Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1752: How to Stretch for Gains

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin detail how to stretch to improve muscle development, injury prevention, and recovery. If used properly, stretching can amplify your ability to build muscle and sculpt your body. (2:11) How stretching can assist with injury prevention. (3:10) The importance of stretching with purpose. (8:04) How stretching can help improve your range of motion. (9:30) How proper application of stretching will help you bring up lagging body parts. (17:50) How to stretch to maximize the pump. (22:55) How active stretching can speed up recovery. (27:54) Stretching is the ultimate pain reliever. (31:56) Related Links/Products Mentioned February Promotion: MAPS Performance and MAPS Aesthetic 50% off!! **Promo code “FEB50” at checkout** Visit Chili Sleep for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Which is Best - Mobility or Stretching? - Mind Pump Blog Will Implementing Mobility Exercises Help Increase My Muscle Mass? - Mind Pump Blog Is Warming Up Before A Workout Necessary? - Mind Pump Blog Priming Your Body Before and After Workouts – Mind Pump Blog How to Improve Weak and Stubborn Body Parts – Mind Pump Blog What To Do About Lagging Body Parts – Mind Pump Blog How To Behind The Neck Press Properly! (ADVANCED LIFTERS ONLY!) - Mind Pump TV Use Intra-Set Stretching for the BEST Hamstring Workout | Ben Pakulski How to Use Intra-Set Stretching for the BEST Chest Workout | Ben Pakulski How to Use Intra-Set Stretching for the BEST Bicep Workout | Ben Pakulski The “No Pain, No Gain” Fallacy – Mind Pump Blog MAPS Prime Pro Webinar MAPS Prime Webinar Prime Bundle | MAPS Fitness Products Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Ben Pakulski (@bpakfitness)  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. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pup, right? In today's episode, we talk about stretching, but more specifically, how specific types of stretching can help you with your gains. Literally, build more muscle and sculpt a better physique.

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and for maps aesthetic, go to mapsblack.com and the discount code for both of them is FEB50. So FEB50 with no space will give you 50% off one or both of those programs. Hey guys, I want to talk about a very unlikely thing that leads to gains. Actually, we know that this helps lead to gains, but I think a lot of people don't think of stretching as something that you can do that will improve your ability to build muscle and sculpt your body. Yeah, you know, it's typically thinking of that as a performance enhancement

in terms of like building muscle. It's more of an injury prevention. And that's usually what most coaches promote. Why aren't all the yoga guys jacked in? Yeah, well, it's not by itself. But you know what though, you know what's interesting though? Stretching on its own does elicit some hypertrophy. It's a small effect, but it does contribute to some muscle growth.

Nothing in comparison to, obviously, to strength training. But as something to support strength training, it's definitely something if used properly, this is the important thing here, by the way. If you use properly, it can really amplify your ability to build muscle and sculpt and shape your body, for sure. Now, you mentioned the first one, which is injury prevention. You know, that's a big one because,

you don't think about this when you're young, but if you think of the biggest roadblocks to your ability to, you know, develop the physique you want, to perform the way you want, besides inconsistency, it's injury. Like, nothing will stop you in your tracks, like hurting yourself, right? Well, inevitably, you start cranking the intensity up and you start loading more weight.

It's going to put more stress around the joints or wherever else. You might not be stabilizing quite as effectively and just over time. I personally experienced this even when my shoulder, I would get to a certain point where I get really strong and then it would give way. And I would have to rebuild myself back up again to achieve that kind of performance. When in fact, I could have just put these practices in place to keep and maintain the health of my joints and move forward. Well, what exactly is it about stretching that helps prevent injury and also is it a specific type of stretching that does that versus just kind of generally like explain that a little

bit more because I don't think it's as simple as somebody who stretches all the time is preventing potential injury. I think there's more to it. No, that's a good question. So the traditional form of stretching, I think that most people, the average person would, you know, if I said stretching, what they would visualize is static stretching, right? Static stretching is the kind that you did

when you were in school. You know, you go to touch your toes, you hold that stretch for a long time. 30 seconds, yeah. You sit in the butterfly position, you hold that position for a long for 30 seconds. Static stretching is that. And then there's a dynamic type of stretching, which is, so let's say if I'm going to stretch my hamstring statically, I may sit on the floor with my leg out and just reach for my toes

and hold that position for 30 seconds. A dynamic hamstring stretch would be walking, but kicking my leg up straight. So as it comes up, the hamstring stretches, but then I bring it back down. That's more of a dynamic stretch. The dynamic form of stretching is the one that shows injury prevention, not static.

In fact, static stretching can actually increase risk of injury if you do it right before you. Well, I would say, active falls under that too, right? Back to three main categories, dynamic, active, and then static. And pretty much everything could fall under one of those three categories. And active and dynamic both have the preventative side doing it, but the static not so much. No, now priming, which is what we really emphasize, is similar to the active type of stretching, but the difference really is you're really concentrated

and focused on activating muscles that allow you to control contracting the muscles. Yeah, new ranges of motion, right? And that's really the best thing you could possibly do when it comes to injury. Isn't that what really differentiates from active and dynamic? Dynamic, you're using a ballistic movement,

like you example of the swinging the leg up, like it's this little or momentum-based. Yeah, right. And then active is just you are you're actively moving into the stretch and connecting to it. To all the muscles. Yeah. And then moving out of it. And it's typically holds no longer than, you know, five to ten seconds. So you don't hold it longer than that. And then you move out of it. You move back in it. That would that would constitute an active stretch or like what we say is priming before you get into your workout. Dynamic would be something like when you, you know, do this with your heart before, you know, it's more done or the kicking the leg of walking like you're marching or whatever. Like those are those are more dynamic. Now, where would you classify like foam rolling, for instance,, in terms of what type of a stretch

static? Yeah. Probably similar, but not really. It doesn't turn muscles off static stretching does. Static stretching, you're telling the CNS to chill out, which is why you can increase risk of injury because you don't want that necessarily. Unless you do it, by the way, I want to say this because if you do a static stretch but it's targeted in a way to get certain muscles out of the way before

you train, then it can be a good useful tool. But it has to be done very specifically, for example, if I'm doing a row with a client and their tight shoulders and packs prevent them from really squeezing the shoulders back, in that particular case a static stretch might be okay. It's not gonna increase the risk of injuries. It's just gonna help me connect to those mid back muscles a little bit better by getting the chest kind of out of the way. But the active type, what we would say priming,

that's the best way to prevent injury because you get the deeper range of the motion, but you don't lose connection. If anything, you gain connection through those deeper ranges of motion. Like what your time was more of a corrective approach. So like to be able to set you back up so you're in your optimal posture, so your joints contract properly and you can actually perform the movements

how they're supposed to be performed. This is where static or like those types of techniques will help kind of get you in that place. Well, I think the real point of this conversation, even though we're gonna, I mean, we're gonna title it like stretching to gain, improve your gains or whatever, but it's really learning to stretch with purpose. Cause they all have a place.

Program on proper. Yeah, they all have a place. They all have a tremendous value when applied correctly. And I have to be honest, as an early trainer, I didn't understand them. In fact, it was, I believe, a movement specialist that talked to me in my early 20s and was like, basically correcting me on how I was using stretching. It was just like, you know, you need to learn to stretch with purpose at them. Just stretching in general isn't necessarily good. Like people think that though.

Like there, there's this idea that, oh, all stretching is good. So therefore, if I stretch before I work out, it's good. Well, it can be, but to your point, it could also be detrimental to your workout, right? So if you stretch and relax for a static stretch, holding a stretch for 30 seconds a minute or longer, you're going to relax that muscle. And if you then are going to go into a workout where you call upon that muscle,

you actually are increasing your risk of injury versus helping prevent injuries. So muscles you want to be in that short and tense position. That's optimal for performance. Right, well oftentimes tight muscles just means that there's instability there. So the body's trying to create stability by making things tight.

But like static stretching before bed is great. Right. That's when I would be great to have my muscles kind of chill out and relax. It's helping the CNS turn off a little bit. It's gonna I would be great to have my muscles kind of chill out and relax. It's helping the CNS turn off a little bit. It's gonna make me sleep better. The next thing that stretching does proper is increase range of motion. Now, why is this important for gains? Greater ranges of motion and exercise tend to lead to better muscle gains. If you study like a full bicep curl to a partial one or a full squat to a partial squat or whatever, you'll see more gains in the longer range of the motion.

But there's more to that too. That stretch position, especially with resistance, is a great way to kind of send even louder muscle building signal. So the way I like to approach this when it comes to range of motion with gains is when I'm doing an exercise in the gym that involves stretching the target muscle, I really focus on the stretch part, right? So like if I'm doing like a pull up, right? And I'm using

more of a narrow grip. If I go down to the very bottom and hang for a second and let the lat stretch and then do the pull up. Now of course I'm not going to do as many reps, it's much more challenging. But I start to get deeper and deeper range of motion. I get way better pumps. Same thing with like a fly or like an incline curl for the biceps or if you're doing like a sissy squat for the quads or a Romanian deadlift for the hamstrings. As long as it's within control,

if you move in those deeper range of motion, increase the range of motion, you have to go lighter, you have to be smart, but you'll see that you'll get better gains. If you have more access to strength within those different angles, obviously performance, that's going to be an enhancement. So now you have access when you're more of an extended position versus that shortened position, and you're gonna be able to perform and lift more potential load from different positions or buy which then you're gonna build and develop more muscle to accommodate that.

What is the actual mechanism that's causing this? Is it because you are recruiting more muscle fibers because you're bringing it through a four range motion? Therefore, I'm going to build more muscle pieces. No doubt, one of the, personally, when, because I knew of this and understood it, but where I really noticed it applied in my own life, was working on my squat depth.

It really blew my mind, how little of weight I have to use to develop my legs. That's probably why you didn't go into it earlier. Same for me. It was you had to go lighter. So I forget it. Why would I do that? But you noticed it was lighter weight?

Yes. I noticed that I could develop my quads, my legs in general, as much or more when I was moving through a full range of motion in comparison to a shortened range of motion with significantly more weight. So that was what kind of what kind of blew my mind was. So I got the chance to see that in my my own life. But is that what it is though? Is it because I'm moving through a greater range of motion? Therefore, I'm recruiting more muscle fibers in order to do it. And that's what ends up building. That's a good question. There's a lot of theories. That's one of them. And they do see that there seems to be more muscle

recruitment, muscle fiber recruitment, but there's like the waste, you know, building up waste signal that can tell you to build muscle. And there's lots of other stuff that's happening. There's lots of studies that are going into trying to really find this out. So they're not quite sure, but what they do know is that when they compare appropriate,

I say appropriate because just having a full range of motion, if you lack stability and your form is off, then you're just getting a higher risk of injury. So we're comparing apples to apples here. Excellent form, technique and control and stability, deep range of motion versus good control stability, connection and a shorter range of motion, which one builds more muscle with the intensity being the same. Now I said intensity the same, not weight, because you are going to be able to have your with the shorter range of motion.

So the intensity is the same, meaning this guy over here does 10 reps, with a high intensity, this guy over here does a 10 reps with a high intensity, probably heavier weight because it's a shorter range of motion, but the longer range of motion builds more muscle. And you know what I remember seeing this was with bench press, with myself and with clients, because we initially learned with the first certification

to stop at 90 degrees. So the range of motion was much shorter. And I remember when I figured out going all the way down, I just saw even though the weight went down, the gains really started happening. Same thing with flies, with that deep stretch. And then I started to seek out. And so when you program your workouts, one thing you can do that I think is really smart is to, if you're doing multiple exercises for a body part, make one of the exercises one, and this isn't work for every body part

but for many it does, make one of those exercises one where the resistance is hard at the stretch. I love that advice Yeah, so like and did you do that too? Yeah, I know or just or picking an exercise where you're intentionally going to take it through It's fullest range of motion go lightweight and controlled and just you know do at least an exercise every routine That is geared towards that versus a lot of times, especially being a guy who wants to build muscle, that's kind of what we're speaking to. You go to the gym and you're always going to like the thing that you could load the most. What exercise can you load the most? It's hard to kind of get out of your own way sometimes because you're so focused like

that. It wasn't until I started a piece this together later, I started to incorporate at least one exercise in there, was more about gaining a full range of motion and whatever muscle I was doing. Well, it just seems like you're not really tapping into the muscle's full potential when you're just focusing on a limited range.

This is sort of the peak of your focus because it is, you could load substantially more, but in terms of the overall function of the muscle, we're not stressing it in its length and position, and therefore we're not maximizing its full potential, which you could build more muscle fibers. Well, this also circles back to the first point, too. If you gain strength and control in this full range of motion, you're also talking about injury prevention.

Yes, yes. I mean, now, because that's normally when, yeah, injuries happen when you lack the stability to control. Almost always. I mean, rarely ever did I, I mean, occasionally, I got a client who had like a lack of student injury or something radical happened

playing a sport, but more often than not, it was a normal client just moving in a, you know, weird direction where they didn't have strength and control because they never trained in that range of motion and they tweaked their back or they hurt their shoulder. And so that, you know, not only does training in this full range of motion also promote more muscle growth, but it also sets you up as for injury prevention

for the real world when you move out of that normal range of motion. I remember when I started to kind of first see this was when I watched Pumping Iron. There's a scene, and this is just, I've seen this movie, Documentary a million times, but there's a scene obviously Arnold is the star of the documentary, and he's the, you know, Mr. Olympia winning all the time, and he's doing flies. And there's a couple clips in that video of other people doing flies. And I remember what stood out was his range of motion. When Arnold does the flies, like,

he is really stretching on the way to open. Really, really, and really good form, really controlled. Whereas the other guys were much shorter. And of course, Arnold was really known for this crazy chest, right? Then the second piece hit him when I read his encyclopedia bodybuilding So I have the original one where it's got like the old school bodybuilders in there demonstrating exercises like that's the one up there

It's all taped up Franco Colombo is in there and you know Tom Platz is in there and Frank's ain't anyway Tom Platz is in there and He's in the legs section. He's known for by the way Still to this day his legs will go he will go on a pro bodybuilding stage today, and he'll blow people away. And that never happens. Bodybuilders have changed so much over the decades because of the advancements and performance

and enhancing drugs and training and all that stuff. But one thing that blew me away and that was Tom Platz. Yes, they demonstrated squats and demonstrated all these great exercises, but he was so flexible, like so flexible, which I was under the impression as a kid that bodybuilders weren't very flexible. The whole muscle bound idea. No, like you're doing the splits, he's sitting on his heels, laying all the way back. He's in these crazy hurtler positions. And in that book, he talks about how flexibility really helps him build muscle,

which, you know, again, I found this to be true with my clients and even myself. This next part I think is probably the most one of the most important, which is proper application of stretching will help you bring up lagging body parts. It'll help you connect and to bring up lagging body parts. Oftentimes, the reason why you have a lagging body part is you're just not firing it as effectively or as fully as you could. And priming, for example, allows you to connect to these smaller muscles.

Because you can do a lot of exercises that are designed to target the lagging body part that you have, but oftentimes the most effective exercises are compound lifts. There's lots of other muscles involved, so you want to do a squat for your glutes and you end up developing your quads like crazy, or you want to do an overhead press for your delts, but your triceps develop more, or your chest, and the same thing with your triceps and shoulders.

Proper priming or proper stretching either allows muscles to get out of the way, or connect to these lagging body parts so that when you do the lift, you feel it and they activate much more. This for me was like the biggest big thing. Right, and I've seen this a few times with the protracted shoulder and like trying to get, you know, their chest more developed and not gaining that access to that because, you know, you're just not in good anatomical position to really open and connect and get your central nervous system to respond and communicate. So being able to get your body to really open up and find that range of motion and set

your body up to be able to focus on that and gain that connection again, it's a vital process. So another interesting thing that I found as a side effect from working on my squat depth was my calf develop. I, this tripped me out. Now I didn't get huge gains from it, but I, I saw expect your calves.

Right, it wasn't something I was, it wasn't even on the radar for what I was like, I'm trying to work on my squat depth. I'm not thinking about, oh, I hope this develops my calves a little bit, but it makes total sense, right? Because I lacked that ability for the knee to travel over the toes. It's an ankle mobility.

Yeah, I had poor ankle mobility, right? And so once I worked on that, and then I was able to get in this deep squat, well, and I'm in my deepest part of my squat, my knees are all the way forward and my calves are stretched. So in that stretched position and the part of that first movement of coming out of the hole, they actually have to kind of activate a little bit to get out of it. An area that I was never training before.

I was never stretching my calves to their fullest point like that and then having to activate. Now, even though they play a small part of the squat, just the fact of taking it to its fullest range of motion right there, them getting activated and then coming out of the squat, I actually saw develop my calves, it blew my mind. Yeah, it also allows you, you talk about lagging body parts.

It also allows you to access lots of different exercises that maybe you couldn't do before. So to give you an example, a great but often inaccessible or inaccessible, I should say, exercise for shoulders is the behind the neck press. Many people lack the stability, mobility, flexibility to do a behind the neck press. They do it, hurts the rotator cuff, hurts the shoulder, they just don't have what it takes to be able to do it without the risk of injury being too high. However, if you can do it, if you do have this stability and you can do it right, man, there's almost no overhead pressing movement that will give me a better pump than they behind the

neck press. To give you an example of how I combined different stretching methods to get myself to be able to do this because I as a kid I couldn't do them but I kept in the 90s it was super popular all the bodybuilders did behind the neck press that was what they did and so I wanted to do them but every time I tried them they would hurt and so later on when I became a trainer I started learning a few things and I said let me see what happens if I really stretch my pecs static stretch before I go into this behind the neck press. And then let me do some rows to activate my, and I was priming without knowing that I was priming. This is before I understood priming. So what I did is I stretched my chest, got that out of the way so my shoulders could come

back, activated my mid back so that, because when you're in a behind the neck press position, you need to have the nice, you're scapping these to come together nicely, right? Low and behold, and I had to start with lightweight, but lo and behold, I was able to do this really full range of motion behind the neck press, and I was able to develop my shoulders, which had always been kind of a lagging body part, which now I don't consider them lagging anymore. So, that's just one example, right? You could do this with many body parts.

So, if you have an area that just seems to be slow compared to the other areas, like for whatever reason your lats don't develop like the rest of your back or it's your chest or whatever, the proper application of stretching will allow you to access new ranges of motion, access better connection, and even get a hold of exercises you couldn't do before. Now you got this great exercise that you can go through those new beings because you couldn't do before. Now you got this great exercise

that you can go through those new beings because you couldn't get into it before, but now you can and you're gonna get great results. One of my favorite things about this application. Now the next one is to maximize the pump. Oh, that's a good one. I'm curious because this kind of is connected to the second one that we talked about

with the greater range of motion. Is it, is the reason why the pump is being maximized here, is because obviously we're moving it over for range of motion, that means we're gonna get more time under tension, so therefore, more fluid is being sent to the muscle, and so then therefore I get a bigger pump. That's part of it, but it goes even further,

and this is a very specific body building technique. So it's not of it, but it goes even further and this is a very specific bodybuilding technique. So it's not correctional, it's not necessarily activate more. This is a hypertrophy application of stretching. Bodybuilders have used it for a long time. Ben Pekolsky talked about it when we went to go see him and he's one of the smartest bodybuilders that you'll find. There's methods of hypertrophy training that actually incorporate what I'm about to talk about.

And they're all based off of these animal studies where they would take an animal like a bird and they would put one of the wings in a weighted stretch. Okay, weighted stretch and left it there. And they saw significant hypertrophy in the stretched muscle. And so, and what bodybuildism practicing for a while, and if talked about for a while, is when you're working out a body part,

is to finish your workout after the muscle's pumped. You're pumped, you're done with your chest workout, to do a gnarly, deep, static stretch. There's a name for this technique, right? What's the name of it? I don't know. There is. There's a name for, well, there's also the interest name? I don't know. There is. There's a name for well there's also the interest stretching also right? So where you can do in between sense, right same same philosophy. Similar, right? And you get this crazy pump. Have you ever messed with this? Yeah, no,

absolutely. That's why I was asking you what it is attributed to like my thought is that I'm in this deep stretched position and I'm holding it. I'm so in a sense I'm holding a contraction in an isometric contraction. And so I'm sending more fluid that way, which is now causing it to pump up. You know what, so I've heard that. I've also heard the explanation that when you have blood already in there, there's already this intra,

I don't know what you want to call it, intramuscular, intracellular pressure because the muscle's pumped. So then you go and you stretch it. It disperses it. Well, you're really stretching the fascia and you're stretching the muscle. And with all this fluid in there. And that sends a growth signal as well. There's a cell swelling signal. For example, with creatine, there's a lot of different

ways it builds muscle. But one of them is by increasing the intracellular pressure, which also sends this kind of muscle building signal. That's the theory at least. So now this is more of an advanced technique because you need to have good form of good technique and know you're using the right weight. Don't go too heavy with this. But if you do like what you were saying at them, what you would do for example is,

while you're working your legs out, once you start to get a pump in between sets, you get into a deep like aggressive static stretch for like 60 seconds. So like I would like sit on my heels and lean back and allow the resistance of my body to really stretch my quads. Hold it for a minute. By the way, this is like crazy.

That's the most gnarly thing you've ever done. If you've never done that. It's terrible. And you gotta go light because obviously you're gonna lose some connection with the CNS or whatever. But the pump you get is so brutal and incredible. Like for lats, you would hang and stretch the lats in between sets or maybe I like to just do it

at the end of the workout. Chest, same thing, you get some light dumbbells. I actually had Doug do this the other day and you let it sit in a fly and just sit there after the chest is already pumped. And it's gnarly and it is a hypertrophy tag. It's more of an advanced one. But if you find yourself kind of plateaued a little bit just try it out. Yeah, is it because you've already kind of sent a hypertrophy signal, right?

And so you went through the workout with that now you're in this isometric static hold, but it's still reinforcing that same signal that you already presented it with. You know, that's a good point because it's less passive than you think, right? Because it's weighted, right? So there's an isometric component to it because you're not just like, no, you're not just, yeah, intrinsically kind of pulling. It's forcing you in that. You're also technically adding volume too, right? I mean, you're even though it's less damage, right? Right.

Not too much damage. Right. You know, we actually did, I don't know if you guys remember, Pekolsky did a video with Melissa Wolf on our YouTube channel. Did he do this? Yeah. I'm almost positive, right? Doug, he did it. to do this? Yeah, I'm almost positive, right? Doug, he did it. Yeah, right?

Yeah, I'm quite sure he did. Yeah, we'll have Andrew link it so people can see or I'll be in the show notes, right? Show notes. Show notes. Yeah, absolutely an advanced technique, but this legit. Yeah, and I've messed with it many times. I have to.

I like it. The pump, nothing gives me a better pump than doing that, that whole stretch at the end of the workout. And if you're following one of our programs, and correct me if I'm wrong, where I would implement this or play with this is like when you're going through one of our hypertrophy phase. Yes, makes the most sense like, you know, I'm not a good idea to do this when you're going

super heavy. Yeah, when you're going super heavy and you're following the strength part, which is phase one of a lot of our work or a lot of our programs, not such a great idea. But when you get into like a hypertrophy phase, which is normally like the third phase of most of the programs, this is a great tool that we actually didn't program into the programs that you could kind of play with if you've never tried it before. Yeah, now this next one, I actually, you know, kind of discovered later on as a kid, which was to speed up recovery. You know, I remember, I obviously have talked about this before, but as a kid, I thought the best way to grow was after you work out to do nothing.

I literally did this. Yeah, God forbid I waste the calorie. I could go to recovery and building. Like I was, I was, I was, I was, I was just trying to talk about this. So I lived, so when I first moved to the Bay Area and I first started as a trainer, 24-arfendess that I worked at was literally,

I lived in the apartments across the street. So I would like, even when I worked, I would do my workout and I always try to have at least an hour too and I would come home and I'd just lay there. Build. And I would, I would be, don't bother me on build right now. Praying, right?

They're sleeping and praying and trying not to move. Yeah, no, so you know what this happened to me. So I was 15 or 16 So I've already been working out for maybe a year year and a half I told you just a long time of the story. I read this article that talked about how Arnold In order to add an inch to his legs went to the woods with a barbell and some weights and a gallon of milk This is this is literally what I read. And he squatted all day. And then his quads, I don't know if it's a true story, but I read it.

And as a kid, I'm like, this sounds like a great idea, right? Because when you're a kid, stupid idea sounds great. So I took a barbell and walked to the, there was an elementary school that was a quarter mile away from my house. And I brought literally two gallons of milk. And I went over into the lawn of the grass area and I said to myself, I'm gonna do squats all day.

Now I lasted probably a couple hours because that's ridiculous, right? So I would do a bunch of squats, then I'd take a break and sit in the shade, drink the milk, right, gotta feed the muscle, go back do some more squats. Well then I got to the point where I had to hold on to something to do any more squat

with no weight, right? And I was so screwed that I could barely walk home. I was dragging the barbell. I have to pause every 10 steps because my legs were just not working. Finally, my dad comes looking for me, finds me, you know, throws the barbell back to the truck and then takes me home. Well, anyway, I took, I couldn't go to school the day after. I was so short. So my mom's like, fine like fine, because I was like in bed, like, oh my god, it's so bright, so she's like fine. She's like, you're going to school tomorrow though. Well anyway, the second day was even worse.

Yeah, I'd just say day two, so it's more like day two. So my mom's like, you're gonna get out of bed and stretch. And I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, no. That's real good. That's real good. That's real good. But you know, she's like, you know, it's going back and forth with my mom, old school of time mom.

So I'm like, either I lay in bed and get the wooden spoon or I could do this. So I got up and I remember doing some really light stretches and then all of a sudden like, man, the soreness is really dissipating quite a bit. Now is the first clue that stretching could help with recovery. Today, it's one of my favorite ways, right? Active recovery is good, moving is really good. was the first clue that stretching could help with recovery.

Today, it's one of my favorite ways, right? Active recovery is good, moving is really good. But if a muscle's really sore, stretching it throughout the day, there's a really, really good way to get the recovery to happen a little fast. This is what I would always recommend the class. I mean, I remember it just from actually feeling it the first time, if you've never done that, if you've never been so sore,

a lot of times people do this, right? You feel so sore like that and you don't wanna touch it, you leave it alone, but yes, it's a little painful to work through the stretch, but you guarantee you feel a difference right afterwards. I mean, you feel way, way better. I mean, you can move again and it just makes logical sense that,

you know, it made a stretch that allows me to move again, would help me build more muscle later on. Took me a while for that light bulb to go off, but it's kind of obvious once you go through it. Once you've been that sore, been the kid who doesn't move and just waits till you recover versus, okay, I'm actually going to get out there and move. I'm going to do some mobility or stretch, see how I feel. Oh, wow, I feel so much better.

I'm more likely to go do my next workout, which is then again, obviously going to promote more muscle building. So it's kind of obvious once you go through it, it's just funny how we were stuck in our own head thinking that you wanna train as hard as you can and then not move until you've got it. It makes a difference. And that takes us to the last one,

which is just pain relief. It's one of the most effective, immediate ways to relieve pain. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean you're fixing the root cause of pain. We've talked about the summit on many past episodes that you wanna find the root cause, you wanna do correctional exercise.

It takes a little longer because oftentimes chronic pain, even though you may feel in an area, it's because movement patterns are wrong and things aren't connected. But in terms of immediate pain relief, like if your hip hurts or if your knee is sore under your patella or your shoulder hurts or ooh my traps a little sore or whatever, just holding a stretch, just holding a stretch on the target

area, you'll notice pain, almost always pain relief right away, right away. Yeah it's interesting even going through a lot of old studies that they've shown this analgesic effect for even an isometric contraction of squeeze, like a really intensive squeeze. And what it's doing is providing feedback that it's stabilized, it's secure. And so, you know, that pain signal starts to dampen down and you get a lot of relief from that. And now you apply that in with mobility or, you know, priming or whatever we talk about in terms of like another approach to stretching

and it has like a massive beneficial effect in terms of like pain relief. Does it have anything to do with like inflammation too? Does it like the fact that the CNS calming down also will bring down inflammation which then also gives you the relief also? Yeah, you'll get that little later on, right? Because when something's tight intense,

so what happens is muscles will be tight because they- It's protective. Yeah, there's instability somewhere. So your body's creating instability in a less than ideal way by getting the muscles to be tight around it. Oftentimes, we'll see this in the neck, right?

The traps, neck area, people, oh, my neck is tight. It's probably because you have some instability issues in your shoulder and in your upper back, or your mid back, I should say. And so what you would do is like, you know, I would stretch the traps, or I'd press on the traps, which would cause immediate pain relief, but then I would go when I would strengthen the other muscles so that that didn't have to happen. Keep happening, right? But the immediate pain relief is there. Like my dad, you know, he gets a lot of low back pain, and you know, I wish you would do the preventative stuff. So that part was a different discussion because

he didn't do it. But oftentimes when I go over there for dinner, he'll say, Hey, Sal, my back hurts. Can you take me through some stretches? Because it right, it right away, it fixes the pain. It doesn't fix the root cause, but you get that pain relief right away. And what I'll do with him is I'll stretch his hamstrings and his hips because I know they're so tight to make up for his core stability. And that's what's pulling his back into that position. Once I stretch him, he's like, oh my god, I feel so much better. It makes that big of a difference. Now what you would do is you would follow it up with correctional exercise to prevent that from happening again. But yeah, if you're trying to maximize your gains and you're not incorporating targeted,

appropriate and specifically program stretching, you're missing out on a big portion of your gains. And I think that's the main point that we're trying to make here. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpafree.com and check out all of our guides. We have all kinds of guides that can help you with many fitness and health goals. You can also find us all on social media. So, Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin.

Added is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. I got kicked off Instagram, but you can find me on Twitter at Sal underscore to stuff and out. Thank you for listening to Mind 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 maps and a ballac, maps performance and maps aesthetic.

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