Modern Wisdom - #013 - Dr Quinn Henoch - The Dark Truth About Human Mobility

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

Quinn Henoch is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Head of Sports Rehabilitation for Juggernaut Training Systems and Founder of ClinicalAthlete.com It's very hard to find a definitive answer about what strategies work at improving mobility. From stretching to foam rolling, resistance bands to hanging therapy, there are a lot of approaches, but for every article claiming X is effective, another claims Y. Today we put the lacrosse balls down, and look to science for the answer. Expect to learn what ACTUALLY improves your mobility, why your warmup routine can be shorter than you think and why that £500 Massage Gun might not be a worthwhile investment. Extra Stuff Follow Quinn Online - https://www.instagram.com/quinn.henochdpt Buy his book - https://amzn.to/2KJn8iO Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello there. This week I have the pleasure of hosting Quinn Henneck. Quinn is a doctor of physical therapy. He's the head of sports rehabilitation for juggernaut training systems and the man behind clinicalathlete.com. He is about as no bullshit as you can get and I've wanted to have him on the podcast for so long. As far as I can see, mobility is this like Charlotte and Rich, a wash world where no one really knows what's going on. And there's so much disinformation that it feels like the Trump presidential campaign all over again, which isn't good, right? People need mobility.

They want to be mobile within particular ranges of motion. They want to be able to do an overhead squat and a normal squat and complete a variety of tasks that require their bodies to be mobile, but doesn't appear to be any consensus or appropriate information. Quinn does a series on YouTube called Mobility Myths and as soon as I saw that I knew that I had to have a conversation with him.

And it went better than I could have hoped. I've just about managed to pick my jaw up off the floor after finishing with him. And we go through what the science says about typical approaches to achieving mobility. We look at the word mobility, flexibility, stability, what do all of these words mean in a performance context? What are the typical approaches and their efficacy, their usefulness within training, from static stretching to dynamic stretching, to soft tissue work, what do they actually do if anything? And I think there's some very surprising takeaways. Even if you're not a highly functioning or even moderately functioning athlete, even if you're a couch potato, this information is so important

to understand how our bodies work in relation to moving. I couldn't believe some of the summaries that he gave me and some of the conclusions that he's drawn. Hopefully, we're going to save people an awful lot of time in the gym and we're going to improve their ability to understand their body and to adapt their training to the needs that they've got. So I'm going to stop blowviating here because this podcast just it speaks for itself. Hope you enjoy it. Here it is, Quinn Henneck, Doctor of Physical Therapy, Head of Sports Rehabilitation for Drug and Art Training Systems and the man behind clinicalathlete.com.

How are you today? Chris, I'm doing well, man. Thanks for having me on. Thank you for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. So I want to cut sort of straight to the chase here. Researching mobility online for me can feel a little bit like a mind field of disinformation. For every article that says yes to one approach, there does seem to be 20 arguing against it. Do you think there's a lack of clarity with what's published online? Oh, 100%. As confusing it as for you, it's as equally confusing to me. The word mobility is not well defined. It's not really defined at all. In physical therapy school, when we used the word mobility, it was regarding patients in hospitals, whether they can walk, whether they can roll over in bed,

bed mobility, it was like functional things, functional tasks like that. And so I think in the last five to eight years or whatever, the word mobility, this nebulous term, has probably the biggest buzz word has been in that time frame. And I don't think we have a good grasp on it. You'll get, is it synonymous with range of motion? Is it, does it equal the control of movement? You'll, you'll, you'll, you'll see some people describe it that way.

And so, cover, so, cover is all range of sins, right? Yeah, exactly. So, when you say, I gotta work on my mobility, we don't, nobody knows what the hell that means. So, I try not to use the word, but I have kind of gauged my interpretation of it because it is so popular. I tend to put the word as synonymous with range of motion. I was going to say, what does mobility mean to you? For me, it means the potential for a movement.

Meaning, do you have the hardware to perform the task? Meaning, again, do your joints get into the positions that we plan to train? So, if we're talking about the hip and our positions that we want to train is the deep squat and we want to squat below parallel or hips below 90 degrees, if you lay on the table, can I move your hip joint past or through that range of motion without apprehension or issue or a hard, some type of hard blocks and structural block.

And in many cases, the reason I define it like that is because it's a way for me to create the buy-in that most people do not have the limitations that they perceive to have in regards to their structure. I think a lot of people, they blame their structure for not being able to hit certain positions in training when the reality is those positions and or end-or-those training modalities are simply too intense and too complex for their particular athletic prowess at the time and so if we Simplify the word mobility to simply can your joints get into the positions? Let's establish that first. Okay, and if the answer is yes, but shit goes, can I cuss on this show? Fire away, man.

Okay. If shit hits the fan with some type of increase and intensity, be that actual weight on the bar. On the load. Exactly. Velocity fatigue, all these markers that can make something more complex or motor control is more needed.

And then you're unable to hit the positions. Well, that has nothing to do with your structure. That has to do with your motor control is more needed, and then you're unable to hit the positions. Well, that has nothing to do with your structure. That has to do with your motor control and your strength or pick, you know, whatever athletic attribute that's required for that task. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, so does other other terms that we need that are pertinent to this discussion, stability, flexibility, mobility. I hear all of these terms thrown around.

Is there a way that you can create a paradigm of how these all fit together in your conceptually? You can try, you know, the reality is the more terms that we use, the more convoluted things, however, I try to, anytime that we hear a new term or start to use a term in this context, I try to see if it's actually been defined in the scientific literature. Mobility has not. Stability has been, it's a little bit more consistent in its definitions, still kind of some variability there.

But it's actually in the scientific literature. So stability is typically defined as the ability of a system to stay and or return to a homeostasis after some type of perturbation or stressor. Okay. So in regards to movement, it's the whether or not it's static or dynamics ability. If it's static, I'm trying to hold a position, a desired position, and resist outside forces. That could be the barbell, that could be gravity, that could be an opponent.

So that's static stability, dynamic stability would be, I'm attempting to move through a desired path again while trying to resist external forces. In the literature, they use the word perturbation tongue tied if I say that too much. Per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per-per- button up, you're looking for relative static stability. You're trying to lock that overhead position in place. But from the from the hip knee and ankle perspective, you're looking at a dynamic stability situation where you're trying to move through a desired path while offsetting other forces that are attempting to take you out of said path. Okay, so globally, how do you put that together when you've got both static and dynamic stability there? To me, then the overarching theme is motor skill acquisition, motor control. It's a lot less sexy than mobility, isn't it?

I think it is, but that's completely toxic, because I think motor sky acquisition is the sexiest of all. That's the heritage of a doctor showing through right there, I think. Exactly. So, if we think motor control as this overarching theme of taking, it's your, so it's task plus individual plus environment. Okay. So, we don't, and this is where, you know, there's about 25 different rabbit holes we could jump into, but you gotta kind of get,

when it comes to human movement, they've gotta get rid of the dichotomies and the black and whites, because human movement is so variable. The task itself can be done a million different ways, and the human is so variable in so many different ways. So we're looking at like optimizing things or general guidelines, but if we think about motor control as it's specific to the task, so one position may be optimal for one thing and

sub-automal for another. So think about your final position with an overhead squat. Mine is absolutely terrible. It is the biggest point of contention in my training. Okay, so I was going to say that I was going to contrast that with like a competitive roer or like a strong man who has to pick up a stone who has like a turtle back. Yeah. That's the optimal position for that task. So maybe you, maybe you're using that position for the other thing. I don't know what I'm using, but it's definitely not helping my overhead score at the moment. Yeah, exactly. So the task matters.

The environment matters, what type of equipment are you using? What's, what's surface are you standing on? What are the implements? And then the individual, what's the build of the individual? What's the training history and the response? All these factors play in. So, all those things lump into motor control, and then motor skill acquisition is basically what we do every single day in the gym, trying acquire skills.

Under that, I think is where these mobility stability factors lie. Do the joints get into the positions? Can you control those positions? And then if the answer is yes and yes, now we can layer on practice and skill. And then we can layer. If it's even lowered in all the rest of it. Exactly.

So factors like strength and power are developed when as we're loading intensity over time. Those attributes take a long time. Okay, I think certainly from my experience and most layman understanding of this, mobility would probably be confused with range of motion. You think that's probably fair to say? Yeah, for me, I don't like that.

If someone believes that someone's really mobile because they're able to do the splits. Right. So then, I guess, the now the turn, in terms of flexibility and extensibility kind of come into play too. So flexibility is usually defined as the ability of all tissues involved to get into a position. So take your example of the splits. It's the muscles involved, it's the connective tissues, you know, the ligaments and the joint capsule and everything that's involved to allow that position to happen. And then within that, extensibility is usually referred to for specifically the muscles. So muscle, I think, I think muscle sensibility is what people call flexibility a lot.

Yeah, okay. When people say flexibility, it's assumed that only the muscles are involved when you hit a position, but there's a whole lot of other types of tissues that have to be stressed into that scenario. So, this is where it gets so confusing because it's sensibility, flexibility, mobility, just, you know, range of motion. Yeah. I like range of motion to be honest, most,

because that tells the story. Excursion of range of, can I, can you put your shoulder over your head? The position that I want your shoulder when that barbell is over your head, does it go there? And if I move the joint in that position, it's obviously assumed that all the soft tissues are going with. If you've got that range of motion passively on the table, but yet you don't, you can't express that range of motion in a training scenario, then we have to develop these other qualities that we talked about. Yep. Motivac physician Yep, motor acquisition, stability, strength, these types of things.

Okay, I think that starts to zero in on how these elements play together. So when we're talking about someone's capacity to get into a particular position, I think a lot of the people who are listening will be potentially crossfitters, power lifters, weightlifters, or someone who's looking at perhaps making the transition across into this. So when we're talking about someone getting into these positions, how much of this is enabled by someone's natural physiology? That's only only place apart. I think that it plays a part in their ability to catch on right away and or take more time.

I mean, there are people who walk into my door where they've never, you know, it's just like he said, they want to do, they want to snatch a clean and jerk or they want to squat, they've never done it before. But I just say, okay, well, put your feet shoulder with the part and keep your feet flat and just sit down as far as you can. I just want to give them minimal cues and I just want to see what's going to see what I'm working with. And there are some people who just naturally rock bottom,

beautiful squad. Wow, they're like, they look at you and they're like, you mean like this and it's like a perfect squad. Just like that. Let's talk about you. Like a perfect squaggle. Yeah, just like that. Ah, let's talk to you. Like watching Ray Williams in front of you is something like that. Totally, yeah, exactly. So then it's like, okay, that's basically the screen because it passed my,

my initial test of can the joints get into the positions. Now this person is going to need very appropriate and, you know, progressive appropriately progressed intensity and training and overload in these types of things, but they pass the initial test of the joints going to the position. So there's no need to stretch or try to passively tug and gain more range of motion. Yeah, I understand. I definitely feel that sometimes when we're in the gym and they'll be especially a lot of girls who will come in for the first time and they'll have a, we'll be doing a squat snatch workout, let's say, in CrossFit

and they'll come in with a PVC bar and just drop underneath it beautifully and there's me sweating and shaking at the back of the class with my entire posterior chain turned on so hard that I could pick up 200 kilos but I've got a PVC bar overhead and to get myself into that, I've already mobilized for like an hour beforehand. And I'm just about overhead with this PVC bar. And then certain, certain newcomers can just walk in and they've got this beautiful overhead position. And so, you know, some factors that play a, is natural structure, bony, bony structure.

So at the hip, there are a lot of factors that can make a squat position just simply more natural feeling and more comfortable. It's like the more shallow a person's hip socket, generally the deeper they can squat without feelings of restriction in the hip, hip sockets that are altered more in front of the pelvis, as opposed to laterally will allow

the person to squat free narrow and kind of sink straight down. Did the angle of the thermal next. So there's tons of the point is you've got to kind of play with position, squat position and overhead position are very are variable based on structure and that definitely plays a role. And this technique needs to be taught appropriately to the person's physiology. Exactly. There's no, especially with the squat, there can't be a one-size-fits-all because human anatomy

is so different. It's just so clear that it has to be tailored to the individual. Yeah. Yeah. I certainly know it is that sometimes I've travelled around to a lot of different gyms over the last couple of years and there's certainly some coaches at certain gyms that I've been to who've got the cookie cutter set of cue cards for cues for lifting. Knees narrow and toes turned in, whatever it might be.

When you're doing, for instance, something like a wallball, which for me is that a lot of people seem to be able to find their own natural way to drop into a wallball. And for me, that involves driving my knees out quite wide, and that feels lovely. And I know that I'm efficient, and I know that it's safe, and I know that I don't get injured doing it that way. And then, as you say, sometimes you may go see a coach or be to a new gym and they've got their preconception about how you should be moving. And sometimes that can be overlaid erroneously, I suppose.

Well, and I get it, you know, the whole I test. We all want our movement to look aesthetically pleasing. You know, we want that overhead squat to be Instagram worthy. I get it. But, yeah. So, you know, if we look at like the very common box that people are put in in regards to the squat in particular, it's that toe is completely straightforward, relatively narrow stance.

And it's funny because that stance is not optimal for most people. Like most people can't squat to the depth of their desire with their feet completely straight. And their feet just shoulder with the part. It doesn't really respect the common structure of the hip. The orientation of the femoral neck is such that 15 to 20 degrees of external rotation at the start. So like just toes pointed out a little bit.

Ends to clear some space in the hip joint at the bottom. Because keep in mind, the squat is an extreme range of motion. We're talking about all the way down. We're talking about maxing out the joint. And so you at that point, you have to respect where the joint is most congruent. Now, if we're talking quarter squats or jumping position or like athletic position, like a linebacker in the NFL

or something like that, that's a different conversation because you're not squatting all the way down. So in that respect, a little bit more narrow stance, toe straight forward so that you can change direction, so you can drive straight into the floor. That's probably, that's much more understandable and valid, you know, as an argument. But you gave a really good example of the wall ball and we use the Galbot squat as a way for people to kind of figure out their natural squat and groove. So I just have them experiment. I say, you know, hold this 10 kilo kettlebell in front of you and just experiment with different

positions. Your general guidelines are your feet have to stay flat. Your knees have to track kind of like middle of the foot, just naturally over the center of the foot. And then that's pretty much it. I look at spinal position just kind of, if we have to clean it up, we will. I like the goblet squad almost. Keeps people upright just naturally.

And it's a really good tool for people to explore. And that's what we have them do. And then we, you know, when they find a comfortable position and they kind of meet those criteria, just, you know, feet say flat, knees track it over the middle of the foot, we'll say, okay, try to bank that. And then let's see if we can recreate that position under the bar. Okay. It's a process that way. I understand. So someone that may be relatively new to the sport of either weightlifting, powerlifting crossfit, anything that is requiring a more extreme level of mobility, for one of a better term, the umbrella term for the things that we are discussing at the moment. Someone who has come into that, it's likely that

they're going to have some deficiencies within certain ranges or planes of movement, is that likely to be compensated by some in other areas? Are there some people who come in and have got really poor mobility globally? I suppose you've got people who are hyper-flexible and there must be people at the opposite end of the scale as well. Of course, yeah, everything's a bell curve, everything's a spectrum, but I will, I would argue again that the people that walk into the door that say, ah, I just don't have the mobility, it's because they haven't provided their body with the appropriate variation of the movement to set them up for success.

It's very common for the person that believes they don't have the mobility to perform a snatch is because all they try to do is max out their snatch and their technique is so horrid and they have not and they don't know how to control their bodies that their body literally kind of puts the e-break on. It's very common that when they say okay lay on the table, their joints move just fine or hold this 10 pound, 10 kilo kettlebell in front of you, do a goblet squat. Oh, looks like it's lovely. Yeah. Yeah, squat's beautiful to me. What are you talking about? You are correct, though. I'm not, there are certainly individuals whose joints do not go into the positions.

And then some that go beyond the positions as well, right? Some people are too flexible. Some that some people have a surplus of range of motion. And those are the people that, you know, it's really just, okay, well, you don't need to do anything else, but, but train the movements, but train, you know, find the amount of intensity that you can control your position and can come back to the gym day in and day out and you'll probably get better. Yeah, but you don't need to stretch. That's, you know, there's that thing for those individuals. But even the individuals whose joints don't go there, it's still about finding the appropriate variation in order to load the joint after range of motion

that it currently possesses, and then over time, the body will adapt and range of motion will be increased to the potential of that particular structure. Like, some people are just not meant to be gumby. Not about to be a gymnast, You know, it's that kind of deal. But I think I fall into that category. Yeah, me too. You know, it's okay. I've got, when I get the courage here, sometimes, I'll release some footage, some old footage of me doing the lifts, and then I'll release the footage of me doing them now,

and I'll say, hey, not a stretch to be had. I'll just practice the movement. And they're totally opposite. But it kind of gets you out to the mechanism of stretching and those types of things. I was going to say you've touched on one of the buzzwords, one of the few buzzwords that we're going to go through today. I think we would go there. You are, you were directed towards stretch city. So someone has entered the gym, they have

the desire to complete a particular movement, whatever that may be, but they are unable to get into the position, perhaps under load, as you say, or perhaps under fatigue. Typically, I think I've tried to look at broad categories of what I think would be prescribed quotation marks, and I think a combination of soft tissue work, static stretching, and dynamic stretching seem to be the kind of go to, these are the things, these are the camps that you could do something in. I think there's a, certainly what I see in,

my experience is a lot of weight towards static stretching. But of those three, would you say, there's anything else that is commonly prescribed if it's bro to bro in the gym? Or is there, have we covered those the three, the soft tissue work, the static and the dynamic stretching? Yeah, I think that covers it. The other aspect of it is just do more of the movement, which I'll tell you.

That's what you'd prescribe, that's the that's the that's the that's the actual solution so we'll back up the old teaser you know spoiler alert. I know you've just given away the end of the movie man So let's start let's start with soft tissue work. Can you tell us what soft tissue work is and What people think it does and what it actually does? and what people think it does and what it actually does. Um, I don't mean to be honest, I don't know the answers to any of those questions, but I can ensure I'll try. Um, what it is, I, we are talking generally about foam rolling, stickin' all across ball and various areas, uh, whatever the foam, the fancy, the gun thing, the costs $600.

Very good. Just on the side, just on the side point, one of the guys in our gym has come up with his home solution to this, which is a bandsaw that he's removed the saw from, milled, milled a solid steel part, welded it in and it's 60 pounds, so probably about $100. And does the exact same thing but has about four times the amount of talk? There you go. So sorry, sorry, sorry, very good. I'm definitely not gonna get one sent out to me now. Am I? You can whatever form earlier you like the one that vibrates the one that's got lights The ball with the you know the wife I connectivity the plays you music knives, the ball, with the, you know, the Wi-Fi connectivity, the plays you music, keeps for the proof. Yeah.

Let's just throw all of those things in the same bucket for now. OK. So those, we have to talk about the mechanisms. What they do, what they don't do. We're going back to the scientific evidence here, and there's no evidence currently. There's no evidence to support the common narratives

of those things break up your tissue as if we were made of clay. And I want, so I'll just kind of like let that soak in for a second. There's no evidence to say that you are breaking up your scar tissue or releasing or breaking up adhesions in your tissues using these implements. So just to interject there, there's microtairs which will occur in the muscles during training. Is that correct? Yes. And the commonly held assumption is that by rolling them on one of these implements,

it will somehow smooth them out, help to break them up. Is that an erroneous assumption? It's just that, It's an assumption. There's zero evidence to support that. Absolutely not. Which is... I was sure there's some jaws on the floor at the moment. Some non-believers.

Well, let's think about common sense here for a second. If you were able to rearrange your tissues that way, what a barbell sitting on your back do to you? Full straight three. You would disintegrate. You would have a permanent dent in your upper trap. Your barbell squat workout. That can be quite useful for low bar. If you squat in low bar, that would be really useful.

Like a little shelf. I saw a groove there. That's a good point. What about sitting down? Your ass would turn to the sponge bar, you know, bar and shapes to the seat. Yeah. Exactly. And then also, so that's just the common sense role in that respect. But also, how can we possibly select the tissues that we want to break up the adhesions, but yet it leaves all the other tissues intact. You know, how does that foam roller selectively get down four layers deep to the muscle,

but yet doesn't jack up the fascia, the skin, and how does it perfectly realign the tissues the way we want? I'm really think about this. It sounds so stupid when you say it. It's not plausible. It's just not plausible. So what the evidence does say about these things is that you can have short-term range of motion changes

and you can have short-term changes in perception in regards to what you feel. Okay. So, yeah, and there are no argument there. My argument is that you can get those same changes with moving and there is evidence to show that that they compare like just riding a bike, stationary bike for five minutes,

versus foam rolling for five minutes. You get the same range of motion changes. Within the legs. Yeah, whatever they're testing, it's like usually like hamstring, whatever. Okay. So my point is why not do more of the movement? And then you will get the same warmup effect.

You will hit that inflection point where you're like, oh, you know, things feel good now. Yeah. Number two, you will get more practice with said movement. So it comes down to the skill acquisition thing. It's just, it's just, how do you plan on spending your time? I think my general recommendation with that stuff is if you're going to do it, minimum effective dose, meaning that if 20 seconds is enough to foam roll your glutes or hip flex or whatever and that makes your

squat feel better, then there's no need to do two minutes of it. Yeah. Because there's diminishing returns. You're not breaking anything up. So I would recommend sticking those short bouts in between the movement as kind of like a back and forth type of thing. Okay. So go in a little bit of a roll, begin your squat,

barbell on your back, a couple of repetitions, then back across the roll, something else. Exactly, maybe three or four rounds of that with your warm upsets of back squat, and then you're good like you're good. Okay, can you explain about the pain perception thing? Because I know that does actually have a, you've mentioned it as a contributing, a positive contributing factor.

Yeah, so what they test is something called pain pressure threshold where essentially they poke the person, they have the, like, you know, it's like, think about just poking somebody with your finger. They use a pressurized tool to gauge the amount of pressure that it takes for the person to perceive it. These types of things, the person rates the discomfort level and then they foam roll and then they poke them again and there's a decrease in pain perception. I'm going to make two arguments here.

Okay. You can't placebo is inherent in everything that we do. The words that I say, the exercises that we give, placebo is inherent in everything. We can't blind the participants to the foam rolling. that we do. The words that I say, the exercises that we give, placebo is inherent in everything. We can't blind the participants to the foam rolling. So there's, you just don't think about what's happening. Ignore the feeling in your leg. There's nothing going on here. Right. So there may be a testing effect there. Yeah. But number two, let's say there's not a testing effect, and that's a true change in perceptual physiology.

It's synonymous with if you bang your knee against the table and you'd like rub it really fast, you know how you like you hit your knee and like, ah, shit, and you rub it down. You're just, you're just basically taking a sensory stimulus and overriding another sensory input. Okay. If you jam your finger and then you shake it in the air really fast, that's your natural way of creating a sensory input. Okay. Or if you jam your finger and then you shake it in the air really fast, that's your natural way of creating a sensory overload to try to override the pain perception. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So, where, if there's such tenuous research that is showing any efficacy for soft tissue work, who were, where's the charlatans that have been propagating this?

Where did they come from? You got to ask them, man. I've got to track back up to the guy in the sky. Just think about, just think about it from a marketing standpoint. I mean, it's sexy in its cells and it's easier than training really hard. It sounds like it works. Sure. It sounds fancy. And it's like... And it's like... And it's like...

And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like...

And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's like... And it's, I know I sound like a cramudge in, and I would, but it's important for people to understand not necessarily with income in terms of these things, not necessarily

what they do because we don't really, other than what I just mentioned, we don't really know, but it's more important to learn what they currently don't do. And so that way, you can, if you're going to implement them, you implement them in the most efficient way possible, which again, is my thing is like short effective bounce in between your movements. Okay, so someone's working on, let's say the squat, because we've talked about it a lot today,

you would recommend getting warm to the point at which they are warm enough. And then you've said, what, 20 seconds to, 20 seconds to a minute of rolling within an area and then go and move? Yeah, exactly. Now, I don't, just to be clear, I don't actually recommend any of that stuff.

Yep, yep. I recommend. If someone's unable to let go of the tether to the beloved foam roller, exactly. That would be the most effective way to do it, right? Exactly. Say, you know what, if you want to do that stuff,

I get that it feels good. I totally get that. So this is the way that I would have been. Exactly like that. Short bouts. If it's, let's say you're going, you're going to do a squat and then you're going to do an overhead press. So you'd foam roll your glutes and hip flexors

or whatever in between sets of your warm up, in between your warm upup sets of squats, and then you'd actually train your squat, and you'd not worry about the foam roller, you'd have your training mind on, and then it's like, okay, I have to overhead press. I'm going to warm up with the empty bar, overhead pressing, and then I'm going to go foam roll my last for 20 seconds. I'm just making up time period. It could be 10 seconds, it could be 30 seconds. I think anything beyond that is probably just a waste of time. And then you're back and forth with going a little heavier

in the press, maybe three or four rounds of that. And then when you're up to your last couple, either second to last or last warm-up set, certainly your working sets of your particular lift, don't worry about that stuff. Like put the fucking foam roller down. You've got some weight to lift. Please. Please.

Yes. So can you just quickly... It's a shame for the day. Yeah. Can you just quickly explain how a massage fits into this? Sure. It fits in a very similar way. And I know that you've probably lost whoever is a soft tissue therapist right now listening

to your show, Maybe you'll be fine. Uh, earned off. And so there's, it's the same conversation. There is no evidence currently to say that somebody's hands can magically rearrange somebody's tissue selectively. Uh, again, it's just not possible. Now we may be looking at the wrong thing. So any topic I have the, I reserve the right to change my mind

when evidence is presented to me. However, there is no evidence suggesting that it does have any efficacy at the moment. On, on, from a bio mechanic standpoint, no. Okay, so what was the, very briefly, can you explain the study? I think it was done on mice or rats, where this came from,

about soft tissue work? Yeah, sure. I mean, the narrative on soft tissue work is that's been a lot longer than those studies. But they've done study ads with the instrument assistive soft tissue work, the metal tools. And the study that is most cited, what they did was they ruptured the little mice MCLs.

And then it was like a six week protocol of scraping the mice MCL with tools versus none, nothing at all. And at the end of the six weeks, they did show that the group that got the scraping, their MCL tissues were more aligned to normal. Whereas the control group, it still showed abnormal fiber alignment, where the tear was, or parallel at all.

The scar tissue had built up all these things. So it's like, okay, that's some evidence of plausibility in mice. The kicker is not that mice physiology is so much different than ours, but it's the logistics of it. The mice were put to sleep when the scraping took place, and then they were using human-sized tools. They were using a tool bigger than the animal. So the amount of force that was applied to the tissues was beyond what we could tolerate as humans. They've been unable to recreate those effects in human studies.

It's beyond physiological realm. There's an actual 3D model a 3D model in 2008. Shodry is the lead author and they tried to make a model to how much pressure would it take to realign these types of fibers to create shear in the fibers. And it was up in humans. It was upward in humans. It was upwards of 2,000 pounds of force to create a 1% change, something like that. Thank you.

But it was, and then like the caveat was, well, you could create a 4% change, something like that. But it was, and then the caveat was, well, you could create a 4% change in the bridge of the, the fascia of the bridge of the nose. So like pinch the skin on the top of your nose. So, and it was like almost beyond physiological realm to create that amount of change. So it's just, it was implausible. That's for everyone who needs soft tissue work doing on the nose. Right, exactly. It was implausible. That's for everyone who needs soft tissue work doing on the nose. Exactly. And then the other areas was like the fascia lotta and the plantar fascia, so like the IT band and the bottom of the foot, so very thick, fiber spans.

And it was just beyond what we could tolerate. You know, your flesh, your skin and flesh would rip apart without a amount of force before you ever got to the muscle adhesions. And you laid on a 30 centimeter piece of foam rolling up and down on a soft floor is definitely not applying that much force. No, and so that was sheer force. There are some arguments being made. Well, what about compression?

What about compression plus sheer? And I get it, we haven't necessarily studied every different- It's not exhaustive, right? Exactly. And so there may be a way to create plastic change if the force is great enough, and if it's frequent or if it's frequent enough.

But in real life, you're not getting a very extremely aggressive massage five times a day. Yeah. That's probably the type of prescription that it would take. And I bet you that the changes would be minimal over time anyway. But you would get far more change with just consistent movement under load. And you would get the motor scale acquisition part of training if you did it that way. So now to your question of where does massage fit to this, and SMR with foam rollers, it's not to say that that stuff has zero place.

I don't implement or recommend it currently, but I can see the applicability not for directly in the movement itself or even pre-workout, but it's the notion of winding down and the notion of recovering and quieting the mind and the notion of recovering and and quieting the mind and these types of things that I do think there's probably some effect there's some decent effect on meditation You know shifting the body into some type of parasympathetic state, however, that's defined so I recommend longer amounts of formulaing like again if the person just likes it, they're like, I'm gonna do it. Just tell me the best way to do it. I'm like, all right.

It's a relaxing meditative pursuit, right? I think post workout and on the off days, I think post workout, the effect is not the actual area that you're rolling, but it's the routine. It's the winding down routine. Like I'm foam rolling now. It's the workouts over. I can start routine. Like, I'm foam rolling now, it's the workouts over, I can start to chill out and I'm gonna have to...

Well, there'll almost certainly be a reduction in cortisol and if you're going to be anxious or frantic about the fact that you haven't done the thing today that you thought you were going to do on your day off. Right, yeah, totally. Now, if you're that stuck on your routine, like maybe that's another problem, but I, you know, I think we may have opened up some people's routines

and freed them up from a couple of, a couple of half hour bouts here and there today, so far. My post workout routine is just chilling. You know, I take off my shoes and I sit and maybe I lay on my back and just chill. But some people might wanna just kind of roll out. I could feel good,, and that's fine. Whatever gets you to wind down,

if you get your appetite back, gets you to just kind of like recover for the next bout. I think massage has a similar thing. The lights are dim, your relax, you're just chilling, somebody else is doing something for you, like you're treating yourself. Yes. Just something nice, and that has just a general effect.

But understand what's happening here. Yeah, and understand what's not happening. It's probably more important. Yeah. Okay. So moving on, static stretching. What do people think it does and what does it do? It's almost an identical conversation.

There, the evidence, there's more evidence on static stretching just because they've been studying it longer. And the evidence kind of keeps saying the same thing is that we're not really creating permanent changes in the muscle tendon structure, like the penational angle, where the tendon and muscle meet, like that juncture point,

doesn't really change permanently. It's like not when you stretch, and there's an increase change in range of motion, it doesn't stick that way. It goes back. Okay. So it's a way that they describe the effects of static stretching,

the reason why it changes your range of motion short term, which it does, by the way, just like foam rolling can, is that it increases your tolerance to stretch. So think it's a nervous system thing. So think about this. If somebody lays on the table and they try to put their arm over their head and it doesn't quite go all the way over their head, if they were put under anesthesia, it's very likely

that that arm would just flop to the table. Okay, yeah. Unless they've got some type of like door stop in their shoulder joint, you know, an actual serious physical imbalance. Some people do, and in that case we're just not throwing a barbell over their head. We're, you know, we're doing landmine presses or something like that. But anyway, if that, if that same person who was under anesthesia, flop, their arm flops over their head, and then they wake up, they wake up a couple hours later, and then all of a sudden, they're kind of that restriction is

back. I don't, that's that tone, whatever we want to call that, that nervous system holding pattern is what stretching works into. Yeah. So I'm writing saying, is tone is tightness? Is tone is similar to tightness? That's a word that I've been trying to define for like three years now. I'm not even going to say it. I haven't said that. I've opened up Pandora's

box of groceries. I don't know how to define tone. I don't know what's, because if somebody's relaxed completely, tone would hypothetically be zero, but there's still some type of something's holding there. So I don't know what it is, but I do know that warming up, literally getting warm and moving through range of motion will will give you that same change in range of motion as that extension. And they've also shown that P and F stretching contract relax adding some load to the stretch actively is a better alternative as well. It gives you range of motion changes faster.

And head of static stretching. Correct. So it's to me like my favorite hamstring stretch is an RDL. Like a hold a light kettlebell or a many deadlet. Hold a light kettlebell, hold it between your legs and just kind of sink into that hip hinge position. Yeah. Take a couple, sink a little bit further. So it's like a lightbell, you know,

something that you can hold and sustain. You're letting that, do what's thing, you're letting gravity do what's thing. All the while your hamstrings are still being contracted centrically, but they're also being stretched. So that's kind of an example of what people have described, what we talk about is like loaded mobility, get into the positions and hang out there.

Yeah. It's active your body, you'll melt into position and you'll have the same effects with the skill of the position. Okay, I understand. So can you explain how someone like a gymnast or a yoga instructor that I'm sure everyone's got a friend who, well, she's done yoga for five years and she can get into the oversplit now

or she can do a back bend? Yep. Where, if static stretching doesn't elicit a long-term effect, how is it that these people have been able to get into what appear to be extreme positions? I was going to go there and I forgot, I'm glad you brought it back up. There's always a spectrum to things. So let's say somebody is a gymnast and that person has been training for 15 years since the age of like six.

There's a combination. It's likely, I don't know what to what extent, but because of the frequency of training, what did I say with soft tissue, if the load is heavy enough, if the frequency is high enough, because of the frequency over years, there is likely some type of structural adaptation. But think about the training for a second. It's with gymnastics specifically. It's very active. Gymnasts can do the splits in the air.

They can do it actively. They can hold these isometric positions. So they've been loading these. It's strength through range as well, right? So my argument is because based on current literature, it's limited because we don't have a we're not tracking like a gymnast over the course of years. I think that if we did that, you would likely you would probably see some type of change in the architecture of the muscle, but I'm going to argue that

that that change is relatively small compared to the positions that they can tolerate. And I'm going to go back to the fact that they have trained the ability to tolerate the positions. Now, they are closer to the person who's under anesthesia because the person who's under anesthesia has not trained for years to be able to tolerate the stretch. So with the gymnast, if you want to think about their nervous system, how is them to go there? Because they've trained it so often and over the course of many, many years that the nervous system is saying, okay, this must be okay. We're not threatened in this position.

system is saying, okay, this must be okay. We're not threatened in this position. Yeah, because even if, as you say, some of these approaches have a very marginal or negligible gain, when you multiply that five times a week over 15 years, the marginal gain actually becomes quite pronounced. Exactly right. And then, okay, somebody who wants to do a snatch is like, oh, I need to do that Like no, you don't need that extreme You know they look at the dream situations and they think that's what they need you don't have to be a gymnast to do an overhead squad I promise you in fact the muscles are not even that stretch your knee the hamstrings not stretch because your knee is bent Yep, you know your hip your hip flexor is slacked because your hip is inflection.

Yep. Your clods, your only quad that crosses two muscles as your rectus femoris, and that's bent at the hip, so that's slacked. There's really no muscle that is extremely stretched from a lower body position. From an upper body position at your lat, to extent, in your pecs, but that wide grip in the stach, usually not a limiting factor. And if you can do a push behind the neck, push press with a stach grip or a power stach,

then you have the shoulders. It's about integrating it. So I think people have this misunderstanding that you need to be, you have to have flexibility of a gymnast in order to get into these positions. You simply don't. Now, with the yogi, that's another example, that's interesting. I think that there's some selection bias there. You are not going to, I'm not wired to be bendy like that. Like I

stretching. You're obviously I have a bias here. I've hated stretching since kindergarten because it's for me, I don't, I'm like wired to resist that crap. Like my body doesn't like it. And I gotta get these weird nervous system tension type things when I'm trying to. But as a doctor of physical therapy, I'm sure is probably, well, maybe for a doctor, but there's certainly going to be a lot of physiotherapists who probably wouldn't put

themselves in that camp. I'm aware of a lot of them that would love the mobility, that would love spending time doing the study stretching in the soft tissue work. And it would appear that you're not happy stretching at all. I mean, I'd rather, I like to train qualities that have some type of functionality and that's right. I don't really care about stretching. I want the range of motion for the tasks. So not for its own sake. Not for its own sake.

That's correct. So I think that people are drawn to certain tasks that they're better at naturally. So I think that a lot of yoga instructors prop their bodies, probably lend themselves for whatever reason to relatively bendy. Well, you're not going to pursue a career as a the owner of a yoga studio and yoga teacher if you look shit doing yoga. That's all I'm saying. Or if it's uncomfortable, I'm not gonna teach four yoga classes today where I,

it's fucking sweat and shake and swear at myself and I'm panting at the front of the class. Exactly. And I think that, also think of a gymnast. Like, do you really think the people who suck at gymnastics and whose bodies are continually playing tug of war with themselves are going to stick with gymnastics for 15 years, probably not. Probably not.

They're going to go find something that lends itself better with their attributes. I think that there is some selection bias that people are not accounting for. That is consistent with the literature showing that there's limitation with these passive modalities. Okay. Dynamic stretching up next. Sure. Can you defund, can you like give an example to something that's stretching as like you could just do the movement, could be considered dynamic stretching? That was something I was going to say exactly. You've, you've spoiled, we've spoiled the, each of the films, the spoilers are out there. It's like Avengers all over again on Facebook. So dynamic stretching for me would be something like a pendulum swing with your foot,

so swinging your foot forwards and back, standing on one leg and allowing your foot to swing forward and back, stretching your hamstring, and then I guess your hip flex ring quad at the back. That would typically be, I think, what I would consider dynamic stretching. Is that anything? Is that just swinging my leg around? It is definitely swinging your leg around. I'm just, you know, first of all, a little grumpy because I'm doing sets of 10 in the back squat and I just got done maybe half an hour after we called. So that just to kind of give the listener some sense of that. That's absolutely fine.

Cutting, sweating through the bullshit is the exact reason that I wanted to have you on. I have taken a, I have evolved quite a bit over the past. I'd say eight years on these topics. And dynamic stretching, I guess, is the lesser of two evils. If you're going to choose one or the other, I'm going to just lay on my back and try to tug on my hamstrings. Or I'm going to do a standing leg swing like you described. I would pick the standing leg swing. Why? Because it is act because there is evidence to show

that dynamic stretching can give you the short-term ranges of motion changes that dynamic stretching can give you the short-term ranges of motion changes that and without the power decrease of static stretching. Oh, that's something we didn't even touch on. Can you can you briefly explain about that? Sure. So there was a few studies showing that bouts of static stretching like 30 to 60 seconds bouts can decrease in the short-term for a short period of time can decrease your top end power term, for a short period of time, can decrease your top end power output. So the way they set up these studies were like, they did a hamstring stretch, or like a hip flexor stretch, or a calf stretch, and then they had the people immediately go onto a

force plate and do a vertical jump. And static stretching affected that. But since they have come out with literature showing that if you do static stretching and then follow it up with some type of dynamic stretch or movement like they were doing like ASKIPS You know like walking lunges these types of like that then mitigates the power loss from static stretching Okay, which which is more real life like most people don't do a static stretch and then just go right to max F something. Yeah, they don't do like a single like quad stretch and then immediately go do a single like extension. Yeah, exactly. So in that respect, I think that it's pretty benign like the power loss.

Yeah, but it was was there a time window of when that starts to tail off? It's like an hour. Oh wow. So it's actually quite significant. If you're doing it within the same training session, it's like it's definitely affected. But at the same time, what is one to three percent is what they found, which there's probably some measurement error there as well, like one to three percent decreases in power, but also that matters for like a few amount of people. and it also matters if you plan on doing max effort training So if I know that my training today is only going to be like 70 to 80% for reps. Yeah It's probably not a big deal and I know also know that if I'm gonna I'll do some if I'm gonna do some static stretching

I'm probably gonna go and do the empty bar for a bunch and I'm gonna do a bunch of warm-up sets That probably doubles as my dynamic warm-up. I was going to say, yeah. It's about potential. I think what happens is it almost relaxes the body. I think that static stretching, it's the same as kind of foam rolling. It almost tells your body, oh, it's kind of chill. That is not synonymous with doing something max effort very explosively.

Yeah. So, you get to potentiate that effect. So, if you're going to static stretch, start to work back into like doing dynamic stuff, which you know, legs swings could be one of those things because your body is, it's that fast stretch contract, stretch contract, stretch contract. I think that potentiates the nervous system to prepare itself for a movement better than static stretching. Okay, so I think we've moved through what I would consider the three main areas that most people would use towards this zenith term of mobility.

Have you got a more optimal approach that people can use? You've alluded to it a couple of times about doing the movement. Yeah. Is it just progressive overload? Is progressive overload just king of everything? I mean, ultimately, yes. But if we're overloading, we're load assumes that you're like we're

talking about weight on the bar. But really, if we're talking about skill acquisition, weight on the bar will naturally come with time. So, it's getting into the position is kind of a different conversation, but you have to practice. So, you mentioned three things, and I think people spend way too much time doing, and not enough time doing the actual movement. Like, they freak out, because they're not happy with the position that they're hitting for like two reps and then like I've got to go do this non-specific thing for half an hour now. And then when you come back to the training movement you have to reorient yourself. It's just so much wasted time.

So those three things, self-tissue, passive dynamic, I think a priority dynamic is probably better, but it's all kind of the same recommendation in that do it kind of in between the actual movement so that you do have time efficiency. And you also, you get that short term change in range of motion, but you get to use it right away. Yeah, I think you, we definitely haven't concluded here that soft issues, static or dynamic stretching, don't elicit a short-term improvement in someone's range of motion. It's the pathway that that works on, which has been erroneously classified. Is that correct to say? Exactly right. And so then that indicates how you implement it.

So if you do 10 minutes, let's say you do 15 minutes, I think it's probably pretty standard for people like 15 minutes of foam rolling, maybe even another tan of static stretching, like it's not unreasonable to think that people spend 25, 30 minutes doing these things. You've probably lost some of the short-term benefit from the first five minutes. You're already off the other end. Yeah, think about it. If you do a total body thing and you hit your, you know, calves first and then you hit your shoulders last, you're probably hitting it to your calves again. It's going to be like the fourth bridge, you just constantly painting it. Yeah. So it's much better to pick one spot and then go use it right away, go load it

right away and the load will will further allow you to get into a new range of motion. It will further desensitize some of the feelings of restriction and apprehension to the movement. So that's, I think, the best way to implement it. And also, just, you've got to trust the process. If you want real changes in your structure and your movement, you've got to put your head down and commit to coming to the gym for months on end. You know, Ty always say, like, talk to me in six months,

and let's see if there's a change. Like, don't worry about tomorrow. And also think about, like, don't panic when the movement doesn't feel it's best because that's pretty much life. Like, it will be an example, it's like, you and I'm sure that you can attest to this, I can, you walk into the gym, it's like, all right, I got squats there, I got snatches.

You do that first air squat and you're like, oh, God. Life hurts today, gravity feels so heavy. Yeah, and then what happens is people are like, oh man, I gotta go warm up. And so they do the 20 or 30 minutes of the non-specific thing, but what if, what if you were like, all right,

that squat felt like shit? I'm gonna take that 20 or 30 minutes that I was gonna do this non-specific thing. And I'm just gonna do 20 or 30 more minutes of like squatting. I was gonna say, we could try and do an experiment with the listeners right now. And the next time that someone goes into the gym and a particular movement, let's say that it's squat because this would be applicable to a front squat, a back squat or another head squat. Instead of them going away or instead of them beginning a session before going and

doing this movement with foam rolling and the sati stretching and the dynamic stretching, what would you have them do instead? Work up from a PVC bar, get themselves warm and then start to put a little bit of weight on the bar and move around for that half an hour instead focusing on movement quality. Yeah, I don't think it has to for that half an hour instead, focusing on movement quality. Yeah, I don't even think it has to be a half an hour. I think that's overkill. Yes, well, you'd definitely be knackered by the end of that. Yeah, now, it's hard the exact way

that I would tweak the movement for their specific parameters, because there are ways. You can elevate your heels a little bit. You can use a little bit of weight, like just enough weight so you can feel the movement to get you down there. But it's hard to say on that general thing because everybody's a little bit of weight, like just enough weight so you can feel the movement to get you down there. But it's hard to say on that general thing

because everybody's a little different. But what I would recommend is that you slow the tempo down. You find a little bit of load in which you can pause at your end range, what it currently is your end range, and that you can go slow in both directions and really feel the movement. And I bet that over the course of five, 10, 15 minutes, your body for lack of a better term starts to melt into position just like it would if you were sad extra-ching, but in this case you're

practicing the movement and you would hit that inflection point of feeling warm. You know that feeling where you're like something inside of you just clicks and you're like, okay, I'm ready. My body is like body lucidity, right? It's like everything's moving. The central nervous system's firing. We haven't mentioned CNS yet or too much yet, but this is all CNS related. It's all CNS mediated. Yeah. And I don't know what that inflection point is. I don't know what we could call it, but it's that moment where you're like, all right, I'm ready to, I'm greasing the groove. Like mentally, I'm there, my body feels good.

Let's add some weight. I'm worried. It's weird, isn't it? It's going from getting out of the car and shit. I need to let the dog out later on to, I'm here to train. And there is you right, because it's, at what point do you go from being that guy to the guy that's ready to PR is squawkly, you know, whatever it might be.

And I would argue that the fastest point from the time that you walk in to the time that you get to that point is a straight line. And that straight line is doing the movement, doing more of the movement, doing the movement, doing more of the movement with pauses, with tempos. Now again, again, over the course of that experiment, you might find that you know what, this gives me 80% all the passive stuff, it's only given me about 20%. This gives me 80%. But I still want that extra little boost. That's where you can layer on that other stuff in between. But I would recommend if you can, cut as much of that out as you can in the beginning and focus on more of the movement with light loads and incrementally smaller jumps than

you're used to and see if your body doesn't hit that sweet spot anyway. Because aren't you correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you going to have to reorient yourself to the movement regardless? Like let's say you walk over to the barbell, you do your first overhead squat, you're like that feels like garbage. Then you go through all your passive stuff. Are you not gonna have to go back

and do the bar warm up anyway? Refrigerate yourself with your grip in every position. And before you know it, you've been at the gym for an hour and you haven't done anything. The definitely, definitely to me, there feels like it's just such an arduous long task.

Warming up. Yeah, it does suck. It does suck. It sucks an awful lot. Yeah, it's it and you write as well that this time that you could be spending grease in the groove and drilling the movement that you movement that is the end goal, right? It's practicing pushing your foot on the pedal instead of actually just driving the car. Exactly.

Like, but you're not pushing your foot on the pedal, you're pushing your foot on a pretend pedal that's outside of the car. Exactly. Now, you know what if the splits are part of your sport, if you're a gymnast dancer, competitive cheerleader, these types of things, then you damn right, you're going to be doing the splits and you're going to be doing them a lot, but you're going to also be holding them isometrically. You know, you're going to be doing things that require control and that range of motion. It's all about specificity.

You mentioned this progressive overload king. I would say that specificity is king. If overload happens to be the thing that you want because your specific quality of choice is strength or power, then yes, we have to progressively overload over time, but specificity is king. So the splits is not going to get you that overhead squat that you want. The overhead squat is going to give you the overhead squat that you want. You just have to be patient enough with the tediousness of what it takes to practice over and over and over and over. And it is tedious and it's not fun.

Yeah. Well, nothing worth having comes easy, right? Exactly. And this is the reason why I think a lot of the time, certainly for myself, when I started doing Olympic weightlifting and CrossFit and looking at these more complicated movements, we forget just how extreme they are, the fact that being able to do a bar muscle-up, because we see the best athletes in the world able to do sets of 10 or 20 and we see people be able to squat clean, pounds. And you know, I mean, the people who were able to move these large amounts of weight and do them, oh, wow, he's done it under fatigue. He did it after a run by Grooney.

Did it, you know, on stage in front of the entire YPNF or whatever it might be, you forget just how much you've been achieving it is to be able to do them full stop. And I think that it can down-regulate people's understanding that it is a challenge in itself. And they can very quickly begin to look past that and believe that there should be moving more or should be moving faster than they are. And I think that definitely leads to a short termist strategy, as opposed to what you were saying, come back to me in six months. Do this consistently and come back to me in six months. You're 100% correct. People see the end product. They don't see that that purse, all those people that you describe have been busting their ass in the gym training for probably years.

Yeah. 10,000 failed reps to get that one. Totally, sacrificing other things in their life to get there. So it's one of the chat about Smith of Jagganaugh, he describes that in regards to programming. Like people look at Ray Williams program or look at Chad's program or like the best of the best and say, oh, well, I just need to be on their program. But there's a process to this thing.

You know, those guys, their program now to be on their program. But there's a process to this thing. You know, those guys, their program now looked nothing like their program when they were an intermediate lifter. And then that looked nothing like their program when they were a beginner. So you've got to, this thing, you know, it works in stages. You can't just jump to the end. You can have, you had to have the end in mind.

But let's, like you said, you got to, you got to trust the process a little bit and it takes time. So it was very freeing for me because I've been on that side of the spectrum when I was warming up. When I first started physical therapy school at the beginning of my weightlifting careers was like nine, ten years ago. I was hook and a band up to every joint in my body. I was suspended from the rig.

A thousand percent. Can I like a sex swing in the middle of a weightlifting club? No, I wouldn't even go into the gym yet because I had too much gear to throw around. I had to go into the indoor track because I had to spread out all my bands and all my foam rollers and all in the balls. It's like an obstacle course of mobility tools. And it was an hour, I easily an hour of spending time doing that.

And then I would have to spend 30 minutes trying to get into the positions because that stuff just didn't really have that big of an effect. But when I started to forget that and started to pay more attention to the positions and stay lighter for longer. Like not like empty bar because sometimes you need a little bit of weight to feel the positions. But I wouldn't, I started to not to increase load.

I started to think about it in a different way. I started to ask myself different questions. Is it too heavy for me to lift or is it too heavy for me to lift the way I want to? Yeah. And some of those thresholds are a little different. So I would stay in the ladder for longer, and my body's blowing behold started to become more comfortable and consistent with those positions.

And so I started to take the approach of raising my minimums instead of trying to worry about my top end all the time. And my move, yeah. I think that's so correct. My movement and mobility, however you wanna call those those things all that stuff improve when I started just thinking about training as a process and it was very liberating When I stopped but it took some time and it wasn't called turkey. I'll tell you that right now

Yeah, I slowly started to cut that stuff out like Like, oh, this drill or this, like, band distraction drill isn't quite working for me. I'll just, I'll chop this one. I'll keep everything else about chop this one. And over a course of, it probably took, I mean, honestly, it probably took a couple of years to really, where I am now, but it was very, very liberating.

It's very liberating to just come into the gym. Like, I'll do some, like, I call them knee bends. I do, like, a bunch of quarter squats in my bare feet. Yep. Just like a dip and drive, dip and drive, dip and drive to like warm up my ankles, to warm up my knees, to just kind of get some blood flow for lack of a better term or whatever.

Yep. And then I put my shoes on and I play with the empty barbell until I hit that first inflection point. Yep. And then I play with 40 kilos until I hit that first inflection point. Yeah. And then I play with 40 kilos until I hit that first inflection point and then I just build from there and it's it's freeing man. I tell you. But it is. I mean, how many times a couple of things I know that you're on a tight schedule. So I'm going to fit a couple of bits in here. How many times do people say that they don't have

it? They don't have enough time in training to work their technique, but they are spending 20 minutes on the foam roller or doing the static stretching or the dynamic stretching or whatever. And hopefully here, people will be able to see, am I right in saying, I think I know your answer to this, would you see there being no difference between the sort of strengthening conditioning side of something and the mobility training, that it would be a paradigm or a scale or a spectrum, should I say, of load intensity and training intensity. Absolutely.

So viewing it is two separate things is an erroneous way to look at it. And I think hopefully, I certainly know that I'm going to very, very gingerly try and I'm going to try and dial back my traditional mobility addiction and like you say, begin to down-regulate just how much of that I believe I need. But I do think that one of the things that I really liked about what you've said in this conversation is that if you feel like it works for you and if you enjoy the process, that that in itself is a therapeutic and beneficial addition to your training, that if you enjoy Yinyoga because you find that it gives you a sense of mindfulness and it zeroes you in for the day then Crack on but understand the pathway that this is working on

100% I don't want to I'm trying to spit and everybody's Cheerios and it also if your training is going really well and You're doing all of these things also, and you like it, and everything's going well, like don't change the thing. Yeah, just stick to the program. We've just said it's stick to the fucking program.

Yeah, this conversation is for the people who feel like they're at a dead end, and they've been doing things that have not, have simply not been working. If it's been months and it ain't working, it probably not going to. I understand. So, where can the listeners find you online?

So, the cool thing about having a weird name is that you can just search my name and put it in my summary search and media platform. Instagram, I think it's Quinn.Henic. D.P.T. similar on Twitter and then on Facebook, I have two. Just Quinn Henic is my personal and then I have a business one that's Quintana DPT but I pretty much just post the same shit on both. I don't know why I have two. And then clinical athlete is our our baby that we're trying to help to bridge the knowledge gap for all this stuff. Strengthening, conditioning, healthcare. So clinical athlete on all

of the common social media channels also. Clinical athlete is a directory of accredited physiotherapists that you vetted, right? Exactly. It's a forum as well. Okay, so it's also a community on top of that. Absolutely. And we do continue education courses and it's trying to connect athletes with healthcare providers who understand their goals. Who know what's going on? Yeah, exactly. And a lot of the things that we've talked about, I do, we do exercises and drills and

different exercise movement variations that help with motor scale acquisition. A lot of those are on my YouTube channel and on, I've done a several videos on the Juggernaut YouTube channel. The people need to check those out. I absolutely loved all of the series that we've touched on. Here, I thought they were really, really good. We've done, yeah, and I've done a ton with those. They're very grateful for them, allowing me to use that platform. And then, yeah, then I have a book. I also have a book. It's called Weightlifting. I'm looking at the title because it's so. Weightlifting movement assessment and optimization. So, if you search Quintenhannic Weightlifting Optimization, it will come up on Amazon, right? Yes, on Amazon, exactly. And it's essentially breaking down the snatch and the clean and jerk by phase. So each phase of the lift, what are

for our terms that we've used today, what are the mobility and stability demands of each phase, and then how do you develop those phases with uses of the lifts, variations of the lifts, and then different kind of positional drills and exercises that can help you better create comfort and proficiency within those positions. So it's pretty much exactly what we've talked about today. But at length, man, I couldn't thank you enough for this. I think, hopefully, we will have opened some people's eyes. I think that going by what the science says is something that we're prepared to take when it comes to medicine. A lot of people are very skeptical of esoteric, new wave solutions, holistic solutions, because of the disinformation and because of the lack of clarity when it comes

to stuff like mobility and physical training. people are prepared to take whatever is in front of them or whatever everyone else does. And I think that going by what the science says, which is what you've presented us with today, is definitely giving people all of the facts. And then I suppose what they choose to do with it, whether they're able to relinquish their stretching routine from here is a decision of theirs. Well, that's a thing too. I know I fall into the same camp. We've all got to question our biases a little bit and be open to changing our ideas if evidence is presented to us. You know, or don't, but I think the knowledge that is there, and again, that goes for me,

too. that is there and again that goes for me too and so these are the ideas and thoughts as as I'm interpreting the current literature and you know if we do another show in three years maybe my future has changed and maybe I'm more affirmed in these ideas maybe maybe you said that maybe you said the dual wielding Theragun's and yeah maybe I'm a real estate agent you know I switch to completely and you you know you interview me on why my life changed.

So who know? Quinn, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. It was a blast. Cheers, man. Bye, bye. All right. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh,