Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1535: Should You Squat Below Parallel?

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin weigh in on the longstanding squat depth debate. Why a greater range of motion, that you are connected to, is better for overall muscle growth. (1:50) Making the case when shorter ranges of motion or more beneficial. (8:10) The difference between being a personal trainer versus a coach. (10:36) Why national certifications are NOT the end all be all. (14:06) The problems training with limited ranges of motion. (16:50) Am I sacrificing muscle in pursuit of a greater range of motion? (18:22) If you don’t own it, you are going to hurt yourself. (21:23) Busting the myths surrounding shorter versus greater ranges of motion. Which builds more muscle? (24:21) The beauty of training in new ranges of motion once you OWN them. (33:00) How the overcompensation of other muscles ends up creating deviations in your posture, which creates chronic pain. (35:49) The stigma that resistance training will make you muscle-bound. (38:54) Steps to increase your functional range of motion. (39:50) Step 1: Train your brain first! (40:41) Step 2: Identify your limiting factors. (47:00) Step 3: Treat your new range of motion as a new exercise. (48:45) Related Links/Products Mentioned April Specials: MAPS Anabolic or Shredded Summer Bundle 50% off!  **Promo code “APRILSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit Paleo Valley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “Mindpump15” at checkout for 15% discount** Hot Debate: Which Squat is Best? | T Nation Mind Pump #494: How To Squat Like A Pro With Dr. Justin Brink Mind Pump #1382: Why Everyone Should Squat What is the First Step to Better Mobility? - Mind Pump Blog Effect of range of motion in heavy load squatting on muscle and tendon adaptations Available for Pre-Order TODAY! – The Resistance Training Revolution – Book by Sal Di Stefano Becoming a Supple Leopard 2nd Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance Kinstretch® | Functional Anatomy Seminars MAPS Prime Webinar MAPS Prime Pro Webinar Mind Pump TV - YouTube Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Ben Pollack, Ph.D. (@phdeadlift)  Instagram Paul Carter (@liftrunbang)  Instagram Justin Brink DC (@dr.justinbrink)  Instagram Kelly Starrett (@thereadystate)  Instagram Dr. Andreo Spina (@drandreospina)  Instagram

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. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Alright, in today's episode, we talk about ranges of motion. In particular, should you squat below parallel? Will that give you better results?

And in general, will you get better results doing larger ranges of motion versus shorter ranges of motion? This is a bit of a debate in the fitness space. And so we bring some light to the right answer. We actually give you the truth based on studies and our experience in this episode. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Paleo Valley.

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It's one of my favorite supplements. And much more. Just go to paleovali.com forward slash mine pump. That's P-A-L-E-O-V-A-L-L-E-Y.com forward slash mine pump. And use the code mind pump 15, mind pump 15 for 15% off your first order. Also we are running a promotion, helping people get ready for summer. Maps and a balic is 50% off, and the shredded summer bundle, which includes

maps aesthetic, maps prime, maps it, and the intuitive nutrition guide, 50% off as well. Go check them out to learn more or to sign up at mapsfitnisproducts.com and use the code April Special with no space for the discount. So you know our friend Ben Pollock, right?

Powerlifter turned bodybuilder. Love then. Yeah, smart guy, and he's built an incredible physique. The guy's getting crazy amounts of muscle weight. But anyway, he screen-shotted a comment. Oh, you're gonna go here. Yeah, and put it up and then it started this whole, like, back and forth between people.

So this screenshot came from, and you got, you know who this page is. Yeah, I got it. From, Liff Run Bane. Yeah, great name. Liff Run Bane. Yeah. This is, by the way, the guy's super sensitive.

So be careful if you comment and you say the wrong thing, you'll do whatever, lose the mind. But anyway, his comment that Ben screenshot it says, a large range of motion for the sake of more range of motion is disadvantageous for hypertrophy because all muscles have a limited active range of motion in a movement. Once the range of motion exceeds that, then something else has to compensate for that extra range of motion exceeds that, then something else has to compensate for that extra range of motion. Just so many bad comments and interpretations about hypertrophy in here.

By the way, the guy sounds smart. No, he's a smart guy. And here's the thing. The statement in itself is not incorrect in what. Do you have my comment back in there? Well, I'm going to read both. So I remind I'll read yours, right? Because what he's saying is, I guess the way he's saying

it might be true, but so here's what I said underneath it, I said, so long as the range of motion is under control with good stability and connection, okay? So that's the context, okay? Then a greater range of motion generally leads to more muscle growth and a larger range of strength spanning over a greater range of motion generally leads to more muscle growth and a larger range of strength spanning over a greater range of motion. In other words, deep squats, so long as the person doing them has good mobility, connection and stability, will build more overall muscle and broader strength

than shallow squats. By the way, all the evidence, all the data proves what I'm saying. But remember, I'm saying generally more muscle, more connection, all that stuff. Adam Cline, that of course irritated the sensitive guy, so he had to come back. But then Adam came and he says, I guess the question I have here is, who are we trying to help? We seem to have attracted several fitness intellects

that wanted to be all the nuances of biomechanics for the sake of being more right. Meanwhile, losing the majority in the weeds or worse, justifying why we should not address our shit mobility so long as our pursuit is to build more muscle. When I see posts like this, I'm always curious to what the desired outcome is. I mean, I agree 100% with what you're saying.

Of course, I agree with what I'm saying. So the debate is over range of motion. It's still a debate. And usually the side that argues against range of motion or it comes from the bodybuilding in space, where they'll say that too much range of motion takes tension off the target muscle, results in less muscle. So is that the main thing that they just feel like they're

losing a bit of tension once they exceed a certain range of motion? And so therefore in terms of hypertrophy, it seems like it's useless. No, no, because they have shit mobility and they can't get, you know, and here's how I can, why I like to speak to this one and this one I feel passionate about. Because I was this guy, like literally, I, I love to attach myself to someone like this that was preaching some of this because I had poor mobility. I couldn't squat past nine degrees and it made me feel good about it. Like, oh, yeah, I don't need to. I don't need to. And you had all the accolades to back you up. You were a pro, IFBB physique competitor. So you had developed

this incredible physique. So why would you want to listen to anything else? And they're right. You don't necessarily have to to build that, but I tell you what, when I began to work on my ankle and hip mobility and my squat depth, so many other positive things. Besides just building muscles, so by the way, the first thing I think is untrue and what your statement I do believe is true. Once I got to the place where I had good stability and control in a deeper range of motion and it could do a full astagrass squat, I was able to build more muscle in my legs with less effort by doing that.

I noticed that right away. And then I also noticed all the other benefits, like my back pain going away, like the ability to sit down comfortably and play with my son and do things that I couldn't do before because I wasn't addressing mobility. So that's why I came out with a statement saying that, I just don't understand the desired outcome when you say something like this

because a 20 year old me reads that, looks at this guy who looks impressive and I go, oh man, yeah, okay, yeah, fuck that. I don't need to go any deeper. Like I cause all I care about is looking good and building muscle. And so I neglect working on my mobility in pursuit of wanting this great physique.

But then I get caught up with all this other bullshit. 100% and again, here's the deal is, because he's saying past a certain range of motion, if you lose connection to the target muscle, well yeah, don't train in a range of motion, if you lose connection to the target muscle, well, yeah, don't train in a range of motion that you don't have connection to and that you don't own. That's what mobility is, right? So if you squat to 90 degrees and if you go below 90 degrees and all of a sudden you lose connection and stability, that greater range of motion is not going to be better for you. It's going to be worse for you. So what we're saying is not greater range of motion is not going to be better for you. It's going to be worse for you.

So what we're saying is not greater range of motion at all costs. What we're saying is a greater range of motion that you're connected to is better for overall muscle growth. Oh, by the way, overall strength too, because here's a deal. The strength that you gain when you do exercise, most of it goes to the range of motion that you train. So in other words, if I squat to 90 degrees and I add 100 pounds to my squat, most of that strength is in that range of motion that I train.

There's some carryover outside of 90 degrees, but the further I move away from that, the more the less of that strength that I get. In other words, if you can squat 300 pounds and 90 degrees, you're not gonna be able to squat 300 pounds as to grass. You'll you can squat 300 pounds and 90 degrees, you're not going to be able to squat 300 pounds as to grass. You'll be likely to squat 220 pounds as to grass, especially if your mobility is poor. So being connected is the, that's where you have to be. And if you're connected and you own the movement, greater ranges of motion

are superior. And again, the data is clear on this. It's very, very clear. But again, I think sometimes we get these really small groups of nuanced individuals. And I think we should talk about cases where shorter ranges of motion may be beneficial or where larger ranges of motion aren't necessarily beneficial to some, you know, instance of your talk. Right. So you're talking about like sports specific instances,

like so everybody's familiar with a little bronjame squat, like the quarter squat. And it was getting like just fire blazed because of that. And if you think about it, like where are you going to generate the most amount of power when you're on the court and when you're about to jump and when you're going to be the most explosive. So, you know, really training that specific range of motion

to generate the most amount of force makes sense in that specific type of direction. Absolutely. And note about athletes, if you watch good athletes train with good coaches, they are not training for optimal health, optimal mobility, optimal overall, like real life strength. What they're training for is sport-specific performance, which is not usually not the healthiest, best way for most people to train. It's almost always not. We had a great discussion with our buddy Dr. Justin Brink a long time ago.

You remember this when we talked about him training professional athletes and we were like, what do you do when you get like this fighter and he's got all this. It's forward shoulder. He's got this discrepancy between right and left. Start all over and do all new recruitment patterns or his feet are pronating bad. He's got all this dysfunction and breakdown.

Stuff that he's helped me out with. Like what do you do when you see that with this UFC fighter? Like, and he's like, you know, in a case like that, you have to be very careful because yeah, you want to help him out with some things that you know, that you see that are glaring, that are obvious issues that he's got or he's going into cause issues down the road. But it's at the same token, you got to,

you got to have this fine dance of, I also don't want to reduce his performance when he gets into the ring. He's been moving, here she, that athlete has been moving that way for so long, they're really good at it. And you don't want to reach, you don't want to completely change their movement patterns

because they'll lose performance. And athletes, it's all about performance, especially at the professional level. LeBron James could give a shit about building maximum mass on his legs. What he wants to do is be a better basketball player. Obviously, that makes sense. So you're going to train a very, very specific way in which case training in specific ranges of motion makes perfect sense. Okay.

All that said, the lift run man guy. I mean, was he really trying to voice this out to competitive bodybuilders or was he saying this is a statement? Well, so, and that was that goes back to my statement of like, what my thing that I, when I read something like that, I go, okay, what's the desired outcome of this post? Is it, I'm only speaking to very high level competitive bodybuilders. Which I put in the same category as like athletes,

pro athletes. And that's, and all you are, and we are getting that crazy and splitting hair difference on that that information Okay, I understand that but I mean the dudes got Well over a hundred thousand I believe followers right was he that was big? Yeah He's got a decent amount of falling. I know he writes for a t-nation too. Yeah, so he has he has a very large audience, okay Bodybuilders the 1% you know, I'm saying? 1%, you can't tell me. And let's just say he's geared his conversation around that 99% of the time, so he's attracted

more bodybuilders I present. I don't care. You still don't have 80% of your followers are professional bodybuilders. Most of these people that are following were probably kids just like me in their 20s that are aspiring to look like this guy and he's talking real smart. So he sounds like he knows a lot of information. And he does, he writes for TN, the dude's a smart guy, he knows what he's talking about. And I don't disagree necessarily with the statement

that he's saying, it's just that, I want you got to understand how, and this is what, this is a difference between being a personal trainer and a coach when you've communicated the same message a thousand times over to clients, you start to realize like, what are the behaviors that follow this? That's right, and how does the client receive that information? Like, I mean, you don't use the jargon

that you learn in school or reading your national certifications to a client because you know that they'll never receive it correctly and apply it right. So I have to use layman's terms to get a very complex piece of information delivered to them so they can disseminate it and then apply it to their life. And when you talk on social media

and you post something like this when tens of thousands, potentially millions of people are listening and watching to think that you're not losing 90% of those people in the weeds because they don't understand biomechanics at that level. And all it really does is tell that young kid that goes, oh, yes, he, I don't need to squat past nine degrees because I really care mostly about looking bigger and more,

and more butt. And meanwhile, they're not able to build as much muscle. They're not able to look as good as they could. It had they worked on that mobility because here's the other argument. They're saying, oh, well, yeah, you might be talking to bodybuilders, but a lot of the people just wanna build a lot of muscle.

So that information must apply to them too. No, no, it doesn't. You take a hundred people who really wanna build a lot of muscle, average people, okay? Who really wanna build a lot of muscle? Out of that, okay? Who really want to build a lot of muscle? Out of that hundred people, you might be lucky enough to find one, probably not even one,

but you might be lucky enough to find one who could fall in that category of pro bodybuilder, genetics and all that stuff. The vast majority are gonna do better with the same stuff that you would apply towards the average person. Full range of motion, control, mobility, compound movements over isolation movements. would apply towards the average person, full range of motion, control, mobility, you know,

compound movements over isolation movements, they're still going to do the best with that kind of stuff. That information applies to such a small percentage of people, but even even the way he was communicating, even the, you know, if the muscle loses tension, well, yeah, you, you, range of motion is nothing, it's nothing without connection. That's not mobility. that's just going deeper. Well, and this is to the problem. I know we all had this,

we went through a lot of different certifications that limited that, limited to 90 degrees, like a limited, so you couldn't bring any weight behind your neck. And there was lots of things where range of motion was considered like this is gonna hurt and harm your clients. And so we're not gonna pursue anything, you know, past 90 degrees.

And, you know, the further I got along my career, you know, that started to make less and less sense. The more back pain, the more knee pain, all these different things that were, you know, happening based off of a lack of strength. And now, you know, like really pursuing mobility and seeing how you can increase strength gradually through range of motion, like what that did in terms of pain alleviation, overall

strength, building muscle, it was totally in stark contrast to what we learned. Yeah, these national certifications, I remember taking them and I remember my first one, I'm in the class, and the instructor goes, when you bench press, you only need to come down to where your arms, the back of your arms, are parallel to the floor. So you want to come down here, you don't want to go all the way down. And then he would have like a mannequin or whatever, like a skeleton. And he goes, look what happens to the shoulder joint when you go all the way down, and all

these problems can happen. I remember listening to him going, oh shit, okay. And also thinking in my head like, I can bench way more now, because I don't have to go all the way down and all these problems can happen. I remember listening to him go, oh shit, okay. Wow. And also thinking in my head like, I can bench way more now because I don't have to go all the way down. Like this is actually really cool. Now here's why the certifications taught that. These are huge organizations.

I mean, NASM, educate hundreds of thousands of people. They're represented in some of the biggest gym chains in the world and what they're trying to do is they're trying to weigh risk versus reward. Now, the risk of teaching trainers to train their clients with greater range of emotion is, are these new trainers going to know enough to be able to get their clients to get better ranges of motion with good control and good stability? That requires another level of education understanding.

Or is the risk too high because there are a lot of them are new trainers. And if we tell these trainers that going all the way down with a bench press is good and they don't know the difference and they're just gonna force their clients to go all the way down. That's gonna increase risk of injury. We may be liable, maybe 24 fitness will stop

accepting us as a certification. So it's better to err on the side of safety and it's better to tell these trainers do this because it's better than nothing. A client doing 90 degree squats is better than not doing squats at all and it makes you know makes more sense from that standpoint. But the truth is you want better results, you want to move better, your goal should be to increase your range of motion in an appropriate way because that's the way that your body moves. Here's where the problem is with training with limited ranges of motion.

Let's say you only ever squat to 90 degrees or shoulder press to 90 degrees or whatever. That's all you ever do. Most of the strength that you gain through the years of training is within that range of motion. What ends up happening is when you go outside of that range of motion, you lose strength and you lose stability. So now, this actually increases your risk of injury in the real world because let's say, I don't know,

let's say Justin's moving. And he's like, hey, how can you come help me move some stuff? I got some heavy boxes, I got a bed frame. And I'm lifting the bed frame. We're trying to get it up on top of something. And I just so happen to go below 90 degrees, now I'm strong enough to hold it up here, but for a second, I go below 90,

and next thing you know, boom, I hurt my shoulder, or I'm down playing with my kids, and I get to get up quickly because my kids are gonna fall or something, but I'm below 90 degrees. I got all the strength outside of it, but I have those bad stability below, boom, I hurt my back. This is why you get a lot of these gym rats

that injure themselves outside of the gym. I can't tell you how many times I've heard stories of people who in the gym are just incredible with their strength and whatever. And then they hurt their bats. I had your shoulder, I was throwing a frisbee, or my dog pulled me this way and I had to twist and I popped my soul.

Or we just lose focus for one second in the gym and they go just, you know, that little bit lower than they normally would. And they're just in unstable area now where they don't have the strength to pull themselves out. And inevitably, either you dump the weight or you get hurt. That's why I wish posts like this would come with like a warning, right? Or because here's the thing, again, going back to me being a 20 year old kid

that would have read something like this and jumped all over and be like, yeah, I'm not scoring deeper than 90 degrees. Is if you asked me, Adam, you know, you could build as much or more muscle just by scoring down to 90 degrees, that's the way to go. But you may risk having chronic back pain when you get

close to 30 and in mobile hips and you may not be able to squat down in a deep squat and play with your son when you're 35, 40 years old. Yeah, would you, that may happen if we don't address these things right now and we just keep pursuing just building maximal muscle and we'll just shorten the range of motion up. Do you still want to do that? I think I would have had the foresight to be like, okay, I don't want to sacrifice all that. Can I still build a lot of muscles? That's the question.

Am I sacrificing muscle for getting a more mobility and a more connected, larger range of motion? No, you're not sacrificing muscle. You actually will build more muscle. And again, the studies completely support this. So when people say, oh, if you go below 90, like here's a good example, we use the shoulder press because this one I hear all the time,

you'll see bodybuilders do this kind of like, go down to 90 degrees, come up, they don't even fully extend, so they're doing this. And they'll say, oh, it's to maintain tension in my shoulder. I'm feeling that constant, please. The reason why people say they feel more tension doing that is because they have poor connection at the bottom

and they have poor connection at the top. The truth is, at the top, I can, and you as a bodybuilder, if you're a bodybuilder, it's your job. Literally, this is your job when you train. Your job should be to know how to connect to your muscle at any given moment. That's what bodybuilders do best. If you're fully extended up here, it's your job to connect to know how to connect to your muscle at any given moment. That's what bodybuilders do best.

Right. If you're fully extended up here, it's your job to connect to the shoulder. Like right now, I'm connecting to my shoulder. If you're at the bottom, don't let the weight just sit on your arm, connect and activate the shoulder. The shoulder can be, you can have tension on the shoulder through the entire range of motion. The goal is not to lock out, allow your joints to support the weight. Nobody ever says that. You can maintain tension. Can I keep tension on my quads at the bottom of a squat? I can.

Can I take tension off my quads at the bottom of a squat? Wait, if I sit on my calves and I'm relaxing, but you should never do that with an exercise. There's never a case with an exercise, unless the weight is on the floor, and even then I say maintain tension, you should never, in any range of motion, in any exercise, lose tension to it.

Never relax in any position, whether it's full extension, fully extended, or not. That's a discipline, that's a way of training. And to eliminate that from the conversation is ridiculous. So again, to Adams, or I don't know whoever's point, but it was like, you know, to me, it just, it speaks of kind of a lazy approach, like, okay, so we're just going to eliminate the fact that you can do all these things and not have to like apply AIDS. I'm not going to have to have things that are supporting me in certain ranges of motion because I haven't

put the work into actually control and own that part. Well, really, it's just trying to be a contrarian. I mean, it's really knowing that it's click baity to say something like that, because there's gonna be a massive amount of trainers that know better that are gonna speak out, and then there's gonna be a group of people that are gonna wanna jump on that bandwagon, that sounds good.

And again, this is one of these things that really annoys me about our space is that conversation is such a high level conversation for most people. It's so above everybody. The average gym goer, it's above their pay grade. That you don't, I would never have that conversation with somebody in the first three years of training them.

Like there's no reason to even go there. Like we have so much stuff we need to learn and work on. So when you post things out like that, you just, it's irresponsible, in my opinion. And it's not that much different than the other debate that we get into, which is the people that like to debate that, you know, squatting, barbell, back squatting is not necessary. And you don't need to do it. And in fact, there's other exercises like hack squats that will build your quads more. I just think it's a bad message. Can you argue that? Yeah, you can make the argument for it.

Do I think it's true? No, I don't think it's true. And I think it's more importantly, I think it's a bad message because there's so many health benefits and longevity benefits to learning how to squat properly. It's such a functional movement. I mean, off-air, when we were originally

talking about this episode, you know, Doug talked, because Doug's been working a lot the last like two years. I don't know if it was watching my mobility increase or whatever like that that inspired him or whatever, but I know he started to really pursue his range of motion on a squat depth. And the thing that he's reported back is the exact same thing that I noticed. I had chronic back pain for most of my 30s. Like, I'm squatting deeper, made it go away. Squatting deeper, made it go away.

But of course, properly, right? Right. And what that was was the pursuit of getting to that this way. It wasn't actually just dropping down into a full, small, that's how you hurt yourself. Exactly. That didn't get rid of my low back pain. It was every day working on my hip mobility,

every day working on my hip mobility, every day working on my ankle mobility, then that allowed me get into a deep range of motion squat that I could control that will support it. And now what's beautiful is I don't do all that mobility stuff anymore. Now all I have to do is do good deep squats and it addresses my hip mobility and it addresses my ankle mobility

and then guess what, as a sidebar, I've built as much or more muscle in my legs with less effort than what I was doing in the shorter range of motion. Yeah, I'm glad you said that too, because this is very important. It's not for just the sake of range of motion. You have to do it with good control, good stability, and good mobility. If you're trying to increase that range of motion, it means you need to work on those things. Once those things are there, now you have a great range of motion, not just

going deeper, not just having a larger range of motion. Because if you don't own it, you're going to hurt yourself. But back to the argument of the shorter range versus longer range, what builds more muscle. Look, as a trainer, I would get clients all the time, people are deconditioned who, I mean, they couldn't even do a half squat without feeling pain, right? So they couldn't even go down to parallel and they would do pain. Now did I say to them, that's okay, we'll just do five inches and we'll just continue to load that because that's your range of motion. Of course not. Now nobody would say that. That's not going to give them great results at all if anything that'll make things much worse.

So my goal was to continue to increase the range of motion. But for some reason, all of a sudden, 90 degrees becomes the... That's... Oh, no, no. It's good to go deeper, but 90 degrees is where we want to stop. And you ever wonder why 90 degrees came from? Where's that number come from? They made that shit up. You know the truth is, the truth is a squat is a fundamental human movement.

And the truth is there's full squats and that's it. Everything other than that is less than a full squat. But the 90 degrees, I think it's because for most people who train, once they hit 90 degrees, going beyond that requires a little bit more work, a little bit more effort, and more focus on mobility. When you sit in a chair and you sit on a toilet, is that always 90 degrees? 90 degrees.

I mean, there's chairs where you're less than, right, or greater than, I guess, the range of motion. But yeah, to me, it's just so silly to focus on that is the degree of anything past that is unsafe when in life in general, we're going beyond that already. Right, and so it's like this argument when people say, these exercises are dangerous and these exercises are safe. So don't do this exercise because it's dangerous.

The truth is the thing that makes an exercise safe or dangerous is you. It's your body. Any movement, I don't care what the movement is, by the way. Any movement that you have complete control over and mobility and stability with. Any movement that you have those prerequisites with is safe for you. Any movement where those things are notquisites with is safe for you.

Any movement where those things are not there for you is now dangerous. A dumbbell curl, the most basic simple exercise that probably exists. If you lack the stability, the mobility, the connection to do a full dumbbell curl, that full dumbbell curl is dangerous for you. Now I'll go with one of the more dangerous exercises, Jefferson curl, you look this one up, right? This looks like everything you're not supposed to do with the barbell, you literally round your back

on the way down, it's an old gymnast exercise. Less than one percent of people can do it. Right, right, look at that exercise. Looks super dangerous and for most people, probably don't do it. But for people who can do it with good control, good stability, good strength, good connection, that exercise is very safe.

Well, the truth is, if you ever want to use that range of motion at one point in your life, you should train it. You should train in it. And to me, that was what was never communicated to me as a young kid, and that would have been it for me. If you would have just said that, if someone would have told me at 25 say,

hey Adam, if you don't work on getting to a place where you can squat down with a little bit, even just a little bit of weight on your back with good control and stability, you're gonna lose that. And can you picture yourself even at 20, right? Think way ahead, I think all the way to 40 because you don't have a kid till then.

When you're 40, are you gonna wanna be able to squat down and play Legos with your son without having to hold yourself to the side because your back hurts so bad and switching from hip to hip because you're so uncomfortable. And do you wanna be able to do that? Of course, if someone would ask me that question, I'd say no, but no one's talking about that. And you see these pages where we're just talking about building muscle, we're just talking about building muscle.

It's like, okay, don't get me wrong. Get that there is a community of people that that speaks to that they are in the sport of bodybuilding and you could ask a pro bodybuilder and he may say, I don't give a shit if I can't. If I just wanna win and whatever is gonna get me there faster and more take whenever stuff they can to enhance it. And truth be told, okay, working on the mobility,

working on the range of motion. It takes time. It's gonna take, it's going to prolong the results, right? It may take a little longer to get to a place where your legs are as big, right? So it's for a guy or a girl who is in competition. And the reason for that is because you just can't load when you're working in that new range of motion.

Right, yet. Yet, right. So it took time. I took a good solid, I don't know, year and a half, two year hiatus from really lifting, really heavy, working on mobility and getting that good control. But now I can load the bar as heavy at a 90 degrees squad as I can all the way down astagrass. And the thing is back to the original point I'm trying to make that I think is so important

is the majority of people that I know that I trained, even the ones that said all I really care about is building muscle, if I would tell them, okay, if we sacrifice this though, are you still okay with that, or would you like to have both? Because we can have both. We can actually get to a place where I can take you into a deeper range of motion and then I can also make sure that you don't lose this movement that you may want to have at one point in your life.

It's funny in the 90s, there was a book, and I can't remember the name of this book, but it was a book that came out that talked all about partial repetitions, and on the cover of it was Paul D'Ameo, was it to see Spot bodybuilder now, but he was a bodybuilder from the East Coast. They called him Quadzilla, big legs. Short reps will kill you.

And in that, that's a new book. No, some male killer, I'm sure I had to do with all the drug and stuff. The group training needs a day. Yeah, but anyway, in this book, and I can't remember the name of it, all they talked about was how it's all about load intention, range of motion is not important.

So, in other words, let's say you could do a full squat with 200 pounds, you're going to get better results squatting half squats with 400 pounds because the load is so much higher. So this entire book was based off of this partial range of motion philosophy. Well, it went nowhere. It went nowhere because it didn't work. The literature completely didn't support it. Range of motion is connected to muscle growth along with intensity and volume. But look, it's simple as this.

I have curl, it's not gonna build muscle as my bicep like a full curl. As the fibers move and stretch and move past each other, each point that they move past there's connections that start to cause damage when there's load. If you're not fully extended, you're not getting the full capacity of that muscle. So full ranges of motion that are connected, again, remember the prerequisite that said, you got to be connected, stable, mobile, you got to have things, or part of the formula. If that's there, that greater range of motion,

you are sending more of a muscle building signal. In fact, lighter weight with a greater range of motion is gonna create, is gonna build more muscle than heavier weight with a shorter range of motion if so long as the intensity is equal. If they're both equally as hard, it's the larger range of motion that tend to build more muscle.

And this is just an absolute fact, and it's funny, you know, again, I learned this later on as a kid training, and I remember, but I managed trainers. I loved managing trainers for a lot of different reasons, but one reason was I would see all these different trainers from different walks of life. And it was really cool to learn from different fitness

professionals. And, you know, I've talked about the gymnast that worked for me for a long time. And he was the guy that, you know, showed me that, you know, curl grip, you know, curls is better for biceps than barbell curls, not stuff. And I remember him doing all these like crazy range of motion exercises like behind the neck presses back back in the 90s when I was first a trainer as a personal trainer. I was a huge no-no. Yeah, everybody was like, don't do anything behind the neck.

No, pull down the back of the neck, no shoulder presses behind the neck, totally bad for you, it's bad for the shoulder, and I remember in the destroyer shoulder. In fact, I had an instructor at one of my certifications, and this was his visual. He took a towel, he had like this bath towel, and he twisted the bath towel, and he goes, this is what happens when you do behind the neck presses,

and he goes like this, with this twisted, and I remember happens when you do behind the neck presses and he goes like this. With this twisted, and I remember like, oh shit, that's gonna be tough. That happens. But anyway, this gymnast had incredible deltoids and would do this exercise and I'm like, doesn't that hurt? And he goes, no, why would it hurt?

He goes, I own the movement. I remember thinking like, oh yeah, I've never done those before and I probably should go real light and see if I can get myself to be able to do them. And I did, I started with literally just the bar because I'd never really trained that way before those before and I probably should go real light and see if I can get myself to be able to do them. And I did. I started with literally just the bar because I'd never really trained that way before. And gradually over time was able to add weight.

And I saw incredible results on my shoulders. From working through this new range of motion, even with the light weight, here's the beauty of, by the way, training in new ranges of motion as you start to own. It's novel again. It's novel. It's like a new exercise. It is. It's like, okay, when you first start squatting in your brand new and beginner, it's not unheard of to add five or 10 pounds every single week to your lift initially, right?

Those newbie gains, right? After you train for a while, it really starts to plateau. Obviously, you can't keep progressing that way. Otherwise, I'd be squatting 10,000 pounds by now, right? It doesn't work that way. So it's like, how do I tap into those newbie novel games? One way to do it is to improve your mobility and connection and train a new range of emotion, because here's what happens.

Let's say all you ever do is squat to 90 degrees, and let's say you squat with 300 pounds. That's what you're kind of stuck at. That's what you work with. But now you're working on mobility. So now you got to back away the fuck down. Now you're down to 135 pounds, and you're three inches below parallel, and you you're working on mobility. So now you gotta back away the fuck down. Now you down to 135 pounds, and you're three inches below parallel, and you're slowly working on mobility. Here's what ends up happening, as that starts to work for you.

You start to gain 10 pounds on your squat every single week again. And what correlates with that is new muscle growth, that starts to happen. You start to see new things happening. So, and again, the studies are quite clear on this. They've actually done studies on this and compared short ranges of motion to long range of motion and the larger range of motion are just superior and not just for the target muscle, but for all the muscle around one thing I hate that bodybuilder say it's a noise a shit at me as I said yeah, but I just want to target the quads as if a deeper squat is going to take muscle away from the quads. No, at the very least you'll build the same amount

of quad growth. But you get some hamstring, you'll get some calf, and you'll get some glutes to go with it. You're gonna get more muscle in other parts of your body. Is that like a bad thing? I don't know, I guess I was trying to think of an analogy for this, but in terms of reinforcing the weakest points of your body, like I just,

I don't feel like that's a conversation a lot of muscle building enthusiasts have. Like, you can build so much more muscle when you actually address a lot of the stabilizing muscles that contribute to, you know, keeping your joints in the most optimal position. And it's amazing what happens, the amount of force that you can output once everything feels like it's not going anywhere, it's super sturdy. You know, like if you think of this with any other machines out there, what do you do to them to be able to increase

their load capacity? You reinforce them. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right because especially as you become more advanced, the number one limiting factor is lack of stability in your joints and your body. Your body will actually prevent you from getting stronger because it knows you'll hurt yourself.

Or worst case scenario, you injure yourself, doing your routine exercises, in which case now, I had a peck strain. I got shoulder rotators, I can't bench press anymore. I can't squat anymore. Well, you have to talk a little bit more to in depth, like about, like, dug and eyes experienced with our low back, because I didn't really fully grasp this until I went all the way through this and then, and now have a much better understanding, because I think this point is the most important point is when you start to limit the range of motion

and joints that should have a greater range of motion, then when you call upon that in real life, then what ends up happening is other muscles overcompensate for that. The overcompensation of other muscles ends up creating these deviations in your posture and you get these imbalances, which then cause chronic pain.

So if you limit your ability to get full extension in your shoulders, then what will end up happening is parts of your traps and your upper back will start to overcompensate. And then it'll start to notice that I get testiveness in my neck or my shoulders start clicking and hurting all the time. And it's related from you limiting that range of motion in your shoulder and the body

starting to overcomensate. The same thing happens in the hips and causes the low back pain. So even though you want to build all this optimal muscle and I want to focus specifically on the quads, do you in order to sacrifice those things or those not important to you? Do you want not want to deal with that? 10, 15 years down the road? Because if someone would have communicated that really well to me when I was in 20, when I was 20, I'd say, yeah, I really do want to get buff.

I really do want to build just my quads in this workout today, but I also don't want to be in that situation in 10 years because I didn't address it. Right, and now picture you sitting in that squat and like playing with your son with Legos and you've only done 90 degrees. And now you're trying to figure out now how to reach out in front of you.

And now your back is compensating, you know, and it's rounding a bit and all these things. And you're starting to really feel that sharp pain in your back versus sitting all the way down. You own that position, you're in control, you can be in an upright position even and you know, use your hands in front of you. Shit, totally different.

You can't even do it. No, you can't even do it. You can't. Yeah, there's only four. You can't. I mean, I, and I remember because I was there. I was there. I remember when I first started working on this, and I think, I think Kelly Starat does this, did this like challenge. Like, can you sit in a squat for five or ten minutes or something like that? Like, you be amazed how many people just can't get down there. Yeah. They're, their heels will rise out the ground. Their shins will be on fire like crazy.

Their knees, their low back will be on fire. Their knees will be stressed. And they'll pop out of it in about a minute at most. And that's just, that's how long they can tolerate the pain for. Yeah. Because they're not comfortably there. So that's most people. And a lot of that is because of information like this,

because we're telling people that are training in the gym that are trying to improve their body, that they don't need to do this. It's like, okay, no, this is not a good message for anybody. And even like your point, Sal, even if you are the competitive bodybuilder, you can still learn to get a greater range of motion and still build optimal muscle or more muscle that way.

But I think that everybody should consider that because you want to get advantage anyway you look at. Right, and by the way, I even talk about this a little bit in the book I wrote, The Resistance Training Revolution, where I talk about the stigma that surrounds resistance training in the sense that it makes you tighter, right? This whole myth that lifting weights will make you muscle bound. That was a turn that they used to use back in the day. It made you muscle bound or made you tight. Now that came from people observing

hardcore bodybuilders move in everyday life and you'd see these guys and girls walking around. You'd be like, oh, they're tight. Look how they move. He can't even scratch his own ass, or look how he turns, and look how he's moving, or whatever, like, I don't want to move like that. Well, the reason why they move like that, they built a ton of muscles, they built all this armor around these kind of limited ranges of motion. And so that's the way that their body now moves.

When people train properly with resistance training, you get better movement. You get better flexibility. If you do it wrong, well yeah, you're gonna start to cause a lot of problems. I think we should start to give people some tips though. I'm sure now that we've made the case and people listening are like, okay,

I wanna increase my range of motion. What are some steps that I can take to do that? Now first off, I wanna start calling this functional range of motion, okay? So range of motion is how far you can do something. Functional range of motion is how far can you do something with control, tensions, stability, and good mobility, okay? So identify that for yourself first and foremost. So like, you might be able to sit in a squat, but can you sit in a squat with all those prerequisites? If not, then find where your real functional range of motion is.

That's the starting point. Now the goal is going to be, can we increase that functional range of motion? That's the important thing. Inch by inch. Right. Well, it's very gradual progression. And, you know, I would start with thing. I think that Kelly Starrett with Supple Lepard

did an incredible job here. I think I can't think of as a doctor, whatever. For Andrew Spina. Thank you, who did Ken Stretch. These are things that these changed my life. So that book, that certification absolutely changed my life as far as like what type of movements and exercises should I be doing in the gym or in your home,

in this case, to complement what we're talking about right now. Because it isn't as simple as, oh, this is where my range of motion is trying to challenge it by going a little deeper or pushing further. There's a neurological disconnect going on here. I'm not neurologically connected to that new range of motion. So I need to train the brain first. I need to train the brain.

It's all brain trained brain. How do I intrinsically create that tension when I need it? That's right. And that sounds really complex for somebody who has no idea what this is what we're talking about. It seems foreign. And this is also why we did the webinars, right? So we have two free webinars.

The Maps Prime Pro one, probably a little more specific to what we're talking about today, where take you through I think I took you through five It's Maps Prime Pro webinar dot com. That's what Maps Prime Pro webinar dot com dog. No prime pro webinar dot Prime pro webinar dot. Sorry. Don't even know our webinar. It's all right. Yeah, go to that Why follow that? It's free and and go through that because and What's important when you do these exercises, this is the thing that I learned, and then I should also credit Dr. Justin Brink too. Because Brink was the first person to take me through Ken Stretch and some of these movements. He was very clear to me that, listen Adam, we're training a neurological connection here.

So you can't just look at me in this position and then try your best to get in that position and sit there and relax like a yoga stretch or a static stretch. He goes, what you need to do is you need to intensify the movement. You have to turn the muscles on. Yeah, and it should be, you should be working like an exercise the entire time. You're contracting the muscle, but that's something that you have to actively do while you're getting into the. Yeah, and here's why, right? So when you stretch a muscle passively, like the old school stretches, right?

So let's say I'm just like stretching my hamstrings. So I'm going to, you know, bend down, touch my toes, relax. In little by little, I'll start to get deeper and deeper and deeper as my hamstrings start to relax, to stretch out. What's happening is my central nervous system is getting this signal that it's stretching and it's first it's tight because it's protecting. But then once it realizes things are safe, is it reduces this signal to my hamstrings and my hamstrings start to slowly relax and open up.

So the muscle itself is not becoming longer necessarily. It's just relaxing because the CNS signal is telling it to relax. Now, there's some benefit to that. We can get to that in just a second. But what that's not doing is that's not increasing my functional range of motion. All that's doing is increasing my range of motion. Because my central nervous system is disconnecting in essence. Now, I know it doesn't really do this, but just for the sake of this conversation, it's disconnecting and allowing me to get a greater range of motion. What I want is functional

range of motion. So the difference would be I'm doing that hamstring stretch, then when I get a little bit more range of motion, I flex my hamstrings and turn them on. So now I'm telling my central nervous system, we have a greater range of motion, connect to this new range of motion. Now, earlier Adam, you were talking about how, you don't even know how to connect to certain muscles. You're training your brain. Here's a great example of that, okay?

If you've ever worked with anybody who just had a baby, and if you're watching or listening, and you've had a baby, you know how weird it is to try to connect to your core muscles after the baby's born, like try to draw in your midsection or try to do a slow sit-up. Actually, don't do that because you might actually cause problems. Those muscles were so turned off in order to create space

for the baby. That is stretch all the way out. That when you go to reconnect to them, it's like a foreign muscle. It's like you, it's almost like you unplugged the wire to the speaker and you're trying to get the speaker to make some noise. It's not going to happen because there's no connection. So the first thing you can do, or you need to do before you go train it, is get that connection to happen again.

And that's what things like Kinskret are all about. And that's what trop property mobility training. Well, another example of that for people that have never had a baby, but maybe have broken something right, and being casted up for a while. And you've been casted up, you know, let's say you broke your forearm or your leg or something and you've been casted up for months on months. And we know one, atrophy is happened, right? It looks like you lost everything. But then like you take the memory, remember the first time that cast came off and you're like looking at your fingers.

You're trying to tell us to move. Right. Trying to tell them to move. And it's like they move and it's like they barely do it and it takes a while before you can start to get a weak signal. It's like barely even happens. That's right. And the reason why is because what has happened because you've been casted up, the brain realizes that and goes like, oh, we're not using this anymore. So we don't need it and it prunes it off.

And it says, I'm going to reprioritize neurons other places in the body that we're using a lot of and stop sending it over to this area that we're not using. That's what happens when you don't deep squat. You don't deep squat and the brain goes, oh, we don't need that anymore. He doesn't want to do that anymore. So I'm going to reprioritize it other places. If I understood that like I know now, I would have never shortened

my, I would have never done these little quarter squats. I would have always been pursuing a great original, especially in a movement as fundamental as getting down in a squatted position. Right. And it's because, you know, and we all thought this, that strength at all, everything to do with muscles. It's the muscles that are strong. And that's not entirely true. A lot of your strength comes from this signal, comes from the central nervous system, the command center, that's telling the muscles what to do. And that builds just like muscles do. In fact, that builds before muscles ever build. When you first start doing an exercise, the first thing that starts to adapt

is your central nervous system, is your brain, or the connection. That's why it's one of the reasons why your strength gains can be so fast initially without any accompanying muscle gains at first, because you're learning a new movement, you're learning a new exercise. So if this is you, and you're trying to increase your range,

your functional range of motion, identify your limiting factors. Oftentimes, the limiting factors have to do with joints that you might not think are the problem. In other words, if I'm doing a squat and I can't go all the way down and I feel it and it's like, oh, I can't go all the way down. It feels tight in my, my hips feel tight. The hips might be a part of it, but it also might be coming from your ankles and your feet. And the reason why your hips feel tight is because your ankles and feet don't have the functional range of motion

to support a deeper squat. So what do you do? Do you practice deeper squats? Part of it, that's part of it. But really the bigger part of it is targeting those areas. So I would go down and do a combat stretch for my ankles. I would work on my foot connection. I would work on my hip, internal and external rotation ability. So I'm doing things like 90, 90. I'm also lightening the load, or doing no load at all, and going a little deeper

than I normally do, and slow, going slow, focusing on connecting to that new range of motion. By the way, here's a great way to make that happen to even faster. When you get down to a new range of motion that you're not entirely familiar with, but you're starting to get connected to, don't put any weight on your back or whatever. Go there and hold that position. Hold it in squeeze. Yes. Really squeeze as hard as you can.

Like max effort squeeze. Like we're really trying to train the body to identify. We need all the troops. We need to get more muscle fibers involved. We need to activate. And so that's a very valid method to then build a lot of strength support in that specific angle. It is.

And whatever you're doing, this new functional range of motion is now treat this like a brand new exercise. What I mean by that is when you approach an exercise for the first time, there's a level of respect that you have like, okay, new exercise, gotta go slow, focus on my form, focus on my technique, make sure you're cautious. Just because it's still a squat,

doesn't mean it's the same squat, right? It's a different exercise now. So the goal is to not push it, and here's the problem, and this is especially for the fitness fanatics, and I run into this all the time. You get a new range of motion, you start to feel good. The first thing you wanna do is push the weight, that's when you hurt yourself.

So you wanna go very, very slow, take your time, allow this new range of motion to become very connected, and then watch your body start to progress. And again, focus on those sticking points, but I love that tension position. Getting that position, the new position, hold, dance, get your form, you know, technique perfect,

activate everything, teach your body to fire properly, and then slowly add weight, and then watch what happens. Look, if you like our content, you'll love MindPumpFree.com. Head over there and download our guides. We have a lot of free guides that help you burn. Body fat, build muscle, even become a better personal trainer. You can also find all of us on Instagram,

so you can find Justin at MindPump Justin, me at MindPump Salon, Adam at MindPump Adam. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, in at Mind Plum Justin, me at Mind Plum Sal and Adam at Mind Plum Padom. poly, mass performance and mass aesthetic. Nine 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 Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price.

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