Let's get ready to argue about
super complicated s***. Yeah, sure. Sounds
good. All right. So the the goal
of today is a comp is a conversation where
we can basically go through.
our approaches to things look at where maybe
we have some deviations in our strategies, maybe still
trying to get to different goals, but I think also
We do have some drastic different endpoints for
some of the things that we're doing in terms of what you're doing with resistance patterns
versus what we're looking from from our poetry movement. So
I think it'll be important when we're talking about things to understand the context of
what the goal of said exercise or
whatever is right. So rather than working the this is a
good or this is bad always looking at the utility of
these principles and tools and what they're for, right?
So when we go
through this we just have to make sure we put that frame of reference.
Yeah on these things as much as possible. I think
that some of the areas that will be very fruitful will
be areas where we have the same goal but
different methods to get to that goal. And I
think that's where the ability to be critical and to
really compare and contrast
approaches is going to be very beneficial for people
to be able to check out so I'm excited about
that because I do think from like a really big
picture perspective. We share some very similar.
Were thoughts on you know,
basically being able to get to an
end place of adaptation and results with
minimal cost along the
way of getting there and whatever approaches provide that
streamlined, you know.
Ability to travel there. That's that's what we're both after,
you know, and maybe our thoughts on
how to find those methods are a
little bit different and perhaps our methods are different
but it's I do think that the shared goal
is is a very from the biggest the
big pictures, you know, the different adaptations now those
might be different we can sort of articulate what
those are in our minds but you know,
I do think that that's a very good place for
both of us to be able to start from with this.
So just as a kind of
a thought to share with people that are viewing this and for everybody here and
that's I think a very powerful component we're bringing
to this
So there's going to be a mix of people that either very familiar
with you or very familiar with our stuff and
yep, not necessarily vice versa. Um,
so do you want to give like a really quick summary of
yeah, like the path that you're
taking or the strategy that you're taking and you know
do the same Absolutely. I'll do my best and as the people
know that we're here for the last couple of days like day one
for me is really laying out my model it takes
a little bit of time.
And I try to do it as relatively quickly, but this
will be an even more crash course walkthrough of
that. So I try to say that and it's taking
me some time to kind of figure out the elevator pitch of what my thing
is all about. But overall I try to I believe
that
algorithms and logic trees are
a good approach to problem solving.
Because I think that when I'm in the moment, I tend
to make bad decisions under stress. So
if I can pre-plan out all of
my decision making with a rule book
and if this then that approach then I'm
much more likely to have good results in a
repeatable manner. So everything I do is
is based off of that as a starting assumption.
So the specific things that I'm after is
I'm trying to create an algorithm
that tells you
the best place to start people off to
learn how to do exercises. You
know, I Define all of the different kinds
of exercises that I think can exist, you
know, I do that through identifying and
defining motor patterns and different
loading zones and velocity zones and duration zones
and different directions that you can move
through with those exercises. But once those
things are defined I try to provide you with
an algorithm or a rule book or a logic or
whatever you want to call it on. Hey, how do we actually
create the easiest place for
someone to learn how to do the fundamentals
of that sphere of exercise?
As quickly as effectively and as
competently as possible. So let me
let me interject there with this question
and make sure that that
Thought about this. I think this is a good way of putting it right. So when
you're looking at competency in an
exercise.
could a very very simple way of summing that up in your
is
Ownership of position of the axial skeleton in
a given movement or position. I think
yeah. It's it really does start there
of can we identify that
Center of mass is accounted
for and from a directional standpoint.
I just look at Center of Mass from A
sagittal perspective or forwards backwards. Can
you own it? And basically not let it fall excessively forwards
90 plus percent of the time and
then when we start to get into frontal play and stuff,
can you really take your center of mass and lateralize
it accurately and appropriately so
in just as a
I I try to identify that the person
does that in a competent manner through it
looking right and then getting feedback from
a sensory perspective that they feel things that
make sense that tell me that the skeleton probably
is in the position that I
to be in
so when I'm looking at things through we'll say
herpertrophy or not. It's
not just Chipotle but more of a tissue specific thing when we're
looking at competency.
I'm looking at through the lens of can we
maintain the path of motion that we're trying to
do and I'm not so much concerned about the orientation
of the axial skeleton as
much as is it providing the base of
support needed.
For the force production of that tissue and this
is where when we get into machines and cables
and like we're kind of leaving the realm of gravity. Yep.
And that's kind of why I'm just
like, okay. Well as long as we're orientated in
a way where that is not going to
be a limiter in any way shape or form. That's what I'm going
to do or that that's what I'm looking for. And if that's a body
position thing a means of external support
or constraints or whatever like that's that's kind
of what I'm looking for and then not trying to emphasis not
trying to focus on anything like further down
the chain that needs to be right. So basically if
I can make the nervous system have to deal with as few
of things as possible. Yep. That's what I that's what I'm
looking at for a outcome for an individual tissue,
right which is
Kind of the opposite side of the spectrum when you're looking at ownership of
everything in a specific position. So
I think
You know, that's where if people look at just
what your content on social only see some of the things that we're doing
whatever like ease are very very different things sure. But
in that in those two instances, we're not approximately we're
not going for the same necessary goal. Yeah
and those contexts and what you just said makes
a lot of sense to me because you know, I I have the
same thought but I can state it in many
different ways. And so when I'm thinking like my
mind the order of operations
for a great exercise is one standardize
the axial skeleton in
terms of its Center of mass, but that is in relationship to
its ability to have appropriate anti-gravity responses.
So that's the first thing I'm typically looking to do and once
that's done I superimpose an
exercise on top of that. And the reason
that I'm doing that is, you know,
I I think that if if there's
not a standardization of the axial skeleton relative
to gravity management, I don't
think I can accurately hit the target tissue
with most training exercise and
I just almost picture it like hey, it's
hard to put a ball in golf into the
hole. It would be even harder if I didn't know where the whole
was so I need to know where the
skeleton is in space in terms of where the
center of mass is if I do that it's still not the easiest
thing in the world to get someone to do and exercise compately. I still
have to coach them and create a sensible reasonable
exercise, but at the very least I'm able
to say well there's the target if I
can now just have a good approach. I
Probably hit the target. But if
the targets are moving Target, or I don't know exactly where
it is. I really greatly reduce the probability
that the person will have a competent
exercise which I would Define simply as one
that hits the target tissues and
essentially avoids adding
in non-target tissues
and what I'm thinking about non-target tissues, I'm
mainly thinking about exacerbating joints and
other skeletal pieces that I'm not trying
to train for joint pain or for like, you know,
doing some kind of compressive excess
damage to vertebrae or
something like that.
Okay. Yeah. Would one more looking at Target tissue.
It's really like I want to grow this specific region of my
Peck. Yep, right, you know, it's it's a different layer and
with the context of you know Athletics
you're
you have to move on a field through gravity. Yep, right
and you know, you can't you can't
pull out of a bench and put it at the angle you want in
the middle of your in the middle of your sport right to get stability
or whatever. Whereas I look at it. If we
were doing an exercise like a free weight exercise where I'm living
it gravity.
I'm going to actually instead of instead of trying to position my
skeleton and then work with gravity. I'm gonna
let gravity be the constraint and I'm going to just position my skeleton
to now being able to move.
In the rent in like in the path of motion that I want for the tissue and
then I'm going to come up with whatever weird setup that
allows me to have the most stability in
that right? So that means if I'm gonna like be like doing
leaning over and doing some sort of you know
fly because I'm training in my garage and that's the only means of what I'm doing is like
well, I can't change gravity. But what I can do is change my
body position to use gravity like a
table or a pulley or whatnot. So I
think from an exercise Dance Design standpoint,
A lot of your reference or a lot of your exercises are
built from well, this is
what we have to deal with on the field. And so
we're going to work in that environment and I'm looking at it. It's like
Well, I'm no longer constrained to those things. So I'm just going to break all of
the rules. Sure. Right like I'm gonna cheat in every
way possible. Yeah to just maximize this specific physiological
goal because I don't need
to deal with any of the limitations are sure having to
deal with, you know, balance and gravity and whatnot. Right? Yeah,
you know in in my system one of the things that like from
the progression side of things within it
because I have a rule book for you know, basically how
to progress and it's yeah, I know that we have slightly different
terms that we use is probably a good discussion point, you
know, I I use the term ground to Define
how much external stuff
someone is interacting with while they're
moving and performing an exercise or competing
in a sport or whatever that is and I
I use the word ground because I think it's probably it's probably
sounds better to people then stuff. That's
not you, you know, yeah and
So to me, I I kind of identify this
spectrum of very high ground athletes and
very low ground athletes and like, you know, the examples I
typically give a very low ground athletes or half
pipe skateboarders snowboarders Surfers Olympic
divers. Those are you
know, they're they're not pushing into a lot.
That's that's like ground. I also say is on
a Continuum itself a very easily deformable to very
difficult to deform so the more
stuff and the more difficult to deform it
is the more ground is associated with the
task. And so I you
know on the other side very high ground athletes probably
the highest ground athlete I can
think of is a power lifter. Okay, I
would say it's a physique competitor. It might
be that if you like, I mean if we're I mean if you
call that a sport, you know, you guys I think yeah the
training for the training for physique.
Is probably because that's basically
the goal of a good physique exercise would be to to maximize
it. Whereas the power lifter. You're still you're still
kind of limited on on. Yeah you have right? I
agree with I was thinking more from the actual sport performance
where you're on stage in a
physique competition and powerlifting has a, you
know, heaviest barbell you can deal with in the states
small underwear could be a sport. I definitely
is man. I mean it's a high paying one of that. So
but it's it's overall like
The other big high ground Sports, I usually think about
like football but like the interior line much more
so than the peripheral players the more
peripheral you get the less ground sumo wrestling
super heavyweight wrestling. That's that's really high ground
stuff. And I I just look at the athletes are very different
looking and their physical attributes are
very different. And the main thing
that I talk about is very low ground. The ability
to dominate comes from your ability to
turn and to Tumble and on
the other side. Your ability to dominate comes
from your ability to not get turned and to
not get tumbled and you know,
the biggest difference physically is usually you
get if you get bigger more muscle,
but more just Mass where you're
better than activities and
probably as you lose Mass to
a certain point, there's obviously like
You know.
End stages where it's probably not beneficial to gain
more mass for high ground and it's not
beneficial to lose more mass but it's much
smaller humans much bigger humans, you know
less mass and it's
just a mass isn't a major determining factor for
being good low ground. It definitely
is for being good highly and so
I would think that probably the training
approaches for my half pipe
snowboarder skateboarders versus my
guards and tackles and centers is
probably different, you know, so would
you say it's different?
Period or in your low ground
people.
Do you still see that there will be
periods of time where you actually would want to take the more if
you want to say biased or isolated approach because
you need a specific like you need a tissue
specific adaptation, but then they can then integrate. Oh,
they're lower ground activities because that's how I
see this stuff as being as carrying over into the
Athletics. Right? Like you wouldn't train a performance athlete
purely like a body builder. But if that
performance athlete will also benefit. Maybe they need
mass or maybe they need strength. I would argue that
your more stable or higher ground
exercises might be your most efficient way of getting
that strength, especially when you're furthest away from
The season or needing to perform right? And then
you can then integrate that into their motor
patterns. I think that's a very fair way to look at it from
a seasonal perspective the other piece that I
look at with this is everyone starts with
Higher Ground because I think that is
the easiest way to actually learn the
fundamentals associated with
a motor pattern. You have more feedback.
You have more engagement with
things that let you feel the the
direction of the movement that
I'm trying to get. It's interesting. I mean, I know that there's I
remember coming up with with strengthening conditioning
and training the argument was machines bad because no
proprioception and the funny thing is recently a
couple years ago. There was a paper published showing more appropriate reception
using machines. And so I'm
kind of like, you know, I never really thought that was a
very strong valid thought but
It what I want to do generally speaking
is I want people
to do the fundamentals appropriately
and I just plot hinge
push pull for big compound resistance exercises. And
I think for people that have coached and
have worked with people easier said than done,
you know, there's plenty of people you work with and they're squats
terrible their hinges terrible even pushing and
pulling you're like God. How did you I just threw that up. So if I
can get someone to have Rock Solid technique
in the beginning and then
I can kind of send them in a direction
overall. I'm not saying that like, we
completely eliminate other things. It's just
the contribution of those things becomes Less
in terms of the more stable locked
in, you know
muscle hypertrophy promoting exercises.
For my skateboarders. There's just a
whole lot less of that compared to my big
strength power athletes and it's
not like my big strength power athletes have nothing
from the other side, you know, if you're going
to play in the NFL and you're going to be a left tackle, you're
going to have to learn how to move and
rotate to keep up with, you know, a freak Show
DN that's six six two hundred
eighty five pounds trying to bend around you like they're
in the Matrix, you know, like you're going to have to
deal with that. It's just that if you're not a
gigantic specimen that's super strong. You
don't even have any business stepping into the league. It's
like hey, you have to reach this bar of
size and strength and being
immovable to have a chance to play. But
now once we're there probably the differentiating factors
might actually be on the other side of the spectrum,
so I can't ignore it. It's much more of
radiant kind of a concept so that
that's that's a hopefully that helps with clarifying
some of this. Yeah. I I think that's a
really good way of kind of describing that you know,
and that's you know, I agree totally without approach. Um,
I don't want to get into a bunch of semantic differences. But for
those of you guys that Pat doesn't like the word stability so
much he prefers ground. But I would argue that
stability is just fine. And that's
the proxy that I would I would use there you've explained
this before. I don't know you want to if it's even worth it.
I do think it's a worthwhile discussion point on honestly
like and and hopefully it helps people
understand things like
You know to me the hard part
about using stability and I don't know if you guys here
in the audience would mind participating in this but like what's
your definition of stability?
You know like I mean, I would say it's like resistance to
change.
Right. That's I mean, I think that is the definition. So
can we can we tease that out
because like it sounds really cool, but I'm
kind of like
it does it just mean that I don't move.
Is that what that means like resistance to change? I'm like
an old grumpy man. And yeah like these damn kids it would
be sure to be change of state right? So when I look at as something
it like like something is stable. This is like whatever role it's
playing in the kinetic chain is that it's able to
maintain that role without losing control of it.
That's kind of how I would look at it. Right? So it's in control
so
What's control? Yeah, if it's
maintaining control, it doesn't lose control what is
control then?
I guess in that instance. Let's let's throw
a thing out there. Let's say we're talking about a
scapula. So just we have a point of reference, right? Yeah. Okay,
the scapula can be moving.
But I would consider it stable if where
it's positioned is where my
nervous system is directing it to be and not where an
external resistance is maybe holding it
away from where I would be directing it
from right so I would love it. Yeah not
letting it get pushed around. Yeah.
How do you know that that's happening?
You know when we're looking at rhythms and
stuff. Usually what I would say like, you know.
Is you can see it's like well what moves first when somebody's
acting on something, right? And is
that movement in sync? So somebody's doing a row do
we see a separation between the humeral movement
and the scapular movement right with those
so I kind of have to know I have to
it's it's it is a bit subjective. Yeah, and
I mean, I think that's gonna be the case
with with most things right? Like what's a controlled
tempo right? I mean, could you be could you
be doing a fast eccentric under control? Could you be
doing a door? Does it have to be slow or whatnot? I
think at a certain point you have like this is where it being a
coach and having a coach's eye. I think just becomes, you know
part of this right and as an athlete if
you're doing something is the movement that you're doing the one that
you intended to do. I think it's that simple, right? So it's
it's like we can sit here and look at it very granularly
and you can see really complicated but if you zoom out and
be like hey
Did what happened? Was that what you intended to?
Do? You know, if so, it was controlled if what
happened was not what you were trying to do or intended to
do then at least some elements of
that was out of control. See this is
why I do think it's important because I don't disagree that
the concept of stability exists, but
I feel like the only way to get
at it is that is through subjective
approaches. It is a fundamentally subjective
concept and I
get a lot of information when people if I ask hey, do you
feel more stable in this exercise somebody usually
can identify that easily and it's like very
Good information for me to have my problem
with it is that I find it to
be far away from objective. And so
when I'm trying to Define an exercise, I'm
looking for more objective pieces.
And that's where like to me
like I I
You know I try to use something else to define something that
I think can be more objective and and again like
I could call it stuff or support.
You know just it happens the word I landed
on is ground. I'm not married to the word. By the
way, if you guys don't like the word throw it in the trash like I don't
I don't care like it's just a word so
You know, I I just think like it's probably more
measurable and reportable from
an objective perspective in terms how much stuff
do we have?
And you know, I tried to be specific in my
list of like, you know, the Avenues of
ground, you know, I think I can look at r&t reactive
neuromuscular training as you know,
a push in the opposite direction as like
hey, that's that's one approach to adding ground or constraints,
you know, basically put the exercise
on Rails or tracks and that's another
Avenue of ground or the
stance. Literally if you're more of hey, if you're
in a bilateral stance, you have more of your feet on the
ground you're pushing against more
stuff.
So all the other ones too, like
minimizing the difficulty of managing gravity if
I lay you down on a Surface more of
your body is interacting with ground. So
that's the common denominator that I
end at in terms of.
All of the ways that I try to make
an easy an exercise easier from
the standpoint of Competency and
and to me competency is the
closest thing to subjective that
I have in my model, you know where I have to say, it
looks right and the person tells me
feedback. That sounds right
in terms of the tissues that I want them
to feel working.
So, you know, but I'm still with looks right
feels right. I'm kind of like that's pretty subjective for
me.
But I don't know what else to do. I would I mean
I would argue that even though you're looking for
tangible things like
contact points. How much is how much in my body is on the ground
or whatnot that when it comes to actually stabilizing
or how much
control you have? There's still a subject to Nature to
those. So taking for instance a seal row
or like let's say I just cut a hole in
a
4x8 sheet of plywood stuck my arm through and did a
row. Yep. Okay, that would be a ton of ground.
Yes, I would argue. I would actually be more stable
with just two points of contact
on my feet and something that I could push in the exact Force
Vector that I wanted that give gave me
the internal stability to do it like I would like okay, you know
tangibly I'm less grounded or
I have you know, less parts of my body secure but because
I'm able to be actually more specific with the forces going
into my feet and where I'm placing my hand and pressing it
that the net result is. I'm actually in more control of
that position and that movement then I
would be, you know, even if my whole body was
laying on the ground, so I think
You know by the time we have forces moving, you know in different
directions momentum and we're starting to like unless
you have a mold of your body, right so
literally it's like okay sure like if you put if
you mummified my whole body other than
the thing that was moving sure you could argue that. Well, yeah, that's that's about
a stable. I'll be the most ground but I would
argue. Well, if you didn't mummify me actually in the position where I
was actually able to muscularly provide
the force so it might be like if you mummified me like this no matter
how tight it was I still might not be as stable
as if you actually mummified me in a position where I have
a little bit of fashion and tissue and you
know orientation to give me that position anyway,
right because there's no there's no
amount of external stability.
That can overcome the fact that our internal
stability is still based off of our skeletal positions
and what we're engaging in the forces going
through internally. So I think it's always going to be subjective because
it's always going to be a combination of those
two right now. I mean if
The communication of what's important? Is there great.
But you know, like I said, this is
an area where we need to come together. Yeah, I think I think
stability is a fine word. I don't think it needs to go. I
think you can always add context to the terminology rather
than changing the terminology. That's the
approach that I take and if I was to say like how do
you lower the barrier of entry for somebody to understand something
is you use the terminology that is
we'll say the most common or easy to get
them there, but then you can add the context in Nuance
to build on that. Well, so I look at stability. It's
like that's very easy to apply across the board,
but you may need to add context and specific.
Because you know and specific situations. Whereas like
with the term like ground to me
that more literally means round
and only like external sources
of stability like just from a language perspective
it is right.
nearly external sources of I I
just think you know when I Envision like
my definition of stability
Is the likelihood that something is
going to fall down? Yeah, and I think that's where we kind of
differs are like interpretation of what stability means whereas
my would be like, how do I set myself up so that
the things that I don't want to change.
In whatever quality that's important maintain that I
would just call that motor control. Yeah.
You know like how good are you at exercise?
Are you good at exercise? Are you bad at exercise?
But I think that something the degree to which
something is stable is the degree to which it could
potentially fall down. So if I got a table and it's
got four legs and they're balanced like it looks
pretty stable. I don't think it's gonna fall down if I knock a
leg out. It becomes more unstable and I feel
and my problem is I don't know how to measure that and exercise.
I'm sure there's probably a way to measure that I just don't know
how to do but I can ask the person. Hey, do you feel more stable?
And usually I get some kind of response like how I visualize
it in in reality
of a human body in a
dynamic State. You know, I talked about this a
little bit. I picture a marble in a bowl. Okay, and
when a marble is in a bowl
the most stable place for the marble is when
it's at the bottom of the bowl.
And that it's it can't fall anymore down at that
point. It's already down. It's it's stable. It's not going anywhere.
It isn't Gonna Change. It's harder to change it
there.
As it rolls up the bowl. It's becoming
more unstable. It's it would take more
active energy from an outside
Source a power source of some kind
to keep the marble there and that's how I viewed limbs
or the body going through space. If I go and
I if I rock the marble forward,
I have to use more of a power source to prevent
the marble from falling to the bottom of the bowl, you know,
if it's here, I need more energy to
prevent it from falling to the bottom of the bowl
and so I can add external
support boom. And
if I do that, I don't need to use my own
internal active energy to prevent
it from fall into the bottom of the bowl. It's now
I put a Blocker in the
bowl and I can operate something else around that so
so then instance the
preacher curl prevents the elbow from falling down.
Fact, right? Okay, but it doesn't prevent
The glenohumeral Joint from elevating. It
doesn't Prevail the pull of the biceps drone
pulling the scapular, you know anteriorly or
any like, you know, so
We we can reduce some of the internal demands
with these external but never never completely
not completely there's still but I
would just say, you know, if to me
the words I do think words become important because
if there's no preacher curl here and you
know, the marble would tend to fall to the
bottom of the bowl.
I would have to use stabilizers to keep
my arm here and then do a curl and the
energetic demand of having to recruit stabilizers
would take energy away from that
disagreeing to the preacher curl is more grounded
or more stable. I'm just saying that there
are there are means of stability that
can't always be satisfied what we
take like with an external Source. We reduce as
much internal as possible, but it's
never not part of the equation, right? Listen
my language. I'd like this an external stability source, and
there's or we have external stability and then we have
internal stability, you know considerations, right? You know,
external stabilities are gonna decrease our
motor command demand because we no longer
have to create Force to overcome that thing right
where from an internal stability the better
your position. You're actually skeleton the better your Technique
and your intention then you're also decreasing.
The motor command demand because now it's gonna like
the motion that you're doing the way you've set up the exercise is
now smaller specific to that tissue and position the body
to where it has to do the least amount of internal work to manage whatever
internal stability demands there. Right? So this
isn't going to be a super sexy topic for us like,
you know, going back and forth on the words of stability, but I think it's
important for people that haven't heard the term ground. Yeah
to kind of know and for people
that are associated that like kind of how we're referencing these terms we go
through because obviously yeah, this is gonna be an important concept when
we talk about you know, what makes up a good sure
size. I I do think that a lot
of these things though like to me when I'm
looking to build hypertrophy.
dominant exercise
to me. I like I if I'm working in the sphere
of gravity. Okay, anything with
a free weight of some kind?
The shape of the bowl that I'm generally thinking
of is is here. Okay,
and me my center
line is kind of in the middle. So the bowl sort
of is like this and when any limb or
segment is
Right here with the bull like my arm is at the bottom of
the bowl right now. It's the least demanding place
to be.
As I get out here, it's increasingly
more than you know, just I
mean look, like whatever words you want to use pork. That's the
more torque is existing out there to be able to hold that
but I want to be able to
create a place where the muscle that
I'm targeting is at length as
far away from the
bottom of the bowl as possible. So if I
can arrange an exercise so that it
features that I'm because it just takes
more energetic demand to hold a
segment at length out here
near that really critical part of the bowl,
you know that energy to be
able to do that with the muscle is going to be the stimulus that
triggers all of the downstream protein
synthesis responses. So I look
at something like a, you know,
a Roman chair back extension like if I
wanted to
Not grow hamstrings. That's probably
the choice I would I would go with
because the body is at the
bottom of the bowl in the length and position for the
hamstrings. And then the hardest part is
at the shortest position of a hamstrings. So I'm
like, well, let's just I wouldn't choose that thing it
to me. It seems like the bowl analogy has switched from stability
to now representing work. Well,
it's from the axis. I think that
your ability to manage.
orc
Is the critical piece?
And I think that if I build more
ground into the exercise,
I give you a higher likelihood
of managing torque with
competency. And if you we don't
disagree on the benefit, right, it's just I'm saying
stability. You're saying ground. Yeah. I mean look over
to your left 30 degrees Yeah.
Is there any have you ever seen more ground? No, I
think that this is the round Capital. So
of the you know resistance training in the
world myself to ground King, but you know, I'm just I'm just
sort of like, you know like that. I try to
get these big picture because I don't know exactly like
how do I write that exactly? I'm not good with
making infographics or whatever. But like if I
feel like if people can see the representation
that I'm talking about here and
you know, I I oftentimes use bills proportional
art because I think a lot of these Concepts and
in a similar place, but it's
If you can see a center line and if you can see moving away
from a center line and that challenge out
here and being able to modify an
activity so that you strategically put
the lengthened part
of the muscle out here in the
midpoint of the bowl. Like you're going
to give a higher probability that the exercise will
provide an enormous hypertrophic stimulate
stimulus. So I'm gonna try and translate that
to not Pat speak for everybody. Yeah,
because I want to hear not my speak too. Um
is because what I agree with what you're
what with what yours we're not in disagreement
on the application here, which is
Creating an exercise at which we can be in
the length and position for a muscle.
But we have also then maximized the stability and
the ability to have the load be more challenging
at that length. And position is is the point that you
know that I think so. I mean this is the equivalent of like
all right, if we are laying down in the prime,
press you know or whatever right? Like the bench
is giving us stability. We can come back to the LinkedIn
position and we can set the load so that it would be
hard just here like there's essentially what he's describing with
his his bowl analogy. If you were not following
them. I mean like another you
know, I gave the example of like the Roman Chair and the
body is at the bottom of the bowl and the
length and position and it's at the midpoint of the whole. It's
got a short positions profile is how we would call that. Okay, right
and so, you know like the 45 degree back
extension.
As you lower your body is actually
getting further away like horizontal distance.
And so as your lengthening
the body is getting further and further away from that middle
point and that's why the thing is such a good choice, you
know, so it's kind of like look
if I was gonna train abs and I was doing like
the dragon flag. That's just
a good choice because like the short position
my legs are straight up
and down from the pivot point of rotation. And then
at the bottom the length and position my my
body my legs are so far away from that pivot point. I'm
stressing the body greatest as it's
longer and longer and longer decline board sit up
same thing versus like a hanging leg
raise with bent knees. It's like it's the
reverse of the concept. So I'm like,
I wouldn't choose the hanging leg raise with
bent knees if I could do the decline.
Sit up because of the opposite.
Way in which it manages?
Shape profile with length or
shortness. Okay, we're we're moving into or we're
transitioning into I think one of our topics here,
which is and I
pulled over this this picture. He got
it. Thank God, which is five second rule.
Well what the f*** is optimal right see at this post on
optimal setup. Yeah. This is old. I
I would disagree with this post at this point. Okay, because
I didn't really so walk through what that
post was and why maybe you agree with it. I don't write
the captions. So I never like this is
he's one of it to using the word.
I I did not write the caption. Okay,
the point of this was whoever wrote
Optimus. Yeah, basically so this
is this would not be in my
opinion. This is not a good choice to grow
biceps. Okay, I can learn and get
better, you know. So in this particular instance,
I have a situation where my arm
is at the bottom of the bowl. This is
the length and position for the exercise as I
come up. I'm getting shorter and shorter
as I roll up the bowl. Okay, so I'm
reverse of what it really should
be in this particular instance versus a preacher cool
at the bottom of
the rest further towards
the end point of the bowl. So at the time
of doing this, I'm just thinking of myself length is
great.
And I didn't really put together the combination of
length plus horizontal distance
in the bowl.
So no, this is a this is not and
this is an exercise choice that I would not go
with any longer. It's a good illustration of
a mistake. I had in my mind that
I have since learned from and
I think made a better choice after the fact so
let's go with the question is so what you would be
saying like
what is not optimal? Yeah in this from we're
talking through we're looking through her purchase lens here would be
the fact that at the bottom position. There's inadequate
resistance, correct, right. So there's whatever
term you want to use. It's got a small moment arm.
There's a low torque Demand right the resistance profile or
resistant challenge. You could say is hardest when
you're arm is here now.
Couple nuances that we could talk about with that like one
is if you tried to move that weight faster.
You'd be overcoming the inertia which is different than a gravitational
force so that you could actually make this exercise more challenging
at the bottom simply by trying to
move the way I master from the beginning. But those
of you guys here that have done our stuff. What is
the limitation with that approach it missed? There's one element that it's impractical
to do on.
Right one part of the rep.
Yeah, it's it's sounds like
a great idea on the concentric, right who wants to let
that dumbbell fling back at 50 miles an hour and then try and stop
it at full extension on eccentric. So like if we're talking
about moving from this and then we're starting to
like
Move this in the direction to being better right? It's like
this is all you have right? Well, there could be one strategy that
it nudges in that direction, but not
a lot, right? Okay.
So what what would be some what would be some other
ways that we could move from this towards the
direction of what you would now consider a better exercise. I
think that if we have a cable for instance on this
exercise that we take away this limitation
of just gravity so if
I can arrange
The orientation of the cable to be like perpendicular
from where the hand is
now. I've got a really good what I
think you'd call resistance profile for the
activity. So if the cable is
going that way my hand is right here now. I'm
really maximizing tension at
the point of length for that
particular piece of tissue. So you visualizing now the
cable pulling almost like 90 degrees back from your torso.
I'm not gonna pretend like you probably have a better understanding
of the directionality of
the cable. I just wanting to starting point I would think that
a perpendicular direction would
probably make sense fundamentally Okay, so
Here's where the ground stuff comes in now, right? So if
I have my arm extended here, right and it's pulling back
the the moments or the the
resistance acting on my elbow has half the
lever.
That my shoulder does meaning that in that
in that situation.
My me resisting the shoulder extension.
Is takes twice as much work as overcoming the
elbow extension.
So I have basically taken that exercise a bicep
exercise and I have turned it into an anterior
Delta exercise with the cable with the cable, right?
So
We saw we solved one problem.
Created so I traded in Cobras for some
Mongoose. Yeah, right. So this is so this is where the stability Factor
comes in. So the benefit of the preacher is it eliminates
the shoulder component? Right? So if
we took an exercise like this and we did decide to do it with
the cable.
One possible solution would be well if that
cable is at an angle.
Two things that's going to accomplish one is the biceps. They
don't have a tremendous amount of Leverage meaning that the
peak resistance of the exercise does not
have to be at full of extension. It just has to be proportionate
to how much elbow flexion Force you have there,
right because you actually have more elbow flexion Force like
kind of, you know a little bit before you get to mid-range right
and it kind of drops off a little bit right here, right?
So you got like it and then you actually start to really pick it
up and then it starts to drop off as you become into the short
when we look at the factors of the muscles like Lake
tension curve the internal moments all of those wonderful factors.
We just call it a force curve whatever like really simple
way. You just pick something up and figure out where it's hard, right we can
talk about the science. There's still what I tell people's like if you want to know like, you
know, if a machine or an exercise is challenging where
it should be just f*** around and find out like you don't have to get like you
don't have to get out scales and your protractor and whatever like
just like do do it and like yeah,
it's soft here not there. How would I
old questions of Nautilus designs and
you know being able to figure out where the sticking point
of a muscle is and muscle strength curves and on and
on and on I yeah, so so I
think this is valuable because when I'm thinking optimal, this is
what I'm thinking is how do I like what are the elements
that I add like if I'm optimizing this exercise?
Right. How do I how do I change it? Whether it's
changing the implement the body position the sources of stability ground
Etc to move it in the direction that I want
while also being caught so being cautious not
to look at one element so much that I actually
make the exercise worse in that Pursuit
because what I would argue is is that you know, especially depending
on you know, what day you're trading this and how
much volume you have for shoulders or whatever. Yeah this switching to
the cable straight behind exercise.
Could it be a worst programming option?
Because you are doubling the load here at the shoulder, right? Which
means that okay, even though the loading is there that might
actually make you stop the exercise before you
had reached a significant amount of stimulus in
the biceps, even though it would be painful because you'd
be holding that stretch the actual amount
of volume and mechanical tension could be reduced because the perceived
effort would be higher the discomfort would be higher right
you'd start to lose your ability to stabilize The Joint
which would decrease your motor recruitment earlier. So whatever
I don't think that you dislike incline
bench cable curls, but what's
your solution to to this? Like, is it
the angle of the cable? That's what you're saying you bring so
that cable angle comes down right? Then. We're
not overloading the you know,
the elbow more than it needs to be so that that resistance
is actually gonna Peak about here but it's still gonna be like significantly
more than the dumbbell here,
but by being in an angle, what we're doing is we're
Typically reducing the amount of load that the shoulder
is now having to overcome, right? So it allows us to
instead of switching to like man. Now, this
is a it's it's excessive at the elbow.
And excessive here we would return it to being not excessive
here. But adequate now here forgive
me for my inability to kind of see this right now, but
I'm like, I I it's not
that I disagree. I just don't understand it
up and go try. Yeah, I would love to be able to to just
see this so I can kind of appreciate what you're
talking about so I can just understand it more clearly in
terms of I mean, I'm assuming that this might
help like if my arms back here and imagine it's
going straight back. It's just like yanking me
back this way. Imagine going down into 45 degree angle instead
and how that would pull differently on the shoulders. So it's just less of pulling
me into humeral hyper extension.
Yes, but it's still pulling me
into elbow extension. Yes. So it's it's a it's a
progress progression in the right direction for loading the elbow
without becoming so excessive that
the shoulder would then become the limiter of the exercise because with
this,
It's more of a shoulder.
Challenge yes, but with this it's more
of an elbow change. Yep. Okay, I think
I can I can understand that. So that's that that's one slish.
I mean the the easiest solution is just find
a source of ground behind the arm.
Right, but that's not necessarily always the easiest thing
to do when your arms behind your body. Yeah, right. It's
like what I and I know that you have.
The pieces that add onto the side of the
bed. I'm trying not to jump to my Perfect Solutions right away. I just
tell people to go and buy Six dollar Bend. Yeah. Yeah. I've
tried to baby step my way there. So the
solution by all my buy all the stuff
that I design right and then you don't need even listen to any of these
very easy six monthly payments and 99.99, you
know, but
you know, I think that we're for me
some of the inability to see
that is because you know for me it's still like seeing it
from a dumbbell perspective and like I wouldn't need
to add anything with a dumbbell because there's no
challenge when it's down there's until you
move it.
When it starts going up the second that you try and
move that dumbbell forward.
Those inertial forces are pushing back.
All right. So this is where like well the
dumbbell goes forward because when
you are always done that girl, you are not lifting the curve.
You're not lifting the dumbbell. What am I lifting? Not you're
pushing it forward.
Okay, just sliding, you know the arc here.
It's right over here. I'm sled push when you
start this motion, right? This is not up. This
is much more forward than not. Okay when you are here, this is
up. Yep, right. So inertia Bay
that's means this doesn't want to move. So yes this
way that's pushing all of this back. Yep. Now
not to the same degrees having a cable pull this
way. But what I'm saying is is that even with the dumbbell
you would still benefit from having something
here so that when you push that there was Zero
shoulder demand to keep
this humorous humeral position because what you'll see
you'll see it people do this all the time right is as they curl
they will do this, right and that's two things one is the inertions.
They're letting the inertia bring here. They're also
like this lever.
When you're here, this load is using the whole lever when
you are here. So you are not going to shortening the
lever a bit, right? Yeah, so
Having that having that external stability even
in a dumbbell exercise.
will matter and this is
This is why I don't really.
Talk about gravity when we're looking at resistance
as much as I talk about, you know, hey, what are
the forces that we have to deal with? Because sometimes they'll
be inertial momentum. I mean
All of our stuff is gravity, but we're
redirecting it and all these machines and cables and
stuff like that. So it's like and then we're applying.
Movement forces inertial forces let's do
that, right, you know and there's a sled is that gravity kind
of but it's made of friction based thing. Yeah. This part
here is literally a sled push
with no friction. Yeah thinking this way, right? Like if you're
doing a leg press right if you lower it
faster does the weight on the leg press change.
Well, no, it doesn't wait doesn't wait doesn't
change right but it's a lot harder to stop. Yeah when moving
it faster, right? So
And that's why it's like okay.
Those are like I'm looking at all of those things when we're talking about.
All right, what do we have to consider in terms of actually setting up
ground or stability for this exercise because we're not just overcoming gravity, especially
not in the traditional sense of just straight down. We're overcoming
forces from all sorts of directions. We're
going to overcoming internal forces as well. And so that's
why it's all right, if I'm gonna build a perfect exercise, I'm gonna
account for all those things. So if we keep moving yeah in this
so we will we've offered a couple different solutions so
far right that are moving Us in that direction. Let's
tangent off and look at the preacher curl
option. Yeah, right. So the preacher curl
provides the ground
Yep, but what do we lose?
in terms of like in terms of what you were describing
is what you wanted from a
More optimal exercise or a better actually it's not
as long there you go, right, you know,
but it's still pretty long. It's like
probably long enough. Yeah to
be able to train the biceps
in a length. I mean as a
heuristic probably I just think to myself long biceps
is armed somewhere down by my
side long triceps. If only
those somewhere up here, you know, and so
if I'm going to hit length with biceps, I
just wouldn't want to train biceps up here. Like
I would look at like the you know, the big table
cross thing as like, yeah probably
short not my first choice. Okay, so this
is
I have this as another topic, but it's
a good transition to that.
So when you're like
Yeah, f*** it. Let's just do it. Let's do it. Okay. Well,
oh different thing. Okay, so
Long muscle lengths. Okay, what give
me your summary of what you're like you're
understanding or your perspective is in terms
of what is the research and your anecdote or
whatnot say right now and what do you think the proper application sure
of that is, you know, I know that there's been research on
leg extensions triceps
biceps.
You know those sort of isolation kinds of movements. There's enough
studies. I think there's been 11 different studies with
isolated muscle movements and that have
shown a significant difference in hypertrophy
outcomes of training the muscle
with lengthened positions versus
shortened positions and that there
is a review paper the Casiano paper
and you know, I I think that
within that it kind of looked at the ice and
metrics and it was able to give a general
difference in percent change and
muscle gain with lengthen versus shortened
isometrics and that the
numbers might be off for my memory, but I
think that the shortened isometrics gave a
percent change I think on a weekly basis of 0.08
to point eight
three and that the length and
isometric
Muscle change was 0.86 to
1.83. Is it
strength change? No, that was growth change per week.
I believe so, you know, I mean,
I like people can feel free to go in take a look at the paper was
oh, yeah after I mean, yeah measuring her
perchee on a weekly basis seems yeah.
I don't know exactly I just know that the number well,
it's on an average of across the span of
oh, they presented the David the data's average
per week because yeah, right because I don't think we have a
tool with enough resolution not only like purchase,
you know, it's right average all the papers
don't look at isometrics. And yeah, I
mean, I mean look like it's just like and it's a lot
of it is like circumference kinds of measurement. There's a lot of probably noise
and problems with the measurement techniques and
all that sort of stuff. But when you get to a point
where there's a level of significant difference, there's
I mean look, like there's a million ways that you can go in there
and say well
Hey, maybe it was muscle damage and
inflammation in response
to lengthen things and that the inflammation is
creating a circumfer circumferential increase
in a measurement.
Look I'm not going to get into the the specifics of
research design and measurement errors.
I'm just gonna say like that's a pretty big
difference that seems to also coincide with
all these other papers. It seems like there's a bit of a conversion.
Here's best guess on what the data
shows. Well my best guess I want the data shows
is that lengthen stuff seems to
preferentially hypertrophied the
distal component of the muscle that you're targeting there
doesn't seem to necessarily be much
difference in the midpoint of
the muscle, but the overall hypertrophy
of the muscle with
lengthened exercises is greater and
Also seems that when they measure strength the
strength changes are greater with the
length and exercises as well. And in
my mind that's actually as good a measurement as anything.
Typically the greatest representation of
strength is cross-sectional change in the
muscle tissue. So I'm almost thinking the strength
numbers are a better indicator than even the circumferential measurements
but you know, and at this
point, I feel like there's enough papers showing
the same kind of a concept with distal hypertrophic
changes about 70%
towards the distal end usually is where
we see this and the strength changes being significantly different
statistically where I'm like there is
some real
power right now in the thought that
lengthened exercises have
a greater beneficial response
compared to short exercises
before I spent
either of you guys familiar with the study. He
was referencing
Casiano it's a review paper.
Really? Okay. I was just curious. I
think it's journalists trying to get here, you know
some nerds in the audience my yellow seat, you know see January 2023
journalist driving conditioning.
So I I agree that we had that signal on the data right
now the context that I think that is important
to throw on there is
this seems to be on a volume equated basis.
Right. So if we equate volume
length and partials seem to outperform short-range
partials.
And then in them, we don't what we don't have
unfortunately isn't as much of the full
application or the the full context what we'd like
which would be like actually doing full range of motion
longer exercises versus full range of motion short exercises,
right like doing full elbow flexion up here down here.
That's what I'm really looking forward to right but I think we're I think
we're gonna see that that's the signal
is gonna maintain there.
but the the question I wanted
to get to is what we were just talking about with the biceps when you said well
short is somewhere up here and long as somewhere
is like well that's question is just like well how
long
Does the muscle have to be yeah for these benefits
to occur, right? So I was I don't
know if you saw the the debate that I had with Mike is
your tell I did on the hack squat, right? We're talking
about like okay reverse banding or not, right and you
know on that, you know,
I encourage you guys to go watch that so you can hear Mike's full
explanation. Yeah.
But he seemed to be leaning towards like everything
needs to be all the way on that
extreme end.
to get the benefit
Okay, not reverse banding it. Yes, so don't reverse Bandit
like well fullest stretch resistance hardest
at the very very end. Yeah seem to
be where he was going with that. Yep, and I don't see like
one. I don't think we have anything in the research that actually
looks at that like so the leg extension
study, right? Well a leg extension. You just can't get small knee
flexion. Right just it's just in the way right? So
I mean, I have a special modified leg extension you
still you know, you can't get there. Right? And actually that
that the the wreck them which
would have been the shortest quad in that experiment like it's
a perfectly difference in the length and we're
short and was greater than the ladder Alice.
Right. So and then we see something like
when we look at some of the other stuff like the preacher curl study like a preacher
curl is not a fully lengthened bicep, right but being
in that position where having to load
made up for being in a longer muscle length,
when I look at the proxies that we're look
that when I'm looking at here in terms of EMG and
Moxie and the relationship between
the the internal forces and the external forces
is like it seems to me like it's probably
more like we gotta be getting to like that length and
third.
With adequate Channel like it. It's a gradient. I
don't know exactly and it's not going to be a linear gradient.
It's going to be some sort of you know, logarithmic or
whatever looking curve. I think where it's like, all right,
we have the short stuff here. That's gonna be like a very
different mechanism. And also once we reach a certain point, we're gonna
see some of these changes in terms
of like how the muscle physiology is able to work right
like our ability to use tighten to increase mechanical tensions. Yeah,
all the sudden that's gonna start to pick up.
And so I think that
it's likely some sort of gradient. So I believe
that okay, we have to be long enough.
I don't know if that continues to scale as we get longer
or if there's a point of diminishing returns or if the
scale starts to like drop off or whatnot. Those are so
many unanswered questions. But I think what
we can pull is is that being somewhere
probably closer to like I would
like I would say from my best kind of personal men
analysis of the data is that it looks like we need to
be unlike the length and third right or at least
be in within that they're like the exercise doesn't need to be limited to
it. But we have to be getting there right if you cut away the whole
length and third of the exercise or the or the muscles range
of motion.
The benefits of being like the benefits of overloading
the bottom of that exercise them would probably start to become limited. Right?
So if we're looking at like the preacher curl, we're getting full
elbow extension, which is a greater change
in muscle length than what we get at the shoulder. So for here, even
though we're not all the way back here. We probably are probably
70 80 maybe
even 85% of that muscle's length, like
maybe on the game like 15% more change in
length by including the the shoulder component. So
it's like, okay, maybe that's why that's enough then to have
that signal right, but the signal wasn't necessarily as
strong and some of the
Some of the examples where we've seen a greater change in
muscle like like, you know, like with the tricep thing
like it was 1.5, you know times more right? So rather
than you know, 12% difference or whatever it is.
It's like a 50% you know change when you're going
from all the way here to like now LinkedIn thing like
that seems like a much more drastic same thing
for the the hamstring study, right like so the
hamstring their length change at the hip is more significant than
the bicep is at the shoulder. So switching from
the seated to lying hamstring. We saw seem to
be a greater degree of effect.
so
I think when we look at okay, what do we need to do to optimize and exercise?
All right. We probably need to get it there with a
good enough challenge.
And not either Focus purely on
the Challenger purely on the length and then losing like
if you focus purely on the challenge you lose that length and
third. Yeah, probably we did the exercise of disservice right
or getting all that range of
motion and now not having an adequate challenge in
that position. Also then maybe doing the exercise a disservice.
There's typically some level of
compromise.
Between the loading profile and the
length. Yeah, well
Not always sometimes you'll be able to achieve both but sometimes
you'll only have the option to
go to an extreme and one of the other or compromise and
in the compromise is probably going to be the
better choice in the in the instance of like this
bicep curl. Like if the only option was that, you
know, you had to do dumbbells like this or
dumbbells laying like denying down but support like
because the cable behind you would be the equivalence of lying
down and doing the curl like this. Oh my Force perspective right when you
think about what that done but with dumbbells, it seems like a pretty stupid
exercise. Yeah, right like I'm supported but for
some reason people don't always translate like using a
cable to that same thing like, oh, it's a cable. I'm sitting here whatever
like you wouldn't lie on a bench flat with your arms
outside just to curls like this. It would feel God it would
feel God awful, right?
You would feel like you're doing basically holding a fly.
The whole time right? So this is
an example where especially if you're limited on
the equipment options or whatever you have that compromise is
going to be a significantly better choice than you
know, the alternative you know while we're here.
little bit of a you know
the left turn but I think something that's very relevant
to a lot of people is just I'm
curious to hear your thoughts on a glute
Bridge hip thrust out. You know, I know
there's difference in the nomenclature right talking about whatever it is.
We're the person's got their back up their hips
are coming down. They're working against load, you know, when you
think of that exercise from the perspective of
length and providing a good resistance profile.
What are your general thoughts?
From hypertrophy perspective. Yeah, okay.
Let me ask you this yesterday. You said
you like dumbbell Rose? Yep.
How would you rate a dumbbell row principally compared to
a good bridge? I think they're pretty similar
in some ways. Yeah, and you know, I I like
you know with a dumbbell row. I think that you're what I
like about it is that you got a
person that's learning how to push and pull with the same time from a
motor output standpoint.
You know what? I don't like about a dumbbell row
is it's potential ability to really grow tissues
to tell you the trick. Okay, I and
and my solution that I tried to
show and then I come up with is basically running a cable
that way so that I'm still loading it
here and it's got tension as
I'm in this position. All right, so
I I look at the concept over all
the dumbbell row is like boy. It's a nice movement,
but it sucks from the
way that it gets loaded. Okay, so if
I could just load it somehow so that I could put a
lot of tension in this length and spot
I'd probably make it a really good exercise for growing
some stuff.
And I think that a hip bridge or
throat. Whatever the hell name. Okay. I can't keep track
of that.
But if I could I look at a hip thrust
as like it's sort of a hinge.
Okay, if I could make it more of
a hinge with however mechanically I
could turn it loading. However machine makers would
do it probably a really good exercise at
that point. But if I put a barbell on the
person and it's just like right there it's crap.
Okay, so a dumbbell row isn't
exercise that you probably done a million times before
right coaching a million times. But
yes bodybuilding forever whatnot.
Do you think people have made progress or put on tissue with
them? Of course not right? Yeah, all of these
things work, but what's the degree to wish that? Yeah, we're working
there.
Okay, yesterday we did yesterday you found
out right? I found out we've pulled
we pulled her out and and we found
out right? Okay, so
All right. So those exercises that we
did, okay.
If you did the same number of sets of those with the
same number of effort.
first compared to dumbbell rows
I'll fubard are you gonna be?
In one versus the other. Well, I think that there's you know,
if I'm gonna use some some RP words,
you know, I think that the raw stimulus magnitude
of pulling around is much
higher. Yes. Okay. The fatigue is
probably also going to be higher. Yes. Okay, the fatigue
from a dumbbell row might be a
little bit lower the raw stimulus magnitude of
a dumbbell row is probably also a little bit lower.
who knows ultimately, you know
my
General thought is yes, I want exercises
with the highest stimulus to fatigue
ratio, but that's you know,
that's a hard thing to actually figure out I usually
buy things towards greater roster stimulus
magnitude if possible. Yeah.
So I think that's a very important thing to to
establish with this muscle in conversation. Right is
that
On a per set basis you are going
to get more stimulus.
But also more fatigue and I think that brings
in a big part of application for this and I
don't think that it should be looked at through the lens of long
muscle lengths producer purchase and short
ones don't produce anything. So, let's look
at the leg extension study.
The short position like the just the partial at
the top of the leg extension still produced results. Yeah,
and at some of those segments the
mix meaning doing some
length and partials and then alternating sessions or
whatever. I can't remember if it was alternated sessions or they
split up the sets whatever they did the mixed version
that did some LinkedIn partials and some short and partials.
Okay.
in some of the in some of the ranges
that actually was Superior for her purchase.
And in almost I think in everyone.
It was better than the full range of motion the mix of
lengthened and feeling some short partials and saw
some long partials. I haven't seen that but you
know, we can we we can pull up the thing
so you can look at the individual responses, right
but
so to me that says that
they're likely is a point of diminishing returns
that we can get out of that length and response meaning
that once that goose is cooked continuing to pound more
volume into that length and position may not
provide any more benefit only more fatigue.
And that there may be like I can think of a bunch
of orthopedic and neurological benefits to fully
shortening a muscle in terms of coordination. Okay,
and then from a strength perspective
we do see that while like and just if
you only had to do one and then you measured full range
of motion strength the length and partial would beat the
short partial.
but when you include both
The strength is better than if you just did one.
Okay, right. So to me that seems that
like we shouldn't just be throwing the short positions
out, you know, because those may be the things
that once we've reached the cap of stimulus
that I can get out of that length and position. This is
now my ability to add stimulus.
With less fatigue toll here where you're
saying there. My question is who is that appropriate for?
Who is that appropriate for yeah, yeah, I mean,
I think anybody that's approaching approach a
fee. That's appropriate for I think anybody that wants
to maintain good Orthopedic
health and strength through full range
of motion. Okay, that's important for right?
You know and anybody that just likes
big juicy pumps.
I think that's that's also important for a short
position exercises. Are you push a lot of blood right for
you know, and you could argue that there might be some unknown
like there might be some benefit to
that that we're overlooking too of just simply like, oh, hey actually
challenging this. No, I think that
Depending on like here's here's
the way I approach like a perch fee training is I look
at this as like when if somebody's in a dedicated, we'll call
it a mechanical tension phase where that's so trying to do is they're trying to get as much
volume up that mechanical tension stimulus because
we're trying to get protein synthesis. We're trying to get new myofibrils
more myofibrils right build the
muscle with legit myofibular perch fee.
I'm gonna bias my volume to a greater
percentage of length and exercises.
But I'm not going to completely do zero it might be
like, alright, I'm gonna ship to like 70/30. Mmm. Okay when I'm
focusing maybe more on body composition
or maybe some more metabolic goals
or working with a beginner that doesn't necessarily need
to be, you know, too f***** up to walk
around in the office or whatever it is. I'm gonna flip that Spectrum
Right because for fat loss you if you're in
a deficit, you're not going to be building maximum muscle tissue. So do you necessarily need to
be hitting the highest threshold stimulus and most inflammatory
conditions in order to maintain muscle
mass or to recomp or whatnot or might
it actually be better that you get an overall nutrient
partitioning stimulus and a little bit more
like and you can actually tolerate a little bit more volume of training
per week. Right like to me I look at that. It's like hey,
this is a way that I can actually maybe be
quote as well inefficient with
my training volume in a way that
Helps with body composition, right? It allows
me to get it allows me actually to say hey, I can you know
cut this person's rest intervals cycle some more
exercises and whatnot stimulate more tissue at a
higher frequency per week for that person. But right which
ultimately might help during the body composition
phases of that and then in addition to
her perchview block and then and then flip those things up,
but then I'm gonna bring them up to either maintenance or Surplus or whatnot
and really be able to take advantage of that extra
stimulus, but also be able to deal with the extra fatigue.
I apologize. I might need to grab something to drink but take
take a
second. I'll talk about yeah, yeah, I'll be
back in one sec. So just for that.
the other thing with short position exercises is
it tends to be very easy to be
specific on what you want to Target. Let's
look at the pecs for example.
So if I'm in a stretch back here all
of my pecs are essentially lined
up to me in a good position to pull my arm forward meaning there.
The load is gonna get shared really easily.
When I bring my arm across this way, my clavicular
pecks are almost like pulling up. My cost
effects are almost pulling down and my sternal
pecs like so they went from all kind of being mostly in
the same direction to now being in very different
directions. So that means the degree of
specificity that I can get in a short
position for the sternal clavicular costal is
significantly higher than what
I can get in the length in position. Right? And that's
one of the reasons that you know, some of the best bang for
your buck exercises that the Bros have kind of worked around are
length and exercises because you can hit more tissue
from a stretch position at once as you
get to a short short position.
Fewer things are set up to be able to help you act on
that low. So in the case of like, you know,
blue Bridges and abduction exercises and
stuff like this that we're doing in the short position.
It allows you to add a layer of specificity that
you otherwise wouldn't have so more
talking about somebody that specifically wants
to grow glutes whether they be a bikini comes.
Or they just get bigger.
They just want their butt to be there.
Well, then these are the exercises now.
Let's play it for you that's meaningless
with a higher degree of specific.
You may have a sacrifice the absolutely so
but you can do more set.
And being more specific with what you're going to
get out of that, right? So short position exercises allow
you to be more of a sculptor, right? They're
not going to be like, this is
simple, right? You're not gonna you're not gonna have
the same effect on a target with the Bazooka as a sniper
rifle, right? And that's kind of that's kind of the approach that you're
taking you're going to be able to really blow something up with the
Bazooka.
But you might not hit just hit what you want. You're gonna hit everything in
that area, right if you
need sniper rifle level results.
Then you got to use a sniper rifle. Right? But if you're you know, if you're
an advanced training trying to like, you know,
really grow something that might be like trying to get through armor
piercing whatever I'm using a lot of gun analogies, you know
right now, but so you may have to pop off
a few rounds in the same spot.
To break through and get that result, but it will be right where
you wanted it. So, yeah, I
think I have a number of talking points off of
what that that is there. So I I think
the last part about it being an advanced training I think
is a very important piece to add to that and I think that
you know
When I'm thinking about it absolute beginner. Okay,
there's like super low hanging fruit. Like there's
newbie games. So literally anything can work for them.
All right, so maybe I don't want to pull out big
guns for them and I just need them to feel things but there's
a million things that I could look at with new people as being
important for how to onboard them and get
by in.
And no, I probably don't want to make them so sore that they can't walk.
That could be a great way to lose them.
But eventually what I need to do is
provide them with high Raw.
Stimulus magnitude exercises, you know
that that's the main thing that they need when I
think about like hey if I change the word
hypertrophied a money. Okay? I I
would think that my longer exercises are
kind of like collecting $100 bills. Okay,
and that my short
exercises are kind of
like collecting more like singles and fives or something
like that. I'm gonna have to pay more taxes. If I'm
collecting more money over here put me in a higher tax
bracket. There's more expenses that are going to come along with that for
sure.
But in the beginning if I'm broke and I have
no money. Well, then I probably should be
looking for more high yield stuff. I just
need big results Big Bang sorts of
things and like for a relative new
person intermediate kind of individual like
I'm gonna blast them mostly with compound exercises
if I can take those compounds and I
can put them into full range of motion. Like that's and I can
drive big quantitative changes. Like that's
the sauce that I would be trying to mix in
for that person to really be able to change them.
Like if I take that intermediate person, I'm just doing
isolated stuff. What am I isolating? They don't even have any muscle to
isolated at this point in time.
Like I need to hit them with the Bazooka
as many times as possible and they
can usually recover from it. You know what I mean?
It's like I give them I give here's where I go into my car analogies
like this is like taking the the Toyota
Camry for the quarter mile like it can run the
quarter mile again and again and again and again and again
now if I have somebody that isn't
absolute specimen, you know,
like hey if I make this this monster do a
bunch of compounds over and over and over this
week. Well, hey guess what? They squat
600 pounds for reps. They bench five Wheels to
reps if I have them do big pulling exercises. It's
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds. So it's
like this person if I give them
too much raw stimulus magnitude,
they're a drag car that I'm
making do too many quarter miles and like their
engine just exploded their doors blue off. They're Tire.
Are in pieces I can't do that with that
person. I need to manage that stuff and do
it less frequently. It's not that different from
other spheres of training either, you know,
if I talk about track and field and developing sprinters.
You know, you look at the percentages that you give young
sprinters oftentimes what
you'll see novices will get about
65% high intensity work and
about 35% low intensity work
Advanced sprinters will get
somewhere around 35% high intensity work and
65% low intensity
work. It kind of flips because the real
deal dudes that are like potentially
going to the Olympics. They're you have
to save them from their superpowers in
many ways and they need more in the
way of like, you know, Tempo runs and
and general conditioning because they
still need training volume.
But you know every time that they go hard
it's like got the capacity to blow the
doors off the vehicle.
So but if I've got like, you know kind of
an up-and-comer real they can go hard over
and over and over and over again and it's not gonna tear
their doors off. So I I just think
that like, you know, there's too many
people that are
Way to juvenile in their
training career.
Focusing on pulling out
the sculpting tools and it's like there's nothing to
sculpt.
It's it's like, you know, it's it's
a approach that's inappropriate for
the population. And I just think
like you got to go along like I don't know some I
feel like Dorian Yates gets brought up a lot these days like, you
know, his approach was ahead of its time. It's very
targeted very and and like, you know,
if you watch him train, it's like why is he so jacked maybe
because he's inclined pressing four wheels.
Like it's a toy. Okay. He's so freaking
strong with his big compounds. It's
like the dudes of monster like then when
you take that and you get really meticulous
with some of the smaller exercises
and finding and feeling pieces and you know,
that's when the sculpting can like be worth while
but I don't say I'm not
saying I know exactly where this threshold is, but I think a
lot of people are jumping that gun these days of like,
you know, they're trying to add the
I don't know what to but the shorter position
drills or those kinds of activities.
At in amounts that are inappropriate
ratios for their actual actual
current status.
I will agree in the last part that I think there's people that suck it
writing programs.
Or compounds and isolation or
biased or whatever exercise in general. Like I think
people get a few pieces and they just don't know how to
put everything together period but I'm gonna
disagree on the majority of that. Okay, let's
let's let me see if I can walk back
and remember all the things.
so
compound exercises like I don't I don't see like okay. Somebody doesn't
have a lot of muscle therefore. They should just
do compounds like they I don't look at that. It's like well, they don't have enough muscle
so they should do biased exercises.
I feel like that. I feel like the argument that comes at this
always realize I'm not just talking about barbells here, right? Like
I mean hack squats. Yeah machines like
that's all I know this stuff all exists
on it on a gradient, right?
So but from a principal perspective what tends
to happen is.
if you're making an argument for
if I'm saying hey this exercise here biases
the short head of the bicep, right then the argument is
it's like, oh you can't really you can't really bias the short
out of the bicep. You can't isolate things everything always works together or whatever
right? It's like
All right. Well, I disagree I think we can get a certain degree
of bias right whether you know
how significant that is. It's like well her purchasing in
general happens very small and slow. So we're looking at
the resolution of difference like clearly what we're seeing in these studies
is like well if we can like it by one
of the things about for bias, we just went to the other days
we can affect which muscles getting more of a stretch.
Right, and we know in the research does that seems to actually have
a significant impact, right? So
if these exercises can change the muscle lengths, right and
then we can also do things that are changing the recruitment, you
know, and how we're loading it then to me.
It's just like I think we have sufficient evidence to assume
that like there's you know, it may like the
argument usually like
You're familiar with Joe Bennett. No, whatever. He just
put this thing on a tiktok or whatever and you know, they're talking about
these exercises whatever and they argument is like, well nobody's
ever just grown like one head of the bicep like out to
here or whatever. He didn't say that somebody in the audience did and
I'm like, yeah that that's that's ridiculous. It's not you
know, so what I'm getting as well we can bias but
we don't isolate so that's the other that's the
other thing is then when it comes to the other side of the argument of using these
exercises for beginners people like, oh, you know,
they don't need to isolate they need to do this. I'm like wait, so the
exercises are so specific.
That they're not good for beginners because they're too specific but then
but then what I'm trying to apply them from a z perspective
no, these exercises can't be that
they're not specific enough so that they don't
make a difference. I don't think that's what I'm saying. I'm not saying I'm saying that's
the narrative in in general, right? And so I'm just kind of putting out
that my view is that yeah, bias
exercise are not isolation exercise. Meaning
you're still gonna get a bunch of other stuff there right?
And if you're a beginner you're threshold.
Is not very high meaning that if you do an exercise for your upper PEC.
that might cross the threshold for your other
pet regions, but if you're advanced
It may not you may have to do upper pack and lower pack
right? So when I'm looking
at applying this stuff.
You know from a from a
beginner perspective some of these more biased motions are
actually just easier for people to learn from motor command standpoint.
Sometimes they make sense in terms of kind of
dealing with somebody's incoming Orthopedic or range
of motion issues. Sometimes they make sense in terms of me being
able to organize a training program because well, I'm trying to
train them more frequently. So instead of hitting compounds in
a similar plane or being limited to two planes now from training
them three times a week or whatever. I have more ways to
kind of divvy up those exercises so that I can be maybe getting
stimulus here, but that fatigue isn't carrying
over because the other day I'm training a different, you know, different division
or segment of that muscle. I'm only getting to lengthen stress maybe
in one portion of that which then means that I can go to that
well for a different division, you know, very soon
rather than waiting for, you know the whole time for that
other division to recover. So I see all of these ways that
you could use these tools regardless of
where somebody is in their journey and when it comes to like
Okay, does it have to be just a compound?
Why like so just say we're doing a chest,
press whether it's a dumbbell press or whatever something that is triceps chest
shoulders, okay.
If we were to compare that to doing a fly motion
and a tricep extension motion.
I could I could I could program in
a way that I could get, you know, the same number of
sets of flies and tricep extensions in the
time that it would take me to get an equal number of sets of presses.
Do you can you confidently say that one of those ways would actually
produce?
Better results than the other. Let's kind
of go way back to like just basic Sciences stuff
with this. Okay. So when
I think about like what makes a
fiber adapt, you know,
the answers that I would give on that is it has to be recruited and
fatigued.
And when I think about what recruits fibers
the answer there is force the more
Force. I apply in the Henneman size
principle. I will grade and eventually get to
the point where I recruit all the fibers but you know,
it's also a matter of like as I'm doing
more reps. I I will begin
to have to recruit more fibers as well. Okay,
but essentially like I it's not
enough to just recruit a Fiverr. I also have to fatigue
the fiber, you know, and if it's recruited
and fatigued now, it will have
to respond and it will adapt and
the most common thing that we think
of with a fiber adapting is going through protein
synthesis and adding structural and
contractile proteins to this,
you know unit the sarcomere.
so
I think to myself well, okay.
you know, I have all these different motor units
and fibers and things like that and
they're going to run on this gamut from slow twitch to fast
twitch and the ones with the greatest
growth possibility appear to be these fast
twitch fibers and when it comes to fast twitch
fibers, they're easy to fatigue
but hard to recruit
and I need to have fairly substantial levels
of forces to get to the point where
I can actually cause those fibers to
be recruited and once they're recruited was gonna
take a couple of reps and they're probably going to be fatigued and now they're
going to have the possibility of going through a growth
response Okay, so,
You know and on the flip
side, I have slow twitch fibers and they
have an opposite profile where they're relatively easy
to recruit but they're
hard to fatigue. Now if I were to take
a look at some of the older research that examines
like well how many of the available fibers
in the quadriceps do people use
when they're squatting, you know, you kind of look at novices and
you're gonna see that it's somewhere in like the maybe 75%
area and if I
look at an elite powerlifter, there's somewhere around like 97% Recruitment.
And so
to me, like the first thing that I kind of
need to do is get this person to
a stage where they're actually recruiting
more of their fast twitch fibers.
So I need to use some higher
Force exercises and those
are typically going to be
Compound exercises because I can use multiple
joints together to contribute to Greater
forces you like.
Horse in this in this instance, which would be
being applied to the muscle is not necessarily correlated
to how much weight is used.
only exercise it's load and then
horizontal distance from the
rotating. Yeah, I can use a significantly lower
load on a leg extension.
To get the same amount of force actually on my quadriceps, then
I would need to put on a bar on my back.
But I think this when we talk about the kinds
of forces that occur they're oftentimes
lower in isolation exercises where
I have less joints contributing
to the overall motion. I don't think that's true
at all. I think it we we have greater. We can recruit
more motor units and produce more
force and an isolated manner, then we can
in a compound manner the mother report agency simpler.
Yeah. Okay. I mean maybe that's the case that's not the thought perspective
that I'm coming in with. Okay, the
thought perspective I'm coming in with is that compounds
are going to be your most forceful
activities and they are
The Logical choice to be able to give people
access to recruiting their fast
twitch muscle fibers, and if I
recruit it and first of all,
It's the first thing that I have to do to get
a fiber to start to respond is I have to recruit it first.
And now if I can start recruiting it consistently and
then fatiguing it it will grow
and change.
That is the thought process in my
head for why compounds are the appropriate
choice for newer people? Okay, and
then when we get to a state where this
person has successfully neurologically unlocked
most of the available motor units in
their major prime mover muscles now
there they've got
the potential to they're creating
a unbelievable kinds of forces and
at a certain point, they can't recover
from the total amount of
force and workload. That's you
know, I could dump on them. If I
kept them just doing a ton of compounds ton of
compounds ton of compounds, but I think it takes a little
while to get there. So like in my mind, you know,
To switch back to sprinting the thing
that makes if you're if you
want to run faster the way that you run faster is
through more volume of specificity. Okay
means you have to run really fast more times.
But if you're already.
Strong and fast in a leaf
Good Luck running fast more times. There's so
many things that can potentially become pitfalls.
When you try to do that to me if I
wanted to grow something an organism just
bigger more tissue. I would try to
make you lift.
Bigger heavier bigger movements, you know,
I just look at it as absolute mechanical work.
You know, how far is
this organism moving big heavy
things and if I can make it
lift big heavy things through greater
distances, then it will
probably grow and but again
if you're already really big
and really strong
trying to add more to that is almost
the equivalent of trying to shove 10 pounds of
s*** into a five pound bag, you know, it's just like things are
gonna start falling apart and it's going to
be a real problem. Okay?
when I have lesser developed people
the absolute sheer
magnitude of that stimulus is
just not as much they can
handle a ton of these like
Bigger loads big big movement
kinds of things to a much greater degree because
it's just not the same level of
absolute stimulus.
I'm going to try Steel Man compounds for
beginners because I don't
I'm not against using compound for beginners
and I think there's a lot of a lot
of ways that you can argue that that would be the better choice. I do
think you're argument on the horses and
motor unit recruitment is backwards. Okay, right.
But if I was to steal
man using compounds for beginners, it would
not be because I can get more actual stimulus
her muscle or produce
or actually get more force on the local tissue.
It would be that I can get less Force distributed
across more tissue in fewer
exercises.
Right, so that means that you know for a beginner,
you know, they might have to learn fewer movements.
But be able to hit more tissue, right? So
like from that's like just from a like how many
movements do I need to learn as a beginner to start on this
path of Fitness? Well, if you can get some core motor
patterns in that's a really great place to start that's a really good foundation to
build so I can take that argument like yeah, you
might want to choose a squat pattern and addition to that over a
leg extension because you know, you're gonna
hit more tissue like you can you can hit quads and
glutes like for a beginner, you know squats might be a cab
exercise, you know in terms of the threshold for them.
So I look at you know, when we look at
compound exercises. So the more joints the more tissues that
we have the higher the central motor command demand. Oh the less
Force I will produce at any individual segment.
The less motor unit recruitment I will get at
any individual segment. So if we're
looking at
if we're looking at this through the lens of like tissue stimulus then
the biases and the
more single joint exercises.
Are just simply going to win from a localized Force production.
That's a pretty much proven concept at this point
in time, but in terms of beginner.
they like
getting more total body stimulus
at the lack of trying to maximize individual tissue stimulus
is a valid argument because what they need
to adapt
the threshold might be very low. So even though
they would be getting less tissue stimulus.
It's adequate for where they're at their training Journey because
they don't they don't need to redline their tissue
at a local level to experience adaptations
at that. Right so level of
threshold changes. So that's one of the reasons that a beginner can go
in and they can do an ambiguous exercise and get
a very broad stimulus benefit because they
don't have a high threshold for all of the synergist coming
along there that are working and you know, whatever because
every exercise still has a limiter whether like, we
qualify exercise in terms of what they're
biased to all we're doing is informing on an exercise
quality.
Every exercise you do something is the
limiter there is something that is going to be the thing
that that is what causes failure in there. Yeah. Now in some
exercises the limiter compared to the next
thing is closer and sometimes it's very far away or whatnot
depending on on what we're working with and how much tissue and
whatnot. But there's all exercises have a
bias. It's just whether you're informed about what that bias happens
to be or not. It's really what
the difference is is.
Like from my levels, it's like hey, if you're
gonna do an exercise, I would rather you would know what that
limiter is gonna be right like in any
given situation right? Because that gives you a great great opportunity to
now assess somebody's like technique
and their form and how they're doing and you know
where they're sore and stuff because it's that limiter isn't works where
it's expected, right? You see breakdown of their technique at a
different joint or they're, you know, sore or uncomfortable some other
place that can tell you that there's something going on and you're set
up or your execution or that person's structural strength balance
Etc that you you can improve upon or
you you could work on
so if I'm looking at man, what exercises do
I use for a beginner it kind of depends on how am I
going to build this beginners program? And what do I have to work with? Because if
I wanted to use more exercises
Then I'm not going to use all just very Global exercises.
So the more exercise I'm going to use the more specificity. I'm
gonna add to those exercises so
that I can make those exercises complimentary rather
than redundant.
right, and if I'm looking at
what they need in terms of strep, you know threshold of
stimulus then I can look at things like okay, you
know maybe for this person coming in. We want
to work on the squat.
but we don't have to take the squat to failure about barium there
because
it's not gonna take much to get stimulus out of them. Right? It's
gonna like it might be like just simply like the, you
know, a beginner you like you might be able to put them through
a stretch program and they would get Doms from just the
stretch. So like if you're taking them to full knee flexion, they've never
been there before like you mean that that may not be the place to
hit the gas pedal but then I could that cool and then
we're gonna go to the leg extension and we're gonna do some work. That's like
the short range. That's where I can put the gas pedal on because also now
in the beginner like they're more like
their motor pattern for squat of s***.
Right and what happens when you fatigue to your coordination?
Gonna get worse it's worse. Right? So I have the opportunity to
say. Hey, we're gonna go over here when you're fresh and we're
gonna manage your loads and your rpe rir so
that we're gonna get some stimulus here, but we're also
going to really be improving your coordination in your motor pattern
here.
Right. I'm not gonna have you practice bad reps though, right
for the sake of the physiological response. I'm not going to
push you to the point where all right. This is getting kind of s***** and
the techniques can be here and we're gonna be really fatigued and really sore if I
could take you somewhere where now I could just give you constraints and
just let you work hard in a way that's going to give me
a good fizzy love response less fatigue and the
motor the motor demand or the like
the the coordination demand is now really low. So
even a beginner could get decent output
and that exercise it's just the extension like, where are you gonna go? You
don't have other joints to compound, you know, do whatever right? So as
long as somebody's not like turning into the Exorcist in the middle of the the
exercise right? I can be sure that like man, we're probably
getting a fairly localized stimulus here
and they're probably actually able to get a good like
physiological demand here that otherwise in
something else. We might reach a technique break
down or something like that before. We really got to that
same physiological stimulus.
So I look at all this stuff as tools. I'm not a you
should do biased exercises beginners or you should only do compound
exercises for beginners. I'm a you should
do what makes sense for you know, what you're
trying to accomplish with that person physique wise, you know,
whether or any of these skills important to
them right already. Is this person coming you to look better but also needs
to have the skill of XY Z right like
that. I'm trying to improve right like do they need to own certain
positions do they need to, you know, be strong or whatever
like, you know, whatever they pick things up at work or
they, you know, they have other sports that they
do recreationally or professionally Etc like all of those considerations.
How many like how many times a week and how many exercises like
are they trading at a place like this, you know or they training
at home with you know, a couple adjustable dumbbells and some bands, you
know Etc. Right? What's their exercise experience
coming in? Is this a person where if the first
week? They're miserably sore the that's the
last week that I'm ever gonna see them. Right? Is this
a person that isn't gonna feel like they got a good session in less. They're
sore right. Is this a person that isn't gonna feel
like they get a good workout unless they have a blazing burn in
a pump or whatever consider. There's all like all you
could use.
these tools
so that you can accomplish the physiological goal.
And the skill goal that you want in a way.
That the person's actually going to enjoy right
and want to come back and do
again, right and that so I don't see any reason to create
a rule of like beginner should do compounds and advanced people
should do this because I don't see any negative to
using either approach.
If it actually fits like if you program it appropriately
but I could make a negative for either approach if you
program it inappropriately, right like if you
only get one whole exercise.
Really good pull down is probably like going to
one extreme division like
the most extreme outer edge of a lat.
Is probably not ideal same thing. I wouldn't go all the way to the
other one just do the highest division of thoracic. Like if you get one pole, I'm
probably gonna name for the middle right so that we get as much
lat as we can that's still a biased exercise. It's biased
to the middle but it's gonna happen but it's gonna have the most
kind of like Radiance effect. So it's
like okay I can still use that knowledge about the anatomy and
apply that in this context. It's like well if I only have
one exercise which motion would give me the broadest possible
stimulus across that tissue
that I could have right but I'm gonna use two
exercises. I wouldn't take two act like I I'm
not gonna if I hit the target, I'm not you know, I'm not gonna
try and shoot through the same arrow for the second. You know, the second
one, right? Okay. I'm gonna try and hit two bullseyes, right
so but in different in different places
So I think just getting a feel
for the audience. I feel like you know, we should probably take a little
bit of a break soon. Yes. I was going to do it three. I
I'd love to be able to try to
say back to you what I think
your big points were to see if I understand and hopefully maybe
to help.
People that are listening as well. So
you know, I think that we have a
difference like the stated points that
we made are different from the perspective of you're
saying that
I will have an ability to recruit and
fatigue more motor units in a
quad with a more isolated quad exercising.
Okay, and because
largely because the
internal forces at the quad are going
to be higher with that exercise compared to
a more compound exercise. It's not so much
that it's the internal forces are based off
of what you could recruit. Right? So the fewer things
I have to recruit the more I can recruit the one thing so in
for the internal the exercises are relevant as much
in terms of like it's not the load of the forces. It's how
many joints and how much tissue do I have to okay to
manage and
you might be able to make the statement that the
more total organism motor
units that are referred in a drill.
The less specific motor units
are recruited in any local region. Would
that be a fair way to look at it? The more connection moving the
most part if I thought like to me like the most
Global motor unit recruiting task,
I could possibly think of would probably be
running or swimming. Okay. So because
of the large disbursement of
motor unit total Recruitment and recruiting
100% motor units
in the body, I won't be able to put enough
stimulus on any specific motor
unit in a region to be
able to drive it closer to recruitment plus
fatigue or adaptive change.
That's a probably a fair way to look at it on
a percent basis. You can always still accomplish fatigue with
volume.
I can make an absolute new person hypertrophy by
having them run a mile probably. Yeah. Okay. I'm
the more that you become Advanced the
more that I have to put my focal Recruitment
and fatigue laser.
On Improvement it removes Choice basically as you
become it like yeah in a beginner you have tons of options as
you become Advanced, you know now it's like well now
you no longer have a choice but to do this. Yeah more specifics.
And I think that you're you're essentially saying that
at any point in time, I can
choose to become more laser-like with
my Recruitment and fatigue of
any part of the body with any population. And
as a result of that I don't need to
have an exclusive thought process of this
level of
bringing history gets this approach versus
that approach or any other. Okay. And you
know, I I guess that it's it's
a perspective, you know what I mean? And it's one
that comes with reason and thought and logic
and I I appreciate that and
I I guess that I would look at it as we
could probably create a spectrum
of you know, understanding it
on one side of this we have total organism
motor unit Recruitment and
the more that we do that the more dispersed it
is and the less of any particular
motor unit group. We really drive
towards Peak.
It's a challenge and adaptive potential.
And maybe I could look at it as in the absolute beginning of
working with someone. I can do that
and probably get fairly holistic growth.
And as that holistic growth is diminished
with training experience. Maybe I
have to become more and more detailed and
focused on each specific region with exercises
that more and more isolate that region.
I think that's the general thought process that I
have.
And that I like this stuff over
here is the low-hanging fruit, you know,
I could do thrusters and burpees and
grow the body on a beginner.
And thrusters and burpees are a waste
of time for someone that's going to try to step on stage for the
Olympia. They need to go in with a scalpel and
Target an area and
eliminate all other areas. So that
area receives the stimulus necessary for
it to grow appropriately. Okay like
that to me is the framework and
kind of a sequential operating
system that I would think to go
with but that doesn't necessarily change my
thought process on the chapter by
chapter Journey Through the story of
getting swole, you know, it's it is still
to me.
more compound and again,
like running and swimming and climbing are the most
compound things I could possibly think of and as
I go through the chapters Things become
just simply less compound over
time until I get to the end chapters and
things like, you know,
Isolated or short position things begin to
emerge as you know, highlighted points
in those paragraphs in
sections.
That's at least my viewpoints on
on what occurs with this that it's a
convergence towards more Target over
time with a bigger swath
in the beginning that just simply reduces
with time.
I think
there what you're describing. Guess what I would consider that
is the constraint.
Of what has to happen?
But I but what I believe is that you could
have like
integrating the more specific training earlier
if programmed well.
doesn't necessarily have a negative could have
a positive and vice versa like
because
if you're doing gonna do two chest exercises, you could do flat barbell
prints one day and flat dumbbell
bench the other day.
Right, but you probably wouldn't right. What would you probably do?
I probably have some kind of flat and some
kind of incline. There you go. So those but basically your biasing two
different regions by doing an incline and
a flat right? So
Are like I see?
I see everybody is applying this stuff, but they're applying
it to at their understanding of or
like their understanding
of well, how much do I need to divide this or how much
am I capable of breaking it up? Right but all
the sudden when you have the tools of like well, okay. I can
actually break this up into more pieces or whatever right
now. You can look at us. It's like, okay. Well now I
have you know, maybe I've shortened and Linkedin exercises
for upper and I have upper middle
and lower PEC options, right so
I could choose to be like, all right, I can
do upper and lower instead of you know,
middle and upper thinking that like well if I'm hitting these two
Then there's going to be some radiant to The Middle on both days. Right? And
so you could take that logic of approach right or if you're training
somebody three times a week you could do each of you know,
the three or whatever or if somebody's like, hey, I'm a
beginner. But I also want to work on this thing. Like
I'm gonna train this two times a week and this
one one time but we like so I don't see any I
mean, like I said all exercises have a bias you regardless
of how compound they are. Have a limiter.
So I'm just saying knowing the vice knowing the
limiters allows you to make those exercises because I
mean even people are just using compound exercises.
Are you only using one lower body push?
No, typically, right you're gonna I mean you're gonna use different
squat patterns right now. You're you're like
a one person's reasoning for why there might
be using different ones.
Might be communicated differently, right but
it's still in almost all those cases.
If it's still likely they're shifting that bias Yes
somewhere else whether it's becoming. Oh, I had a
you know a more hip don't like I had a glute dominant push and I
had a quad dominant push, right or had a single leg and
a but like they're these things
are happening.
Right, it's just how you how informed are
you on what actual changes you are making with that
selection. And what I'm saying is is that there
is not a limit to how granular you can
be with the beginner.
If you program it appropriately for what they need, right? Like I could
come up like especially here. I got all these machines or
whatever. There's no reason. I couldn't bring a beginner in and have a
term super high number of exercises that
I take them through because they will
all be very easy for them to learn and apply right and
I understand how to like move the stress around the
body so that we could like, you know be efficient
with our volume and our in our frequency, right? So really
comes down to like understanding these exercises
and applying them correctly. I think in general if
you reduce yourself to like hey, I'm gonna do fewer exercises
and these what it does is it reduces the amount of decisions
that you have to make and chances for error because if you don't
know s*** about exercise, well, then don't use it. You
can't be like, well, I'm gonna do this and this and this because you don't know what that
combination is. Yeah, right, you know, it's like trying to cook without knowing
what the ingredients taste like, right? So what are you
gonna do? You're like these two things. I know so
I'm just gonna put those in there and I'm not gonna risk.
On these other things in there and then accidentally having onion cookies
or whatever, you know, whatever pretty good at making grilled
cheese.
If it would be fair to say in some
ways I could summarize your last point is like what most
professionals do is fairly similar,
but how and why they do it that way
oftentimes as divergent and maybe your ability to
ascend as a professional is improved by
having better more accurate thousand wise
I would say most professionals are doing
this on an amateur level, but they're doing it
right. They're just they're just
do I mean they're do they're doing it.
less informed
meaning that
in some ways they're doing on an accident. Yeah, right
or they're doing it with a different logic rights that
they're not realizing. This is one of the major mechanisms behind
their decision-making processes, but they learned
it through a different scope of maybe it's like hey, I'm loading through different planes of
motion. Well, if you're changing planes of motion, you're changing the tissue that's gonna be
bias in those things or whatever, right? So it's like, you know, the
it's either they're looking they're doing it through a different lens or they're
doing it out of anecdote knowing that like look if I do this exercise,
I can't do that other exercise on Thursday, right? Just
because I know when I did that last like or I
did that Susan
Susan was screwed up like, you know, so you
these these you you'll be
either forced to learn these things at least to a certain degree right
or you or you can get ahead of it
by learning learning and academically heuristically
ever since the yeah, so, you know
and let's I think it's good to take a break right. Now. What I'd
love to do, I think a fairly decent topic to
come back to in some ways is like hey with
hypertrophy, you know, I think there's
a big spectrum of
How bad you can be doing this stuff
and still getting results and I'm kind of curious where you're
gonna go with that but like because look
like man, there's a lot of big meat monkeys out there probably do
things really poor, but get real jacked and I just
want to hear what you have to say on that. But yeah, let's take a few minutes at least.
What do you think for time? Let's do 15 minutes. Okay. Yeah.