be honest here with yourself. How fit am I right now?

If you're not doing anything, then you have a very low fitness level. Now, why is this important? It's important because, again, you want to apply the right amount of exercise. So if I'm going from no activity at all, or barely any activity at all, then I don't want to jump into a four, five day

week workout program. It's just inappropriate. It's not going to produce better results if anything, it'll produce worse results. So you want to be very, very honest with your current fitness level because in order to get your body to change, you just got to do a little bit more than that. That step ladder approach is what will keep your body continuously progressing.

It also helps you avoid plateaus. Plateaus are one of the number one reasons why people stop working out. Besides injury, people stop when they get their initial burst of results and then nothing else happens. Now I'm bustusting my butt work. It's insanely frustrating. Super frustrating, but now I've got nothing to show for it. I've been doing it until first two months were great.

The last six months, I've stayed the same. I can't work out more than I've been doing. If you want to avoid that, you want to apply the appropriate level of intensity and exercise and that's based on your current honest fitness level. And I think what goes with fitness level really well too is also your current commitment level

to how much you can train right now. That's a, you gotta be real honest with yourself. And normally I tell people, whatever you honestly believe you should commit to, you should start with a little less than that even at the beginning to again to your point. So we don't hit a plateau.

Last thing you wanna do is someone say like, okay, I can commit to four days a week of training. I mean, if I get the sitter on this day and I do this, like, I could make this happen. It'll be tough, but I can make this happen. Like, I don't wanna start that person at four days a week. I'm going two or three. Right. You don't wanna stretch too far out. You wanna do something that you literally can do right now.

You wanna, and add to that. So when you say to yourself, how many days a week can I commit to exercise, add the following to that sentence forever? Okay, so how many days a week can I commit to exercise forever? That changes it quite a bit. I used to love doing that. I would ask somebody,

how many days a week do you think you commit to exercise? Oh, you know, and they're walking in, motivated, you know, they're just signed up at the jammer, whatever. Oh, I could do four days a week. No, no, no, no, no. How much do you think you can do for the rest of your life? Oh, what do you mean?

Well, something realistic that you know, you can always do no matter what. The number always changes. Oh, I don't know, two days a week. Well, guess what we're gonna design your routine around? Two days a week. I wanna design a routine around what you think you can be consistent with for the rest of your life because a consistent program done two days a week for years and years and years

going to be far more effective than an inconsistent program that you do five days a week because you were super motivated at one point and then afterwards life hits you in the face. And to that point, it's also important to understand any sort of aches or pains or other things that you have going on because when you build a routine that's around a generic goal, like I just wanna build muscle, there's the order of exercise and okay, these are the best compound lifts to build muscles.

But then as soon as someone throws in a new variable, like, oh, I have bursitis in my hips or I have frozen shoulder or I have low back pain. Even though they still have the same goal, as the person who said I wanna build muscle, they're programming now changes. That same person, those two same people, we both wanna build 15 pounds of muscle,

but this person was more specific with their goals. It will also have low back pain, and I wanna take care of that. It's just got a lot more complicated. It did. And not only did it get more complicated, it also changed how I'm going to prescribe exercises. Yeah. Because I can still build that person muscle, but along the way, I'm also going to address

why they have chronic pain in their low back. Now, it's important when you talk about what areas of your body hurt and that you, because sometimes people don't count the areas that hurt that I've hurt for years. I would get this all the time. Because they're used to it. Yeah, so this is how you wanna do it. So I'd have to, I learned this through years,

I'd have to change the way I'd ask questions. So when my early days of personal training, I would say, do you have any areas of pain in your body and they'd say no, they're cool, I'd go to the next question. But then as I train them, they'd be like, oh no, no, I can't, that hurts my shoulder. I got a bad shoulder.

And I remember thinking like, why don't you tell me when I first asked you? So I started to change it. So this is what I would say. It's okay, do you have any areas of pain? They'd say, no, let's say, does your neck ever bother you? Does your shoulders ever bother you? What about when you reach behind your back?

Does that ever bother, okay, do your elbows, and I would go, joint by joint by joint. It's examples. You literally do have to provide those examples because it's it is. It's not one of those things that you immediately think about unless you're doing the movement currently. Yeah. So someone would say, you know, my low back doesn't hurt me. And then you'd say, well, what if you sit a long time on a plane? Oh, yeah. My back gets really stiff. But you know, that's just when I sit down for a while. Like okay, but that's important to know. That is an area of pain.

So that's how you wanna identify the areas of hurt on your body. It's not just the obvious ones, it's also the chronic ones where, yeah, my knees hurt when I sit down for too long or my shoulder does hurt if I'm washing dishes for a little, those are all things you wanna pay attention to because that will dictate your workout.

That's the real value in the personal trainer, right? The real value is in that. Anybody can Google and look up good exercises for strength building or fat loss. The real value in the personal trainer is their ability to assess your body like that and address all these nagging, chronic pain that you've probably been dealing with for many years. And how many times you guys have this too where a client tells you that, you know, it's because they're getting old. I mean, I was literally on the phone with my uncle yesterday, who by the way works for

the company. And it's crazy how this, it just, it reminds me of how much we have to keep repeating this message that I've got somebody who works for the company understands everything that we're doing, yet we'll say things to me like he did on the phone yesterday about his hips and he's just like, yeah, you know, my hips are just, they're shot, they're done, they know, I'm getting old, you know,

it's part of getting, you'll see when you get older. It's like, you know, only times I've heard that, I've been hearing that since I was 20 years old. You're still. You're still. You'll see, yeah, when you get older, you'll see, you get, let me tell you, I know when I got older, when I got in my 30s, you're right.

My hips got brositis, I had low back pain, but it wasn't, because I got old. It was because in my early 20s, when I thought I was invincible, I wasn't addressing any of my poor movement patterns. I wasn't going joint by joint and looking at if I had any dysfunction, if I had limited range of motion, and I wasn't going joint by joint and looking at if I had any dysfunction, if I had limited range of motion, and I wasn't addressing it. Therefore, I started to get

these aches and pains in my thirties. But luckily, I'm wise enough to know that it isn't because I'm 30 or 35 or 40 that I feel that it's because I didn't address something in my twenties because I didn't feel it then and now I feel it. And it's not because you're old. It's because you're not addressing something that you want to address first before you even think about. And you may think of those examples right now personally of certain types of movements and things that may stick out right away.

Like, oh my God, wait a minute. No, that's gonna, I'm gonna feel that my wrist. Oh no, I'm gonna feel that my shoulder. So you start just, just naturally avoiding certain types of movements. And then what that does over time, is it your body just deprioritizes those types of movements. And now I can't do those movements. No, that's a great point. So it's not so much that you're gonna identify areas of your body that hurt. So you can avoid certain exercises. although that's a part of it at first. The idea is to identify those areas of pain

and get them to not hurt anymore, so that you can do lots of exercises. So, again, talking about the back, like, oh, my back gets a little tight when I sit for a long time. Okay, so initially, we're gonna avoid certain exercises, but we're gonna address why that happens in the first place. It's create better movement patterns so that your back doesn't bother anymore so that you can do all these other exercises.

Most pain that people have comes from poor movement patterns. A small percentage of people's pain actually comes from acute injury. So, unless if your knee hurts because you literally smashed it yesterday or hurt your knee, that's different. But if your knee hurts, and it's it yesterday or hurt your knee, that's different But if your knee hurts and it's just been hurting and sometimes it bothers me when I do certain things Well, that's chronic pain and that's usually the result of poor movement patterns So imagine imagine this for a second You've got poor movement patterns that kind of caused knee pain every once in a while when you do certain things What do you think's gonna happen to your knee if you just go into a workout without addressing that?

It's going to get much worse. And then what ends up happening, you have to stop your workout. You can't do what you were doing before because you've exacerbated a problem because you never corrected it in the first place. And that's where most of the value comes from. An assessment is identifying these parts of your body,

getting yourself ready. By the way, while you're doing this, it's still, you're still working out, you're still moving, your body's still adapting, you're probably still building a little bit of muscle, but you're preparing and prepping your body so that as you start to move forward, things accelerate and you get really, really good result.

Well, we should simplify too. Why is it that we get chronic pain as we get older? Like, why is it that we, you know, when I used to sit down as a kid at school all day long, my low back didn't bother me, but now when I sit down in a car or time, right? What, what, what is it though? It's what we need to understand or what people need to understand that are listening, and trying to figure out, you know, why is it that my knee all sudden hurts all the time or why do my hips bother me all the time? Is the entire body is supposed to work and communicate together. And when we're young and spry and and and playing and moving in all different planes all

the time, we do a really good job of staying very well connected and utilizing the joints through its full range of motion. And as time goes on, like Justin was alluding to earlier, if you don't use it, you lose it. And so when you stop utilizing a joint and moving it through its full range of motion, it says, okay, we don't need to do that anymore. But then you still got to go through your normal daily activity. So what ends up happening is the body starts to figure out how to overcompensate, to keep you still doing the things that you have to do, but because you're not training the body

and strengthening it to work and speak together, it starts to overcompensate in certain areas. That overcompensation is what we call like overactive muscles or tight muscles, and that tightness or overactiveness ends up pulling and stressing the joints and ligaments, and that's where the chronic pain comes from. Well, so, you know, when you look at joints and how they move, there's an ideal way that they can move, and then there's a less than ideal way that they can move.

And you can get away with less than ideal for a while, but over time, it starts to overcome your body's ability to heal from the poor movement and you start to cause problems. This is why, you know, if you start moving, you know, poorly now and you're in your 20s, it might take five or six years of just basic walking and moving, but eventually you'll start to develop problems. By the way, usually it happens a little sooner than that, but over time you start to cause problems. So if you think of like a like a sliding glass door, it it's on a track, right, and it slides on the track, if it's off the track just a little bit, it'll still open in close, but over time starts to chew up that track, it starts to cause problems. And then what are you going to replace the door with that ever fixing the fact that it doesn't

track probably, you're going to cause that track to get chewed up again. So this is what happens to the body. The body does this over time. So if you don't correct problems and set yourself up well before you get into your workouts and you just get into your workouts, the odds that you're gonna have to modify, modify, modify, and then eventually eliminate exercises. The odds that you may even have to stop working out

are significantly higher. Even if you don may even have to stop working out are significantly higher. Even if you don't ever have to do all that, we know that good movement produces better results than poor movement, even if there's no pain. So a good squat, even if there's, you know, a great squat is gonna give you better leg gains, better strength gains, better muscle development in your quads, hamstrings and glutes,

than a bad squat, even if both of them don't produce that pain. Better movement, you're gonna be able to recruit more muscle fibers. I mean, and that's, talk about maximizing your time and efficiency, that's what we all want out of these workouts. We want to do things as specific as possible in order to get a result that we want and not just waste our time.

Nobody wants to be in their waste in their time and adding more problems to what you already had pre-existing. So this is such an important thing to consider when coming back in and then wanting to then change your body the correct way. Well, not only do I think that this is one of the most valuable things that a trainer can provide for you, this was also one of the most valuable things that a trainer can provide for you?

This was also one of my favorite things that brought the three of us together. To this day, I think all of us, equally, for sure, I am most proud of the Maps Prime program because of this, because we all value this part, the assessment portion of training more than anything else that we've ever created or we've ever talked about on the podcast. And the idea of, okay, how do we take our years of experience and what I can give to somebody in person. When I have a person for hours on hours day after day and see the way they move and then change my programming based off of that and address that to help that person, how

do I take that knowledge and then put it in a digital form to help the masses and then how did the three of us all collaborate on that and that really was the birth of Maps Prime, which is truly an assessment. It's an assessment that everybody should go through before they get into any sort of routine. And the way that we simplified it for the masses, not just for trainers and coaches to utilize, but for the average Jaina Joe to be able to utilize and help themselves out, was we agreed what we thought were three of the most important movements that we would need to see

to really be able to start to point that person in the right direction. Right, and this is very basic, if you can do these movements perfectly without lots of struggle, without pain, you can complete them well, then you're good. If you can't, then we'll give you a list of exercises that you can practice so that you can do those tests.

And generally speaking, of course, it gets much more, you know, individualized as you want to work on an individual basis. But generally speaking, if you could do the following three things really well, then you're probably for the most part going to be okay when you do, you know, when you go into your workouts. The first test that we did that we put in there is called the wall test. By the way, if you want really detailed explanation of how to do some of the stuff we're going to talk about, you can go on our YouTube channel, search for these things,

or if you go on our Mind Pump Media website in the show notes for the podcast. So click on the link. They should all be links in the show notes after this. Yeah, you'll be able to click on it and actually watch us kind of break down how to do it. But we'll explain it right now on the podcast. A wall test really is looking at mostly the upper body. Okay, we're looking at the upper body, although there's a little bit of the lumbar spine in there,

but they know the lower back, but we're looking at the upper body, and we're looking at your ability to move through, move your shoulders through a full range of motion, and if you're able to hold yourself and stabilize yourself in really good posture. Yeah, this is mostly cervical spine, thoracic spine, so mid back, neck and shoulders and your ability

to move properly in those areas. So basically the upper, from the chest above, are all the areas that we're looking at. And the reason why the wall slide, the wall test. The wall test wall slide was chosen by the three of us was because it really points out the most common offenders. Like when we look at all the clients that we've trained,

I would say at least 80% of those people suffer from some level of upper cross syndrome. This is desk jobs. This is like just something you see every day in the workforce, you see in schools. It's just we have sort of set everything up. So we're always sort of hunched forward and we're writing in front of us and we're looking in front of us

and we're leaning forward constantly. And so just the patterns of that alone creates these types of compensations that we're trying to address with a specific test. Yeah, your body literally molds itself to what you do all day long. You guys ever look at pictures, every see those old pictures of from Japan

when they used to do foot binding. And then they would take the foot binding off to see what the foot look like. Have you ever seen that? Yes. So was it for China? Was it China or Japan? China.

Okay, so China. So they showed these, if you can look these up online, but if you're a little queasy, I would suggest you don't, but they would bind these girls' feet when they were really young to keep them really small. And then there's pictures of what the foot would look like when they take the binding off. And the whole foot was folded underneath

with the toes underneath, because the body starts to shape itself through these outside forces. And so, you know, if you sit down a lot, well, first off, you're normal. If you live in modern society, you probably sit down a lot. You probably have a desk job,

you're on your phone or computer. And so your body kind of molds itself that way. So when it's up to happening, is your head starts to jet forward. You get what's called forward head. So you lose that tall neck posture. Your shoulders start to round. Okay, this is where the shoulders kind of come forward. That's a part of your body molding itself to the way you're working and sitting all

the time. Now that can cause problems when you go to work out. When I go to do certain exercises, the risk of shoulder pain or neck tightness, if you think you have a tight neck now, it's gonna get way worse if you don't correct this problem when you go to your work out. If it's forward and you're straining,

oh man, the pain will be almost immediate. Well, let's just talk about the big five, right? The big five movements that we always talk about the big five, right? The big five movements that we always talk about that are so important. And when you look at like overhead press and bench press, which is staples in almost every muscle building fat loss program, and if you have excessive forward shoulder

and forward head, you're looking for a potential injury that's going to happen. And it's a big problem. Or at the bare minimum, aches and pains that are going to come from that if you big problem. Or at the bare minimum aches and pains that are going to come from that if you don't address this. Right, right. And you know, by the way, neck tension and tightness

is a nice easy signal to know that this may be a problem. And the reason why you get that tightness is there's muscles in the neck area that start to compensate to try to stabilize this poor posture. So if you get tension in your neck, you're like, oh, why am I so tight? You know, you don't even work out.

You just sit down in front of a desk and you get this tightness. You probably have some of these what are called posture deviations. Okay, so let's talk about the wall test and how to perform this. Again, we have the video linked in the show notes but we'll try to explain it on the podcast,

the best that we can. So you wanna use a wall because that's feedback. You want a nice straight wall that you could lean up against. You want to place your body up against, stand up against the wall. You want your butt to touch the wall. You want your shoulders to touch the wall. You want your back to be relatively flat. You don't have a huge arch in your low back.

You should be able to probably press against your hand if you were to slide it under your low back. So you don't wanna have this super strong, butt sticking out type of arch. And then here's the important part to start with. You want the back of your head, there's a small, at the base of your skull, you'll feel, if you feel it around right now

under your hair. There's a small nodule that you'll'll feel I can't remember the name of it But we all have it that's the part you want to be touching the wall while your butt And upper back and shoulders are touching the wall in order to produce that you do have to look pretty silly I mean you have to like pull your chin in so you're basically performing the double chin I'm gonna say every time I smile. Yeah fat face. Yeah, you're gonna have fat. If you're doing this right, you'll have fat face, right? That's it.

Most people are gonna have, everybody, and this is what's, why this is so important is that, almost everybody has this. Yeah, but yeah, I don't feel bad, by the way. Most people will fail this. You're gonna fail, I haven't even given you the test part yet. I know, beginning of the position.

Which, I would say probably a good 30% of you can't even do that. I bet you about 30% listening right now can't even get the nodule of their head up against the wall without overarching their back or taking another common one too, just to get the shoulders to touch a lot of times. You really have to excessively arch the lower back. And so a lot of times, and this is why we do try to then press our lower back into the wall by drawing in your stomach and squeezing your core. So you actually lose that connectivity in your core, which is vital, especially if you're pressing

anything overhead, we wanna make sure that our spine is supported. So if you start to arch excessively, you have this rib flare, which your ribs start to kind of come up and it's very visible, that's something that we need to correct. Yeah, if you start to feel shearing in your low back, like, oh, I'm arching too hard,

then okay, you're failing the movement. You're not able to produce this movement. Or even what Justin says, like our test in prime, we actually take a stick. Yeah, the hold it in position. And you actually hold the stick there. So you have to maintain core stability and the pressing of the low back while also tucking the chin.

And you're right, probably 30% of the people listening right now. Can't even do that. Can't even keep their back flat and tuck their chin. And here's a deal. One, like Sal said, don't beat yourself up. We can't do it. A lot of people won't be able to do this.

But that's your, that right there is a flag that you want to address this. And we'll give you exercises that'll be good that you should focus on if you can't do this test. Well, that's one right there in itself, chin tucks. Yes. Oh, just just the chin tucks. If you're somebody right now who that is challenging, like you, we can't even, we

have even got to the wall test part that Sal is going to keep going on. And it's already hard for you to flatten the back and tuck your chin against the wall. That's an exercise. Just practice that. That's an exercise. I would take the clients that I had that were in this case. I would have them press their back,

flatten against the wall, and then we would tuck their chin, and they would press hard with their chin tucked for five seconds, hold, breathe, then release, do it again for five seconds, hold, release. And I do that for about five to 10 times. I practice. And you can regress this a little bit

by kind of taking a towel or a little yoga block or something then to kind of smash into the wall and then slowly kind of reduce the size of what that object is until now I have the ability to bring my head on. By the way, this gets so bad in middle-aged individuals that when I would train a client who was in their late 30s, up to mid 40s or older, and I'd have them lay flat

on the floor. Their head getting tested ground. I would have to put towels under their head, because otherwise they would let's like they were looking behind them, because they'd lay flat and then their head was so far off the floor that in order for them to put their head back, they'd have to look way back and it was super uncomfortable.

So I mean, if that's you, you've got a really bad forward head, but it can get corrected, you can have it. And what you have to understand why this is so important is that if you can't do simple movements like this, you're still going about your day. Your body is then overcompensating to do things. So then like, you know, you saw me, the comment of you looking, so if you go to turn to the ride or turn to look to the left, your body now has to kind of tweak itself to do that, to still be able to get that to rotate your shoulders with you.

Right. Because you've now lost that mobility in your cervical spine to be able to do that. That's why this is so important. And even if it's not causing tension headaches right now or causing neck pain or shoulder pain now, it eventually will. And it won't be because you're old. It's because you didn't address it.

Yeah, well, you know what's funny is a lot of people don't even realize how bad they feel until they correct it. Right, you know, and they're like, oh my, I didn't realize just how. Oh, it's liberating. Heavy my head felt until I was able to fix this posture. Okay, so back to the wall test.

So you're up against the wall, the nodule of your skull up against the wall, shoulders up against the wall, your butt is up against the wall, you're not overarching, so that's nice and tight, you're not flaring your ribs. Now what you're gonna do is you're gonna take your arms and you're gonna bend your elbows and place them up against the wall like you're putting your hands up.

Okay, like a police officer tells you to put your hands up. But your elbows are bent, okay, about 90 degrees. Now you want your whole arm touching the wall. You want your elbows to touch the wall and you want the full back of your wrist and hand to touch the wall. Now a lot of you here aren't even able to do that. You're gonna get into this position and you're gonna have to bend your wrist back just to touch the wall. Now a lot of you here aren't even able to do that. You're gonna get into this position

and you're gonna have to like bend your wrist back just to touch the wall. Fingers can touch, but yeah, your wrists are nowhere near the wall. And you want everything flat, helping us the wall. While holding the original position that we talked about before. And very common in this, so this is really common. This is a challenge for me.

And what you'll see a lot of times is one side worse than the other. So sometimes somebody will be able to get their hand flat against the wall on one side, but not the other side. So that tells us that they are, their shoulders are more rounded on the other side. This is common with somebody like my teachers a lot of times. If you're a teacher and you write on a white board all the time or you're in construction and you're using your right arm or like a hair stylist, you're using one side more

and it's constantly protracted and forward in front of you. Again, like Salah saying earlier, you start to shape the body that way. So then when I ask you to be able to retract the shoulders and pull back in that position, that side that is used to being so forward all the time, struggles even more to get back there. Which again, is gonna start to get back there, which again,

is gonna start to cause all kinds of other issues when you go to do a movement like a shoulder press or a bench press. Now when you do that, you gotta understand that one side's gonna be firing different than the other side because you have this imbalance because of whatever it is that you do all day long. So now we're in that position, right?

Arms up against the wall, elbows bent. The back of your hand is flat up against the wall, wrist is flat up against the wall. The nodule is still in contact with the wall. Your butt is still in contact with the wall. You're not overarching, you're keeping everything tight. Now what you're gonna do while maintaining all those points of contact is you're gonna slide your hands

all the way up like you're gonna extend your hands all the way up, like you're gonna extend your arms up above your head, everything's staying in contact, and then bringing back down. Now, if you're like most people, you're gonna lose some points of contact. And 90% of people will, like all kinds of things are gonna happen. If you're like most people, you're not gonna be able to do this perfectly. Something's gonna come off the wall, or in order to keep everything in contact with the wall, you're like straining and struggling like crazy, okay? Those are both considered

failed. Just means that you need to work on a few things. So we're gonna give you some of our favorite exercises that help fix a lot of these issues. Now one of my favorite exercises, very basic, is a row. A seated row is better for correctional purposes than other types of rows, like a bent over barbell row. It's just harder to get somebody to pull their shoulders back and have good posture when doing a bent over barbell row versus a seated row. I love bands for this correctional exercise, rather than using a cable or using a weight, grab a resistance band, attach it around a secure object, maybe put it in your door, jam or whatever, or even put it around your feet. You can even do it

just around your feet. Sit up nice and tall, brace your core, create that posture that you did with the wall test, where your head was tall. You don't have to have your back up against the wall, but create that posture. Then do the row, pulling your shoulders back and down, hold that position, squeeze, let it come forward. I'm so glad that you said that because the idea of all these tests too and the wall test is the wall is just there for feedback so you can understand where you're supposed to get. Like if once you've practiced and always would tell clients that like this, this is yes

and exercise and a test that I'm doing with you, but I also want you to pay attention to how your body feels when you're tucking your chin, you're pulling your shoulder blades back, and to think about that now, when we get out on the weight room floor, now when I take you into exercises, and I say get into that posture, you know, tuck your chin or sit your chest up high

or pull your shoulder blades back, you're trying to remember what it felt like when you were pressing against the wall, you want to think about that. Like it's not just, and this is why exercises performed correctly are far more valuable than just flat-out exercising. It's how you do the movement. Oh, it's like it's two different universes. Doing exercises wrong is just training your body to move wrong.

That's what you do. Just practicing, teaching your body. This is the wrong way to move. We're move wrong. That's what you do. You're just practicing teaching your body. This is the wrong way to move. We're gonna keep getting this stronger and stronger. You actually create strength in the bad movement pattern. And I know we have a very wide variety of listeners out there that some people might not even be able to get anywhere close to doing these things on the wall.

And so an option that you can use is to do this on the ground. And so an option that you can use is to do this on the ground. And so to lay down flat on your back and go through these same type of movements and do a slide using your arms and in the position of the saddle is describing with your elbows bent and your wrist touching the ground and then reach behind you.

And just start with that, really start to connect to that and try and squeeze and fuel your muscles through that process. And the reason why that's a regression or a good place to start, if you really struggle with the walls, we're just using gravity. Yeah, we're now using gravity to help us, right? Gravity's pushing down on us, so all those things that are deviated,

it's pushing against them to assist you, where when you're standing upright, you have to actively be able to intrinsically think about all those things that you do that, which can be a little bit challenging if you've never done it before. So that's a great tip. Here's another good one. I think I can explain through the podcast. These are called wall circles. They're really, really good for shoulder mobility. And essentially here's what you do. You stand up against with your shoulder up against the wall.

So now you're kind of standing sideways to the wall. So place your shoulder up against the wall, take your hand, the back of your hand, place it up against the wall. Now rotate your hand or keep your arms straight, create like you're creating a big circle with your arm, with the back of your hand up on the wall, until you can't go any further,

then turn your hand so that your palm is on the wall and go all the way around and make a complete circle. It's harder, it's harder done than said, it's a lot easier said than done. You want to raise your arm nice and slow all the way up till you get to about your ear or so, right? You have to turn the hand. Try not to lean away from the wall either, which is going to be something you're going to want to naturally do. So you try and, you know, really concentrate on staying in one place and really connecting to that. And then right when you get past your ear about, so start rotating your wrist

and then you're going to get your palm down and then kind of continue the circle like self. So my favorite, and we're addressing some of our things by doing this, but my favorite move to teach for shoulder mobility like this, and where you're taking it through its full range of motion like the wall circles is handcuffed with rotation. We have a great video on YouTube. That'll be in the show now, Tom. Yeah, handcuffed with rotation, same concept. That's what we're trying to do is work on taking the shoulder

through its fullest range of motion and all the planes. Handcuffed with rotation does that. I find it a little bit easier to teach than the wall circles. Most people that I would teach wall circles with, I feel like they have a hard time. Unless you're advanced, you have a hard time understanding the concept of how you need to keep your body and not deviate. Anybody gets to stand by a wall and do draw circles on the wall, but what you find with the clients they they lean away from the wall and then they cheat they wrote they rotate their their upper body to turn. And the ideas that you are staying in a very fixed position and we're working on just

the shoulder joint where it's a little I think harder to coach to I think handcuffed with rotation is easier for me to coach to it and accomplishes the same concept that's a good watch watch the video we really break it down. Prone Cobra, another great exercise. We have that on YouTube as well, really, really good at strengthening the mid-back, drawing the shoulders down.

You could do it on the floor, you could do it on a physio ball, you could do it on a bench. Great, great exercise. All right, let's move to the next test that we think is really good. This is a, it's called a windmill. A little bit more difficult to explain on the podcast,

but essentially you're standing with your feet, maybe shoulder width or slightly wider than shoulder width apart. And you want one foot slightly forward. So let's pick your left, for example, left foot a little bit further forward than your right foot. And now what you wanna do essentially

is you wanna reach down with your right arm totally straight, so you're touching the floor. And then reach up with your right arm straight up into the sky. So left arm is touching the floor, right arm is pointed up to the sky and you wanna create a perfect line. So yes, you are not only bent over,

but you're also twisted, so that your arms create a perfect line while keeping your feet planted way harder than it sounds. Right. So as you have the staggered stance, so one way I like to look at it is I have my toes and my right foot. If my left foot is slightly forward, my toes line up with my left ankle. And so now I'm in a staggered stance.

I'm upright. I'm going to raise my arm up to my ear and my palm is going to be facing inside towards my ear and then I'm going to look up at my hand. And so once I look up at my hand now, I'm going to start to slide my hips back and rotate my hand. And that's going to create that rotation in my back that we're looking for. And meanwhile, my other arm, my left arm is going to be straight the whole time.

And it's not going to come forward past my leg. It's going to stay right alongside my leg, and I'm just going to naturally kind of slide it down as my hips produce depth. So my hips slide back, which creates the opportunity for my hand to then get further down. Now, what is this looking for? Yeah, I was going to say, what's more important to me than I think describing the movement

because Justin's got a great video on that. We have videos on all the things that we're talking about, is why we do this. Yeah. And I love the windmill because what we're looking for is the ability for you to hinge at the hips. Okay, like you would need to do if you were to squat down or anything.

Or deadlift. Right, or deadlift, or pick anything up, or sit on a toilet. Think, these are functional movements, right? The ability to hinge, and then also have rotational control of the spine. Because, yeah, when you do a squat, you're in a fixed position, or when you're deadlift,

you're in a fixed position, but in real life, you know, and you pick up a bag of dogs to rotate. Right, you pick up a bag of dog food or something that's an odd object and you bend over, you hinge over, and you grab it, the ability to control your spine rotationally or anti-rotationally in that position is extremely important for longevity and health.

And that's why this movement, this was a, this is Justin's baby that he added to this, that I remember when, I remember I'll never forget when he said that, I think this is important, he's a being here. And Sal and I are both like, oh, 100%. I don't know why I didn't even think of that right away, why this should be in here,

because that is, this is another very common area that people break down and can't do. And this is where, man, you wanna talk about low back pain and issues in anywhere up and down your back. A lot of times it's caused because people just don't have the ability to rotate at the spine because they lose that because we just don't train that anymore or we don't use it very much as we get older.

And then when we finally do, we're weak in that area and then we get hurt doing, and it's always, how many times you guys heard this? I never had clients get hurt because they were dead lifting 200 pounds. They were always hurt picking up the shampoo bottle or they were hurt gardening, pulling, you know. Reaching back in the car, because they said they were there.

Yeah, reaching back for the kids in the car. It's always this weird, it's not heavy. It's just, they're doing something either quick and fast and they think that their body is capable of doing it and they haven't trained in that range of motion. It becomes unfamiliar because it's just not a part of your daily habits anymore. And so this is why it's so important

to then teach the body again. Like this is something that we need to be able to do and to be able to do it correctly requires this type of training. So now I have to like literally teach my body, I need to be able to rotate. I guess I need to be able to look up with my head and my neck needs to rotate this way.

My upper back needs to be able to rotate as well while keeping my hips going a specific direction. And all these things have to happen without any pain. Yeah, and again, the areas you're looking at with this are in the middle, lower part of the body, but you are getting a little bit of shoulder, you are looking at a little bit of shoulder mobility. So let's say you try, by the way,

all these tests that we're giving you, themselves can be practiced over and over again as well. Yeah, those are exercises by themselves. Yeah, so if you can't do the wall test, if you can't do the windmill test well, one of the easiest ways to correct issues that are resulting because of your inability to do it, it's just to practice these movements.

But besides the windmill, here's some good exercises and movements that will help you work on the areas or work on why you can't maybe do it. One of my favorites is the lizard with rotation. One of the best. I love lizard with rotation. We have a great video on this as well, but it does work on that lumbar ability to rotate.

It does work a little bit on the hip hinging. Really easy to do. What I love about it also requires no equipment. You just do it at home. You could do it on your own. In fact, it's a staple for me as part of my priming or warming up. Anytime I warm up for a workout or whatever,

Lizard's always in there. Now, Lizard with rotation I think is a common movement that trainers use, but I also see it done incorrectly a lot. Now, like we made the point in the last part of the assessment of remembering the windmill test and when you were hinging and rotating to try and get your hand to the floor and reach up, where it felt limiting for you, you're trying to challenge that when you're doing a movement like the Lizard with rotation. So what I mean by when I see a lot of people do this incorrectly is they get into this lizard

with rotation exercise, which you get down almost like in a plank position or a runner's position and you're pulling your shoulder through and then you're rotating your spine and looking up and you see people who just kind of like whip through this and that's like their warm up. They kind of go crazy. Yeah. The idea is that you do it slow and controlled and then when you get to the end ranges of motion, you kind of pause there and you challenge it, right? You intend to- So if it's some isometric squeeze.

Yes, you intensify it by getting the isometric squeeze and challenging the range of it. Not through a dynamic whipping, it's not supposed to be fast and going back and forth. That new class, right? Yeah, dynamic whipping. I mean, how often though do you see that, right? When I see a lizard with rotation done in the gym,

I see people just, they saw a video probably of it and they're just mimicking it. When you do it, the intent of how you do it is the most important part. Otherwise, you're not really working on where the dysfunction in the breakdown is. The dysfunction in the breakdown, normally with the windmill is the inability

for you to rotate the thoracic and lumbar spine and rotate around like that. So then when I'm doing the lizard with rotation, I'm challenging the end ranges of motion and intensifying like Justin said, and then coming back through and then challenging it again each time. So another thing, I had like issues with being able to access

like my thoracic spine and be able to flex extend and do these things and manipulate it a certain way. And so cat cow was a drill that I would do constantly to really try to gain control of that again. I think a lot of people don't realize like and that's again, it's just addresses a lot of other issues as well, whether like you have, if your shoulders are too protruded forward, this is all going to be compensations that we're addressing to,

that affect your upper back and your thoracic area that now you don't have access and movement that you should. Yeah, one of the reasons why I like CatCow so much is almost anybody can do it. It's like one of the easiest ways you can work on some of this mobility. Like I could do this with old people who have bad mobility. I'd have them on their hands and knees on a soft surface

and have them practice rounding their back and then have them practice letting it sink in an arch and they would just go back and forth. It's something most people can do. And it's really all we're doing is we're trying to regain control of your spine. And when you're doing something like cat cow, you're actually doing it at each vertebrae, right?

You're trying to articulate that in and out or up and down in this case, which is why too I like things like bird dog, right? Bird dog is another one of those movements similar to cat cow. Seems really basic when you see somebody doing it. It's all about the intent though. Right, and that's, I think the takeaway

from this conversation today is like, and I'm guilty of this as a trainer. I remember as a trainer when I first learned all this stuff, like I think I had a surface level understanding of, oh, these are important movements I should have clients do. And I teach them and just kind of let them do it. And they're so simple that if you don't move slowly and work on the intent of it and make them challenging,

you're not really doing much work if that makes sense, right? If you just get under and you do cat cow or bird dog and you're just kind of whipping through it or lizard with rotation and you're just kind of whipping through the movements. You're like 10% of the benefits. Right, you'll get a very minimal amount, a bit of a shirt on, it'll help you stay

at least to that mobile to where you can continue to do that. So it's not bad that you're doing that. But the max benefits are gonna come from like really paying attention to the detail of the movement and really trying to articulate the spine and staying control and challenge the in-range's emotion, not let things rotate, be able to really keep bracing and holding things in place that need to stay in place.

So all those things matter. And so if you slow down and focus in on all those little cues and things that your body just naturally kind of falls into, you stop that momentum of just letting your body control you. That's it. Two more exercises you could look up on our channel, thread the needle and supine scorpions. I believe they're both on there. I know thread the needle is for sure.

Yeah. Those are those are also movements that you can work on. If doing a windmill, you find difficult or you just can't do it perfectly. The last one, this is a staple in any assessment. I've almost any assessment I've ever seen because when you look at assessments that trainers and coaches do,

there tends to be some variety in different versions and they can do that because they're watching the client in person, but one always pops up because this tells you a lot about your body's mobility. And that's a squat. This is a squat test. Now there's a couple ways you can do this. The real basic way to do it is just to try to go down on a squat and look for a few

different things. But if you really want to have a little bit more detail, here's what I recommend. Get a broomstick, place it on your low back by holding it with your arm, and you want it to be touching your tailbone, you want it to be touching the mid back, and you want it to be touching the back of your head, and hopefully it's the nodule and the back of your skull. The video that I have on my Instagram right now,

which will be the last video, like I won't post anything between now in this video being live, is that? Okay, if you've seen that or not, it's actually a picture of me holding the stick on those three points of contact on my Instagram page. So if you want to see what you're talking about. Good, and now when you're holding that stick there,

now you want to get your feet a little wider than shoulder width and you want to do a full squat. Go down as low as you can comfortably and look for a few different things. Did those points of contact come off the stick? Did your heels come off the stick? Did your heels come off the floor? Did your knees cave in? These are all real common issues that people tend to see.

It's shift to one side of the... Yeah, are you leaning to one side or the other? These are things that people tend to see or issues that they tend to see when they do a squat test. And if you see any of these issues, then you definitely want to work on fixing those problems. Now, one of the most common issues that you see with this is that someone can't squat without their heels coming off the floor, or their feet will turn out really, really far, and their ankles will cave in. It's kind of a similar problem. It's because you have really, really tight calves. You have poor ankle mobility.

Well, one of my favorite movements to address this is called the combat stretch. Again, we have a video of that on our YouTube channel. And it's just exceptional at fixing ankle mobility issues. What about when your knees cave in? My knees like to cave in all the time. Well, one of the best ways to fix that, if you don't wanna use any equipment or anything, is to squat slowly while pushing your knees out. If you need some feedback, you can tie something around your legs, like a rubber band or something like that.

Push your knees out as you do your slow squats. That helps with that as well. And then floor bridges. I love floor bridges for strengthening the hips. Some people, when they squat, one of the reasons why their heels come off the floor, is they're floor bridges for strengthening the hips. Some people when they squat, one of the reasons why their heels come off the floor is they're not able to sit back properly. They can't activate the glutes.

Floor bitches really helps to activate that. Anything I'm missing? Well, yeah, when you talk also to about the knees collapsing, the rubber band is one thing. This is also where a lot of times when the knees collapse like that is just your inability to internally and externally rotate the hips really well. So this is very, very common.

This is also connected to a lot of times when people have burstitis in their hips like I did, right? So because I lack the ability to internally, externally rotate the hip to its fullest capacity and then I still was squatting. Also and I get this like sharp, like feels panning someone's sticking a knife in my hip. Those are the brositis acts that I'm feeling that hurts like that, and the reason why I'm getting that is because I'm still performing exercises,

but I'm not addressing my inability to rotate my hips like I should, and a lot of times you see that expressed in the knees collapsing too. So one of the best things that you can do, and for sure been game changer, life changer for myself has been the 90, 90 variations. And when you're doing, and we have lots of good videos on the 90, 90

and the variations around them. And when you get good at being able to internally, externally rotate the hips, it just, it opens up that whole hip complex, allows you to get down into the deep squat without overcompensating, and we'll leave a lot of times, this is also what's connected to low back pain.

A lot of times people think low back pain is like, oh, I have my low back hurts, so something's wrong in the low back area specifically. A lot of times it's related to the whole hip complex because it's all connected and because the hip complex is so tight, it's pulling on the low back area and that tightness is coming from the inability to rotate the hips very well. And also being able to stabilize your spine properly throughout this entire process too. In the 1990s, it will expose that almost immediately

just sitting in that position because now it's just about your torso standing as Up right as possible and as vertical as possible while your hips are in that position internal and external rotational position and so to be able to then brace properly and then keep your your upper body from falling to one side or the other You're gonna be able to really expose that and work on that. Right, right. So remember, when you do a good assessment of yourself,

you ask yourself the right questions, you do some of these movements and you can identify some of these problems. Now your workout becomes correcting those issues. That's how you start your workout. You work on, and by the way, it's a workout. You're still strengthening your body, you're still building a little bit of muscle,

you're still burning some calories. And then once you go through the process of doing this and you find that over time, wow, I can do the wall test now and I feel relatively comfortable. Wow, I can do the windmill test and I'm starting to feel comfortable. Wow, I can do a squalla. Now you can start to progress your body into heavier and harder movements. But for the time being, a lot of your exercise should be focused on correcting a lot of these issues. Now, if you want something more specific, if you want more coaching,

because I know this can be a little bit complex, although we have a lot of free videos on YouTube, and I think if you practice these tests, even just practice these tests on their own, you'll benefit greatly. You could try one of our programs, Maps Prime and Maps Prime Pro. A lot of our programs, maps prime and maps prime pro. A lot of people ask what's the difference between the two.

Maps prime has the general assessments that we talked about, and it really teaches you how to get your body primed and warmed up for your workout. So what does that mean? That means let's say you fail the windmill test. Let's say the windmill test is the most difficult thing for you. Well, maps prime will show you what you need to do because that's what you failed before you get

into your regular workout. So let's say you're following a Maps anywhere, then you would do the specific Maps Prime movements for you to get your body ready for your Maps anywhere workout. So that's just an example. And really, it can be any workout that you do. Now, MAPS Prime Pro, it breaks down every single joint. It's much more specific, much more correctional. You can look at the ankles, you can look at the hips, you can look at your wrists, you can look at your spine from the lumbar all the way up to your neck. Neck, neck, all that stuff, all very, very correctional.

And here's the cool thing about correctional exercise requires almost or no equipment. In fact, most of the best correctional and here's the cool thing about correctional exercise requires Almost or no equipment in fact a lot of the most of the best correctional exercise movements involve no equipment What so ever and here's the other key correctional exercises are best done very frequently It you're better off Practicing them throughout the day rather than doing like to one hour correctional exercise workouts a week the day, rather than doing like two one hour correctional exercise workouts a week, every other hour spend five minutes picking one movement and practicing it.

That will give you better, faster results, because what you're trying to do with correctional exercise is create new recruitment patterns and to correct the old bad recruitment patterns. Now here's the best part, both maps prime and prime pro are 50% off. So we put them both half off. So if you're interested, now is a great time to enroll. You can go to maps fitness products dot com. So MAPS fitness products dot com use the code prime 50 for the 50% off discount both programs prime 50s PRI ME 5-0 the number 5-0 no space and

Input that for the discount. Thank you for listening to mine pump If your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance Check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPSANABOLIC, MAPSPERFORMENT and MAPSISTEDIC, 9 months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal and an adjustment as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price.

The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump. you