Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1787: Lifting Weights Is Best for Flexibility

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin detail why lifting weights is a superior way to gain functional flexibility when applied properly. What is functional flexibility? (3:09) The importance of your central nervous system (CNS) in being the governor of your body and assessing risk. (6:29) Ways to lift weights to improve functional flexibility. (15:43) #1 – Train with CONTROL. (16:03) #2 – Train in YOUR fullest range of motion. (20:25) #3 – Strengthen and train your body in ALL different planes. (27:09) #4 – Do correctional and mobility work OFTEN. (33:23) #5 – Do NOT overtrain. (39:49) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Paleo Valley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code “Mindpump15” at checkout for 15% discount** April Promotion: Get MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Prime and Prime Pro all for $99.99! How to Fix Rounded Shoulders (GONE IN 4 STEPS!) | MIND PUMP TV Do You Have Back Or Shoulder Pain? YOU NEED TO TRY THIS! | Mind Pump TV Dunphy Squat- Improve Your Squat with this Secret Exercise – Mind Pump TV 3 Reasons Why You Need to Incorporate Mobility Into Your Workouts – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1142: Nine Signs You Are Overtraining Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned IFBB LEGEND FLEX WHEELER (officialflexwheeler) on 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 Pump. Alright, today's episode, a controversial one. We explain why lifting weights is the best form of exercise for flexibility. And then we tell you how, what you need to do

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In this episode, you hear us talking about mobility and correctional exercise. Well, you're gonna like this. All month long, we put together a bundle that includes maps prime, maps prime pro, and maps anywhere. Maps anywhere is a workout you can do anywhere prime and prime pro or correction exercise programs all three of them would normally retail you for three hundred fifty dollars sorry three hundred sixty one dollars but right now you can get them all for the one

price the one low price of ninety nine dollars and ninety nine cents that's it one, get access to all three programs. So go sign up, head over to mapsaperal.com. Once again, it's mapsaperal, M-A-P-S-A-P-R-L.com. So this might sound controversial, but lifting weights is the best way to get flexible. Oh, functional flexibility. We're gonna make, I feel like that, the Michael Jordan meme we're crying is like, insert that right now in all the

yogis and all the mobility experts, they don't want to hear that. Yeah, you know, before we get into the why, because this is true, we're not just saying click baby stuff, we should talk about why sometimes you see people who do a lot of lifting a lot of weights, who do seem to be tight, who do seem to have poor mobility, because that's what people observe and that's where lifting weights who do seem to be tight, who do seem to have poor mobility, because that's what people observe, and that's where lifting weights or strength training gets that myth, right? Yeah, the myth sort of persists

because of the way that people train. Yeah. And again, we are a product of the patterns that we present our body. And so if we're constantly going in shorter ranges of motion, our bodies gonna adapt in that direction. Well, even before you do that, I think you should get into defining what flexibility is, because I think there's a little bit of nuance even with that.

Right. Yes, because there's range of motion. Right. So how far a muscle will allow itself to be extended? And then there's functional flexibility. The muscle gets extended, but you also have control and strength over that extension. And those are two different things. Just having that flexibility or that extensibility or the range of motion isn't what you want. In fact, babies have incredible range of motion. Terrible stability, terrible stability. You know, in fact, I know that they recommend, for example, that you don't pick up young children too often

by their hands and stretch them by their arms because they can dislocate a shoulder or a hip joint if you grab them by their legs and swing them around. And that's because they have incredible ranges of motion but they don't have any strength to support it. So that's not what we're talking about. You don't want that, right? You don't want to be like Gumby,

where you have no control because that's very unstable and complex. Not usable. No. I remember the first time that I learned this. I remember training a client that was a gymnast. So I trained a gymnast and I trained a, like a yogi, right?

So a yogi, or yoga specialist, done it for her whole life. Both female ladies, both of them could like put their legs behind their head and had this incredible flexibility. But then when we would do like a strength exercise, with very, very minimal weight too. Like I mean, I think one of them was body weight,

the other one I put like the bar on their back and they would just knees, we collabed in word. And they had, it has like a very like a baby where they're wobbling all over the place. And I remember freaking out as a trainer just assuming that because they looked pretty fit, they had this flexibility. So I just kind of assumed that they'd be able

to perform this movement. And then their body reminded me of what it was like when I was training younger kids that just do not have the stability and control. And that was really interesting to me to see that in a person that did gymnastics for most of their life. And then a person that was a yogi expert, I really didn't expect that to happen

from that type of a client. And that's not to say that all yogi experts and gymnasts suffer from this. In fact, most gymnasts are not like this. It just happened to be this case for me where they were extremely flexible, but then lacked the strength and stability within that range of motion.

Yeah, I had a client that it was so rare, that's why it stood out. She had hyper mobility, totally inactive, never worked out, was never an athlete. She worked in the tech industry. She hired me because she kept suffering from repeated back injuries. Her hips bothered her too.

Her chiropractor happened to be a friend of mine and he says, go see Sal, you need to do some strengthening. I saw her and she was so hyper-mobile. She could sit on a heel, she could sit in the splits, she could twist her body a little bit of place. She lacked strength so she would hurt herself often because she didn't own that range of motion. So that's not what you want. You don't want to just be flexible.

You have to be able to own your range of motion. So that's what we're referring to when we talk about flexibility. Otherwise, what's the point of being able to just basically what we're defining is mobility, which is flexibility with strength. So the combo of the both being able to have access and be able to get out of those positions as you get into them is just as important. Yes. Now what controls how much your muscles can extend or how tight they feel is your central nervous system. It's the control center. And it tells the muscles be tight or be really loose. Now more people suffer from being too tight than

from being too loose, but too much tightness is not because people are strong. It's also because they lack stability. And often that comes from weakness. And what the body does is it tightens muscles up to prevent too much movement to protect the joints and to prevent injury. So this is what you see sometimes when you see guys or girls who lift lots of weights, who don't lift properly, who seem to be and are very tight. The problem is they train in a particular way that tells their central nervous system protect these joints at all costs.

So to give a silly example, it'd be like doing curls, but only ever going halfway down and halfway up and just always train that way. What will end up happening over time is you'll note this will happen as my arms would naturally want to carry themselves in that slightly bent position because this is where they're strongest, this is where I've trained. Outside of that, it lacks strength

and in order to protect my elbow joint, my body would, you're not shortened up and let's say stay in this range of motion, this is where you're strong outside of that, you're not very strong. So if I do shoulder presses halfway down, if I do lower body exercises with poor range of motion, this is where you're strong outside of that. You're not very strong. So if I do shoulder presses halfway down, if I do lower body exercises with poor range of motion, and I get strong in that short range of motion,

my body's gonna wanna keep me in that range of motion, and that allow me to go outside that range of motion, now I have tightness. And this is where the myth comes from of being tight from doing strength. I remember I fell for that trap for a long time. I used to think that if you were this big, you know, muscle bound guy or dude,

there's no way that you're also flexible. And I remember the first time, I wish I remember what bodybuilder was that was. Might it be a flex wheeler or some plants from this? They're like famous for doing the splits into their routine and stuff like that. It would have been flex wheeler. Yeah, and I remember seeing that going like,

well, there goes that out the window. Yeah, it's dudes 10 times more jack than I'll probably ever be and I can't do the splits. So it's obviously not because he has big muscles that he's flexible like that or not flexible like that. So there's something else that's going on. I'd never made that connection that, oh, it's because I'm training this way.

I'm getting so good in this range of motion, so strong that anything outside of that now, which would be increasing my range of motion, I'm weak and my body is saying, no, we don't wanna go there because you don't ever train there, you're not strong there, we're gonna keep you in this limited range where you always tend to train at blue my mind.

Yeah, Tom Platz was like that. He was a body builder in the late 70s and 80s known for having some of the best legs of all time or whatever. Squats. Well, I mean, you see him splits. He would sit on his heels, flatten himself out, going backwards. He would do these just crazy stretching movements and showing his range. But obviously very strong. Tom Platz is the guy that did, I think he squatted 315. I want to say 40 or 50 times, 500 pounds

of ridiculous amount. I did this competition with Tom Hatfield, who is this super strong powerlifter. Squatted 135 for 30 minutes, like incredible strength, also great flexibility and range of motion. Well, this myth still persists. I'm fighting coaches all the time,

baseball coaches, basketball coaches, with their athletes. They don't want them working out, you know, going into season or even like, you know, preseason because they don't want them to muscle bound. They don't want it to affect their performance, their skill. When in fact, it would enhance it if you do it the right way, the appropriate intensity, the full range of motion,

and then also still applying skills training, simultaneous with that, you're gonna create an even better athlete that's gonna perform. the full range of motion and then also still applying skills training simultaneously with that. You're going to create an even better athlete that's going to perform. Well, you can't blame them though because they've been proven right so many times. You know, how many times have they had somebody a young athlete go train and get all muscular over the off season and then it comes in and he can't swing about anymore. He can't throw the ball anymore.

And so you start to make that correlation of, oh wow, every time I have a kid that goes and gets buffed over the summer and then I get them in my sport again, it fucks up his sport. Now the irony is. Short and range of motion, bodybuilder style. Right. Now then the irony of that, what's so funny about that is that doesn't happen in professional sports anymore.

You name one professional sport that doesn't. Even golf. I mean, you've seen everything evolve into incorporating weight training because of the benefit and the flexibility that goes with that. Yeah, reduces injury, right? It's a big one. Yeah, no, think of it this way, right?

The central nervous system is this governor and part of the job of the central nervous system obviously is to get things to do, to move in particular ways, muscles to contract, others to stay slightly contracted to create stability, others need to relax. For example, if I curl my arm, the CNS is telling my bicep to contract,

but simultaneously telling my tricep to relax, because if my tricep contracted at the same time as my bicep, I wouldn't move. They would have to fight each other. So it's this incredible dance that the central nervous system performs. The other job of the central nervous system is to assess risk. Can this person wants to generate lots of force?

Do we feel safe generating lots of force? No, limit. It's like a limit on your car when you try to go past a certain speed, all of a sudden, the engine turns off, right? They've done studies on this and they find that the average untrained person can really call upon something like 60% of their actual strength because the central nervous system doesn't feel stable. Olympic athletes on the other hand, who are very, very, yeah, crazy. Almost all their strength.

It's also why you hear the stories of the, you know, the mom under, under distress saves the baby by lifting the car off the kid or whatever. It does some crazy stuff. That's because under extreme stress, the CNS, it overrides. It overrides. All right, injury is fine because we're under, and oftentimes people will hurt themselves, doing these incredible feats of strength

under extreme stress. So that's what the central nervous system does, and that's what you're training, largely what you're training when you're working out or when you're doing mobility, or even when you're stretching. Like, here's another example. Let's say I do a stretch on my hamstring right now

and let's say I go down and I can't even touch my toes. I get down and I'm like three inches away from my toes. If I just hold that stretch for a minute, I'll probably gain one or two inches of range of motion within that minute. My hamstring didn't lengthen, it didn't change. The only thing that changed was my central nervous system. I was holding the stretch and the CNS said,

I think we could go a little further, I think we could go a little further, I think we could go a little further and allowed me to increase my range of motion. So that's what the CNS does, it controls all those things. Lack of strength will tell your body to tighten up. Another example is very common that people have tight, you know,

upper trap muscles or neck muscles. Lots of people feel neck tension and they wanna get massaged and it causes headaches. Why is that so common nowadays? Well, one of the more common muscle recruitment pattern issues or what they call posture issues is forward shoulder, right? We all sit at desk now, we all work on computers. Our shoulders come forward.

The muscles of the mid back, weaken or lengthen. They don't need to be so contracted to hold that position. Our body forms that way. We create dysfunction. And what happens is a CNS creates tightness in these upper trap muscles to help stabilize these unstable shoulders. So it keeps them slightly tight all the time.

Like the way to fix that literally is not to massage the traps, that's temporary. As I say, even if you, that's the thing you gotta make sure you explain to people is because someone will be like, oh, bullshit, I have to have my soul therapist or my caro, I feel amazing every time. Right? You gotta keep going back.

Yeah, it's just a band-aid. I mean, it will give you relief right now, but you still got to put the work in if you want to address the recall. Yes, strengthen the mid-back muscles. Now that the CNS doesn't feel the need to cause tightness there to protect your shoulders or your neck or whatever. And by the way, if you're a trainer, this is to me, this is where this is like the next level of like coaching when you get this. This is what prime pro is all about. This is why we did prime. Like this is for like when you're a coach, this is what I love about this. It could

it could take you months, sometimes even longer to get a client to add 10 pounds of muscle on their body. Or lose 30 pounds. Yeah, or lose 30 pounds forever. But you can like, within weeks, make a dramatic difference in how somebody feels or moves by understanding these concepts and then knowing how to address it and teach them specifically what they need to do for their body to address the root cause.

In fact, we'll change lives that way. In fact, one of my most effective sales tools, when I would get a new client to show them my value, would be to find an area of pain and you can get the CNS to change in one session. Now, it's not permanent. You have to train it over time, but you can cause this temporary change within literally one session and they would have pain in their hip. I would find the problem.

Get the CNS to tighten the muscles that need to be tightened, loosen the muscles that need to be loosened, all of a sudden they're like, my hip pain that I always have is gone, and then they'd hired me, because I could show them that particular value. But you're absolutely right, over time, over a short period of time,

you can make profound differences in how the CNS fires. So you can, through improper training, make yourself tighter and more unstable, but on the other end of that, that coin, through proper training, dramatically improve your functional flexibility. The kind of flexibility that matters, okay, because flexibility doesn't matter unless you own it. If you don't own it, all you've done has made yourself more prone to injury.

So the question then comes, how can I train with weights? So I can build muscle, boost my metabolism, look awesome, do all the great stuff, but also not get tighter but rather improve my functional flexibility. What are the things I need to pay attention to when I'm training in order to make this happen? The first most important thing is to train with control.

Because when you train loose or you train out of control, the CNS still believes it needs to tighten things up to keep things stable. Now, as you become more advanced and you've got great control and stability, now you can do explosive, more loose type training, and you're okay. But if you're new, especially if you're new, slow and controlled as the way to go, because

through that range of motion that you train in through control, you're adding strength every step of the way. And it's little things, too, like even if you're doing a bench press and not realizing that anchoring your legs and your feet into the ground, makes a dramatic difference in terms of how the body feels stability wise. Now I'm stable, my hips aren't rotating, I'm not allowing that kind of loose movement at all and I have a lot more control,

which allows my body to get that signal and that feedback that it's okay, it's okay now to ramp up that force production so I can actually start loading a significant amount more. That 60% goes up to 80% real fast. Don't be a momentum lifter. Yes. I don't know, what would you guys say, what would you say the percentage,

when you, like, we're talking about a general gym, not like a powerlifting gym, not like a advanced, but like a 24 hour fitness, lifetime fitness, like what would you say the percentage of people are like momentum lifters? You know, it's a big percentage. It's gotta be high. Yeah, and I don't think they realize it. I think what they do is they have sticking points and so like at the bottom of a lateral raise you see the swing and then control at the top or a curl

hip thrust and then you know a little bit of a curl at the top right a squat either a bounce at the bottom or Speed at one point slow down and another right no. They're lacking control And so they're gaining strength in uneven ways. Yeah, and also to that point, like it doesn't need to be heavy loaded initially. Like you can do a lot in terms of your focus and creating more muscular tension, even by gripping the bar a little bit more intensively,

even as you're allowing the bar to come down slower, I have a nice firm grip. And you start training your body in that direction to really hyper control the movement. And then once you start adding weight and going through that progressive overload, you really notice the difference of what that did. I'll tell you, I may have put the most muscle on my body ever did by lifting heavy, because I'd never train really heavy for most of my career, but I never felt as good

as I felt training like this. Training with like four to six second negative, so as pausing at the bottom of it, and just really trying to always push my capacity, my range of motion, always try and control every part of the movement. And a lot of times that required me to dramatically reduce the weight. That's why I used to not care about PRs because it would be discouraging.

If I was comparing my bench press or my squat to somebody else's, when I was really focusing on the movement and rage of motion and control, I'm always going to lose. I mean, that person's going to beat me all day long. And so I would take myself out of those conversations when people to be like, Oh, well, how much you do here? I don't know. Yeah. I don't even know what I what I PR and bitches. I haven't tried that in years because this is how I move when I train. Actually, the goal is even different. The goal when you're training with with incredible control is to use the least amount of weight to achieve the tension and the rep range that you're looking for. In other words, if I can do,

let's imagine we use an intensity scale, one to 10, one being low intensity, 10 being like maximal intensity. If I could make 135 pounds, a 10 on the scale of intensity within 10 reps, or I could make 185 with that 10, the 135 is better, because that means I'm doing more control. I'm making that weight feel heavier through my control. And what happens, you gain even strength.

Like today, in fact, I was working out and I was jumping in. There was the peck deck, but when you go backwards on it, so you could work your rear delts. And the guy in front of me, very common, controlled up until here. Once he gets here, he's got to swing it to get it to go back more. Well, what part of that range of motion is he losing, right? That back part of the range of motion. What ends up happening is he's going to get tighter,

because he's strengthening here to here with control. Back here, it's a lot of momentum. So as CNS says, well, we don't own that. Like we own that first part, you're going to get tighter, right? Versus the control all the way through. Now, this takes us to the next part, which is to train in your fullest range of motion. I emphasize the word your because this is an individual thing.

And what this means is, and when I say your fullest range of motion, what I really mean is the range of motion you control and own, not how far you can push your body, okay? So if you're doing a squat and you can go down to parallel with perfect form, but then you go down below parallel and your form is no longer perfect, your full-lift range of motion at that moment is parallel. Now the goal should be to earn the rest of it.

To figure out how to get yourself to go lower with that perfect range of motion, but what you don't want to do is train in a larger range of motion that you don't have good form or control over because you're only making things worse. You know yourself best. Yeah. I mean, and this is something I was trying to stress so much, especially doing a wall circle for your shoulder, right? This is one of those really difficult ones when you have limitations and you're going to feel that immediately. And it is, I get questions all the time. Is it better to pull off and go through the full circle?

Or is it better to really find that sticking point hyper focus on that and start really just trying to gain access to that sticking point? So stop in that spot where, you know, your limitation lies, really focus in squeeze, you know, get more muscular tension, recruit more, to stabilize, and gain access. And from there, we can make incremental progress. So it may seem like you're not doing a whole lot, but each little sliver, each little centimeter of an angle,

that's progress. So you have to look at it completely differently. Now, what would you guys do? Let's use the example you just used to have. I think this is an area that everybody is not everybody. A lot of people are trying to improve, right? They're squatting. So if you were coaching a client who we've agreed, we want to work on their range of motion.

135 is relatively light for them. And we noticed that after they break parallel they're break down in there. Would you guys break that setup where like you take them to there, they've got it and then you would go do some priming in between and they go revisit it or would you do that as a separate session or before? What would that look like? So if you're training that client who their goal is to get an asterisk what we're far from it right now. We recognize that at 135, if we go any more below parallel, they break down a little bit, where's the coaching at? Where is it? Yeah, so first thing I would do, and this is a simple, this isn't work, this maybe 50%

of time this would work, is I go way lighter and say, can we go lower than parallel without breaking down, just by going down to, let's say, 100 pounds. If the answer's no, now I'm going to do more correctional exercise. And I'll prime and then do a set, prime and then do a set. And usually what will happen with that is I'll get another inch or two range of motion with good form and good technique. If I don't, I repeat that the next workout. And you start to see these incremental improvements in range of motion. Now here's the deal.

When you do this, this means you're getting stronger. In other words, because you're training in a greater range of motion than you own before, you're actually lifting more weight technically. So that means if I have a client who did 135 at parallel and three weeks later, we're doing 135 at three inches below parallel, same amount of reps, they're stronger. I don't have to add weight. I've just added three inches of range of motion. Well, again, like it's a different exercise at that point of focus. So to your point of bringing the weight down for sure, and then really changing the tempo. So we're going very slow focusing on the negative, but then holding. So we're doing like a pause squat. We're generating more force at the bottom position. And it may just be like, honestly, like a centimeter difference of gain of access,

but that's where we start to build. And then each time, you know, we can see if we can increase a little bit by depth and squeeze and hold. So more of a pod squat, less loaded, and then just really like take your time going. Oh, I would make the case that you could even go unloaded. So what I would do, this is an area one

where I would use a tool that later I found, which was through you, which is like the dump fee squat. Yes. So this is an area where I'd use that. Or what I would do is I would go find a bench or a box that is lower than what they, they would, I would do no weight, I'd have them sit on there, and then I'd have my hands, I'd push on their shoulders

and make them drive out of that. So I want them to feel me forcing against them, I want them to be starting from- I love pushing like an immobile object. So they're starting from a little bit deeper than where they can technically go on their own loaded, unloaded, but with me resisting them or an immovable object like you're saying,

which would be like the dumpy squat pushing against that, and get them to connect really hard with nothing in that position, and then go back to another set, light again, because I know I'm gonna challenge the range of motion, so I'm gonna strip a little bit of weight off. Now let's see if we can get down to that box that I just now started you in that was a couple inches lower than what you could before.

And now, remember this too, like, I'm not gonna take somebody who can only get to 90, all the way to Astrograss in one session, but what I might be able to do in that one session is gain, you know, two or three more inches of depth in that squat and get them more comfortable in that extra two to three inches and build upon that as we continue

to go through the program. And because you're using weights and because you're using strength training, what you've done is you didn't just give them two inches of range of motion, you've given them strength adaptations in an additional two inches range of motion. So this is why other modalities that do improve range of motion don't compare

to strength training because they don't add the strength nearly as effectively a strength training does, because now you've trained someone, I've gained two inches of range of motion Means nothing if we don't have strength to get out. Yes, to get back up We have to own it because the CNS realizes that there's load there the CNS Connects more the muscle builds it gets stronger now. We've eight. We've owned we own now the extra two inches range of motion Well, this is part of what really excites me about the isometric book that you just recently

wrote that I know we're going to release soon. Doug don't get mad at me for talking about it before we have it. He's our man. But this is one of the things that I'm really excited about because I think there's lots of opportunities for people to utilize a tool like that that has tremendous benefit. And here's a great example of how you safely gain strength in a new range of motion that you're trying to train for a client where you do an isometric contraction in a deeper squat than what they can do loaded to help build that strength in there. So later

on, we can all maximize the recruitment process. Yeah. And it's all maps prime or prime pro. You go through the mobility movements in there. That's what you're doing. You're doing isometric contractions through these mobility movements to connect to new ranges of motion. All right, so the next one, this is another reason why sometimes you see people who lift weights are very tight. And that is that they don't train

or strengthen their body in all different ranges, excuse me, all different planes. Most of the exercises they do are what are called exercises in the sagittal plane, right? Squatting, pressing, rowing, overhead pressing, very little lateral strengthening, very little rotational strengthening. So what happens is you become really strong in this one direction. That means the CNS is going to keep you in that one direction because that's the direction that it feels strongest and safest, meaning it's gonna limit lateral and rotational movement.

So now you go to twist your stiff, you go to move sideways, ooh, I don't feel very stable or I injure myself, right? So a good strength training routine, strengthens the body and all the planes of motion that exists, right? Above your head and front of you behind you, rotationally, laterally,

and then combining them all and putting them all together. That produces this fluid moving strong body, which again, that's, that's great. As a young trainer, I really didn't grasp this fully. I remember, it always happened to me too. Like, when I'd be training a client and I get a client and they end up calling me or telling me that they can't come their session

because they hurt themselves. They hurt themselves in the garden, they hurt themselves in the shower, but the thing that was like always mind blowing. But you're so fit. I'm like, we would be squatting and deadlifting and doing these things. They were so strong.

And they were like, what, you were picking your shampoo bottle up in the shower or you pulled a weed out of the dirt and that like it was always some of that where you picked up a dog food bag that weighs 30 pounds. I have you I have you squatting 200 pounds. I don't understand, but I didn't get the importance of that as a trainer to incorporate a lot of that came later on. I remember when I hired Justin, I know there was something that he was very passionate about and a lot of that knowledge and information came from working with him for years and going like, Oh, I really neglect this and I was so young and dumb and I was playing sports and I was doing a lot of that knowledge and information came from working with him for years and going like, oh, I really neglect this. And I was so young and dumb,

and I was playing sports, and I was doing a lot of it. So I wasn't seeing how that is as a trainer. You don't notice it yourself, and you don't realize how important it is until I started to get older, until I started to neglect it, and it started to see it in my clients. But that was a common theme.

I'd see injury happen, and it always frustrate me as a trainer, because I thought I got them so strong, but what I was neglecting was getting them strength in a different plane. It's very similar to the conversation we're having about depth in your squat. It's just unfamiliar territory. Yes. Body just doesn't have that natural response that, you know, bracing stability that added

support that should be automatic because you're familiar with that pattern of movement and that range of motion. It's the same thing in multiple planes. If I'm rotating, I have to familiarize my body with those patterns of movement and organize my muscles in a way where they respond properly. So I'm stable and strong and I can move my way out of those positions as well. So it has to be a consideration, even for your average person, because you do get really strong in the gym,

you get progress, but then an instance comes up where you have to rotate and grab something behind you, and you're gonna do it ferociously because you have strength. But all of a sudden now, your bite doesn't respond like it should and then a problem happens. I remember in my 20s, I went to the park for a barbecue with the family and I threw the

Frisbee around for 45 minutes. It wasn't like we were crushing it. Like I just threw on the Frisbee and my shoulder was jacked. It was messed up. It was shoulder low back. For a week afterwards. And I'm like, dude, I work out all the time. Like, well, obviously, I don't train in any of those ranges of motion. I have no strength and stability there. In fact, you can make this argument that there is a certain ratio of strength and balance that's in the body that quadricep to hamstring, to glute, to lower lat, to upper back, to chest, to shoulder, to bicep to tricep, and there's lots of ratios of strength that are balanced.

Well, if you're always training in one particular way, you throw those ratios off. So then what happens, you increase your risk of injury because, you know, if there's a certain ratio of strength that is required for me to throw a really fast ball, for example, there's the muscles generating the force, but those are ones that are stabilizing, preventing my arm from coming off my body or my tumors from twisting too much, and the muscles have the force, but there's the ones that are stabilizing preventing my arm from coming off my body or my

Humors from twisting too much and the muscles have to slow it down Well, if there's an imbalance in that ratio if it's too strong on one direction not in the other I'm gonna cause problems There's also this like if I'm in this is to your point Justin if I always train in this one plane of motion And then I move outside of that range and I move into a different plane of motion. And then I move outside of that range, and I move into a different plane of motion. My body may just call upon the recruitment pattern that it's used to in the in the wrong range of motion. So instead of stabilizing laterally, it tries to stabilize like if I were moving forward, boom, I hurt my knee or I twist my ankle, I roll my ankle, what the hell is going on? This is so weird.

Well, we talked about this the other day. I mean, wouldn't you make the case for the argument that you were at higher risk even being somebody who's strength trains and then you move out of that range of motion because you have so much power. I'm producing a lot more for you. It's like somebody who has an old classic car like mine and you decide to throw a supercharger on it, but I haven't reinforced the rear end of the suspension.

It's like, yeah, I can beef up that motor. I'm more likely to get in an accident or break something on my car by adding that extra horsepower than if I were just to leave the engine alone and be like, I'll just use a battery. I had a buddy that did that. He put a kill axle. He put a ton of money and time into the power and the car

didn't reinstrengthen the frame. Twisted the frame of the car because it couldn't support the power. And your body's the same way. You get really, really strong in the gym. You neglect to do that rotational stuff and make sure you protect it like that. And you become a higher risk of it

than the person who's doing nothing. That's right. Look at your workout. Does your workout, is all the exercises in front of you above your head? Are you doing any rotation? Are you doing any lateral stability? This is one of the reasons why we encourage people

to do all of our maps programs. It's not because you can't follow maps in a ballic in forever or a mass study. We want all of you to programs. It's not because you can't follow maps and a ballac in prepute, you know, if forever or a map setting. Yeah, or because it's because each program has a strength, but it also has its weaknesses and the other programs fill in those gaps, right? So training in all the different planes is extremely important to give you that functional flexibility and to prevent you from getting typed. All right, this next one is also very important, which is to do correctional and mobility work often.

Because inevitably, regardless of all the planes of motion, you train all the full range of motion, because you're strengthening, because you're training, because you're working with weight, there are going to be issues that will start to pop up over time. It's almost impossible to prevent every single issue. Correctional work and mobility work fills in those gaps. It really does. There are mobility movements and correctional exercises that are so different from traditional strength training

exercises that I don't think I would reach those ranges of motion with traditional strength training exercises. For example, handcuffs with rotation. There's no resistance training exercise that gets my shoulder through that incredible range of motion. So really the only way to strengthen all that and articulate all that is through correctional work. Do you guys think you guys have found what that ratio is for yourself or for clients like what ratio of mobility work to strength, traditional strength training

work? Do you need to have to keep a pretty stable body? Like do you guys have an idea? To keep a stable body? Yeah, like to correct. To both, right? So like, I mean, it's like, what does that look like? Like, I have an idea for myself, but to be honest, like I haven't consistently done this

with clients enough to see where I could go, oh, I think two to one ratio, as long as you're doing, you know, one day of mobility correctional type work to your two days of strength training, you should be able to protect yourself, increase range of motion, fix any sort of issues. The way I used to do it with my clients, which is not the best way to do it was when an issue

would pop up, then we would spend more time correcting that issue and then it got better, and then we go back to strength training. Towards the end of my career, I figured out that if I did, if they were going to do an hour workout with me, 15 minutes of it, if I could do 15 minutes of it to be correctional work and mobility work, that seemed to be a pretty good ratio for them. Yeah, that's a tough question because it again, like if we're talking correctional, we may need to up that frequency, quite a bit to address and to get them back patterning the right type of

response, but you know something I've I and again this kind of Speaks back to us like not Favouring cardio quite as much, but I tend to favor mobility way more than cardio And so I'll program that in where a lot of people would probably Program in cardio. It's almost on a very similar ratio of that in terms of like weight training and then in pairing that with with mobility just as a as a constant Addressing joints function stability. So that way we're continuously

stability so that way we're continuously making sure that we're keeping tabs of like how how well our joints are stabilizing so we can progress. So it's not like we're going to hit these plateaus. I love that you went that way Justin, this is what I experienced and this is my own personal mobility journey right? Because in the last decade or even less than that, last five years, I'd say I put more work into that than I ever have in my training career. And I have the best mobility and stability, I think that I've ever had in my career today than I have in all my prior years of training. And what it took to get here was a tremendous amount of work and effort in the mobility and trying you know, trying to increase

flexibility and strength and range of motion. Like, it took a ton of effort and work. It took me actually thinking about it multiple times a day. Even if it means just getting down and doing combat stretch for a minute or two, doing it as frequent as possible. And I would say the ratio of that to strength was more like a forward of mobility, one to strength, to get to where I need to, now here's the cool part though. I rarely do it anymore. Yeah, maintaining is a totally different thing. Because once you get there, if you know what traditional strength training exercises

to do, to keep you like that, and I shouldn't say traditional because there's things that are unconventional like the mace, by the way. You do handcuff rotation for, you know, a year of your life every single day like crazy. And then you go swing a mace club just, you know, every time you do shoulders and you'll be good. Or, you know, work on your ankle mobility, your hip mobility to get down to a 90 90 squat, then actually make sure you always incorporate

really deep squats where you pause at the bottom and you connect and I don't do that stuff hardly at all anymore. Unless I've been collecting training in general for a couple of weeks at a time, which is rare for that to happen for me. That's what's kind of cool about this is at the beginning, yeah, it might take a lot of work,

yeah, it seemed laborious to be doing these mobility drills and that, but if you put the work in, you get to a place where the shoulders are feeling good again, the hips are feeling good. Then there are strength training exercises that you can do to keep you mobile forever. And then you rarely have to do that stuff, which is amazing.

I remember years ago, I wanted to be able to do behind the neck pull up so bad, probably because Rocky did them. And Rocky for... Harvest. Same logical. And you know, I bad, probably because Rocky did them. And Rocky for... Harvest, the same logical. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, if you never did pull-up behind the neck, pull-ups, and you always did pull-ups to the front, like, that's like, you feel like you're gonna tear your shoulders

off, like, it's not good. So I went through this process of shoulder mobility work, and it did, took me like six months, and then I was able to do behind the neck pull-downs, and I did that for a little while, and then I got to explain where I could do behind the neck pull-ups. Now I could do behind the neck pull-ups, and I never have to do anything for shoulder mobility to be able to do behind the neck pull downs, and I did that for a little while. And then I got to the point where I could do behind the neck pull ups. Now I could do behind the neck pull ups, and I never have to do anything for shoulder mobility to be able to do that anymore. So maintaining is way less volume, way less frequency than getting there in the first place.

Yeah, what is the Olympic where you just overhead squat? Like is it the, yeah. One of my favorite things about that movement is you have to have incredible thoracic mobility, incredible shoulder mobility, incredible hip mobility, incredible ankle mobility. So, I- Yes, I, of course, the pinnacle of knowing whether or not you have the mobility and the stability to pull it off. It's so great, that's my favorite part about that movement is to just, you know, it

intermittently incorporated into my routine. Real like to, I ain't trying to get really strong at it or be the bat, like I ain't trying to get really strong at it or be the bad, I loaded a little bit so I can work it, but it's really just to keep everything mobile through one single strength training exercise. So if you can work to get to where you can do that movement and then you can learn to discipline yourself, to keep that movement in your routine

throughout the rest of your life, you're gonna have healthy shoulders, gonna have healthy hips, you're gonna have healthy ankles for a very long time. Very true. All right, so this next one, this one, if you do everything right, but you mess this up, you're going to be tight,

and that is overtraining. When you overtrain your body is in this constant state of healing, lots of inflammation, and your CNS is limiting range of motion on purpose. So if you ever overworked in a workout, you know exactly what this feels like, over time, this feels like more joint pain, more stiffness, lack of mobility. In fact, for me, over, this is my number one most, this is the one sign that tells me I'm overdoing it.

Like if I start to feel stiff, if I start to lose range of motion, and it's just like that all the time, and I get up, and I feel stiff, and why does my hip hurt, and what's going on with my shoulder? That's when I go, I'm over-training. I'm just doing too much.

So even if you do everything right, if you train too hard, or too often, or both, this is going to limit your range of motion and cause some serious flexibility issues. And again, like I said, this is my number one sign. I know I'm over training when I am stiff all the time. It's very hard to stand or control when you're in a state of fatigue or you've overdone it.

Yeah. So, I mean, this is definitely an indication. A lot of times too, if I'm not bracing properly and I'm just kind of going through the momentum of the exercise and you start to notice, you're really resting too much on your joints and your muscles aren't contributing quite as much. That for me is assigning to kind of back off a little bit of the intensity of the volume.

What about nutritionally? What do you think there's rules to this or do you think that plays a big role in this? Do you have any tips nutritionally with this? Hydration is the number one. If you are not drinking enough water, you will feel tight. You will feel tight. You will feel joint pain. I remember I had a client that this blew my mind.

I was a relatively new trainer, couldn't figure out what, we got some of the back pain to go away, but couldn't really figure out why it was still kind of lingering or whatever. And I had this other trainer talk about, they need to drink more water, they're not hydrated. And I thought that sounds stupid,

but they kept telling me and I said, I'm gonna try this, told this client, let's aim for this much water every single day. They did and they're like, oh my God, something my back pain has gone. And I was like, holy cow, I didn't realize I had that big of an impact. I would add like inflammatory foods to like,

if you're eating foods that you're intolerant to or you have a major inflammatory response to it. I mean, it's really hard to move a joint through its full range of motion if there's like serious inflammation in the butt. This is especially true for the core. So when you eat, like what are the,

one of the hallmarks of eating something that you don't digest very well, right? You feel bloated. You feel bloated. And what happens when you're bloated is your gut distends a little bit and it stretches the core muscles out just enough so that they lose optimal control

and stability. So think of it this way. If I take your quad and I stretch your quadricep really hard or I even stretch a little bit and then try to get you to generate as much force, you're not going to be a strong because it's in this weird kind of stretched position. Well, that's what happens to the core when it gets to stand. This is my pregnant women start to lose core stability, right? The baby's pushing things out. So now you're slightly distended. Muscles now have to fire differently just to stabilize and you actually get more back pain.

Back pain can oftentimes be related to just poor core stability from bloat, from digestive issues, which sounds crazy, but it's totally true. You notice that with the back arching and everything else sort of compensating as a result of that. So that makes perfect sense. Yeah, totally.

You know, one of my favorite to highlight that and why I asked that and brought it up is because one of my favorite periods of working on mobility was when I was also incorporating fasting. I always noticed I had these great mobility to do. To me, a while to kind of register that, like why were the connection was? The correlation of the, oh, that's crazy.

I wonder if- Plus your focus on hydrating. Yeah, exactly. I'm staying busy. So that's a good point. So it kind of proves both points there, right? I was probably drinking a bunch of water more than I probably was before.

Because you're hungry. And then I'm not eating anything. So I definitely have got all inflammation tamped down. And those were some of my best mobility sessions to do that. So that's a great thing, I think, for people to think about. If you are having a hard time working on This flexibility is to also potentially look into your offenders nutritionally to totally So you know there you have it right if if functional flexibility is range of motion plus strength

You can't find anything better than strength training for them Those are the reasons why and we just told you how to do it. Look, if you like our information, head over to MindPumpFree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So just in this on Instagram, at MindPumpJust, and you can find Adam on Instagram at MindPump At Him, and you can only find me on Twitter at MindPumpSelf. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy

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