Weights and Plates Podcast - #55 - Does Technique Really Matter?

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

It has become popular in the last few years for coaches in the strength and fitness world to question the concept of "technique," that is, that technique matters when it comes to getting stronger, building muscle, and injury risk reduction. One claim is that certain standardized technique hallmarks such as squat depth definied as the "hip crease below top of patella" are arbitrary, and that one could strong squatting deeper or higher than that. Others claim that certain techniques such as lifting with a rounded back, while inefficient, do not increase the risk of injury during training.   Dr. Santana and Coach Trent attempt to wade through the bullshit, find the nuggets of truth in the claims, and discuss whether technique really matters"when it comes to getting stronger and more muscular. They also offer tackle the misconception that lifters must have "perfect" technique before adding weight to their lifts, and where their personal line in the sand is for technique quality.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Yo, what's going on? Not much, man. TGIF, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we're recording this one on a Friday. Y'all, we sure are. We're like so fucking late. Just a bit behind.

I think we both, just like the last two weeks have been a blur. I thought that we posted it last week. And then you're like, no, dude, it was two weeks ago. Yeah, well, I was walking around all week thinking the exact same thing until I looked at the calendar again.

And whoops. You don't let me fact check this, fact check this, quote unquote. I have not actually looked on a podcast to see when it posted. Let's see. Seven newer episodes. Goes to show how often I listen to my own podcast. June 2nd. Okay, you're right.

Yeah. Yeah. June 2nd. Abs. Well, yeah. Over here in the Jones household, our son has been going through what is typically an eight month sleep regression. So he's about to be nine months old. And typically babies around eight months have a big sleep regression because they're learning to

crawl. And that's a big deal. And basically babies, every time they're about to do something big, like learn a new skill, they just like stop sleeping or they, or they just toss and turn all night. And we've been going through like a month long sleep regression over here. I think we're, we're, we're coming out the other end. Knock on wood. I gotta be careful saying that, but yeah, uh, the weeks tend to blur together and quite quickly in those circumstances. Yeah, man. But today, yeah, we wanted to talk about something that is, man, I don't know why this is so controversial in the fitness world, but somehow it is, and I don't understand it whatsoever, but maybe we can make sense of it today in this

episode. Does technique matter? Well, you know, there's no such thing as technique, according to some people. Right. Just like there's no truth either. Isn't that a thing? Nihilists, right? Oh, my gosh. Well, yeah, that's just relativism, right? Well, your truth isn't my truth.

So, therefore, there is no truth. There is no technique. Everything is change. Everything is just in flux, man. We're just not going to go down that rabbit hole. Anyhow, yes, there's no such thing as technique. But you've got to draw the line somewhere, don't you? Right. Yeah. And this is one of those things where, you know, I like to think that on this show, we try to cut through the academic bullshit out there and get down to like brass tacks. Like, okay, well, like you like to say, does this pass the smell test of like what we actually see day to day coaching people in the gym versus what the theory says should be true, right? Which comes from,

you know, academic studies and whatnot. And there's a pervasive argument out there today. I don't know when this started. I'm sure it's been going on forever, but it's become popular in the last, I don't know, year or so. That's when I've heard about it. That technique is just, That's when I've heard about it. That technique is just, it's entirely arbitrary. Your technique has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not you get injured. And it doesn't even matter that much when it comes to, you know, getting stronger, like producing an adaptation. I mean, that last one might be true if you're shooting a bunch of roids, sure. Yeah, right. And it's like I hear these arguments and I don't understand where these people are coming from because that is the complete opposite of what I've experienced in real life coaching people. What I've experienced is that technique absolutely matters

and that if you do something wrong enough, you're got a pretty damn good chance of hurting yourself. And no, you can't just, you know, quote unquote, adapt to any movement pattern that you choose. If you squat really fucked up or you deadlift really fucked up, you're probably going to hurt yourself. That's what I've experienced. So people can argue this from a theoretical standpoint, but man, it doesn't pass the smell test. Absolutely not. That's what we want to dig into today. The most serious injury I ever had was when I was squatting wrong and I was taught to squat correctly and I'm lifting a couple hundred pounds more than that now and it has not happened again.

and it has not happened again. With the exception of one time, I re-aggravated it, not to the extent of the initial injury, just that area got irritated because I misloaded the bar on a back offset. I had 405 on the bar. I squatted it for three or four reps, took a plate off, put a 25 on, did not do the same on the other side, squatted it up, then my right adductor got tight. I wouldn't say I fully injured it, but I had to drop weight off

for about a month, and then it was fine. But by drop weight off, I went from 400 to like 275 and then worked back up and then hit some PRs. But again, both of those situations, the initial injury was due to bad technique and the follow-up irritation or tweak, whatever word you want to use was also due to technique. I put the wrong weight on the bar, right? Yeah, that changed your technique for you. The problem that we run into is, let's address the first thing. It has no bearing on whether you're going to hurt yourself. Okay, so you can pick a few outliers that, for whatever reason,

they get away with moving like shit. Right, yeah. We've all seen that. We've seen that. We see guys pulling deadlifts and you're just like ouch like i'm tweaking my back watching that and they power lift for years and years and years um typically they don't make it to the master's level by that point they're like oh i had to stop lifting because i got old and things started hurting

you know like we bought these guys right um and i think that's why you know you'll see some master's records that uh you know getting set now by you, guys that we train because they didn't do stupid shit in their twenties and thirties. Um, but, um, yeah, so there's that you got guys that, yes, they will lift like shit and not get hurt. Right. Um, so that exists. Then you also got, then you got the argument of has no bearing on whether you're going to build muscle or get stronger well yeah if you take steroids or if you're what you know considered a you know a high responder somebody well endowed for this then that's true that's true for that guy sure you know we know these guys they lift like shit they grow they get stronger they pr you know

yeah i knew swimmers i knew a swimmer when i was in high school uh swam 20 of the workout you know because of asthma and he definitely leveraged it a little bit he had asthma but he was leveraging it a little bit right and the fucking dude um got faster year after year you know so one could say that oh the mileage you swim has no bearing on how much faster you're going to get as a swimmer you know right well you have a young man going through puberty who's got the right limbs and hand size, foot size and genetics for that sport. And he's growing and increasing his testosterone levels year after year, you know? Yeah, we've all seen that.

You know, I grew up playing football in Texas, which is extremely competitive at the time. It was 5A, so it was the highest level of football. So this is where all the guys that you see in college in those d1 games this is like where they recruit from and um yeah it becomes painfully obvious when you play a good team that with a stacked roster those guys i mean a lot of them do work really hard but they don't they wouldn't have to even if they didn't do anything they would be so much faster so much stronger so much bigger than the other guys. It's not fair. Absolutely. You know, now it's competitive enough. They have to work hard or else they fail at the next level.

But it just, it, it, it points out a genetic differences very quickly. Yeah. So we're not going to pick out liars like LA fitness does with their ab pictures to, you know, justify lifting like shit. We're not doing that. Um,ars like LA Fitness does with their ab pictures to justify lifting like shit. We're not doing that. What we'll do is, you know, I have this term that I use lately. It's called the technique continuum. And I usually use it in the context of the type of exercise you're doing. So on one end, I say you have a seated tricep extension.

That's probably the single exercise that's most difficult to fuck up, right? Sure, yeah. Like it's almost idiot proof to do a seated tricep extension on a machine, you know? A machine seated tricep extension. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have a snatch, right? That's probably the most technical free weight exercise you could do. Right, yeah. Very easy to fuck up.

Yeah, and the main lifts that we folks on squat press deadlift bench press pull down pull up those are somewhere in the middle right sure yeah and uh what i just told somebody earlier today is you know just like with any other sport any other skill first couple years you do this you're gonna spend time refining that right you're gonna spend time developing your technique. There's going to be ups and downs, with the exception of somebody who's naturally gifted and can pick them up quickly. We're going to put that guy aside. But the average person that learns this is going to have ups and downs with technique.

That's about a two- to four-year process. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's just my general observation. Then as you stick this out, eventually you have quote unquote your technique, right? And it's just consistent. Like mine doesn't change from workout to workout, from rep to rep. It's pretty damn consistent, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I like to say the error bars just get smaller and smaller and smaller, you know, the more that you train and the more that you work on this. It's a skill. It's the skill component of lifting.

I'll come back to that. So I remembered what I wanted to say. So I was talking to somebody else recently about swimming again. And she just started lifting with me and said something about, I forgot what she said. She was talking about swimming and how it carried. I think she said it carried over to something we were doing. And then I'm like, oh yeah, pretty much every swimmer I've trained has a big press.

I would not have a, I would not have the press I have. I press 225 at 180, I'm 5'9". And I attribute that to years of swimming and lots of chin since I was 15. You know, I've worked the opposing range of motion, right? So I got to a 225 press about, what, six years after I did my first LP, about probably 10 years since I started pressing overhead, period, because I didn't start pressing overhead until 2009, 2010. And then I hit the 225 in 2019, might have been 2020. So six, seven years since I started doing it this way, and about roughly a decade since I started training that movement.

And we were going on and on, and I was like, yeah, you know, my coach was like most sport coaches who believe that more swimming equaled faster swimming. And I want to add some context to that because it's not entirely incorrect. Now, this was a guy, you know, who I have a lot of respect for, by the way. I don't know if he listens to my show, but we follow each other on Facebook. Love his post. He gives me some good laughs. You know, he was hard on us and I thought it was good, you know? So it was a positive experience. But his philosophy about swimming was more swimming equal faster swimming, right? And when I look at his experience before he came to the public school I was at, he coached at a Catholic school with a big swim program and he won three state championships over there, right right so we both know in order to do

that you have to have you know the top you know one to five percent of swimmers in the state the top talent right so he got very accustomed to training the top talent and when you're training the top talent or you are the top talent training you know because lifting you know sometimes you're just doing it by yourself and not competing necessarily if you're very talented for this yes more lifting will lead to stronger lifting and to getting bigger, you know, regardless of other factors, right? Non-specific things, right? You can get away with anything and improve when you're very talented. We see it all the time in sports, right? So that's what I, so I explained to her, I'm like, yeah, when you're the top 1%, it probably doesn't matter that much if you lift or not. I

mean, it matters. It's going to move the needle, but where it really matters, when you're the top 1%, it probably doesn't matter that much if you lift or not. I mean, it matters. It's going to move the needle. But where it really matters is if you're not the top 1%, if you're mediocre or even worse, if you're a motor moron and below average, it matters plenty. It matters plenty. And technique is one of those things. So we're just talking about lifting in sports. I'll start there. So lifting helps the mediocre or below average athlete to a far greater extent than the natural athlete.

And it's usually the natural athlete that says these things don't matter, right? Right. Yep. That's number one. Number two, your lifting technique matters even more if you're not gifted, right? So if you're the guy. So let's go back. Same example.

You're the guy that doesn't get hurt and does whatever the fuck you feel is right for you, right? We're not talking about you. Maybe technique won't matter. Maybe you can pull the round back to your 80 and never hurt your back, you know, just like the guys who smoke and don't get lung cancer. They exist, right? So it's the same thing, right? But then everybody else who's prone to getting hurt, you know, your mediocre athletes, your below average athletes, technique matters more. The shittier you are at this, the more it matters. But then you could be someone like, you know, our colleague Wolf, we're going to bring on at some point,

great technique gets hurt, you know, and that can be a variety of things. You know, we'll talk to him about it when we bring him on here, but that's my point. Technique matters more when you're not gifted for this. People who tell you it doesn't matter are often gifted for this or they're on drugs, doesn't matter are often gifted for this or they're on drugs, you know, there's other shit going on. And that's, you know, that's one of the problems that Rip has talked about this ad nauseum about you. There are a lot of pitfalls in looking at the professional athletes in a given sport or endeavor, you know, whether it's like top level power lifters or professional baseball players or football players or whatever.

You can't look at those guys and extrapolate backwards to what you should do for a lot of reasons. And I see this a lot in the sport of strongman because it's analogous to what we do in strength training. Those guys are strong, and they have to express force, right? But it's a sport with a number of events and they don't measure generally. There's, there's a few events where they do this, but most events aren't about lifting the most weight possible, right? It's, did you do, maybe it's for reps, maybe it's for speed, maybe it's just, you have to complete it right in a given time. So you get guys out there and you see, I see it with a deadlift, right right because the deadlift is the technique is

Fairly simple. It's not easy to do necessarily, but it's a fairly straightforward simple Technique, you know, there's just not a whole lot of different ways to pull efficiently off the floor And some some of these guys will pull eight nine hundred pounds with you know, terrible technique that they jerk the bar off the floor There they've stiff legged deadlift the thing, you know, terrible technique that they jerk the bar off the floor. Um, they're, they've stiff legged deadlift the thing, you know, they squat it up and their hips like shoot like, you know, two feet up before the bar comes off the floor, all that kind of stuff. Right. You see, you see it all in strong man. Well, you know, that might be good enough to win the event or do place well enough at the event so that they can get the points that they need to potentially win the competition. That doesn't mean that that was an efficient way to move that weight. Maybe they

could pull a lot more, you know, with a better technique. I mean, who knows? I don't know. So, um, yeah, so, so, you know, we, we have to avoid the trap of looking at the top level athletes and extrapolating what we should do both, both good and bad, because, um, you know, there's, there are situations where, uh, these lifters do things very, you know, from our perspective, they do things very inefficiently, but they still are the best in the world. So, you know, who am I to argue with that? Um, but then also you see things where when you look at very advanced athletes, their technique also becomes individualized, right? So you will see things that work quite well for an athlete in their circumstances with a lot of training under their belt that isn't necessarily going to work well

for a novice. So you don't want to necessarily look at how John Hack squats and say, I want to do it exactly like him. You know, you don't have his training history. Um, and you don't know all the circumstances. Maybe some of the ways that he's adapted his technique is to work around, uh, injuries and issues that he's had in the past. There's a lot of different things that can lead to individualization of technique, uh, besides just like, you know, anthropometry, the way that you're built, you know? So anyway. just like, you know, anthropometry, the way that you're built. Yeah.

You know, so anyway. Yeah, so the point is, if you are a gifted athlete, you're probably going to improve no matter what the fuck you do. And by improve, I mean you're going to exceed, you know, 95% of what most people do or higher, you know, that you're going to achieve a level of performance that most people will never even come close to, even with hard work. We're talking about the guy that gets to a 600-plus deadlift in the first couple years.

I believe no guys like this. Sure, absolutely. Whereas most people are not going to ever get there, right? Yes, right. So you've got to consider this into the equation. For these people, all these little idiosyncrasies that matter for us don't matter for them. There are guys that eat like shit. Look at Michael Phelps.

Great example when he was a swimmer. His diet was fucking terrible. He was an Olympian. Fast food. Yeah, Olympian. So when you're going down the pyramid of priorities, so you've got to lift, obviously. That's the foundation of it because that's what we're talking about here. That's our quote-unquote sport activity, whatever you're going down the pyramid of priorities, so like, you know, you got to lift, obviously, that's the foundation of it, because that's what we're talking about here. That's our quote unquote sport activity, whatever you want to call it.

And then you got, you know, you got technique, you got programming, you got diet, you got sleep, you got stress, you have all these variables. And most people want to focus on all the little variables over, you know, actually the lifting part of it. little variables over, you know, actually the lifting part of it. But some of those, you know, when you're talking about somebody who's gifted, they can sit there and say none of that shit matters because it didn't for them, you know, and that's why most of the guys telling you, oh, technique doesn't matter. They're either gifted or they created a similar situation by getting on steroids very young and getting to a level that it may have taken them a lifetime otherwise, or they may not have gotten to at all all depending on how much shit they're taking right right so most of the rest of us outside of the marvel universe uh we're affected by these things bad technique gets us hurt poor

sleep causes mislifts under eating causes mislifts or or injuries, you know. Fighting with your girlfriend fucks up your workout the next day. Like all these little things matter when you're mediocre or below average. When you're above average, you are going to get to a top five results, even in the worst of circumstances, you know. Like you take a gifted lifter, he's not going to get stuck at 315 even if he sleeps two hours a night, you know, on a deadlift. You know, you take a gifted lifter he's not gonna get stuck at 315 even if he sleeps two hours a night you know on a deadlift yeah you take someone who's really gifted that might be his first warm-up you know his first deadlift might be 470 i know a guy who was a minor league catcher

almost made it pro injuries you know that's usually what weeds these guys out um almost went pro in baseball and uh his first deadlift was 475 and he was sub 200, you know? Wow. And that was no drugs either. Cause he, cause later on he did get on a TRT and he's like, man, I regret it. I was just, oh, I don't want to cheat and this and that, you know, I respect them, you know, whatever. But when he got older, he's like, oh, I regret not getting on, you know? But anyways, yeah, he was on drugs. He pulled like in the mid sevens, you know, and he was 220 and that's mediocre for powerlifting. So there you go. Right. I mean, but he was really explosive. He probably, he probably like in the mid-7s, you know, and he was 220. And that's mediocre for powerlifting.

So there you go, right? I mean, but he was really explosive. He probably should have done weightlifting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so I mean, I think, you know, I think that's pretty reasonable what you've just laid out. And I think most of our listeners probably would agree with you on those points. But there's a more nuanced argument against this. And I want

to try to not strawman too bad here, because I don't think that's exactly what some of the other coaches in our world that advocate for this idea that, I don't think they're saying that technique doesn't matter at all, but they will say things like, um, technique is, is arbitrary or technique. Um, like you can adapt to a very wide range of techniques. So, uh, like if you pull with a rounded upper back, let's say, um, like, well, if you pull that way all the time and you adapt to it over time with progressive, you know, with progressive loading, then it's fine. Your, your, your spine will adapt to that just fine if you pull with a slightly rounded back or whatever your spine will adapt to that over time it only

becomes a problem when your technique changes acutely right like normally you pull with a flat back and all of a sudden you pull something and you let your back round and then you keep pulling with that that's when it becomes a. So there are some people arguing some version of that out there. Look. And I think I still disagree. I agree, but I disagree. So I want to talk about that. I agree with the concept that you'll adapt to whatever the fuck you're doing in the sense that you'll be able to reproduce it if you're doing that on purpose.

Right. Rounded up or back, easier off the floor, you're going to get purpose um you know rounded upper back easier off the floor you're gonna get stuck at lockout you know i mean if there's a trait i guess we should really talk about this in terms of trade-offs because what you're talking about is a controlled inefficiency and a controlled inefficiency you know if an advanced lifter wants to do that he has every fucking right you know um when konstantinov was still with us uh i'm not gonna sit there and criticize his 900 deadlift because he pulled the rounded upper back. He said he never got injured from it either.

So I'm not going to criticize that. But, you know, you get to advanced status. I think that, you know, I think for the most part you're dealing with controlled inefficiencies. Sometimes you see some really silly shit on some of these lifts, like dive bombing, you know, yanking the bar up on a deadlift. There's some extremes, but they're reproducing something, and there's some adaptation going on there, even if it's not a positive one. Right, right. But what are we talking about here?

Are we talking about controlled inefficiency or involuntary inefficiency? Because the second one's probably more dangerous if I had to sit there and compare. Right. Obviously, I'm of the position you should try to make things as efficient as possible. But, you know, this idea that it's arbitrary and you can just adapt to garbage, I think the – I'm trying to – I'm searching for the nugget of truth there. Yeah. And I've already kind of hit on, okay, the guy saying that is on steroids, and he's probably gifted for this type of activity, you know? So for him, it was arbitrary, you know? And he didn't get hurt for a long time.

So for him, it was arbitrary. For some people, this is probably true, but it's not because they're doing anything special. It's in spite of it. It's in spite of what's happening, right? Right, right. Where I find a nugget of truth here is that there are some inefficiencies that for whatever reason are just there you know uh for me my mid thoracic spine like uh just rounds a little bit when i'm dead lifting yeah right yeah but maybe that's the natural shape of it when it's neutral you know i don't fucking know um and you know as i you know and then on the bench press i welcome any coach to take a stab at this but i i've just given up it's not going away my elbows flare on the fucking bench press, I welcome any coach to take a stab at this, but I've just given up.

It's not going away. My elbows flare on the fucking bench press. It's not bad where it's completely – I don't go completely perpendicular. My humerus does not go completely perpendicular to my torso, but there is movement towards the head when I come off the chest. And I've tried everything. I've beat the fucking thing to hell. It's just not going to stop happening, and I don't give a fuck and I've adapted to it. I don't have any shoulder pain. It's a controlled inefficiency. Yes. Yeah. Same thing with, uh, when I squat,

when I, when I squat above a certain weight, my knees come in a little bit when I drive out of the bottom. Oh yeah. I've got a little bit of valgus and, um, yeah, it's, it's the same thing. Like, look, I've, I've tried everything. I've done the knees out. I've cued it every way. I've worked with the tubo. I've taken my squat down, like, you know, a dozen times and tried, you know, it's every time I squat over 275 to 315, somewhere in that range, I start to get a little bit of valgus. But it's the same amount every time, to your point, right? It's controlled, right? It's the same amount every time. And it's not a, it's not a acute, my knee, I don't go baby deer when I come out of the bottom. It's the same amount every time. I don't think anybody has an exact explanation for why that particular thing happens. But my theory is that it has to do with the structure of your hips and the way your femur attaches to your hips. It's something that we can't visually see. Yeah. Yeah. Now for me, I think in my particular case, yeah, I totally agree. The hip, hips, Q angle, all that stuff matters. How the, you know, how your, how your femur fits into your acetabulum.

It can be kind of complex, you know, all those, those little angles and distances and stuff. For me, it's actually my, I think it's my feet. I have very flat feet. You know, my art and my arches aren't even on either foot. So there are, they're, they're flat. So I don't have that natural, uh, what do they call it? Eversion is that sort of natural outward sort of, um, tracking of the foot because of the foot arch.

I don't have that. Now I got custom orthotics made for my, uh, for my lifting shoes. And so it does help me give a little bit of arch and I can feel my foot sort of do that natural eversion that I should have naturally. But as a result, everything just tracks inward on my feet. Especially I think once the weight starts to compress my shoe and compress those orthotics, they're not as supportive as they were when I was squatting 135. It just, it happens, right?

But I can't control that. You know, my arches are the way they are. And, you know, but the thing is, it doesn't give me any pain. I've dealt with that in the past. It doesn't give me any pain and it hasn't for years once I, you know, fix the technique to the best of my ability. So I use that as an example to, here's where I fall down on that argument. This is where I find the nugget of truth. I coach a wide range of people with a wide range of ability in terms of being able to, you know, in terms of body awareness and being able to move their body efficiently and move their body well. And I, you know,

some people pick up these lifts very easily, you know, the natural athletes, some people, most people pick the lifts up pretty well, but it takes the natural athletes, some people, most people, um, pick the lifts up pretty well, but it takes them a handful of workouts to get it right. And then there are some people that takes them many workouts to get it right. And it's never, they're always working on something. It's kind of like whack-a-mole, you know, they'll fix one thing and then something else will fall apart and they fix that. And then something else will fall apart. Um, those, those would be called, you know, our wombats as our friend, uh, Dr. Sully calls them or motor morons, whatever you want to call them. Um, they just struggle. They're on, they're below average. And so I tell these people, I'm

like, Hey, listen, when we're doing the big four lifts, when we're doing squat, press, bench, and deadlift, I'm not looking for perfection. I'm not looking for an a plus Hey, that'd be great if we could all do it. But if we're actually trying hard and we're lifting heavy, it's just not going to happen So I tell them like I want a solid b I want a solid b. I would I would prefer that you clock in a b plus most workouts But hey, listen, you know, this is a tough lift and you've worked really hard at it. It doesn't have to be perfect I want a solid B. When we start getting the B minus and definitely C plus territory, we got to like stop a little bit or back up maybe and fix something. Right. But as long as you're giving me a solid B in terms of your technique, then that's okay. We can still, we can progressively overload with that and your body will still adapt. You'll still get stronger. You're still getting a useful range of motion that's going to cause strength adaptations to occur. And you're not, you're not putting yourself at increased risk of injury, in my opinion,

doing that. Now for other lifters that are more gifted, I expect more, you know, I want to see an A minus or B plus, right? But you have up days and down days, like just like everything else, your techniques, you're going to be, you know, on fire some days and some days you're going to be, it's going to look like dog shit. That's okay. As long as you kind of fall within a reasonable range, that's fine. You can adapt to that and, um, and you'll train just fine. So that's the way I, that's the nugget of truth that I see in this argument is that, yeah, the technique, in my opinion, can range in terms of how quality it is. And as long as we're in a certain range of quality, it's fine. spend months and months wailing on somebody because they can't give me an a plus squat you know that's just not productive and it's demoralizing to a lifter right so that i just make them give me a b and then we're good yeah you got to know where to draw the line um and

you know you really don't know like you said people that are top athletes technique becomes more individualized. I think that just that also applies to advanced lifters. As you become more advanced, your technique becomes more individualized. So telling a novice or somebody who hasn't been coached that technique doesn't matter and they can do whatever the fuck they feel like it is not good advice because that could mean a squat that's five inches high. Oh, technique doesn't matter, you know? Right, right. squat that's five inches high. Oh, technique doesn't matter, you know? Right, right. And that's just, you know, it's an extreme example, but, you know, if you haven't been coached and you've been

pretty much doing the same thing in the weight room for years, you're pretty much a novice, you know? You are a novice who's lifted weights before, you know, but you're probably a novice, you know? And as you do things longer, you might, you know, I, the coach, might see, oh, the knees are caving in every time. You know, that's just his fucking wonky hips probably, you know, or his feet, you know? Right. Or, you know, the mid-back rounds on a deadlift or upper back rounds, it's like, all right, well, he's probably more kyphotic. Like, you start figuring these things out because you're doing the fixes

and you can tell the inefficiency is controlled by the lifter, and nothing's happening. Well, you're still going to try to do the best you can to iron it out. I have a girl, Juliette. She has been with me for nine years, so I've gotten to see lots of things there in terms of how she's developed as a lifter. And rounded back was a problem her first year. Now she is one of those rare types that can pull pretty damn close to her 1RM with a flat back.

But I'll tell you what, most people can't reproduce that. You know, like typically the back, the shape of the spine changes. It becomes more kyphotic when the weight gets heavy. You know, this has been written about by many people. We've all seen it. And despite the best efforts of the lifter, it just happens. But again, until I have a lot of data and we've been working together for a while and I've been watching, you know, you can't sit there and say,

well, that's just what I do because it's comfortable. Comfort doesn't dictate this. Experience dictates this. Time under the bar dictates this, you know? Right. Yes. Level of comfort does not because in the beginning, what's right is wrong and what's wrong is right, usually, you know? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, get over yourself and accept there's a skill component to this right so you know it's the other thing that i deal with you know there is a skill component here so for you hypertrophy slash aesthetic people i know a lot of you listen to me and i appreciate that but you know if you're

if you're gonna go down this journey and try to put on as much muscle as you can um and get as strong as you can at the same time or maybe to put on as much muscle as you can. And get as strong as you can at the same time, or maybe just put on as much muscle as you can to get stronger, right? Because typically, the quote, unquote, aesthetic folks, you know, they don't care about strength, you know, well, you always got to get stronger, we've hit this to high health. So right, I just, I just won't use the language for the sake of this argument. If your goal is to build muscle, that means you have to lift weights and lifting weights is also technical and things that are technical take time to develop from the technical side, right? So if you think you're just going to come in and get the most work you need to get on your legs with a

squat, you know, within a few months or within a first year, it's probably not going to happen because you're going to have to back down a few times to fix your technique. It's just going to happen. You know, you're going to get to a point where shit gets fucked up for whatever reason, or you're going to hit a threshold of weight where you can't maintain your technique. And you're going to be, there's going to be this up and down period. And that lasts about two to four years. And I went through it. I know you went through it, Trent. Everybody who's done this for more than five years remembers that. And, you know, I learned this and I took a motor learning class in my kinesiology degree. And there was some, I learned some things in that class that were

useful. And they were talking about sport movements and, you know, just physical activity in general. And they were just saying that in the beginning, when you have a novice, right? Like in the example, my professor used was a golfer right he's like you know you're not going to tell a brand new golfer you know hey okay turn the turn your hand two degrees rotate your hips five degrees you know aim just right here yada yada yada he's like you know that's going to confuse the person you know things need to be basic and uh general in the beginning you know and then sure he was and he was showing the science behind this all the neural stuff you know and uh then he's showing the science behind this, all the neural stuff, you know? And then he's like, but then Tiger Woods, you might be able to give highly specific advice like that and he'll respond, he'll be receptive to it, you know? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's an interesting point. Yeah. So lifting is no different. You're moving your body with weight, right? And it's going to get hard and your technique's going to change and you're going to fuck around a little bit in this little weight range and then that little weight range goes up. And then, you know, from year five onward uh it's not something you really think about anymore now you're getting into more fine tuning like you know move this much move this little fine bit etc those things can work right that five degree yes you could work i mean we're not going to do that here but um that that's that that's what i'm trying to explain i get guys that you know they're that they're in this for looks which i don't judge

that ripple shit all over that i don't judge that because that's why i got into it right and you know but i was also a child of the 80s you know blow up the bad guy movies and you know strong was important you know and now we see these guys with big weights you know inclined pressing four plates and stuff like that you know so like strong matter to me you know i'm an 80s kid but i'll notice a lot of these guys don't care about that like i did, but they're in the weight room because they want to look better. Guess what? Skill is going to slow that process down, and that's never talked about. The skill component of this will slow that down.

If you don't give a shit about skill and you just purely want to stimulate your muscles to grow, hop on the fucking machines. But guess what? Guess what? There are limits to this, right? You can incrementally load a machine and build muscle, but guess what? There's not a fucking machine out there that's going to build your back like a free weight, like a deadlift or a squat specifically. Because I mean, every exercise is a back exercise, let's be real.

But squat and deadlift is going to make you hold your posture while lifting a heavy weight. I had to think about this in my first attempt at the PhD because I was forced to go from free weights to machines. Long story over a beer. But I was forced to get rid of the free weights, put the machines in because it was the ACSM dogma that dominated that lab, right? Yeah, right.

So I had to sit here and think through. I'm like, okay, I can use a leg press to replace the squat. They have a bench press machine. Then I'm stuck at the deadlift. I'm like, all right, well, there's like a quote unquote back extension, which is really a hip extension on a machine. But then every single person time and time again, maxed it out. Right. And then I thought about it some more. I'm like, even if I could put more weight on that, the back's not really having to control itself to maintain position because you have the feedback of the pad that's on your upper back, right? So, I just came to the conclusion, I'm like, you cannot train that isometric

spinal stability with a machine. You can't do it. And that's a lot of muscle there, from your neck to your ass. That is a lot of muscle. And around your waist, too, from your neck to your ass and around your waist. That's a lot of muscle, and you're not going to get that on a machine. Yeah, and it's just, it's self-evident, right? If you, if you squat and deadlift anything, if you work up to anything reasonably heavy in a novice linear progression, it just becomes so obvious, right? Because you feel it like holding your position as you descend in a heavy squat is really hard.

Same thing in a deadlift. When you're, when you're grinding through the middle of a deadlift and a heavy deadlift, it's just really fucking hard and it becomes obvious how much of your whole body is involved and especially that trunk musculature. Exactly.

And like I said, you could incrementally load machines and make muscles grow. And, you know, I don't recommend doing that. I'm a functional, I coach functional exercise. You know,

I coach true functional training, not the stability ball bullshit. You know, lifting with barbells is functional training in the true sense of the word. But, you know, I know some of you listening to me care about aesthetics more. Right. So if you want to be pure, I don't give a shit about technique. I don't want to think about how I lift. I just want to go in and push my muscles. You could do it with machines, but you're not going to build a big back, and you're not going to build your abs. And I know you could do it with machines but you're not going to build a you're not going to build a big back and you're not going to build your abs

and i know you care about your abs but you're not going to build those muscles unless they're naturally already jacked to begin with which they're not otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation right yeah exactly so yeah i'm glad you're getting to this point because i wanted to talk about this as well so let's break down the ideas behind strength training and, for lack of a better term, bodybuilding, or we could say hypertrophy training. Now, we've already talked about strength training is hypertrophy training, so let's just get that out of the way. However, there is a time where your training can take on a different emphasis. is there is a time where your training can take on a different emphasis um and i think that's the primary difference here as i see it between you know training to strength training and hypertrophy i'm just going to create that dichotomy there um you know fight me on the on the wording

so when we when we squat press bench dead right? In the starting strength model, the reason we choose those exercises and the reason we perform them the way that we do is so we can fulfill three criteria. We can use the most muscle mass, we can move the most weight, and we can do that over the greatest effective range of motion. Okay, so the idea is that we're trying to, we want to get strong.

Being strong is a function of force production. So if you can produce more force, you are stronger, right? And we use weight on the bar as our proxy for force. So if you can move more absolute weight, you got stronger. So we're, and we also understand these movements, like you said, to be functional in the sense that they train the entire body. We use the whole body as a system, not just a collection of individual muscle groups. And so we are trying to use our entire bodies to move more weight, right? That's the whole goal. needs to be efficient so that we can eliminate things like moment arms and basically handle the

physics of moving a bar up and down through space without making it harder than it needs to be, right? You know, we need to balance the weight over our midfoot and all that kind of stuff, right? So that's the whole focus of technique with the big lifts, right? And remember, the goal is to move more weights, to put more weight on the bar. Now let's flip over to, you know, quote unquote, bodybuilding or hypertrophy style training. In this case, we're not as focused on the entire body. We're focused on a muscle group. Like, I want to grow my pecs more. Okay. Well, so in that case, we know through experience and, and, and, you know, this lines up with the academic understanding, that if you put a muscle group under a long time under attention, that is a primary driver of hypert for a long period of time. Okay. So that, that means that we're not necessarily trying to move the most weight possible, right? If you want to do that,

you need to do a bench press for your chest, but you might choose for size. You might choose to do a dumbbell fly for instance, because you can put the packs under a lot of mechanical tension for a long period of time because you can do sets of 12 a lot of mechanical tension for a long period of time because you can do sets of 12 or 15 or even 20 if you want to, right? So in that case, the technique needs to emphasize time under tension and strain on the muscle group in question. We're not trying to use our leg drive to move more weight on the dumbbell fly. Leg drive is not important. It's very important on the bench press.

What we're trying to do is make sure that the pecs are feeling a lot of strain. And that's, you know, in a nutshell, the essence of bodybuilding in terms of technique. Is that a fair dichotomy? I would say, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. me i would say yeah yeah okay yeah yeah the focus is mind muscle connection time under tension and isolating the areas that you're trying to isolate right right um and that's a different

animal and you know i never said that it doesn't work it's just not functional you know right right but you know these guys that are looking for aesthetics i think they get confused by that because they see um you know jay cutler or whatever doing front squats on a Smith machine. Okay. Well, you know, Jay Cutler's trying to do it. He has a very specific thing. He's trying to get a massive pump in his quads. Yeah. And let's remember, Jay Cutler's not weak. If he was going to try and grow his quads with squatting, it would take an eternity because it would beat the shit out of his low back. Right. Exactly. If you're squatting five, 600 pounds for volume, you know, let's say four sets of 10 with five, 600 pounds, which some of these guys can do, uh, you're probably not going to be

able to hit anything like that for another month or two, you know, it's too stressful on the low back. The low back becomes a limiting factor on the squat, not the quads. The quads can continue. The low back will fail first. So if his goal is to target his quads so that they're bigger or more defined on stage, he's going to have to use something other than the squat because he's so damn strong. But you, the novice lifter, everything's going to grow squatting because you're unadapted and your low back is not going to fail before your legs at this stage in the game. And the neuromuscular component is going to teach you how to engage everything at the same time. You're going to get much more robust muscle contractions at this stage in the game.

In fact, most people listening aren't going to get to the point where Cutler's at, you know, where the low back becomes a limiting factor. You're going to grow leg squatting for a very long time. That's what I'm trying to say here. You're going to grow leg squatting for a very long time. That's what I'm trying to say here. You're going to grow leg squatting for a very long time. If you have that problem, then, you know, if you have that problem where they're not growing and you're squatting four, five, 600 pounds, then yeah, the bodybuilding stuff can be useful. You can go leg press.

You can, you know, squat on a Smith machine, do whatever the hell you want. Now you're getting into bodybuilding, right? But the reason that these guys evolved to machines is because they're fucking strong and they cannot accumulate the work on the muscle they are trying to isolate with a free weight exercise just remember before all this shit back in arnold's day in the golden era 60s 70s these guys used the barbell lifts for many many years and then right then Arnold himself came to the conclusion, I can't train full body three times a week because it takes forever and it beats the shit out of me. So he started the split routine and started doing other exercises, right? Yeah. And don't forget. So I actually watched recently a video on YouTube, but the algorithm

got me. It was Jay Cutler training legs and back. This was like, I think he says in the video, he was like four weeks out from competition. And, you know, so I, you know, he did a bunch of shit. But one thing I remember, he was front squatting 365 on a Smith machine. Okay. But then what caught me in this video is I'm like, well, first of all, that's a, that's a pretty heavy front squat on a Smith machine with a real closed stance, right? So putting a lot of tension on the quads. But also the guy's four weeks from competition. That means that dude is in a crazy deficit right now, right?

So he's training, you know, I guarantee you that guy's squatting 5, 6, 700 when he's in the offseason and he's got a lot of food in his system. And that's the thing that I think gets overlooked a lot of times. You're seeing these guys and they look super shredded and whatever. Well, yeah, but they're also in a heavy deficit deficit. You can't train heavy like that. There's no energy. You can tell the guy just, the guy looks tired driving his car into the gym, but I want to, I want to touch on one other thing though. And you've, you've, you've,

you've kind of you've kind of talked about it or talked around it here. And I want to make sure that I underline this point because I think it's really important. If your goal, if you don't really care that much about the, you know, how much you move on the big barbell lifts, fine. That's, that's fine. That's, you know, I don't, I don't care. Um, but if you want to be able to do these bodybuilding movements that we're talking about, we've already said before on this show that you need to be strong. So, you know, if you can't bench 225 for three sets of five, you don't need to be messing around with anything. You need to work on benching 225. Yeah, there are correlations between some of these numbers and how you look. Absolutely. But the other thing that gets overlooked that's relevant

to technique is that the process of learning how to squat and deadlift and press and bench and get those numbers up to a decent level, it's going to give you skills which will make you better at those bodybuilding movements. You've talked about the barbell curl. We've talked about the barbell row. Andy pointed out his problem with the pin lay rows. When you're doing these bodybuilding style movements where you're trying to put strain on a particular muscle group, you need to have good mind muscle connection, right? So you need to have good body awareness in other words, but you also have to have strong stabilizers in order to target the right muscles. So if you're weak in your trunk musculature because you don't squat deadlift, you're probably going to suck at doing back exercises like a bent row

or a T-bar row or a pin lay row or whatever kind of row you choose. You're probably not going to be very good at them and you're not going to be able to get them heavy and therefore you're not going to grow. So I really see the big four lifts, whether you care about how much you move on them or not, as foundational from a technique standpoint. You've got to do them and get pretty good at them so that you can get good at the other lifts that are more relevant to, you know, bodybuilding down the road. 100%. You know, what kind of drove me in the strength direction was, you know, I always enjoyed the heavier better, but I was afraid to do it all the time and uh but the thing that got me was when i looked around and all the gym bros were fucking repping out two plate benches

you know and i'm like okay there's a correlation between strength and size right yeah and oh for sure and people dance around that they don't want to say there isn't because they know they sound stupid if they say that they dance around it they try to avoid addressing that relationship They dance around it. They try to avoid addressing that relationship. You don't see big guys that struggle squatting or benching 135. You might see small guys squatting 535. You see it the other way, but you never see it in reverse. You don't see a big guy lifting light weights unless he's warming up. So smart ass that wants to point that out. Oh, this guy ripped out 30 reps with 135 yeah okay no if you push him hard for hard 10 reps he's gonna lift a lot more than you can for one most likely yeah and i've made this observation i'm like these guys are fucking bench pressing 225

and they're pressing over 135 like shit looking back on it now but still right and they're curling like 100 pounds plus right so i'm like they're and I'm not anywhere near that. Right. And like, there's a correlation between these numbers and size. Now, like I said, there are guys that are squatting 535 that aren't that big. Now that's where genetics starts to play a role in leverage. Right. Of course. Um, but I guarantee you those guys that you see that are the little guys squatting 535, uh, they were a lot littler before they started lifting. Yes. That's the part that gets missed, right? Like if you lift and it gets heavier, you get bigger than you were, but doesn't mean you will become a big guy. Now, a lot of that

is determined by how you're built, right? But yeah, you don't see it go the other way. You don't see a 220 pound, 12% body fat guy, you know, struggling and screaming to squat 135. You don't see that, right? You don't see him doing that to bench 95, you know, you're not seeing that. So let's be clear on this. It has to get heavier and you're going to get bigger. Even if that means you're just less small, pick better parents can't help you there, you know, right? That's why steroids are fucking popular because they'll make you even less small you know you might actually look kind of big i don't know i don't know how that shit works i've never taken it but um my point is that uh it became clear to me i'm like these lifts have to go up and uh the other thing too is you know as i mentioned you

get to a point where sometimes the muscle that you would like to grow is not the limiting factor in the larger movement you know the quads might not be what's failing on the squat it's your low back right yeah um you know might be your triceps on the bench not your pecs you know etc right there's these things eventually happen but early on everything's pretty much getting stronger at the same time you know absolutely so let's just be efficient about it and then you know you get your stabilizer stronger too because of all these months what makes barbell training superior is the things that are not moving during the lift you know yes things that are not moving you know it's easy you know you're squatting yeah you're flexing you're

extending your hips you're extending your knees you know but your back is contracting to hold your spine in position so your abs and your obliques and all those things, right? So you develop that, and then when you go and do something that's more isolated, you know how to contract those finer muscles, right? So, you know, I still stand by it. You know, I know that there's a paper out there that says, oh, you don't need strength to benefit from hypertrophy training. You could put a paper out there about anything, especially when it comes to human subjects. So I'm sure I could find a paper that says the opposite because professional research and science

are not the exact same thing. Let that marry. That's another episode we're going to bring Dr. Bradford on for. Yeah, I like that. Because the gym, like what we see in the gym, that is science. That is science. Itford on for. Yeah, I like that. Because the gym, like what we see in the gym, that is science. You know, that is science. It's just, you know, observation.

But the quality of evidence is very low. Well, you know what? It's all anecdata, bro. You know, the quality of evidence in randomized control trials on lifting is also very low because you're getting people that are.00000000000000. I can't keep saying zero. And then there's a one at the end percent of the population, you know, 23 college kids. Okay. Well, I got one that has a hundred. Congratulations. The United States has 360 million people. How generalizable is that? You know? Right. So, you know, the quality of evidence

in these human subjects, randomized controlled trials, in fact, on most things, is pretty low. Because even if you have 10,000 subjects in a country of 360 million people, I mean, come on, New York has 8 million people. 10,000 is not that many people, you know what I mean? Right, yeah. So, again, I'm not going to go down that because I'm saving that one. I've been thinking about that one for a long time, and I want Dr. Bradford on for that one because she can speak to that. Yeah, I want to hear that episode too. You know, these guys are going to say, oh, one guy went back and forth with me, explained to me,

showed me evidence that you need to be strong to benefit from hypertrophy training. Then I'm like, go run a gym and actually train people, you stupid motherfucker. Right, yeah. Oh, my God. I did it the other way. A lot of us have done it the other way, and it motherfucker. Right? Yeah. Oh, my God, I did it the other way. A lot of us have done it the other way. And it just simply doesn't work. Now, I will say, as I've gotten older and have, and there's more equipment available, I think equipment's a big reason why a lot of us mediocre lifters, so to speak, people with mediocre to below average

muscle building genetics, genetics suffered in most most weight rooms because the dumbbells go up by five, right? The smallest bar is 45 pounds, you know, which is a problem for some men, but a problem for a lot of women. You know, the machines don't really have a way to microload, or they don't even think to tell you, hey, you can hang a plate on it, whatever. The machines go up by 15, right? So, you know, you can't progressively overload a lot of these more isolated exercises without specialized equipment now i have some of it at my gym i

have loadable dumbbells i have fractional plates i'm now getting spotter stands that pivot so you can unrack the dumbbell overhead you know and move it like a monolift i'm excited to get that and you know i'm going to progress my dumbbell bench just fine and in a much safer way i got a client that owns a company that makes wooden boxes. He's going to make me some stackable boxes so that I can dump the dumbbell if I miss, you know, in the event I miss. So we'll kind of have like jerk blocks. But look at all the effort I got to go into to do that. You're the novice. You don't even know if you're going to keep doing this. You want to go spend thousands of dollars so you can run up your dumbbell bench? Or do you just want a barbell bench and go up a little bit each time you know exactly and and you know and i and again i go back to my argument you'll get some peck i don't out of that oh sure yeah of course like anything right you know you do push-ups and you'll get some peck growth for a little while but uh you know i go back to my argument of like i just don't think you're going to become

you're not going to bench the 80s or 90s on the dumbbell if you don't have a decent barbell bench, right? Because it's just all the little things like, you know, can you, do you have good lat contraction, right? Are you creating a good foot for the bench press by contracting your lats, pulling your shoulder blades together and down and getting good leg drive, right? I don't see people training their dumbbell bench only doing that. But you have to in order to build a good barbell bench. And then when you take that over the dumbbells, then you can actually work those pecs through a longer range of motion,

put more strain on them because you, again, have good stabilizers. Yeah. Now, I want to talk about one last thing because you've posted about this on Instagram recently. Okay. So, um, now I want to, I want to talk about one last thing. Cause I, cause you've posted about this on Instagram recently. Okay. And I think this is interesting. This is something where my, my thinking has changed over the last couple of years, uh, in large part, thanks to Andy Baker and, and, you know, everything that he's put out there about, uh, you know, accessory, what we would call accessory work, dumbbells, tricep extensions,

curls, blah, blah, blah. Uh, and that is that I used to make fun of these bodybuilders who you'd see out there doing, let's say a, um, you know, a bent row or maybe like even something like a lat pull down. And you see them like, you know, they let their, they let their back go crazy rounded. and then they they pull it you know super deep or they do the opposite way and they're doing let's say a uh an overhead press with the dumbbells and they're doing like you know half range of motion or they stop their curl early they don't go all the way down and back up so you see all this kind of wacky stuff from from these you know some pretty damn big bodybuilders.

And he used to make fun of them for that. It's like, oh, they're just stupid. They don't understand proper biomechanics. But I think it's interesting that, no, in a lot of cases, there's some very smart bodybuilders who have done things like that very intentionally to, again, hit certain muscle groups that they're trying to train and put more strain on them, right? And you've been messing around with some of this in your own training, right? Oh, yeah. I saw you talking about rows the other day like this. So I want to talk about that.

So are these bodybuilders just dumb? Are they stupid? Or is there actually something to it? Again, what they're doing is controlled, right? So this is my post about strict uh variants of exercises right doing things quote unquote strict right uh and sure enough some stupid motherfucker wrote a comment on my row saying that it was a straight legged deadlift and uh a shrug he didn't even understand his own biomechanics you know i'll get to the i'll get to the valid criticisms of what i'm doing but first of all if your elbows are bending and your shoulders are extending at the very best it's scapular retraction which i don't think i quite achieve on a heavy road i don't

think anybody does you know yeah on a heavy one but you're trending in that direction a shrug is scapular elevation right so where he gets off saying it's a shrug, I mean, I explained all this, and just stupid troll responses to be seen on my page. I'm going to just delete that fucking shit. Yeah. Dumbass. And then my legs, I'm like, my knees are bent, so how is it a straight-legged deadlift? Well, the knees can bend in a straight-legged deadlift.

I'm like, well, they can, but if you can avoid it, then you should. I have a girl who can do them with locked-out knees because she's flexible. I'm not. So the bent knees on a straight-legged deadlift are an artifact of flexibility, but that's a whole other discussion. So I'm like, all right, time for a post about lifting strict, right? So when I'm doing a row, I do like what people call a quote-unquote penalty row or what Rip calls barbell row. Yeah, row from the floor.

And this guy said he doesn't know how SSCs are vetted and that I need to reread the book over a lift that's not part of the program, that's not evaluated in the seminars. And that I happen to be standing right next to Rip while he taught it in the instructional video that's still on YouTube, right? Yeah, right. And in fact, the criticism, so here's the, let me go, you know, I haven't even talked about the criticism was, I'm assuming that people saw this, but when I row, I do a pen lay slash barbell row, barbell row, that's what we we call it right. And I have a very special relationship with rows because I could not grow traps for the life of me when I was younger. My lats would always get wider in the middle of my back would be completely flat. And my you

know, the trap the top part of the traps that you can see would you know, pretty much be non existent, right? I had a little bit from swimming, you know, so I didn't have zero traps. But when I say that I couldn't grow my traps, I really mean the middle and lower part of my traps that span across the center of my upper back, right? And I did every single type of row, and then I'd go overly strict with it, but then the weight wouldn't get heavy, and then the guys that were big were rowing a lot more than I was. And it was just annoying. I could not get those muscles to grow. And then you know what did

it? A 500-pound deadlift did it, you know? Right. A 500-pound deadlift made my traps grow from neck down to my low back. The entire trapezius muscle, hypertrophied from deadlifting because they're isometric. They are postural muscles that respond to isometric muscle contraction. So I learned that, right? Now I've been trying to build my arms and i followed you know a variant variation of baker's arm program and there's a lot of rowing in there and uh a few years back i was working with this other guy you know he had barbell rows in there and i was doing them and then oh your quads are extending you know you got to stop doing that but i'm like if i stop if i do it the way you're describing there's not gonna what's the point of them there's not gonna be any fucking

weight on the fucking bar you know i'd rather be chin-ups you know right right because and this is the same the person who said this to me is also somebody who does them pretty dynamically but then it's like oh you just basically i think he was just looking for technique to criticize you know yeah oh your knees are extending then i'm like well you know if i do it the way you're saying to do it then it doesn't become dynamic at all right then when i when i talked to baker about it he showed me a video of his and he says he's good at pen lays as well but he prefers you know just doing them with the bar suspended versus off the floor every time he does them in the middle over the in front of the middle of the foot so that he gets more range of motion on the lats which

makes sense right that's that's what i call a bent row but yeah sure he does a bent over row yeah so anyways i noticed that his hips were opening up and i'm like well how much hip extension's okay then he's like well you know that's tricky because there's always going to be some if you're trying to do these with any appreciable amount of weight right so then finally i'm like all right i'm gonna fucking train these and i mean whatever happens happens and i'm just gonna make sure that it's controlled right i'm not gonna sit here and beat myself up about oh my hips opened up or my knees opened up. It's a dynamic, explosive variant of the exercise. You're going to use lots of muscles.

It's more compound. I'm not doing a super isolated physical therapy row, as I like to call it. Right. Which I plan on doing, by the way, because my goal is to run these up as high as I can get them and then go back down and do them very strict and see what happens there because it's an assistance exercise. But if you're doing a heavy row, your hips going to open your knees are going to open it's just going to happen right and the funny thing was you know because when it gets heavy your back angle becomes more vertical your hips extend and then you start coming down to it right and i think

that's what the guy was criticizing and i the analogy i gave him like it's like a jerk you know your jerk's not a press. You're dropping and catching it, right? Well, when you're doing a heavy fucking row, you're pulling it up, and then you're dropping down to it, similar to a jerk, right? And your elbows end up bent, but you're not literally strict rowing it up or curling it. You know what I mean? So I went back and watched the video. There I am right next to Rip as he's explaining this.

And I remembered things correctly. You know, my friend Cody Miller asked a question. He's like, now Rip, you know, when it gets heavy, the back angle starts to become more vertical and they kind of start coming down. Rip's like, that's right. They start coming down to it. And then he goes on to say, and you know,

this is a thing about these assistance exercises is there's a lot of different ways you can do things wrong. And then he proceeds to say you know when they start coming down to it that's where you just have to set he's like because no first he says they start coming down to it some of that's just going to happen right that's where you have to draw the line somewhere and the line is when the belly makes contact with the bar as long as your belly makes contact with the bar it's a legitimate rep just for clarity purposes now Now, you can change

those rules around however you want, right? Yeah, you can say if the bar comes within one inch from your belly, that's fine. Yeah, whatever. That's fine. But touching the belly is easier to tell. But for somebody to sit there and tell me I need to reread the book when I'm sticking to the criteria in the video where I'm standing next to the fucking author of the book saying that the bar must make contact and you're going to come down to it. I've done nothing fucking wrong here, right? You know? Right, right. But yeah, so again, and then, you know, the other thing Rip said, which was hilarious, he's like, this is why we don't have a bunch of assistance exercises. It's hard enough with the squat, you know? It's right there in the fucking video. And he's right, you

know, the squat's hard enough to fucking teach, you know, we don't in the fucking video um and he's right you know the squat's hard enough to fucking teach you know we don't need to throw all this complexity in here you know the barbell row is not part of the program by the way but you know i'm an advanced lifter which is the first thing rip says this is for intermediate and advanced lifters so i'm doing it and i think that the explosive nature of it carries over to the deadlift it certainly makes the weight less intimidating off the floor when you're dead lifting after you've been rowing for a bit you know i've certainly felt some carry over there you know if you're deadlifting after you've been rowing for a bit, you know. I've certainly felt some carryover there.

You know, if you're doing Olympic lifts, it can carry over. But you've got to be careful because there's an arm bend. And if you have a bad arm pull problem, you know, it could exacerbate that. So it may not be for everybody. But that's why, that's where rows come from, from the world of Olympic lifting. You know, they started doing them that way. So to get to the point, because I just kind of went on a long rant there. You know, the row is not super strict, where only the fucking arms and shoulders are moving, you know, the elbows extending, or the shoulders extending,

the elbows flexing. It's not super strict like that the hips start to extend the knees start to extend when it gets heavy. And that's anything, you know, you can go strict up to a point. And then if you want to keep going heavier, you're going to involve other muscles, it's going to become compound. But it's not like I mean, your elbows are still bending, your biceps are getting something. The guy who says that it's doing nothing except stroking your ego is ignoring the fact that you know, you don't have neuro neuromuscular damage there, your fucking elbow is bending. If your elbow is bending, the muscles that bend the elbow are doing something. Otherwise, why don't you, what's that shit that they do when they try to like inhibit a nerve?

They inject you with something? Oh, like a nerve block or whatever? Yeah, yeah. So inject a nerve blocker and try to do a heavy barbell row since the biceps and forearms don't do anything when you add momentum, right? Right. Let's see if that will work, right? So the thing is you can't really, you're not isolating the muscles as much because it's more compound, but those muscles are still contracting. Otherwise, if you injected a nerve blocker, you'd still be able to do it,

right? Right. So, you know, you're just putting more weight on and you're using more muscle mass. It's not the best way to isolate a muscle, certainly not, you know, but it's a good way to get used to handling heavy weights. And something odd happens, too. When you run up these compound variants of movements, the strict variant becomes easier, and you can do more weight with it when you go back to it. Right. I've seen this in other areas, right? Like I did a barbell curl with a little bit of hip. I didn't turn into a reverse clean, but when it got heavy, the hips get involved.

But now my strict curl has went up, you know? Exactly. Yeah. And right. I'm glad you pointed that out because that's, um, that's just a general truism. Uh, I think for anything, right. I think that you can even say the same thing about the big lifts to some extent, like, and this is again, going back to my, my less gifted movers, a lot of times I will tolerate, you know, you know, a not perfect, but good enough, a B grade squat or deadlift or whatever, just to run the weight up. And then, you know, if things start falling apart later, or they just hit a natural wall in their, their progression, they start doing more, you know, they go from a heavy deadlifting, every workout to a light deadlift. Well, guess what? On that light day, I'm going to make sure that they clean it up and that it looks more like a

B plus or an A minus, right? And that seems to work because at some extent, you know, people just need to handle some weight, right? They need to move some weight and we still have to have progressive overload. And so, yeah, that's absolutely true. And yeah, for sure, for a more advanced athlete, yeah, I think there's definitely something to, it's kind of like how we use overload movements on, on the barbell lifts, you know, like, uh, you do a pin press to help your press move up. Sometimes you just got to handle more weight so that you can do the, press, you know? Or a push press. Yeah, yeah, right. You just need more weight in your hands for a little while so that you can, you know, so you can make your stricter variant or your stricter version go up. a cheat curl, not okay. You see what I mean? It's like, you can't have it both ways. You know, Olympic lifters, and they don't do any of these, actually. They don't give a shit about rows and curls, so they're not the ones criticizing this, but some of the people making these criticisms would not make these criticisms of Olympic lifters or CrossFitters push pressing, you know what I mean? And it's the same exact concept, right? And it's like, yeah, push press,

you're not really, you know, you're not really getting much out of the bottom. You're getting something, and you get more confident holding all the weight. And it's hard to quantify how much the legs are doing, how much the shoulders are doing, how much the triceps are doing. The point is it's not an isolated exercise. Neither is a barbell row. Yeah, let's just differentiate. Barbell row is explosive. It's done fast.

It's compound. A bent over row is more strict just for our purposes we're just going to use this nomenclature right yes um but uh you know to sit there and say that you know if you start using your hips on a bicep curl that's just going to satisfy your ego um ignores the fact that again put a nerve blocker in that bicep and do a cheek curl and see if the bar comes up. See what I mean? Now, let's go back. Let's just, you know, I've hit, I think I've hit that point to high hell. You know, if you're doing compound versions of strict exercises, like a cheek curl, a barbell row, even a seated row with a hip extension, right? A push press, a muscle snatch, you name it, right? If

you're doing these, they need to be controlled. You know, and that's what I talked about my post, you know, I still set my back before every rep. You know, I take a big breath, set my back, roll the weight up, set it down, exhale, redo the process. Same thing on a push press, it comes down, I don't just go right into the next one with soft abs. I'm taking a big breath. I'm setting my back, getting my abs tight, throwing it up, repeating the process. So you're still stabilizing your body while you're doing this. You're just making it more, you're making an isolation movement more compound. I would consider cheating where you're just muscling it up and paying no attention to stability. stability. Yeah. I think, again, I'm going to go back to, and this is all Andy's, you know, verbiage and ideas, you know, so I want to make that clear. I attribute this to him. This is where the mind muscle connection is critical, right? It's cheating when you're using that dynamic motion or whatever you want to call it to move the weight without actually, you know, putting tension on the target muscle group. So this is

Andy's problem with the pin lay row. It's a fine exercise, but it's easy for people to use leg drive and momentum to move the weight up and to touch their belly without actually contracting their lats, which is the goal a lot of times, not always, but that's one of the goals. One of the goals we have when we program a row of some kind is to target the lats, get some extra lat work. Well, you know, you can, you can muscle the thing up without actually like feeling anything in your lats. And sometimes people are doing wrong. They feel it in their shoulders. They even feel it like their grip or their biceps. And you're like, well, if there's no, if you're not feeling any fatigue in your lats, you're not doing it right. Um, so that, that, I think this think this is where the bodybuilding thing, and I've heard lots of bodybuilders say the exact same thing. There's a video with Jay Cutler showing Eddie Hall, like how to do like, you

know, how to do a bodybuilder style workout. And he spends the whole time talking about, hey, you got to really go for the feel here. You're trying to feel the contraction right here. And he like pushes on the muscle. And so, you know, a lot of bodybuilders talk about this. There's, there's a, there is a method to their madness there and they're going for a feeling in the muscle. And, uh, I think that's what a lot of people overlook when they see these, you know, quote unquote sloppy, uh, looking movements. So again, it just, it comes back to, uh, what you're trying to accomplish, right? If you're trying to get overload work in, you still got to stabilize yourself. And that's where, you know, the squats and the deadlifts and the getting

strong at the main lifts becomes useful because you know how to stabilize your body, right? So if your goal is overload to get used to some weight, then you got to get set, right? If your goal is mind muscle connection, you're going to do an isolation exercise with light weight. That shouldn't dominate your entire program, though. You still need the bigger overload stuff, whether it's just a regular standard squat or if you're overloading doing a barbell row or a push press or whatever the exercise may be, right? But when you're doing those overload movements, you have to stabilize all the joint structures while you're doing it so you don't get hurt. That's right. And to bring it full circle, my last thing I want to say there is that this is why the sort of mechanical approach to the barbell lifts that starting strength has worked so well. In that starting strength gives you, you know, call them

arbitrary if you want to, but it gives you guidelines for how to perform the movements so that you can learn that mind muscle connection, because it's not going to happen right away. You know, um, you just need, you need to say like, Hey, listen, you need to squat until your hip creases below the top of your patella. Okay. And then, and then, you know, have someone else, a third, a third party set of eyes there to verify that you're doing that because you can't, a beginner, a novice cannot feel that they cannot feel depth right now. Eventually you squat enough and you can feel depth. Like I can feel when I'm high. I can feel when I squat too deep and I'm usually right. Not always. Sometimes I'm wrong.

That's why I still have to video myself. But usually I can feel that. So I have good mind muscle connection, but that came from years of squatting and you just don't have that at the beginning. So you need these sort of hard line markers like, hey, you got to touch your belly with the barbell row. But if you build strength that way, you will develop mind-muscle connection over time. But it's not going to happen right away. And if your only barometer for did I do this right or not is mind-muscle connection and you're starting out, you're screwed. You're just not going to have it. I think there's a lot of wisdom to the way that the starting strength method teaches people using these sort of objective measures rather than subjective measures. It doesn't mean the subjective measurements are not useful whatsoever. They're just not useful at all for a novice. No, no.

It's context, right? Yeah. It's context. And again, at the end of the day, however the hell you're moving, you need to stabilize your joints, your muscles, your connective tissues. You have to learn how to do that. And the bigger lifts teach that quite well because you're using heavy weights and doing it, and it transfers to everything else. If you want to isolate a muscle, then yeah, slow, controlled, lightweight. That's what you're going to have to do because it can't get that heavy if you're trying to do that. And that's fine. Nobody's disputing that. But, uh, you know, to sit there and say that, you know, overload stuff doesn't contribute at all. That's, that's a lie. You know, guys have been doing that for decades, you know, and that's not me just making an observational statement. You know,

there are a lot of reputable bodybuilders that quote unquote swing the weight, but when you pay attention, their back is set, they're locked in, you know, and it's a controlled swing, you know? Yep. So it just depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to get a massive pump and get a good mind muscle connection

and a very specific muscle, lightweight isolation. If you're trying to hit a general group of muscles, like in a row, forearmsiceps lats you know rear delts even tricep because tricep attaches uh to your shoulder yeah you know so when you extend the shoulders triceps are shoulder extensors so you're working yeah so if you're trying to work those general muscles great you know you could do you know an explosive dynamic uh barbell row right but if you're just trying to target the lats exclusively, then you might want to do it very slow, strict with less weight, you know, it's not, but it's

not wrong to use overload. What I would consider wrong is when you're just jerking the weight up to just for the sheer purpose of moving it, and you're not paying attention to the stability aspect of it. So, you know, that's the point I want to hit there. You know, there's a right and wrong way to do things. And when you start getting into explosive movements that hit a broad group of muscles at the same time, it becomes subjective, you know, it's become subjective and you got to know where you want to draw the line. If I'm basically, you know, deadlifting it, locking my hips out, I'm not, that's not really a row anymore. I don't even think that I could drop into it if I went all the way to the top anyways you know right yeah

uh you know but you got to draw the line somewhere you know what the row rips criteria was your belly has to touch you know you're going to come down and some of that's going to happen your belly has to touch you know yeah um you know i want to my goal with the row and with the rowing is i want to get used to moving a lot of weight with in that general range of motion. And to do that, I have to, it turns into more overload beyond a certain point. So let's say you try to progress a strict variant of any exercise, add a little bit of weight, add a little bit of weight, add a little bit of weight, oh, wait a minute, I can't move it strict anymore. So okay, you could drop down, you know, maybe do more sets, more reps, etc. You know, some people

do that. Or, well, you know, I kind of want to overload this movement. You can get some hip into it on a bicep curl. You can get some knee into it on a barbell row, right? The point is you cannot do anything isolated heavy, right? Yeah. And when you start getting into really heavy weights, and just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's heavy. If you're bicep curling 70 pounds with a five second tempo and only using your arms and leaned up against

the wall, yeah, it could be hard, but it's not heavy. You know, if you're just doing a regular barbell curl and letting the hips get into it, then you can get over a hundred pounds, maybe 135. It just depends how big you are, right? Yeah. But, uh, you know, beyond a certain point, every lift becomes compound and you have to involve other joints, connective tissues and muscles in the lift. And there's a degree of subjectivity there. But the criteria that I set is you have to stabilize all the joints involved if you're doing that, because it's very easy to get hurt when you time. So, you know, sit there and argue that, oh, you're, you know, make you're doing the row really fast using your hips and knees. That's that's unsafe. It's like, well, then so is a squat by that token, right? The problem isn't that you're using a bunch of muscles, you can't use that as the reason for it being risky. What makes it risky is if you're not stabilizing the joints that those muscles are attached to, you have to stabilize while you're doing that it becomes more it actually becomes more like a squat or deadlift, you know, it a deadlift. It becomes more compound. You're moving more joints. It becomes a multi-joint

movement versus one or two joints, a single or I don't know if there's a word for two-joint, bi-joint, I guess. Very rarely is there a single joint movement. A bicep curl, I guess, is one joint. Your elbow is moving, but a row is two joints, your shoulders and your elbows, but then your hips and your knees might start moving and it becomes more compound. So again, eventually, if you try to add more weight, it's going to become more compound. Then you have to decide, do I want to treat this as an overload movement or do I want to maintain ultra strict technique? And only you can answer that. You know, I know why I'm doing it and I'm an advanced lifter and can make those fucking decisions. In fact, you said, fuck barbell rows. Stop worrying about barbell rows. Get your

deadlift up to 500, and you can have your own opinion, and you won't need mine. Well, I'm over 500 on the deadlift, so now I have my own opinion. I still think they fucking suck, but they're helping me do what I need to do, so I'm going to keep doing them, and I've drawn the line. I want a barbell row 365 for three to five reps. And then I don't give a fuck. I don't want to barbell row 405. I don't fucking care. I don't care about that lift that much.

Right. But what bothered me about it was everybody had an opinion on the fucking form. And then I just realized, I'm like, if you do them ultra strict, they're not going to get heavy. And if you make them more compound, they can get quite heavy. And it just depends what you're trying to do. I'm real shitty in that range of motion. So I believe that the compound work is helping and you will see because once I hit that number,

I'm going to go back down and I'm going to do them strict and we'll see where my baseline is. I suspect my baseline is going to be higher than it was when I first started doing this because trust me, I tested that so I can answer that question, you know? My baseline is going to be higher and I'm going to be able to strict row a lot more weight than

I used to be able to. See, this is how I know you're a scientist, right? Because you're like, oh, I've got that baseline. But this is real science. Real science happens in the gym. Yeah, I like that. Well, you know, so there you go. It's really, you know, know why you're doing this. And if you can't figure that out, then it's probably not time yet. You know, if you know, so there you go. It's really, you know, know why you're doing this. And if you can't figure that out, then it's probably not time yet. You know, if you just, if you're not really sure why you would do a lift, then don't, don't do it just because maybe you just need to spend some more time on the main list. And that's the thing, this stuff is, it becomes pretty evident. Like you start to understand where you need more work just by doing the main lifts. And then the answers will come to you.

I think a lot of people just go looking for problems. They're like, oh, you know, it's because they just want to do something cool looking. Yeah, that's fine. You know, give it a try if you want to. But really, if you want to actually get anything out of these things, you need to understand why you're doing them. So, all right, well, let's, let's wrap it up here and, and sign off. All right, cool. Well, thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. You could visit me at the gym. If you're in Metro Phoenix, I am just South Sky Harbor airport off 32nd Broadway, uh, weights and plates gym, which, uh, you could find it weights and plates, gym.com or weights on double underscore and double underscore plates on

Instagram. Very good. You know where to find me marmalade underscore cream on Instagram, or if you want to send me an email about coaching Jones barbell club at gmail.com. All right. We'll talk to you again in a couple weeks.