Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Stacie Barber on Mobility and Flexibility for Strength and Health

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

There’s a lot of confusion surrounding the topic of flexibility and a lot of conflicting advice.  Is stretching necessary? Should you be working on mobility during your workouts? Some people say strength training itself provides all the flexibility you need, and any additional stretching should be at your discretion.  Others suggest that skipping foam rollers, massage guns, and band-work is not only going to impair your performance, but put you at risk of injury. To help clarify some of the kerfuffle, Dr. Stacie Barber joins me on the podcast for an interview all about flexibility and mobility. In case you’re not familiar with Stacie, she has a Doctor of Physical Therapy from Duke and is the founder and owner of The Physio Fix, which offers physical therapy, training, and classes to help everyone from professional athletes and Olympians to fitness newbies feel and move better. And as a former collegiate gymnast and current Olympic Weightlifter, Stacie knows the challenges faced by people who lift heavy weights. In this interview, Stacie and I discuss . . . - The difference between passive and active flexibility - Whether stretching prevents injury - Common mobility issues for squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and more, and how to fix them - Jefferson curls and Copenhagen planks - The rise in tendinopathy and why you should train at end ranges for tendon and joint health - The utility of resistance bands and other mobility-focused gadgets like massage guns and foam rollers  - And a lot more . . . So whether you're dealing with tight, painful muscle groups or just want to learn about the science of improving your mobility, give this interview a listen! Timestamps: (0:00) - Please leave a review of the show wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to subscribe! (4:48) - Should I be stretching? (12:06) - Is it normal to have tight muscles?  (21:37) - Try Recharge today! Go to https://buylegion.com/recharge and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! (23:59) - What are some common mobility restrictions in certain exercises? (36:38) - Should your knees be in front of your toes when or far from your knees when squatting? (43:46) - Are there some other tips or exercises you recommend to include in workout routines? (46:41) - What are your thoughts on stretching accessories such as bands, foam rollers, and  percussion guns? (51:19) - Do massage guns help alleviate tendon pain or muscle tightness? (60:18) - What are your thoughts on exercise bands? (64:13) - Where can we find you? Mentioned on the Show: Try Recharge today! Go to https://buylegion.com/recharge and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! Stacie’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/thephysiofix The Physio Fix: https://thephysiofix.com/

Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another episode. And in this one, you are going to learn about mobility and flexibility. How important are these things? How should we go about developing them and maintaining them? Some people say that proper strength training is all we need. That will give us all of the flexibility and all the mobility that we need. And anything additional like stretching is not needed, maybe not harmful, but not nearly as important as just doing strength training. So that's one camp. And then if we swing the pendulum all the way in the other direction, we have people who say that this, they recommend foam rollers and massage guns and band work. And some of these people say that we should do that to improve our performance. Some of them say that we need to do that to improve our performance and reduce or minimize our risk of injury. And so I often get asked about this topic and to help break everything down, I asked Dr. Stacey Barber to come on the show and teach us about flexibility

and mobility. And in case you are not familiar with Stacey, she has a doctor of physical therapy from Duke and she is the founder and owner of the PhysioFix, which offers physical therapy, training and classes to help everyone from professional athletes to Olympians to fitness newbies feel and move better in their training and in their life. And so in this interview, Stacey and I discuss the difference between passive and active flexibility. She talks about stretching and particularly if stretching prevents injury because that's a common belief. Stacey gives some common mobility issues that get in the way of people's ability to squat, deadlift, bench press, and do several other exercises. And she also shares some common ways that those issues are resolved. They are not going to work for everyone with those issues, of course, but if you are experiencing any of the issues that she discusses, and if you are like most people who are having those problems, then chances are one of the tips that she shares is minimally going to help alleviate the problem, if not eliminate it. In this interview, Stacey also talks about using little known exercises like the Jefferson curl and Copenhagen

plank to reduce the risk of injury. She talks about the utility of mobility tools and gadgets like resistance bands, massage guns, foam rollers, and others, and more. Hello, Stacey. Hey, Mike. How are you? Good, thanks. How are you? I'm doing good. Living the dream here in Phoenix, Arizona. Ah, is it getting hot? It's about 80 degrees today, but there's like no humidity. So it's perfect weather. The sun is shining. It's beautiful. Yeah, that's nice. I'm in Florida, so it's 80 degrees, but maximum humidity already. But you can't complain if you're in Florida because soon it's going to be 105 plus maximum humidity. Yeah. We get hot too though. Yeah, yeah. I know. I've heard. So years ago, I lived in Florida and my wife and I wanted to go somewhere else. And we ended up going to Virginia. But Arizona was on the list. But then when we looked at the reality of what summer was, and we were leaving Florida, one of the reasons we were leaving Florida is to get away from the climate. And you're like, okay, Arizona's out.

okay, Arizona's out. Just like how on the opposite end of the spectrum, Wyoming, we were thinking about and then looked at the reality of what a winter is in Wyoming. And I actually like cold weather, but when it's like six months of snow, and I think the moment when I was like, yeah, definitely not was I saw it was like, there was some statistic. It was like, oh, in the last Wyoming winter, they had a hundred days in a row below freezing. Yeah. And I was like, okay, next. Anyway, we're not here to talk about weather though. We're here to talk about flexibility. And so just to kind of tee this up and then I will stop talking. I wanted to talk to you about this because I often get asked if this is somebody asking, should I be stretching? That's commonly the question.

And if you look around online, you find a lot of different advice. Even if you try to stick to smarter, at least purportedly smarter people, evidence-based people, you get a lot of different advice. You get some people saying, well, if you just do a few hours of strength training per week, and if you just do the basic exercises correctly, that will give you all of the, let's just say, functional flexibility that you need. And if you want to just be more flexible for fun, you can do stretches and do other things. But if you don't, don't bother. And then on the other end of the spectrum are people who say that

it's very important to be stretching. And we can talk also about using certain mobility things like foam rollers and massage guns. But there are people who they would say that doing that stuff is just as important as doing your strength training. And if you don't do the stretching and the other things, plus the strength training, you are not only going to be impairing your performance, but you are going to be increasing your risk of injury. And, and then you have people who are somewhere in the middle. So that's kind of the state of the discussion and, and understandably why people will reach out because they're just kind of confused. And so I'll just stop there and let you go wherever you want with that. Yeah, there is a lot of confusion on this topic

because like you said, what does even flexibility mean? And if we're talking about the context of movement, how flexible do you need to be? Well, whatever flexibility you need to complete whatever task that you're trying to do. So that looks different for each person, depending on what sport you do, what activities you enjoy, what hobbies you enjoy, etc. But we talked about flexibility in terms of passive flexibility and then active flexibility. So if we're talking about joint, just about joint mobility, our passive mobility is flexibility. So let's just get that straight. So if we talk about mobility, passive mobility or flexibility is the prerequisite to active

mobility. So getting more flexibility within our tissues will allow us to have more joint mobility for movement, for the expression of movement. So yeah, I think that mobility work is very important. Flexibility work, well, it depends on are you trying to be a high-level gymnast? Are you trying to be a dancer? Are you trying to be an acrobat, someone that needs to be incredibly flexible? Yeah, maybe then you need to spend some more time training that flexibility

or those passive mobility ranges to be able to access more range of motion and then to be able to then turn it into active mobility, which is really what's the most important for a majority of people. Just learning how to use the mobility that you have access to and learning how to control it. So then you reduce your risk of injuries. listening are going to be, I would say, everyday people whose fitness is important, but it's not their livelihood and it's not the most important thing in their life per se. And so they're in the gym, let's say, or they're doing three to five hours of training per week, a lot of strength training, maybe a little bit of cardio training as well. But the primary goals are to look good, feel good, be healthy, and not to pursue a sport or to

compete at anything at a high level. And so particularly for, if you want to call them lifestyle bodybuilders or body composition crowd, whatever you want to call them, what are your thoughts in terms of flexibility? And again, what people will ask me or what they will see they'll see claims like for them who they you know they just are trying to get strong and you know let's just say get into great shape stay in great shape avoid injury have good workouts for them though some people will say that if they are not also stretching or not also doing mobility specific exercises, in addition to whatever mobility they're gaining by doing a proper squat and a proper press and a proper

hip hinge and so forth, that they are minimally missing out on additional performance and may even be increasing their risk of injury. Right. Yeah. There's actually not a ton of research to support that viewpoint that if you don't have X amount of flexibility that you're more prone to getting injured, right? It's more in terms of mobility. Like, do you have the mobility to control this movement? Can you get into it? Can you get out of it? You know, can you make sure that you don't get stuck in that position? Like, so if you slip on some ice, can you catch yourself, pull yourself back and not go into the splits?

That's more the research, like what we found, what's important. So I would say for a majority of people, stretching is not as important. You know, if you have extra time at the end of your workout and you want to do some passive stretching and just like sit in certain positions that feel good, then by all means do that. Or if you have, you know, sciatica and you're having a tight piriformis and you want to kind of get in there and kind of do that pigeon stretch at the end, great. You know, maybe your physical therapist recommended you to do that. That's fine. But I wouldn't do that at the beginning of your workout. I would definitely switch that to the end as like a cool down element when your body's already nice and warm, as opposed to like spending too much time on that. So majority of people, I would say five

minutes max stretching per workout, like not don't devote too much time to it, because it's not as important as all the other things. Yeah. So you know, I just think of some some people I see in the gym, they have pretty elaborate warm up routines. I mean, it can be 15, I swear, it might even be 30 minutes. I'm not like timing these people. But I'll notice like, I like almost halfway through my workout and they haven't even started yet. They're still fiddling around with bands and doing certain stretches or, you know, dynamic stretches. And, and so if I'm hearing you correctly, that for most people, again, the people that I just talked about, that doesn't sound like a very productive use of time. No, it's not going to reduce their risk of getting an injury. What's going to reduce

their risk of getting an injury is making sure their joints are able to sustain whatever positions they're trying to get into and then make sure they're strong enough to be able to make sure they don't break, right? Strong people don't break. So I would think that building more resiliency within those joints, which means strength training. That's how we're going to get stronger. And that's how we're going to make sure that we maintain our bone density and our sarcoplasmic, just cellular level as we get older too. So yeah, stretching is not as important as well as like foam rolling. Like those people that spend 30 minutes foam rolling every single body part before they

work out, the research shows that you might get 10 minutes of increased flexibility within the tissue after you foam roll. But then what happens after that 10 minutes, it goes back to the same shape that it was before. And now like, unless you foam roll again, that foam rolling is kind of useless. So I tell people that like, if it feels good, it's okay to do it, but don't spend too much time on it. I would rather do active things over passive things every day of the week. And that's what I teach all of my patients too, is that like, let me give you the tools that are going to help you long-term.

It's not going to be a quick fix. It's not a short-term temporary band-aid approach. It's going to be the things that are going to help you out the most. Yeah. I'd love to hear more on foam rolling. We'll come back to that, but I wanted to share another question that people ask me along these lines. So, so what about though the person who's like, okay, but I seem to be very tight. So, and it's, it's uncomfortable. Like I have an uncomfortable amount of muscle tightness and I

experienced this in a very uncomfortable way when I'm working out, like, you know, where people are saying, it seems like I kind of do have my flexibility is limiting me here. Or if it's not limiting me, there seems to be an issue. Is it normal to feel this tight in my upper body or lower body or so forth? Yeah. For those people, obviously, I would say that make sure that you do an assessment first. That's why sending someone to the practitioner that could do a formal assessment is key there. Because some people that think they have tightness, it's not just true shortening of a tissue. I just posted something today on Instagram about how most people think that

they have tight hip flexors and they just stretch them until they're blue in the face and they never get any better because it wasn't actually tight because tightness is just a perception. So it's a perception that you don't even know what does this mean? Is it shortened? Or is it something that is weakened and needs to be strengthened? So that's where a good healthcare provider would come in or even just a good personal trainer that could look to see what your ranges of motion look like and say, are you actually limited in this range? Do we need to focus on this first, the stretching component or mobility component,

or is it just something that's weakened? And maybe now we need to strengthen through various ranges of motion. Maybe you've never strengthened at the end range of your pecs before. Maybe now we just need to add in some more exercises at that end range. What are your shoulders more in extension or in horizontal abduction? Who knows? But without having that formal assessment, we're just guessing. And so if I heard you correctly there, then what you could perceive as muscle tightness could just be muscle weakness. Absolutely. And obviously, you're not going to be able to just summarize what a formal assessment or to simplify it and like, yeah, just try these little things and then you'll know. But

again, let's think about people who are looking to perform basic strength training exercises, your basic movements, horizontal, vertical press, hip hinge, squat, and so forth. Are there some green flag, red flag little assessments that they could do where a normal, if you want to be able to barbell back squat, there are a couple of things that you're going to have to be able to do related to flexibility that people could just do a simple self-assessment and at least find if they have any major issues that need to be addressed. Yeah, it's going to be dependent on obviously the movement that they're trying to perform and then the joint that you're trying to assess. But so for

the back squat example, like you need to have a fair amount of shoulder extension and shoulder external rotation, even hold that barbell in that position. So I work with a ton of powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters that come in with shoulder pain all the time because they lack that shoulder extension and they can't even get in that position. So what we do is we look at both of those things. We look at shoulder extension. How far does your hand go back? Okay. And then now, how much external rotations I have and bring their arms up and then rotate their hands out. Can your hands get outside of your elbows and with your elbows right in front of your shoulder? Okay. That shows me if you have the prerequisite external rotation to be able to get into that position. And then you could go one step further and say, okay,

let's do like a behind the head lat pull down, which is essentially with the same position you need to get into for that back squat position. Can you get into that position without your elbows deviating? Like, can you pull all the way down to where you need to be for that like really sturdy position? And then now that'll tell me, okay, you have the prerequisite mobility and that strength and that stability to hold that position. That's just a quick example for the upper extremity. But yeah, like a practitioner would know all of these different or a skilled practitioner. I can't say there's, you know, not every practitioner is the same. There's good and bad physical therapists and like every field, right? So, you know, going to someone that knows how to properly assess these things

to be able to get you back to whatever you want to do is crucial. And as far as the shoulder extension goes, what is a good amount of shoulder extension just for people who are wondering specifically and people watching will have seen what you did there with the shoulder external rotation, but maybe just to describe it quickly for people

who are listening. So if you, if you put your arms out in front of you and then bend your elbows at 90 degrees and have your elbows relatively close together, I'm trying to, trying to describe, and then, and then, and then, and then keeping your elbows in, how far can you move your hands away from your, your elbows or rotate them outward toward your toward your shoulders i guess is the for people listening who are trying to visualize and so if if you can't if you can't get them outside of your elbows then that indicates that you may need to work on your external rotation, right? Yeah. And then for extension, like we would just look at, you know, straight just your arm by your side and then moving your arm backwards.

And then a normal range of motion in the physical therapy world is 60 degrees, but you don't need 60 degrees to be able to back squat. You need about 30 degrees, depending on if you're a low bar back squat or a high bar back squatter. So, you know, how far does your hand go back? And then also look to see, does it deviate out to the side or do you have strict, you know, extension or do you have extension with abduction? Because that'll tell us maybe you want to be like more, you know, change your hand grip position when you back squat to a little bit wider.

Yeah. Yep. That makes sense. And, and just sticking with squatting, can you speak a little bit about hamstrings and ankles as well? Because those are also two issues that people run into. And if the hamstrings and the ankles are not able to participate properly, it throws it off. And I've had people reach out to me who are confused and they'll sometimes even send a video and they're like, why can't I just do this correctly? What is going on? Yeah. So the hamstrings play a big role in pelvic positioning. So when we think about that butt

weak position at the bottom of the squat, so if you don't have... And everyone's going to be different because everyone's squat mechanics are different. Everyone's ratios are different in regards to their torso length, their femur length, their tibia length. So all of this plays a role in how much specifically does that person need. But if you don't have enough to move effectively or efficiently, then you're going to have that butt weak at the bottom. So getting a little bit more hamstring flexibility or mobility, we could kind of group it together. That's going to actually keep your pelvis in a more stable and starting neutral position and allow you to be able to lift heavier weights too, because now you're not moving inefficiently. And then in regards to the ankles, a quick ankle test that we do, and there's very few people that pass this test, is a five-inch test away from the

wall. So we have people just kind of use their fist with a thumb out as their reference point because that's going to be pretty standard because they're going to do the same thing over and over for reliability. So then they just put their thumb against the wall, they put their toes right behind their pinky, and then they let go and they see if they can bring that front knee to the wall without their heel coming up. And if you can do that, that's great. Your ankles are fine. And if you can't do that, that's definitely something that we work on to improve that ankle mobility because it's going to be hard for you to keep your chest upright and let your knees come forward over your toes to do a really nice deep squat if you don't have that prerequisite ankle mobility. And as far as the hamstrings go, again, something that people ask

me is, should I be able to just touch my toes, put my palms on the floor? Does that not matter? What's normal? What's good? Yeah, it's so different because I had the shortest legs ever. And so people will yell at me all the time on Instagram because I'll be performing various hamstring mobility exercises. And they're like, well, it's not fair. She's so short. She can just touch her feet. And I'm like, you're right. I am short, but I also was a gymnast. So I do have really mobile and flexible hamstrings. So the people that have really, really, really long legs, like my husband, who's 6'2", he can't touch his feet and I wouldn't expect him to. And that doesn't mean that he has necessarily tight hamstrings. He just has a really long

femur and tibia. So now it's really hard for him to reach all the way down. So once again, it comes back to where is it limiting you? The mobility that you have, do you find yourself limited in some way, the activities that you do on a daily basis within your job, within like the sports that you do within the, the workouts that you do? Are you finding yourself limited? Do you have any pain? And then that's kind of when we kind of assess that I think that everyone can use more mobility and in that regards, I think that always improving your workspace. So if you have more, then you could go into more things or you could express more movement and do different things a lot easier. So I always am a big advocate for kind of incorporating hamstring mobility in pretty much every single person's treatment plan, especially the men.

And what do you mean by hamstring mobility? Yeah. So we talk about mobility as more of in terms of active movement. So I would go into like, put their foot on a box and then have like, you know, their arms at the side and then they hinge over until they feel like a good stretch. Then they come back up to a neutral position and then they lift their leg up. So then now we're working on active range of motion too. And then we're working on passive range of motion and then active range of motion. So that's more like teaching them how to keep their pelvis in that neutral position, and then now work on lengthening the tissue and then now using the tissue in that lengthened

position. So some things like that, and that's just a quick and easy example. Your ability to gain muscle and gain strength is greatly impacted by how well your body can recover from your training and how strong you get in your training. And that's why it's not enough to just hammer away at the weights every week. You have to watch your calories and watch your macros. You have to maintain good sleep hygiene. You have to avoid overtraining. And you can also speed up your post-workout recovery and your muscle and strength gain with supplementation. And that's why I created Recharge. It is a 100% natural post-workout drink that boosts muscle growth, improves recovery, and

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muscle and strength faster, you want to try Recharge today, go to buylegion.com, B-U-Y legion.com slash recharge and use the coupon code muscle at checkout and you will save 20% if it is your first order with us. If it is not, you will get double reward points on that order. So that is 6% cash back. And if you don't absolutely love recharge, just let us know, and we will give you a full refund on the spot. No forms, no return even is necessary. You really can't lose. So go to buy legion.com slash recharge now, place your order, use the coupon code muscle and save 20% or get 6% cash back in reward points. Try Recharge risk-free and see what you think. Yeah. Yeah. Could we talk about a couple of other exercises? Could we talk about

like a horizontal press? Maybe you could think about a bench press, I guess, or an overhead press and just some of the maybe common flexibility, mobility restrictions that people run into. And also for people to be able to just assess if maybe the problem they're running into is related to that versus something else. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So really good one to work on or look at overhead mobility. So can you do that shoulder press efficiently is to sit with your back against the wall on your butt and then see if you can bring your arms all the way to the wall without your back extending. Okay. That'll tell me, do you have good shoulder mobility? Do you have good thoracic extension mobility without relying on your lumbar spine to extend and get that extra range of motion? So if you don't have that,

then you can do things like a down dog. I know most people kind of know what that looks like. So you can go from your knees into a down dog, like a triangle position, or I'd like to do a, like a thoracic extension'd like to do a like a thoracic extension stretch on the wall so I put my hands on the wall walk my feet back and then bring my chest down and then that's working on mobilizing that thoracic extension and shoulder flexion at the same time for horizontal pressing so maybe that's more of that shoulder extension thing so I will look to see how much shoulder extension like we already talked about someone has and then you know if they don't have that shoulder extension, we could do something

like a crab lift. So they put their hands behind them and they're sitting down and then now they lift their hips up like a glute bridge. And now they're working on mobilizing that shoulder into extension, hold it a few seconds, come down. And with this one, I would just make sure that their shoulder isn't rolling forward. It's staying back. So they're actually mobilizing the right tissues and not trying to like compensate their way out of the right position. Yeah, that's something that I've been doing. So I do a few stretches every day that are just more specific to my body, just knowing the restrictions or tendencies toward restriction that I have for whatever reason. And so that's, that's one of them is just, um, it, it's just good for opening up my shoulders. I think generally I have good posture, but I don't

know, just a lot of years of weightlifting. I just think it's, it's, it's just a good stretch to do. It at least feels good. So I continue to do it. Right. Yeah. Always do the things that feel good. I tell people that too. Like some people think about mobility and flexibility, like they always have to mix it up and like change things too. But if you're still like finding that it feels good and it's helpful for you, you can keep doing those same things over and over. You know, there's no like rule that says, oh, you can only do this for four weeks and then you got to move on to something else. You know, it's not like a muscle confusion strategy. You know, we're just working on opening

up that joint and you can keep doing the same thing. Now, if you find that you want to work on something else, then yeah, then you can mix it up. Yeah. I mean, I've just more of a, I've approached it more about just, just from a kind of utilitarian standpoint, like here's what I want, get the joint to do. And that's a good way to do it. And good enough for me, like my hips were pretty imbalanced. So on the left side, my internal rotation was bad and my external rotation was good. And then I had the opposite on the right side. And so that eventually was causing some SI joint dysfunction and pain. And I found it's, it's kind of kind of tricky to train that internal rotation or to expand the range of motion in internal rotation. And so, you know, I found a couple little odd

stretches sitting on the floor with my leg in a certain way and doing a couple things and it worked. And so I just continue to do it. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a really good point too. Like hip mobility is the number one thing that I see limited in the clinic. So hip internal and external rotation. And those like those 90-90 positions are very helpful for that. But when you say that you had a hard time even being able to like get into those positions, that's where that passive mobility or that flexibility work would come into play. So then you can learn how to like sit in that position and kind of expand what your joint is capable of. And then

now you can actually get something out of it. So that's when you would start using some of those strategies too, if you're trying to get a little bit more out of that joint or out of that muscle. Yeah. What specifically for me, what helped a lot was, so this is, I was in Virginia and I had an infrared sauna and I would go in it every morning and I would read. And so I was sitting on a bench and I was able to then put my, I mean, you'd understand what I'm doing for people listening. So it was my left side. So I'm sitting on the bench and then I am bringing my left foot up onto the bench right next to me, which allowed me to sit down into my hip. And initially, I remember I couldn't put my left butt cheek on the bench. It would be like an inch or two off of the bench, and I would just have to kind of sit there and then just ease into it, ease into it.

But eventually, I was able to then sit correctly on the bench in that internally rotated state. And once I balanced that out in particular, then the SI joy pain went away, which was nice. And so that, that was a simple solution, but now I just do it on the floor. I just, you know, for a few minutes, just kind of sit in that position every day, just to maintain. Cause I've, I've found that if I stopped doing it for a few minutes, just kind of sit in that position every day just to maintain. Because I've found that if I stop doing it for a period of time, for whatever reason, I tend to regress and I tend to lose a little bit of that internal rotation. Yeah. I also have like, I call it a sticky hip.

So my left hip is a little bit sticky. I've had a hip surgery, a labral surgery on this side. So like sometimes I feel like my hip doesn't move as efficiently too. And I feel like a lot of people just kind of gravitate towards things that like naturally work for them. And so those are always good things too, for me to like ask, what are you already doing? So I can figure out what they're already doing and figure out, okay, these are the things that are helpful for them to do. So we all kind of just kind of move around and kind of figure out how to move our bodies

to get what we want out of that stretch or that mobilization. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Can we talk about deadlifting and probably is going to be related to the hips? Yeah, yeah. Deadlifts obviously need your hamstring mobility and they also need a good amount of spinal mobility too. You know, there's still a good amount of flexion that occurs at the spine, especially if you're doing max effort deadlifts, you know, and people might say that, you know, you should always keep your spine perfectly neutral, but you know, you and I know that if you're maxing out your deadlift, it's not going to look perfect, you know, so to be able to at

least have that prerequisite mobility, so then you don't get hurt if you have a little bit of spinal flexion is huge. So for things like that, I would do Jefferson curls. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. That's kind of when you go into some of that spinal flexion segmentally, and then you learn how to control that movement. So then when you get yourself set up for a deadlift, now you can go into that flexion and you don't feel like you have a ton of tension or a ton of pain. And then now you can tolerate those movements a lot easier. And then for mobility for the hamstrings, once again, it kind of comes down to leg lengths

and torso lengths there. Some people start with their hips a lot higher. Some people kind of squat down a little bit more. So we do like a straight leg raise test. The normal range that we're taught in school is 90 degrees. So you should be able to lay on your back and get your leg all the way up to 90 degrees. And I would say that 75% of people can't do that.

So that's something that you'd want to work on too, because that might change how they have to maneuver themselves into that setup or shimmy into it and get tight because our hamstrings don't have that prerequisite flexibility to be able to get in those positions. So adding in straight leg raise exercises there, like we talked about earlier, would be helpful to learn how to like mobilize it and control it. And then just doing the movement more often, sometimes I'll do like stiff leg deadlifts for people, you know, and that's kind of a flexibility exercise right there or doing like a good morning, you know, if they can tolerate that movement, all of those things are helpful to work on loaded mobility of the hip. And just to come back to the spinal flexion, just for people wondering,

some people might be thinking, do you mean thoracic flexion or lumbar flexion or both? Just because many people listening have heard so many times that your lumbar spine should always be neutral. Maybe some people have heard that you can flex the thoracic, the upper part for people listening, the upper part of your spine. I personally don't intentionally do that. I consider it a more advanced technique that I just don't care to like practice.

I'm not a competitive deadlifter. So, but I just wanted to quickly ask that for people who might be wondering. Yeah, good question. Yeah. So obviously, we don't want to get out of neutral, but neutral is a range. So there's a portion of neutral that is flexion. There's a portion of neutral that is extension in both the thoracic, the lumbar, and the sacrum. So when we talk about getting into a little bit of flexion, it's okay if you go into a little bit. Obviously, we want to minimize that as much as we can to reduce our risk of a disc injury. But it's okay, especially if your body has been able to get in that position frequently, then you're probably more exposed to that. And then your risk of having an injury with a tiny

bit of spinal flexion or under load is not going to be bad, right? You're going to be used to that sort of movement. And that's why training that movement like Jefferson curls, it used to be like, let's never go into flexion. And that's not a way to live. Stuart McGill, he published a lot of research about everything in a neutral position of the spine. It's about creating spinal stiffness. And a lot of his stuff, it's effective for people to stay in that position when they're really flared up and they have a lot of back pain, but it's not really realistic. We can't just live in this neutral spine. We bend and we move and we twist and that's just how we function. So unless you expose yourself to those various ranges of motion, then you're

probably going to be setting yourself up for an injury if you ask that of your body. Now your body can't do that. So I'm not saying go into flexion. I'm just saying if your body has to go into a slight amount of that to be able to do that lift, that's okay. And assuming that you've trained up to a point where, yeah, you can handle it, that makes a lot of sense. And as far as the Jefferson curl, it's again, it's just, it's, it's counterintuitive to, to many people, because to, to your point, many people have heard that when you are doing any sort of weightlifting period, you never want to be in spinal flexion, but then if you, it's going to be with a lot less weight. The point that I think you're making is that if you can, you can add load and you can build

strength in that position. And that's a good thing that as long as you do it appropriately, it's a good thing. Yeah, we can, we can cause adaptation with anything that we gradually expose ourselves to. So it's a, it's a graded exposure thing. It's not jumping from zero to 100 in terms of load or in terms of range of motion of the spine. But yeah, graded exposure always wins at the end of the day. And do you think that would be appropriate for, again, more kind of lifestyle

athletes, so to speak, to include something like a Jefferson curl? Or would you say that that's maybe more for a competitive strength athlete who is going to have to accept a higher risk of injury than the average person to compete? I think for something like that, it's actually really helpful for everyone. I get patients in with low back pain all the time. That's like the number one diagnosis in clinic. And so adding those in, even general population people, it's really, really helpful so they can learn how to trust their body again, because people are so fearful of movement. Like a big thing that we have to overcome is confidence of movement. And that's done through graded exposure, like getting all these little wins along the way, and then teaching them that like,

it's okay for your body to go into these positions. Because once again, they're so fearful, they've been told a million different things by a million different people, their friend, their grandmother, their dog walker, their physician that has good intentions, but it's a lot of fear-mongering language. Never go into that position. You should always bend your knees and have a neutral spine when you bend over to pick anything up. Now they're fearful to get the groceries out of their car. So doing things like that and going into a little bit of flexion with very light load is really, really helpful

for their mindset too and their mental aspect of injuries or just movement. That makes sense. And what about, I immediately think of knees and toes when squatting, right? So everyone's heard that for a long time, the dogma was your knees should never go in front of your toes.

And I think the state of that conversation now, the pendulum has swung pretty significantly in the other direction, where now there are exercises that are explicitly designed to get your knees to go as far in front of your toes as possible. What are your thoughts on that? I think that those are helpful. We think about things like they should be natural. You should just do what's natural for your body. You shouldn't

try to limit your range of motions. If your knees want to go forward when you squat, great, let them go forward. Limiting the amount of anterior translation of the knee when you are squatting down actually increases the stress to the hips and the low back by 670%. That is significant. So if you're telling someone don't do that, and now they come in with low back pain, oh, I wonder why, you know, it's like, it makes sense that now that they just change that and move the forces to their low back. So I think that everyone should do what's natural. Some people just naturally, they don't have that ankle mobility. So they do shift more back. So they never get their knees over their toes. So for those people, obviously, like, you know, we wouldn't have them squat the same as somebody that has the adequate

mobility to be able to just squat down, these go forward. But training throughout the full range of motion is important for everyone to maintain their like tissue health. So our tendons are weakest at their in ranges. So if you never train the in ranges or that like full squat position, which is what you see a lot on Instagram with that heels elevated squats, that's training the in range. Yeah, that's what I was gonna Yeah, on the slant board, I see that. Yeah, yeah. And I see sissy squats. People will talk about that. Or a, I mean, what do they call it? I think it's like named after, you know, Ben Patrick, who has talked about this kind of stuff for a while.

But I think they call it, like, I've seen it called the ATG squat, where it's a lunge, basically. But it's a knee maximally forward lunge, you know? Yeah, an exaggerated forward lunge. Correct, yeah. All that stuff is helpful for the tendons. So for our patellar tendons, our quad tendons, if you're not ever training it in ranges, which most people haven't done forever

until some of these methods kind of came to light. He didn't invent the method, but obviously he's definitely marketed it. No, no, I know. Popularized help part. Yeah, yeah. Correct. Yeah. So all these things is just learning how to train at your end ranges. You maximize your strength in these different tissues and to reduce your risk of injury whenever you need to get into that position. Now you have the prerequisite strength to get out of it and not have an injury. And by doing that, do you also decrease your risk of injury and pain in just performing the exercise, just performing your squat how you normally perform it where you're not, let's say, playing a sport. You're not doing something that is going to necessarily require you to get into rather extreme positions. But by training some of those

more extreme positions, can you still benefit, again, just doing normal things? Yeah, absolutely. Tendons or tendinopathy is becoming increasingly common. Like, you know, everyone has tennis elbow, golfer's elbow, like these things are all over the internet. Jumpers. My biceps tendon right now is aggravated. See, yeah, like jumper's knee, like bicep tendonitis or tendinosis, or it's all called tendinopathy at this point. But any of that stuff, like tendons need to be loaded at their end ranges to be able to get that full adaptation. And so when you just do a half squat or whatever,

then you're only kind of strengthening the muscle belly. The tendons never really get like tugged on. They never get pulled. They never get stretched. They're not actually getting any like tensile strength within them. So for everybody's joint health and everyone's like long-term protection of their body,

we should be training at those end ranges for everything, not just knees, but elbows. Make sure you're doing full tricep extensions, full bicep curls, all of that stuff. And so then would you say, sorry if I'm being obnoxious, but I'm genuinely curious because I personally, I currently don't do Jefferson curls. I don't do the slant board or sissy squats or the extreme lunging. And I'm curious if maybe I should be. So, you know, I can, let's see, I don't, I generally don't full squat just because I don't really see the purpose. Although if I do like, you know, I'll get a little bit below parallel on my back squats, no problem. If I'm front squatting, I maybe will end up just going a little bit lower than that. And I don't, I don't generally have joint issues. Sometimes

something hurts a little bit, but generally I'm okay. So do you think that me or somebody like me could benefit though from some, some of these of these other, like a Jefferson curl or some of these extreme knee over toe positions? Yeah. Because it's not about just about now, right? You said that you feel pretty good now, you're pretty healthy, but you're also pretty young. And as our bodies get older too, things start to happen. And if you don't have, or you're not still training at the same intensity and you're not training the end ranges, now that's when you really start to see those tendinopathy. Tendinopathy are more highly prevalent in people like over 45. So it just like, as we get older, our tendons get weaker because we stop training like we used to, or we stop, you know, we avoid

those end ranges altogether because we're fearful or, you know, so-and-so told us that we should never do that. Or it just doesn't really happen. I mean, right. Cause it's like, if, if you, if you do a lot of just by the book strength training, unless your anatomy just really, let's say knees and toes, unless it really pushes your knees forward, when do you really get anywhere beyond maybe an inch past your knee going beyond your toes? I mean, even full squatting, I mean, I've done it before and my body, just the way it's built, my knees, they don't push too far. Then maybe it's a little bit in front of my toes, but it's not as extreme as you would achieve with some of these other exercises. So I know you have your muscle for life book, your podcast, stuff like that. So I think that

if we're talking about like joint health for life and muscle tissues for life, I think you have to incorporate in range stuff. You don't have to do it every day. You know, maybe just doing it like, you know, once a week for each major joint is sufficient, you know, and then maybe once you have that training stimulus over time, maybe you only need to do it like a couple times a month, you don't need to do it, you know, signal that to the brain every single day. But now, you know, your body is adapted to those different positions, and you're just continuously training it periodically. It's not a not a big thing, it shouldn't take too much time. But I think for longevity purposes, we have to train the full range of action.

All right. Then I'm going to open up my spreadsheet when we're done here, and I'm going to work some of it in. And I have to ask then, so we've talked about a couple of the joints, but what would that look like for shoulders? You mentioned elbows, if there's anything else to say. I mean, that seems pretty simple. Any other tips for people who now are thinking like I am like, okay, then I'm going to include some of these odd exercises in my routine.

Yeah, I would say that obviously the hips, like the hips training in ranges is important too. So, you know, training like the groin, a lot of people have been doing Copenhagen planks, you know, that's become kind of more popularized recently. But training Copenhagen's at in ranges too. So like if you're taller, maybe your leg needs to be higher. So now you're strengthening through that full range of motion. Most people just use like a bench. But if you're taller, a bench isn't going to be sufficient to your in range.

You should feel a stretch at the top of that range of motion. So just kind of playing around with that and figuring out what works for you. But once again, that's training at in range, it's going from the full lengthened position all the way to the full shortened position and back down. For the biceps, like we want to also strengthen the shoulder at that in range. So we do like incline bicep curls. So you know, like letting the shoulder go into extension and then bicep curl all the way. That stuff's pretty easy. I feel like people for like single joints, they kind of know how to train that more so like tricep extensions, you see a lot more people going like, you know, overhead tricep extensions, they'll go through their full range of motion, which is great. But we're not doing that same thing for

other joints, which is why now we're starting to kind of realize, oh, shoot, maybe we should have been doing that all along. Maybe that's important to do. Yeah. Yeah. The biceps point is good. And that's also, that's a good way to train your biceps muscles too, just for, just as an added benefit of you can do it on an incline bench, or I suppose you could probably accomplish the same thing with like a cable drag curl kind of situation. If you know, we're like from behind. Exactly. Yeah yeah and so you get you get a nice biceps stimulus uh in that as well because of the the consistent tension as opposed to with a standing biceps curl it's fine exercise but it is a bit odd in in how certain ranges of

that are very difficult and then other ranges of that motion are much, are much easier. Like the final, you know, third of a biceps curl is quite easy compared to the bottom. Whereas with the, the particular, I like the,

the cable drag curl setup. You just get constant tension throughout. Yeah. That one's really good. It's brutal sometimes, right? I mean, it's,

it's nice too, that you don't have to use that much weight to get a good training stimulus, even if you want it to be rather intense. Let's say you're going to do no more than 10 reps per set. I think for me right now, that's 30 or 35 pounds. So it's joint friendly in that way too. Can we now talk about gadgets? So foam rollers, popular massage guns get asked about bands, particularly popular these days. What are your thoughts on such things? I'm not a huge fan of passive modalities, like even like hands on physical therapy stuff like manual therapy. I think it's a means to an end. You know, I think that like there's a

time and a place for all of these things, but they shouldn't be your main tools for working on your mobility or, you know, your main work strategy. I think that there's a lot of better ways to warm up a lot more efficient ways, you know, with better use of your time. So like a percussion gun, it's kind of the same input as a foam roller, right? It kind of produces a stimulus. Sometimes they can help reduce pain perception temporarily. But once again, it's temporary. It can help increase the elasticity of a muscle 10 minutes. That's what the research is showing. So all those are very short-lived benefits. So you just got to know, you know, if you're really trying to get something out of that and immediately go into an exercise, that's going to be also stimulating the same muscle group,

then that's great. But just know that it's only going to be 10 minutes. And it's not the thing that's going to really benefit you long term. So I like percussion guns when someone is incredibly flared up. If you're just in a ton of pain, and you need something to just like help you get over that hump to be able to do something, then it's a means to an end for me. Like I will implement that. I will have people, you know, foam roll if they find that beneficial. And sometimes you're kind of working within people's narratives too. Like if they think that it's beneficial, then there is a placebo effect to that too. And placebo we know is, this can be helpful. It can be very helpful for people because a lot of the things are, you know, definitely more like mental too. It's like some of these things that like how they

perceive training and how they perceive their bodies. So I think that those tools, they're helpful, but I think that there's better use of our time. And a big part of what I do is educate people on what these tools actually do and what they don't do. Some people claim that they break up fascia or that they like some crazy stuff. And it's like, if you knew how much force it takes to actually like break apart fascia or, you know, do like fascial adhesions, no amount of pressure from someone's hands, no amount of pressure from that foam roller or that ball or that percussion gun will ever make a change in the tissue. Yeah, I've gotten rolfing before. And I don't know

ultimately what changes might have occurred. But that's probably about as painful as I would pay anyone to do something to me could could possibly be. And even that it took several sessions to notice any difference. And that's like, you know, maximum pain basically. Yeah. You got to think about like the, the benefit cost ratio there too. Right. Like, man, they mean like, I don't know if people know what rolfing is, but it is an extreme form of like massage that like is intense.

Like did they have, you have like parameters to like, if it with elbows. Yeah. If you go above a nine out of 10 pain, you tell them to stop or something if a word? No, no, there was no safe word. Yeah, I've heard some practitioners go crazy with that. And they're like, they'll tell people, okay, we can go to a nine out of 10 pain scale. But I don't want you to go to a 10 out of 10. So if you get to a 10, then we'll stop. And I'm like, you have people like, that is incredibly damaging, not just like physically, but like psychologically too.

Now you're going to go to that amount of pain at what cost, you know? Yeah, he wasn't that extreme. It actually, it was painful, but it was certainly tolerable. And for what it's worth, this was a couple of years ago. So I don't remember. There were a couple.

There was one issue, some muscles on my back that I just can't get. What am I going to do about it? And so there were a couple of things. And he was a good enough practitioner. It was maybe part rolfing, but wasn't maybe as extreme as what you might find if you were to search online. He was a rolfer, but he also had trained in other disciplines. And so ultimately, it was productive. It was painful, but it wasn't torture. I don't have PTSD. I can laugh about it now. Yeah. And all that stuff is stimulating

blood flow and circulation too, which is helpful too, obviously with like inflammation and just to help, you know, kind of feel better. Those are all those feel good things that you feel when like you just get things moving. Yeah. Regarding massage guns question for you. So something that is seems to be related to this biceps tendon issue. This is the first time that I can remember having any problem on the left side of my body. The only problems I've had in the past were always on the right side. So it appears to be related to pec tightness, which can obviously make sense. And I say tightness. And what I guess I'm really describing is, is pain. Like when,

you know, I have a, there's a massage therapist who I see every week and she was just kind of doing assessment of my body. Okay. Let's see how things are. And then I didn't even realize that this was a thing on, on my left side of my left pec, but in getting getting in it might be more of a pec minor but in really kind of getting in there it feels bad and it's not supposed to feel like the other side feels totally fine no issues and and so i i have a massage gun and something that has been helping for whatever reason is i see her once a week, but spending probably no more than 10 minutes a day, not, not overdoing it, but getting in there with this gun and finding these, I guess you could call them trigger points. It kind of felt like a big trigger point to begin

with. And now there are areas where it's like, Oh, that feels better now. Okay. That's, that's no longer aggravated like it was. But that in there, yep, that's still a thing. And so in just using the massage gun every day, in addition to an hour with this woman every week, again, the perception of pain has gone away in certain areas of the pec and it has translated into less aggravation. Okay, my biceps tendon is feeling better now. I still feel it a little bit. I'm avoiding a couple of exercises, but it's certainly improving. What are your thoughts on that? And the reason I bring that up is not really in my own self-interest, maybe a little bit, but also a lot of people,

they will describe similar situations themselves where something does not feel good and it seems to be muscle tightness or something, trigger point, something's wrong and they can use one of these guns and by being consistent with it, it seems to resolve the issue. Yeah. I mean, the gun does, like I've said, it does provide short-term benefits. So how long, it really depends on the individuals, but you like, you know, unlike a lot of other people that don't actually like,

you know, take care of their bodies, there's, you know, the problem in America, right? Not a lot of people are taking care of their bodies, but you do. So you are doing the things you're doing the work in addition to doing the soft tissue work and doing the percussion, like all that stuff to make sure that your joints are, you know, working efficiently and you're doing the exercises to strengthen all the stuff around your shoulder. You're probably doing like rotator cuff stuff, that posterior delt stuff, anything to kind of offload this front part of the shoulder. You're doing all that stuff. You're doing the work and this is now just kind of giving you a little bit better or put you in a better environment to be able to feel like you can do those things easier without as much discomfort. A lot of people though, they might just rely on these tools

as the end-all be-all, right? This tool is going to fix all my problems. But unless they have those exercises to follow up with, to be able to solidify what you're trying to accomplish, then it's just going to be a short-lived thing. And they're always going to go through this cycle of they'll do it, it feels better, and then it comes right back. They'll do it, it feels better, it comes right back. So you're making the lasting changes by all the other stuff you're doing. This is just helping facilitate that.

And in terms of what may be going on, you mentioned earlier that there can be situations where a muscle can be shortened or it could be weakened. And so, again, I'm just speaking to my perception of it, but can there be a situation where a muscle or certain parts of the muscle can be in a kind of hyper-contracted state? And if you don't address that, it just kind of remains in this dysfunctional state. That's how it seems. Like this has been, I guarantee you, this has been an issue for some time. I just wasn't really aware of it. And it didn't particularly get in the way of my workouts, training my pecs, but there's

an issue, you know? Yeah, no, I think that, I mean, you're doing all the right things, but yeah, I think that the stuff that you're feeling here, you know, it's probably a result of what's going on at the shoulder joint too. And then we also look at like thoracic spine too. So, you know, if this doesn't resolve, you might want to look at your T-spine and say like, you know, am I always kind of tilted into rotation this way? So maybe like when I'm doing these exercises, I'm not actually getting as much out of this one side as I am on the other side, because I'm rotating away from it subconsciously at this point. And so looking at some of those other things to kind of fill in those missing gaps is huge. But all of this stimulus, it feels good. It's also creating a placebo effect too, which is helpful. Like if you believe in it, if you think it's going to work, then by all means. But there's other things that can work too. They might just take a little bit longer, you know, to work by themselves alone. That's why in physical therapy, we do have tools that we use. We have a percussion gun. We have, you know, we can do like soft tissue massage. We can do

needling. We can do scraping, but these are just, like I said, a means to an end. So it's just to get yourself in a better environment to reduce your end so it's just to get yourself in a better environment to reduce your pain because it's more of a pain threshold so we can reduce that and what you are describing too is hypertonicity of that tissue so it's like it's in a tonic state so it's tense right and so if you can reduce that short term then it feels like it may be your shoulder sitting in a better position immediately after. So then you can do those exercises that you do normally with it being in that better position. And then maybe, you know, you did that stuff today, maybe it'll take a week until it feels terrible again. And then maybe the next time you do it, it'll be two weeks until it

feels like it comes back again. And so it's getting better and better and staying longer in the right environment. So I just think that you have to make sure you balance it and making sure that we educate people on what these things are doing and what they're not doing and how you have to back it up with something active for it to ever have a full transformation. Just to the point that you mentioned of what the underlying cause is, and that's something that I'm aware of intellectually, but it's hard to know yourself. And yes, there probably is something in my training that some sort of imbalance, something that's off that led to that issue.

And so we'll see how it goes. Although, again, it's kind of odd that many years now I've not had any problems on the left side of my body at all so i guess we'll see where it goes but but being able to address it in the short term is is one thing but then being able to prevent it from recurring is another thing right and that's where then how i am training is is is going to be the deciding factor because if it goes away, that's great. But if there is something, some weird little thing that I'm doing that just contributes to it little by little, it can just come back if, if I heard you correctly.

Yeah. So if you ever need any help, let me know. This is what I do for a living. Yes. Yes. Uh, so far, uh, it's been, it's been moving in the right direction. So I'm like, all right, well, I'll just keep doing. And I actually, I ran into a similar issue. This was years ago on my right side, but I worked with a physical therapist because I couldn't figure it out myself. And that time though, it was my subscapularis

was extremely aggravated. It felt really bad when he worked on it. And I believe it was hard to say if it was Terry's, there are a few muscles that it's hard to say exactly what it was, but there were a couple just very upset portions of muscles that we just had to work on. And by being consistent with that, I would would see him a couple times per week and then uh actually use a massage gun one of the one of the guys who worked with me when we were in an office together because i couldn't get back so he would just kind of we'd spend a couple maybe five minutes a day working on each of these points and i would avoid exercises that aggravated the tendon

and then it went away and that was the end of it. We'll see. We'll see if maybe the left side is... Most things sort themselves out over time. Sometimes you just want to give it a jump start. So that's where a lot of these tools can come in. You can give yourself a little jump start or if an athlete's in season and they're just trying to get through the game or get through the championship, whatever, then they use these different tools and they know that now once season's over and after that championship game's done, they're going to now take care of it and implement the exercises that they need to do to actually fix it long-term. That makes sense. And one last thing before we sign off, I just wanted to get your thoughts on our bands. Cause I see a lot of people usually it's it's women a lot of younger

girls incorporating bands into a lot of things now warm-up routines exercise routines like adding bands now to exercises that you wouldn't normally add a band to what are your thoughts on the utility of bands i think bands are a great tool and i think that they're like an easy tool to get your hands on, right? They're not very expensive. You know, I feel like especially like after, you know, the pandemic, like a lot of people, that's all they had were bands during that time. So kind of like the resistance band exercise really took off. So I think bands are could be really helpful to, you know, you can do like band assisted exercises, um, you do band resisted exercises too. So you can use that to facilitate even mobility work. Um, I think that sometimes we wear bands like for exercises that don't make any sense, you know, um, that you could probably not wear the band for that, but they might've found that an exercise they saw on the internet by their favorite influencer. And now they have to try that exercise because it looks effective and it's gonna you know hit x y or z whatever that person said it was gonna do a lot of it a lot of it seems to be glute focused like you're gonna you're gonna achieve

higher levels of glute activation by adding the band to the whatever exercise yeah i think that there's a lot of low level, especially if you're doing like an isometric. Yeah. It can help like get your knees to be out a little bit more. So say like maybe you have a faulty movement pattern and you want to work on getting your knees out more to be able to facilitate a better squat or a better like hip thruster. So yeah, you could turn on the glutes better, but if your main focus of the exercise is hip extension, then why are we adding hip external rotation, hip abduction, right? It kind of takes away from the main focus of the main stimulus that you're trying to provide. So I think that we really have to think about or

reevaluate our training of what's our goal here? Is it just train all the things at the same time? Okay, then yeah, have bands on your hands and your legs at the same time, like go crazy. But if your goal is to, you know to maximize your hip thruster, well then take the band off and just focus on hip extension. If your focus is on deadlifts, like I don't know why people are wearing bands when they do deadlifts.

That's still beyond me because I think maybe they're just tired and they don't want to take them off and they just keep them on or something. But like there's various exercises that we do in the facility to help, you know, to work on strengthening the glutes.

It's just to stop the scrolling, you know, it's the scroll stopper. Like, Oh, is that, is that a, is that a rubber band when,

when he's dead lifting or when she's dead lifting? I gotta, I gotta see this. Yeah. Like, what is this doing? Or, you know,

these like banded, like kickbacks, like, or people that wear the bands and then they go on the stair master. Have you them no no i've not seen that banded stairmasters yeah like what are you yeah like what are you doing right now like why i guess you're being efficient with your time i have no idea so whatever makes people happy i think it's just a lot of people they're associating bands with a bigger, better butt. You add a band to something and your butt gets better.

No, it's not going to create hypertrophy. So if you're looking for a bigger butt, a band is not going to do it. It doesn't provide enough stimulus or enough resistance to do that. So I think that they need to know what they're doing. Maybe a good portion of this should be education, but it's just providing a little bit of nice symmetric generally. So I think that it's not going to make grow bigger glutes or anything else. Yep. Makes sense. Well, that's everything that I had on my list. Is there anything that I haven't asked that I should have asked or anything still kind of bouncing around in your head before we wrap up? No, I think we covered on a lot of things. This is a good talk. Yeah, yeah, this was great.

Again, I really appreciate you taking the time. And why don't we wrap up here with where people can find you find your work, if there's anything in particular relevant to this conversation, not directly relevant to this conversation that you want people to know about. So I'm on all the socials at The Physio Fix. And I'm on Instagram, TikTok. That's a new thing. So I'm just trying to get into the TikTok space. I'm on YouTube.

So you did it. I haven't done it yet. I literally held off until July. I think I got it in July. So very recently got into TikTok. But other than that, you can work with me online. You can work with me in person. I'm in Phoenix, Arizona, like I said at the beginning. So everything is on the website, thephysiofix.com. You can book online appointments, in-person appointments, everything right there. Awesome. Well, thanks again for taking the time,

Stacey. This was a great conversation. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions

or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.