Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 598 - STOP DEEP SQUATS, 90° is FULL Range of Motion ft. Dr. Joel Seedman

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Dr. Joel Seedman has different training methods than we've all been taught. By his calculations of lengthening a muscle, we do not need to go further than 90 degrees to reach full range of motion. Full explanation in this episode as well as a special guest appearance from Dr. Mike Israetel who is on the complete other side of the spectrum as to what qualifies as full range of motion. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

I just love watching this every day. It's like there's more. There's like more. Come on. Something's happening. This is. You're a very complicated man. Yeah, this is heavy whipping cream.

Dude, again, I love that they give you like $30 worth of heavy cream every day. Listen, you can get four ounces of heavy cream for free at Starbucks. It is not anything by living in the bubble. You just. I don't know, dude. Okay. You can get it for free heavy cream for free at Starbucks. It is not anything by living in the bubble. You just get it for free. This is like the best thing ever. I don't have special... No. Right, Andrew? Yeah, no. He's in the bubble.

You walk anywhere with a weird hand tattoo. Nah, that's not the case, man. That's not the case. You guys can do this too. You're not handsome and jacked. No. You're in denial. You're in denial. that's not the case you guys can do this you're not handsome and jacked no you're into man dude i remember like being in high school and like talking like my best friend being like bro you got like five bucks man i forgot like i don't have any money for lunch and i've totally fucking forgot like now dog i got nothing and then a girl would come up and they'd be like um can i uh you have like like a

dollar or and the guy's like yeah here's a 20. dude oh man here's a 20 just keep the rest of them yeah we'll get whatever you want you're, what? I do anything for some ladies, man. Damn. Do anything. I mean, I get it. That's fucked up.

All right. Are we going? Yeah, we're going. Yeah. Well, actually let's talk about this real quick because we like cereal here. What?

Yeah. Cereal. Cereal. But, you know, you can't really eat the normal cereal that you usually eat. You gotta be careful out there. Too much sugar, too much carbs. It's just not good on the macros.

But then we started getting some Magic Spoon. Now, the Magic Spoon is high-protein cereal. Andrew, is it 4 grams of net carbs per serving? Yeah, and then most of them have 13 grams of protein, but then some have the 14 grams of protein and it actually

tastes good yeah no it's delicious yeah yeah the uh the frosted one i think uh huberman was saying it tastes almost like like donuts and i'm like maybe that's the flavor because i couldn't figure it out like it doesn't like i saw frosted so i'm thinking you know like the flakes that have frostedness all over them yeah but it didn't didn't taste like that, but it was really good. It was amazing. Yeah. I'm a peanut butter guy myself. So, but this is the thing that's hard about it.

It's like I ate the whole box. I'm just going to be real. I'm not going to talk like I had self-control with it. I ate the whole box because it was really good. So honestly, if you do get this cereal, the macros are really good. Even if you do eat the whole box, like even if you do eat the whole box, the macros are safe. Better decision than just going nuts on a thing of cocoa pebbles. And if you're an adult, unlike myself,

you probably can just have a bowl and put it in the cabinet. So, Hey, give it a shot. You will not regret it. Yeah. The other thing with like a regular cereal is, yeah, I could easily eat a whole box and then kind of look around the room. What else do we have with this i had two bowls and i was good i don't know if it's like the high protein or if

there's like a certain fiber in it i don't know that side of things but i was just like wow like i'm i'm good like and i still had more in the box so i was really happy about that because again i was worried like well shoot like if if i go through one box really quick like everyone else is going to easily be able to do it as well. But no, that was not the case. My wife likes it a lot, too, which is really cool. And they're, you know, they're grain free, gluten free. There's all the frees plus protein stuff that she can eat and not have any like weird gluten intolerance issues or anything.

And what's really cool is we've partnered up with Magic Spoon, and we're able to get you guys $5 off the variety pack. So you get four different flavors, like the staples. I'm not going to remember all of them, but there's the frosted, there's the fruity, there's the peanut butter, and then the cocoa. Chocolate. Yeah, chocolate. Cacao. Cacao, cocoa. Cocoa.

Yeah, that one's good, too. So all four of those, you're going to get $5 off by heading over to magicspoon.com slash powerproject. You don't have to put a code or anything in you just go to that uh go straight to that link and you'll receive five dollars off of that variety pack links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes should be a fun show today guys yeah we got uh joel seedman on the show today um we've uh saw a lot of his stuff on instagram he has been posting a lot of content and he's working with a lot of high level athletes and um it you know a lot of his stuff is

interesting because um a lot of people you know would be in disagreement with a lot of stuff that he's sharing because he's kind of known as, um, doing stuff in a partial range of motion. And, um, it'll be interesting to ask him some questions because he, like some of the stuff he says, uh, sounds to me like false claims. For example, he'll talk about full range of motion in the squat and say full range of motion for a squat is, you know, around 90 degrees for a human. And I would I would like further explanation of that, because while I don't disagree with his techniques, I don't disagree that somebody could end up gaining some really wonderful attributes from training in different ranges of motion. I agree with that 100%. And I would actually, I actually understand that when you're talking about producing force and working on changes of direction, a lot of times producing force and changes of directions happen with minimal bend of the knee.

If we're talking about lower body type stuff, if you look at most movements that you do, lot of times producing force and changes of directions happen with minimal bend of the knee. If we're talking about lower body type stuff, if you look at most movements that you do, you're not really like squatting down. You're not, your hip is very rarely in any athletic endeavor. I mean, it might even be hard to even name one that's not a powerlifting competition squat or a clean and jerk or snatch, a movement that's not a weightlifting movement where you are below parallel and then exploding through some, it's hard, you know, be hard pressed to figure out an exercise where that is a viable movement that is done in the actual sport. However, that doesn't mean that squatting to uh, to what your body's capable of,

which I would consider full range of motion. Um, I do think he's bringing up a really good point, um, in the fact that he mentions like, uh, tightness and he talks about a passive squat versus an active squat. Some of that language I kind of like, but that's more nuanced coaching stuff than it would be a fact, I believe. I would say, for example, if he took Ensema and he took myself, I think that we could say for sure that Ensema is able to perform a full range of motion squat while maintaining good position with your spine and maintaining healthy positions with your knees, your just overall alignment.

And also keeping active even at the bottom of the hole where some people would lose it. Yeah, where with myself, it'd be like, okay, Mark, you just go with the range of motion that feels good to you. And I would kind of agree with that because let's kind of face the facts here. If I had, if I had 135 pounds on my back in order for me to go down further or to try to go

down as low as you're going down, I got to like give up position. I got to give up position in my lower back. I got to give up position with my knees, even my ankles, like my heels don't want to stay down. And so therefore, I got to put myself into some compromising position. What happens when I do that with weights that are heavier, with weights that are 315 and 405? Well, now I'm getting squished down into position that my body doesn't want to actually go into. body doesn't want to actually go into, but I'm creating that range of motion with having these forces squish me down in these positions. And I know a lot of this, cause this is like, this was my powerlifting career was to try to tow that line of figuring out how to stay as tight as possible, kind of almost on purpose. Uh, but to have it not be super ridiculous to the point where

you're getting pushed in positions that are compromising and you're going to hurt yourself because if you give up your lower back just a tiny bit with six plates or seven plates, you're in a lot of trouble and might be looking at like a career ender. And ultimately, that is kind of what happened to me. I i had a 1085 squat that i took down and as soon as i got into a position where i had to give up my back a little bit i also didn't have great external rotation of the hip i lost almost all internal rotation of my hip and as soon as there was deviation you can watch the video as soon as there's deviation as soon as the knee goes in just a little bit it's lights out and i'm boom i hit the ground that would not have happened if i

had better range of motion that wasn't just a strength issue i got pushed through a range of motion that my body didn't want to go to so i was weak from that position and one thing i do appreciate because i've been going through a lot of joel's content you know a lot of people like flame him but i've been going through a lot of it and I've been seeing, okay, I see how this can be really useful, especially for high level athletes. Number one, they're, they're a majority of the things that they're doing is on the field. So if they can still get the benefits of squatting some heavy load while not going all the way down, um, knees don't have to go past 90 degrees, et cetera. Um, I can see that being massively safe and beneficial and they can load without getting, without it being dangerous. But then there's the side of it where I'm just like, okay, but then what if the athletes did have the skill of going lower and being able to

create force there? I mean, we did have Ben Patrick on knees over toes guy who also works with a lot of athletes who also works on rehabbing knees. And the interesting thing is that he is on the opposite spectrum of things where he's like let's actually work through that range of motion start with the bare bones no weight and slowly progress to be able to work with some pretty impressive nate with full impressive weight with full knee flexion whereas when joel talks about it like for example when he talks about things like the sissy squat or the squat etc he's talked He's talked about how like, you know, like I think he, I heard him mention how when he used to squat Astrograss and deep, um, he did it for like the gym bros and, you know, it caused him a lot of actually need degradation, knee issues

and, and pain and, and, and sciatica. Like it sounded dangerous, but like, I don't necessarily see, I mean, I don't see how that can necessarily be because again, if you're doing this safely and it takes a long time to get an athlete to do that safely. Right. I don't see anything but benefit if that athlete's able to access that range. I mean, you, you've seen the clips of a Jordan, right. Or even who's that NFL player that his nickname's Gumby. Y'all know black guy. He's, we just, we just talked about him.

You're telling how he can move his body in crazy ways. He's the defensive player. Crazy. I don't remember. You know, I'm sure we'll bring it up. OK, one second. I'm going to know. I want it to be a confusing thing. No, people need to understand because once once like once gumby nfl once i give you guys the name dude this uh this coffee fair life protein is really good it's a combo shout out to uh steve uh the plug or what is his name ron he's the guy that wears the fancy glasses in the nfl oh oh uh oh oh yeah yeah the linebacker. God damn. He dresses. Y'all supposed to know football? Dresses all impeccably.

Yeah. But we'll think of his name. All right. So even before we think of his name. I don't want to answer it because I just want people to just scream at their phones right now. Super Bowl MVP, I believe, at one point, right? Are you guys fucking with me? Because I know Andrew knows.

No, I can't. Oh, you really don't know. I can't pull his name out of my head right now. But the way he moves like when you watch highlights of him moving he's he's getting in weird positions he's getting in deep knee flexion creating force quickly because he has that ability and i think that if you can safely give that athlete an ability while not getting them injured it's just more power to them but i I can see how Joel's work keeps athletes safe. It'd be interesting to ask him because I haven't really seen a video where he's saying,

I haven't seen him promoting that athletes shouldn't have access to that range of motion. I haven't seen him say anything like that. But from the videos, you kind of take that away because you're like, well, he's talking about these shorter range of motion. You know, I haven't seen him say anything like that. But from the videos, you kind of take that away because you're like, well, he's talking about these shorter range of motions, but he's also not talking, there's, I haven't seen any footage of him talking about stretching. I haven't seen any footage of him talking about

like body weight exercises. So maybe he has different thought processes for different situations and for different things that allow the athlete to demonstrate these ranges of motion because most of the stuff i'm seeing that he's promoting is usually through the gym it's usually through lifting weights and again i would i i do think i mean you can argue any point but i do think he has a good point uh when you're talking about strength and change of direction and producing force, again, when we're talking about running, skipping, jumping, I mean, look at the effort that it takes for somebody to do a high jump or the effort that it takes for somebody to do a long jump or the effort that it takes for somebody to dunk a basketball or to do a 360 dunk with a basketball or to dunk from the foul line, no matter how far away you try to dunk or no matter how high you try to jump, your knee never has

to bend that much. It might have to go over your toes, you know, it might have to be in a position that is, you know, might be, you know, different than the way you're training in the gym perhaps or something like that. But that's where most, you know, that's where extreme amounts of force are produced. And when you go to throw a punch, you know, if you're thinking about like jabs and, and, you know, like a right cross and hooks and things like that. Um, again, your, your, your force production is, is from like, I guess what you would say, like a half bench press range of motion.

It's not. Yeah. And it, yeah. And it's coming from your hips. I mean, I think in SEMA and I, and Andrew, I think all three of us on this show are in agreement that we don't really like to be like, oh, well, because you're doing MMA and because you might be on your back, let's have you use dumbbells

and bench left, right, left, right, back and forth as if you're trying to punch your way out of, like we're not really fans of like trying to take the sport. Like you're not doing jujitsu, you're not going on your back and putting ankle weights on your back and putting ankle weights on your back and like trying to mimic all these different movement patterns

that you do in jujitsu. You're just like, I'm just going to go to the gym and do some box squats because that's going to help strengthen my hips or I'm going to do a regular squat because that's going to get the glutes, the hamstrings, the quads, those kinds of things. I think you might say, well, you know, because in jujitsu guys are tweaking their necks. And if my neck wasn't, your neck's already pretty large, but if my neck wasn't big, or if I was feeling pain there, I might address it. I might train it more, but you're not necessarily going to go out of your way to

try to train it by having people try to choke you or to try to find some sort of resistance with choking because you're probably getting plenty of that in training you would instead go to the gym and use a neck harness or use appropriate stuff in a gym that you can mimic just strengthening the neck those kinds of things yeah yeah i'm i personally for myself, I'm not a big man of crazy specific jujitsu training. When I come to the gym, I want everything to be able to be strong. And personally, I like to be able to work through large races, ranges of motion. I want to be able to produce a decent amount of force. Like, for example, shoulder presses, right? This is going to be the place where you're the strongest. You'll be able to produce more force here. But when you're down here, it's going to take more for you to produce force from there, right? But the thing is, when I do work like that, I can see why individuals and trainers and coaches don't have people do those movements. Because if you overload that area, if you overload when you're in a deep knee flexion

for the squat, it can be unsafe for the athlete if they don't understand how to moderate their load. So whenever I do a lot of these movements, I'm using lighter loads and I've slowly progressed using heavier loads, but I started using light loads to allow myself to get used to be able to create force in those deep compromised positions. And now I can create force in those positions with long, bigger weights, but I had to start using embarrassingly small weights. And I think that's one reason why a lot of people don't advocate that because it's, it can be dangerous, but I think if an athlete can figure it out and if an athlete can be safe and be moderate,

which is a hard thing for athletes to do naturally, we want to push it. But if you can moderate it, you can reap benefits from it. There's a lot of ways to get results here. So I, I, I appreciate what Joel is doing and it's actually quite interesting that he's

a man. I, I got to say, I think he's the first of his kind that I've seen promoting this this way. Have you seen that before? I mean, I know we have like the high school football kid is like, I did five 15 squat for three reps and he cheated, you know, and, uh, did, uh, you know, a throw a quarter squat or whatever. But Joel is like, he's in promotion of these things. And also he's having people like hold positions. I guess, I mean. Isometrics.

When you think of 90 degree isometrics, you automatically think of Joel Seidman nowadays. Yeah. Because he has drilled that in. 90 degree isometrics, 90 degree isometrics. So like that's his thing. But you think of like a box squat, right? Yeah. Like if a lot of coaches. That's a good point. degree isometrics so like that's his thing but you think of like a box squat right like yeah like if a lot of coaches good point a lot of coaches have like you know high school kids or college kids box squat why so you don't have to go below parallel with a heavy load but and it's not

an isometric hold but at the same time it's limiting that range so you're not squatting too deep right um and there's there's like uh rack deadlifts, there's pin poles, there's all kinds of different things. Um, pin presses, um, uh, Josh Bryant, huge proponent of a lot of partial range of motion work. Um, but most of these people are also huge proponents of full range of motion work. And most of these people are not only fans of just that, they're also fans of further range of motion work, you know, where you're doing like deficit deadlifts or a cambered bar bench press or bench pressing with dumbbells. So you get the you get the stretch at the bottom and things of that nature. Let's go. There he is.

Hey. Trying to get that post-workout meal in. What are we doing over there? Man, I was intermittent fasting today i do it sometimes and i was like yeah we don't eat over here we never eat oh yeah we we live off air great way to great way to start off the show we uh we feel your pain we know we know it too well especially when you start smelling food from like somebody else, somebody else is walking around with something delicious. You're like,

fuck man, screw fasting for today. I always see you guys like, you know, sipping on something good there. So it's like, you know what? I better make sure I'm prepared too. Great to have you on the show today. Really excited to talk to you about this topic. And I was just mentioning that I'm not really seeing other people promoting what you're promoting. So I think it's great because it opens up dialogue, it gets people to think, and hopefully it gets us all into a better spot. What I think is interesting is when we're talking about strength training, sometimes there's a difference between the way that someone might train specifically for strength for a sport like powerlifting versus the way an athlete might train versus the way a bodybuilder might train for maximum hypertrophy.

But through some of the stuff that I'm seeing you speak about, I've not really seen other people talk this way. And in a lot of the exercises that you're showing, they may be viewed as partial range of motion work, like as in the bench press, right, where people are going about halfway down and then pressing the weight back up. I saw you do that with an NFL quarterback recently. In the past, I know there

have been some coaches who are like, look, if you're a quarterback or you're a pitcher in baseball, probably not a great idea to go all the way down with the bench press because of the limitations of the shoulder and maybe it's too much weight and so forth. And then we're seeing you do the same thing in squat where people are doing like a 90-degree squat. And these are things that appear to most of us as partial range of motion work. But I believe that you feel quite differently about it. It's not even necessarily partial range of motion work. I think as you have explained it, you believe that that is full range of motion for a person, for a human, as it pertains to a squat. Can you explain that thought process and maybe how you ended up kind of landing on this and maybe recognizing that

what everybody else is talking about is different than what you're speaking about? Yeah, definitely. I like how there's no shrewd coat and we're getting hardcore right into the deep questions right off the bat here. This is good. Yeah, I think, like you said, I view the 90-degree principle as not necessarily partial range of motion, as you just said. I actually view that as something that is not even, I would say, full range of motion. I would consider that maximal range of motion, which to a lot of people sounds kind of crazy because it's like, wait a minute, everyone goes deeper than this. I know you can get deeper. And I admit I could get deeper and my clients could get deeper on

every exercise. However, they would have to sacrifice certain elements of proper muscular contractions that we wouldn't want to sacrifice. Some of those being alignment of the body, okay, just overall body positioning, biomechanics in terms of, okay, if we're looking for an athletic squat, we want the hips, knees, and ankles in line. We're basically looking for two kind of straight tracks, railroad tracks, if you will, where the knees, hips, feet, and ankles are very straight.

And a lot of people aren't used to seeing that because we're used to seeing powerlifters, used to seeing Olympic weightlifters where they have a lot of external rotation. Their feet really rotate out a lot. And, you know, that's great for having to reach depth requirements for powerlifting. It's great for having to pull yourself under the bar as deep as you can to get the maximal load for a weightlifting competition. But in terms of for something that's athletic or something we're looking for it to be more functional and optimal alignment, we're looking for that straight position. In order to go deeper, to go beyond 90 degrees, I have to sacrifice that neutral alignment.

Feet have to start rotating out. I also have to lose a little bit of intramuscular tension slash stiffness or tightness, which we also don't want to compromise. I also have to lose some elements of proper lumbopelvic hip control or posture alignment. And everybody compensates differently. You know, for example, for me, my compensation to go deeper is I have to rotate my hips and feet out, which most people have to do. Some people to go beyond 90 degrees, they have to have spinal flexion. Okay. So again, it's fine.

But under loaded conditions, we probably don't want to be doing that too frequently, in my opinion, from what I've seen, unless again, you're doing something for powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting. So once again, that's the 90 degree principle is something i do consider to be maximal range of motion and also while keeping as tight as possible um again if you if you lose some of that tension you can go deeper but it's like okay why would i want to you know sacrifice some of that muscular tension that i'm working so hard to produce to my athletes. I want to interrupt for just a second and say that I have helped probably thousands of people squat.

Like I've literally seen thousands of people squat in person, worked with people in every which way you can think of, you know, having them have their feet straight, having them point their feet out, having them go with a close stance,

have them go with a wide stance. I've worked with people that are, you know, under five feet tall all the way to being seven feet tall. I've worked with people that weigh, you know, 90 pounds all the way up to people that weigh 400 pounds. And I have to honestly say that what you just said, I have seen to be very true. Something happened at Super Training many years ago where we opened up the gym and we had more space

and the squat rack used to be close to the wall. Now, when the squat rack was closer to the wall, I didn't have opportunities to get the 360 perspective to be able to get around people and really examine them from all angles and examine them specifically from the back. Once we did that, I recognized how much people's feet move when they're doing a squat. And if you, anyone has a slant board or anybody that's experienced, you know, doing a squat

where you rest your calves on your, or I'm sorry, you rest your hamstrings on your calves, they may have noticed this. They may have noticed that you got to kind of lump, you know, get in a little bit of spinal flexion. You might have to do something a little tricky with your lumbar. You may have to push your knees excessively forward over your toes, which can be great and can help load the quads and can have a desired result. But also for some people may be too strenuous. So I have seen nearly, I mean, I guess I haven't tried to observe exactly what you're saying with everybody all the time.

But now that I'm running it through my head, I have seen what you are talking about 100% of the time. And I've noticed it even more so as people started to increase weight and or try to increase their range of motion. I kind of just for lack of better terminology, I kind of call it sandwiching in. Like people will try to be on kind of the outside of their feet. They're trying to push their knees out a lot of times and they get to certain depths. And sometimes they don't have the rotation of the hips, enough external rotation of the hips to be able to do that through a full range. Their feet will collapse slightly. They'll be on the instep of their foot. They'll lose a lot of power and their knees will kind of cave inward.

I've seen that many, many times. I've seen a lot of different varieties of things, but I've definitely seen the foot, people trying to keep the foot straight as they go lower and lower. The feet will go just a tiny, tiny bit. Once the feet go, the hips go, the lower back goes and lots of other things go. So I'm in full agreement with kind of what you're stating off the bat here. Yeah, no, I think that's some very intuitive points you made there, especially with the feet. I think a lot of coaches, they don't examine the feet.

They just, Oh, we want to look at the big muscles. We'll look at what's going on with the hips and the quads and the shoulders. Like you said, if the feet go, everything else goes. That's your point of contact. And it's also interesting what you said there about creating that external rotation and how oftentimes once we do that, we'll see some compensation patterns in the feet and ankles. One of the things that is being more of a strength coach for athletes and not doing so much in terms of powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, one of the topics that is discussed more right now is something called joint centration.

And I take it a little bit farther. I even say muscle centration. The topic of centration, really, all that means is that we're basically trying to disperse force as equally as possible through the targeted or loaded structures. We don't have unequal pressure through certain spots. I always like to equate it or use the analogy of a bridge. We don't want spots where we have too much pressure. We don't want weak links. We want basically pressure equally dispersed as much as possible. That's why engineers have a job.

They make bridges so that that force is dispersed as equally across the bridge as possible so it lasts the longest amount of time. The same is when we're doing human movement, especially when we're talking about like functional positions, okay? And that's why when athletes jump, they typically have a straight foot position. Their hips, feet, and knees are in line. When you bow out and you externally rotate, again, may be great for achieving extreme depth, but you lose that centration. You're now placing excessive tension on certain areas of the hips

and knees, and you're having too little tension on other areas. The force and the force vectors, they're no longer going straight through. And oftentimes what you just mentioned that valgus collapse is actually a first response that people will compensate with oftentimes unintentionally because the body is trying to bring them back to neutral. And it's, it's why that happens so frequently. So this,

this is actually, this is really freaking interesting to me, just because like, for example, with what Mark mentioned there, when I first started squatting, I mean, I had a lot of those issues for a few years where I would have valgus knee when my when I would dive bomb because I lacked the ability to maintain force while like going down into depth of a squat. But as I started working on my mobility, as I started learning how to utilize my feet to grab the ground, to create torsion, because like you just mentioned, when a lot of people squat and deadlift, for example, let's just say squat, their big toes will leave the ground when they start to reach depth because their toes are not creating that that force to maintain that position their feet are weak right so then they end up losing that position and things end up getting out of place

but when you actually learn how to do that you you get you you can maintain and you also increase your mobility your active mobility through those ranges you don't just lose tension when you pass the 90 degree angle. You don't have to give it up because you can demonstrate it. You can do it. You can demonstrate it. This is the thing though. I don't think a lot of people generally take the time to build the ability to do that well.

Because when you look at high level athletes that are also lifters that have worked on their feet, that have worked on their mobility, and they can get to those ranges and maintain activity, their lumbar doesn't move at all. They're maintaining good spinal neutrality, all of that. It takes a while to build, but I don't think that I don't understand how that can't be beneficial. What I do think is that because it takes so long to build and because there are so many small little weaknesses, athletes can't necessarily have the time to focus on all of those different things. Might take half a decade.

Might take might take a fucking while. Right. And and because of that, like, number one, I love I love the way that you're having people squat and athletes squat because, number one, they have to be good for their sport, right? They have to be able to demonstrate the things on the field. They don't have to squat below 90 degrees or with a 90-degree joint angle, right? But they can actually do that while maintaining that position, coming down here, up, still able to be able to load that volume, maintain spinal position so they're not injuring anything. But I – like, for example, we had Ben Patrick on right. Knees over toes guy. You look at the ATG split squat. When I started doing the ATG split squat,

I could not go into deep knee flexion without my ankle coming off the ground. And I couldn't maintain my, um, an upright torso because I didn't have the hip mobility demands. But after a few months, I could maintain force, having my knee go all the way forward, keeping my heel on the ground, being active in that deep position with an upright torso. Because I was able to build those mobility demands and force in those positions. But it takes a while. So my question, I'm curious about this. My question, I'm curious about this. Do you think that it's not beneficial for athletes to do it?

Or is it more so that it just takes too long and there's too many little things for these athletes to have to fix that the cost is not worth the benefit gained? Especially since not all of this is going to be sports specific. That's an interesting question. I would say, first off, I would say what you said in terms of, okay, it's just the cost benefit analysis here in terms of how much time it's going to take. That's something we always have to take into consideration with high level athletes. You know, at most I'll train athletes four hours a week. Okay. Four, four times a week for one hour.

Yeah. That's not that much time. Okay. So we do have to basically say, Hey, what is going to give us the most bang for our buck here? Uh, and, and, you know, it's kind of like even the, even the topic of, uh, Olympic weightlifting for athletes, you know, if they can't do Olympic weightlifts with, or, you know, snatches and cleans and jerks with really good technique or safe technique,

is it worth having them do those exercises? Then you can say, well, we just need to coach them properly and train them. Well, you know, Olympic weightlifters have been training Olympic lifts for years, decades, oftentimes, and they're still working on their form. They're still working on mastering and they still have technical flaws. So it. So I think to your point, there is definitely something to be said about, okay, how much time do we really have to work on these subtle elements? Now, I'm going to take this a step further and be a little bit more controversial and say that even if it didn't take that degree of time, I probably still wouldn't implement it because if we're actually looking at some of the physiological and biomechanical principles and even the neuromuscular physiology in terms of human movement, I would argue for most individuals, most individuals, okay, some of those things would not necessarily be beneficial. Now, with that said, this is a tricky topic, but I always like to look at things

on a scale of one to 10. It's just a very simple way to look at it, right? So if someone has very lousy movement, okay, and let's just say on a scale of 1 to 10, there are 2 or 3. Horrible mobility, horrible stability, just everything, every dysfunction, compensation pattern you can imagine, okay? And we have them do some of the things that, you know, maybe you're talking about or certain mobility drills that maybe I wouldn't necessarily agree with or have athletes do. But let's just say on that scale of 1 to 10, just keeping it simple, that's a 7. Okay, maybe it's not optimal, but it's still good. That's going to represent a massive improvement for that athlete. And we do see scenarios like that.

That's why athletes will do some of these protocols that I necessarily wouldn't say are optimal, maybe some of these corrective mobility routines and say, wow, this helped a lot. Okay. But we always have to look at, you know, I always like to say good as the enemy of best just because something worked well, it doesn't mean it was optimal. And so if we're looking at some of the other principles that I like to follow in terms of like the 90 degree mechanics, taking muscles through a natural range of motion and not going through their maximal end range of motion. I would say on a scale of one to 10, just from maybe being a little biased and then from what I've seen, I would put that more like a nine. Okay. As far as

a 10 goes, I don't know if anyone, nobody knows everything except God. So to say a certain training principle is a 10, I don't, would never want to claim that. So, but just being a little bit biased towards my own philosophies and what I've seen experientially and anecdotally, as well as some of the research supporting that. So, so again, you could see if I took someone who I trained, who they've been training at that nine level for two years, and then we had them do other things that let's just say we're on a seven. That would represent a regression that they might feel a little worse because their body's used to feeling a certain way. Now, I know that's a very overly simplistic way to put it, but

because physiology is so complex, there's so many variables to take into consideration. I like to kind of use that scale one to 10 just to show like, hey, there's a lot of things that work. I've tried so many things myself. I've used a lot of things, my own athletes over the years. What I've come to in terms of my own training methods is not a result of going from, oh, I was training this way. Now, let me train 90 degrees because I want to come up with some trendy new fad that I just think is going to sell and make me a marketing machine. It has nothing to do with that.

It was very gradual transition. It was a very long, steady journey where I kind of gradually saw myself having to adjust my range of motion. Same with my athletes until the point it's like, man, why is everything looking like these 90 degree angles when we, you know,

just have them clean things up and why, why is everybody gravitating towards that? So I know it's kind of a long answer to a little bit of a simple question, but. I think you're bringing up a good point, especially the fact that you're working with athletes, you're working with people that this is their career, this is their job. And that could be kind of looked at in different ways because you could say, look, man, if anyone gets a hold of someone like John Jones, you know, Bones Jones from the UFC, they can probably make him look pretty good, whether they have him doing farmer's carries or bodybuilding or powerlifting just because he is an exceptional athlete, you know? So sometimes it can be difficult to tell, but I would imagine that athletes aren't really that into going backwards. They're not into having regression.

They're not into being injured. They're not into, so if they're not making progress, I'm sure they're probably like, I don't know about this guy. And so clearly you must be getting results for people. What are some of the results that you're seeing and how long have you been working with athletes? Yeah. You know, it's, it's one of the things on social media and Instagram, people always say, Oh, how much are you paying these athletes to work with you? You know, that's a good question. How much are you paying? Oh man, I'm almost bankrupt now. No, but so it's, it's one of those things. Athletes are very stubborn.

They're very skeptical and they're a hard sell. Okay. So, and, and they're you know, especially if things that are different, especially when you start telling them that, Hey, what you've been doing is not optimal. And in some ways what you've been doing is not optimal. And in some ways, what you've been doing is wrong. Even though you're a pro athlete, let me have you do it differently for them to stick with it. They have to see results almost immediately. And what I mean by immediately, obviously, they're not going to get stronger. They're not going to gain muscle within

a day, but they have to feel certain sensations. And I can almost, I tell, you know, different people this who ask me about my training methods all the time. If I can get an athlete in for one session, I know I'm going to have them hooked. And it's nothing to do with my amazing training abilities, my amazing skills. It has nothing to do with that. I just know that if we put an athlete through a protocol, they can feel certain stimuli that are optimal for the human body. They're like, wow, that feels amazing. I can feel things fire that are optimal for the human body they're like wow that feels amazing i can feel things fire that i have not felt fire i can do these positions that used to cause me pain within five minutes it's like how come i can squat now and i haven't been able to

squat for five years there's no pain all we did was you know take them through a simple protocol that is based on scientific sound principles again it has nothing to do with my training i could have a lot of my clients take some of these pro athletes through the same thing. They would get the exact same results because they've had to do it themselves. So when the athlete feels that, it's an easy sell.

And then over time, you know, they start, wow, I'm stronger than I've been. My movement on the field feels great. And that usually, they start feeling that usually in a few weeks. So again, this has nothing to do with me, like giving myself a pat on the back. It's just really cool to see when some of these athletes, uh, you know, have a proper stimulus and they use it and they take hold of it, what it does.

And, and it's, but I will say this too, you'd be surprised how many of these pro athletes, uh, their training protocols in the NFL and MLB, they're pretty lousy. So you could actually take a lot of other protocols, and they would probably work well too because the training that they've been doing is so antiquated and so outdated because it's what coaches have been using for the last few decades because their coaches were doing it because their coaches before them were doing it.

And it just got handed down. And really in football, especially, you know, you just see this grandfather kind of hierarchy of people who have been in the league for decades. And, you know, they happen to know this person and it's tough to break in. So a lot of the methods are very old school. It's tough to break in. So a lot of the methods are very old school. Have you studied things like force production or have you kind of more just had more like observational? You know, because if you think about like someone doing like a long jump, somebody doing a triple jump, somebody doing a high jump, somebody dunking a basketball where there's, you know, a great deal of force production must be going on for somebody to elevate their body in these ways and propel their body in these particular movements, but they're not bending their knee very far. Is this sort of how you stumbled upon some of this stuff? Or is this more like you're in the gym and you can squat 225 by rubbing your butt on the ground versus, you know, you can handle 405 by going, you know, mid range, which, you know, what some people would say mid range or like a half squat type of movement. Like, how did you kind of start to really stumble upon some of this stuff? And what was, if there was like an aha moment, was there, you know,

was there a moment where you're like, hmm, I think this makes sense this way? Yeah. The aha moment for me was, it was necessity because I got to the point when I was about 24 that I couldn't squat more than once every three weeks. I couldn't deadlift more than once every few weeks. My joints, my knees, my hips, everything was hurting. And everyone who saw my squat, and I'm dead serious about this. Everyone who saw my squat in the gym, I'm talking about experienced powerlifters, weightlifters, always said to me, man, you have an amazing squat, awesome ass grass squat, great mobility, such a good looking squat,

how do you get it to look that way? I had that since pretty much, I would say, from 21 to 24. It's not that I wasn't doing a proper squat. By the books kind of expert common consensus, it was a great squat. Okay. And it baffled me. Why was my body not able to do it anymore? Now, I have a pretty sensitive body for whatever reason. I actually feel it was a blessing in disguise. Some people would say, you know, that sucks. But I think it was a blessing because it forced me to reanalyze things a lot earlier. Okay.

A lot of individuals, maybe, you know, they can squat deep until they're 40 35 maybe 50 maybe 60 i see it sometimes in high school athletes you know 17 18 they have to change because it just catches up to them i always say uh faulty activation patterns faulty movement eventually catches it up to everyone like smoking you know you may be able to smoke for a few months and you start to feel it. Some people can smoke for decades, not feel the consequences, but eventually it's felt in everyone who smokes to some degree. And the extent of what's felt, whether it's death, some people, they die sooner because they smoke. Some people, their quality of life changes for decades and it sucks because they can't breathe as well. It just messes with their hormones, their chemical makeup. So it does impact everyone. For me, it impacted me when I was 24.

I had pain in pretty much every area of my body. So it really made me rethink what was going on. And I said, okay, if I'm following the books and, you know, I'm doing it that way, why is my body starting to break down? So I basically had to go on this journey of fixing myself. It led me down this path of wanting to seek even higher education, researching for myself. So I did my PhD and this was not something where it's like, like you said, I would say it was the opposite of, okay, I was doing 225 deep and it's like, oh, let me try 405. See how it feels. It was a very gradual process because i uh was almost arrogant about squat depth i was like oh if you can't squat deep it doesn't count um i was i was one of those guys

so it wasn't like you would not have caught me squatting shallow uh in my earlier mid-20s or early 20s because of you know almost uh i wouldn't didn't want to disappoint, disappoint the bros. Let's put it that way. Depth before dishonor, as they say. Exactly. So, um, it just took me down a journey. So I started looking, I basically said, Hey, I need to basically disregard everything that I've learned. Start with a blank slate. Let me look at the research and the science by myself without, you know, from my own lens,

not with other people telling me how to interpret the results or what we should be doing let me look at it for myself and i gradually kind of came up with these protocols did a lot of little mini research studies and then did my dissertation at uga and the more i looked at things the more i looked at biomechanics the more i looked at neurophysiology structural physiology the more and the more i started applying some of these physiology, structural physiology. The more, and the more I started applying some of these protocols to my clients, because I've been training, um, personal training since I was 18 and I have not stopped, which is, it's, that's been, um, another part of my journey because it's allowed me to take what I've learned and implement it immediately. Not just to my own

body to make sure, Oh, this isn't just a personal thing for Joel, this stuff works, but for everyone else, you know, everyone's different. No, no, no. I've been training people of all different walks of life, different ages, different sex, different ethnicities since I've been 18. So I've been able to apply these things. And I started to see things come together. It was becoming very congruent and very systematic and very similar, almost uncannily so. And so it made me really start to think, hmm, what's going on here? And

that's how these protocols came into existence. You know, looking at your page, there's a lot of amazing things, the unilateral work that you do with your athletes, the offset movements. I haven't seen many people do offset movements like that. For example, I think it's a row and then one hand back to control. That's a lot of really useful stuff, even for individuals like bodybuilders. But before we move into more of this awesome stuff, I really want to try to dig a little bit deeper on the idea of the 90 degree being the optimal place for a squat. Because like I mentioned before. Or it just even being, I think, as you say, I think Joel, you, you say that that's full range of motion, full range of motion. Um, and I do see

especially for athletes and especially for individuals to see results immediately. Cause I, you mentioned that they, they see results immediately and I can understand how they see results immediately. Number one, because they're squatting to a depth that's safe for them, that they can easily maintain spinal position, that they don't lose hip position, that they can maintain force through their feet if they're here. Most, like especially professional athletes, too, they can do that, and then they can make progression with that because now they can load that. They can get stronger, which will allow them to get bigger, and it doesn't affect the sport, which I get. that. They can get stronger, which allow them to get bigger. And it doesn't affect the sport, which I get. But the thing that I guess I don't necessarily agree with, and this is, this is personally anecdotal, but then I've also seen it with a lot of individuals too,

is for example, myself, I had a meniscus surgery when I was 21. Actually, no, 23. I had a meniscus surgery when I was 23. And that was because of like, I injured my knee when I was doing squats with powerlifting. Right. So so like I was doing some dive bombing to try to get depth. And I was trying to work on my squat technique, but that was my fault. Right. And I also had Oshkosh Slaughter when I was younger. So my knees have never been great, even though I played a lot of college soccer, etc. I've always had kind of ginger knees, right? And I've had to be careful with the movement. I'd have to be careful with my squat depth, even doing things like leg extensions. I couldn't go in and I've Mark, Mark has seen the time that I wasn't able to do leg extensions. I couldn't go past 40 pounds without being like, ah, yeah, we're not going to extension anymore because it hurt my knees. But when I began actually implementing, like again, knees, I'm going to use Ben Patrick as an example, because I think Ben is somewhat of an opposite spectrum where he goes through that full range, right? By working that. And again, this is, this is the thing. I didn't see results immediately doing that type of work. It took me

doing regressions with no weight, doing literally step-ups, just like literally just having slight knee flexion on one knee. And then over time, the results weren't seen immediately. And if I just stopped there, I'd have been like, this is some bullshit. I'm in pain. But over time, my knees got stronger. My knees got more resilient. I was telling Mark, I was in Vegas a few summers ago and just walking around during the day, I got back to my hotel room and I was like, fuck, my knees hurt. Like, because I didn't have that strength. But this year, as I started to implement that, and I've seen this happen for a lot of other individuals too, because you have to work from the most regressions where it doesn't, it's not sexy.

It's not impressive. It's not loaded. Right. But over time, now my knees are the strongest they've ever been. I'm able to present massive amounts of control through deep ranges of motion and strength and resilience through deep ranges of motion. I could I can leg extension the rack now. And that's because I worked in that range for a period of time. So I've I've I've seen like I think I've seen you say that, you know, working in those ranges can somewhat cause degradation of those joints.

But myself and a lot of other people have seen the opposite by working through those ranges, but not working through those ranges in an unsafe way. You have to you have to start at the regressions. And I've talked to a lot of people about this a lot of people i know that have to start at the regressions don't stick with it because it takes a while because it's kind of like when you're fucking doing a step up and you're just right here and you're just doing that rep after rep it's like you don't see results immediately and you're just like fuck this this doesn't work but i stuck with it And the people that do stick with it, see the massive benefit and strength within that joint. So I'm curious, are, is it certain that these, or do you believe that these things are actually like causing degradation of those

joints for athletes working within those deep knee flexion ranges or ranges in general? Or is it that these athletes, number one, there's a lot of instruction needed. There's a lot of regression needed. Athletes don't like doing things that are boring. Generally athletes like working with some fucking weight. They like feeling good.

Right. And with what you're doing, it is extremely beneficial. It is extremely smart. It does keep the athletes safe, but they can also make progress immediately. Do you get what I'm saying? So do you know, I do this, there's several topics in there to, to explore. Um, I do think a hundred percent, first off there are, uh, it's not just, you know,

you can't just look at range of motion is black and white. I think regardless of whether it's 90 degrees or whether it's, you know, deep end range of motion, there's quality range of motion is black and white. I think regardless of whether it's 90 degrees or whether it's, you know, deep end range of motion, there's quality range of motion and there's poor quality range of motion. I've seen plenty of people say, Oh, check out my, my 90 degree squat. I'm,

you know, Joel Seaman told me to do it like that. And I'm looking at like, that's a lousy looking 90 degree squat. Yeah. Your joints are at 90, but you still have valgus collapse. You have no motor control.

You know, you have a spinal flexion going on. You're shifting to one side. So just because something's 90 doesn't necessarily mean it's optimal it can be sloppy and just because something is deep range of motion doesn't mean there's no motor control and it's sloppy there's there's everything in between yeah okay um so yeah i mean again i wouldn't have people do an astrograph loaded squat anymore, but there are, you know, powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters who have a very good looking ass to grass squat that is much safer than the way most people would do an ass to grass squat. So, yes, I do think there are definitely degrees of variance in terms of higher quality, lower quality in there. You know, I've seen some of Ben's stuff. I don't, I don't, uh, uh,

follow it religiously, but he, we, we've reached out a few times to each other. We're on very good terms. He's a true professional, by the way, only the greatest things to say about him. Um, so I can't really say anything like negative about him. I wouldn't. And about his protocols, first off, there's a lot that he does that I actually love a lot. The emphasis on hamstrings, the emphasis on dorsiflexion, which I've been saying for a long time. The emphasis even on partial, starting with partials and partial range of motion. Allowing the knees to move because a lot of power lifters, they get into that low bar squat mentality. It's like, no hips back, hips back. It's like, well, we got to still bend the knees, like let the knees bend too. Um, and even isolating the, you know, isolating the, the weak muscles and doing things to actually

like really hone in on that, like the quads. Okay. Rather than like, Ooh, I have a knee pain, forget isolating quads. Like, no, shoot, you need to isolate your quads. Okay. Rather than like, Ooh, I have a knee pain. Forget isolating quads. Like, no, shoot, you need to isolate your quads. That's what's weak. That's what's, that's what's one of your problems. So I think there, and the back pedaling, the backwards pulling, um, and even a lot, he does a lot of slow eccentrics. Okay. Which I think slow is actually when I started, uh, when I was 24, 25 and I started to really like, okay, I got to rethink things. First thing I did. Okay. Because I saw some stuff with, um, and I started to really like, okay, I got to rethink things. First thing I did, okay, because I saw some stuff with, and I actually, I don't know if he said this, but I've heard that some of the stuff, knees over toes guys, Ben Patrick does,

is he's followed a little bit in the footsteps of Jay Schroeder, who trained Adam Archuleta. That had to be probably a decade and a half ago, okay? that had to be probably a decade and a half ago. Okay. Now his stuff, and I, this is some of the first things that, so I want people to understand that I actually went through a phase that was actually somewhat similar to what knees over guys,

knees over toes guys did. And I actually, I tried, I literally tried everything I could get my hands on. Okay. Every day. Just to give, give a little context to that.

He used to have people like jump off the roof of their house and like bound and like, I mean, they did just crazy stuff and it was a progression thing. So I don't want anybody to think like, Hey, I'm going to go jump off my garage or whatever. But he had people do really wild stuff.

And with Adam Archuleta in particular, he was able to take them to a really high level. But also there was a wake of a lot of athletes that were kind of that were pretty banged up from that kind of work because it was very intensive. And if you could survive it, I think you ended up with great benefit. But it kind of seemed like you only had one client that survived it. Well, it's kind of the old Soviet protocol. It's like, okay, we're going to take these athletes that are like, maybe probably not going to make it to gold medal, but you know,

maybe with the craziest training protocol, if they survive, they'll, you know, they're in a medal. So let's do 12 foot depth drop. So, but anyway, so that, that, that, those, those slow eccentrics with those deeper range of motions with those longer holds, which is not too dissimilar to what I do, except the range of motion part, obviously the slow eccentrics and the holds. Um, you know, Jay Schroeder was doing that and I, and knees over toes guys does that a lot, controlling the eccentric, controlling your movement, doing holds that is going to benefit anyone and everyone. Okay. Just that in and of itself okay forget talking about range of motion for a second so so many things that ben does are

amazing okay um so i like i said i think and we've even said this when people have tried to get us to like argue uh on social media we both have said hey like guys you know we actually agree on more than we disagree on okay so it's not like oh'm saying all this. And he's saying exactly the opposite. I think there's a lot of, uh, a lot of corresponding things that, that we agree with. So I'm not surprised when people say they got results off knees over toes, guys, those methods at all. Would you, and do you utilize some of his protocols? If you do have an athlete that comes to you that has banged up knees? I actually started implementing even more dorsiflexion with the

Tidbar. And I've been using that more. I actually revisited and started using again, not again, because I actually never use them, Nordic hamstring curls. love nordics yeah yeah i actually i i didn't use those because i i i tried using them a little bit with some athletes and they got such extreme soreness and i tried using them like oh man like forget this and it was just because of like my hamstrings weren't strong enough that was like 10 years ago though and so i just it's one of those things it's like hmm why haven't i gone back to that? And after seeing all of his work, it's like, okay, I need to revisit this. He's making some great points about this. Started using those again. Awesome exercise. Um, ironically,

the first time trying them, uh, uh, probably about six months ago, to be honest myself, I was able to get more or less, uh, and some people would say it wasn't quite full, but I was about right there. I was able to get, uh, you know, a few. So it's interesting to me because, like, I don't do a lot of hamstring isolation, but just training with 90 degrees. My hamstrings were still pretty strong. But, again, so I think this goes back to the point kind of what I mentioned earlier. And I hope this doesn't sound bad, but good is the enemy of best. Okay.

And I don't like to, I don't know how else to phrase it, I guess, or maybe we can say, you know, good, better, best, you know, again, what's best only God knows that. So I don't want to put myself in a position where I would say this is best no other way. But just from what i've seen um and having gone through so many progressions i would say some of these methods are great doing a lot of benefit for a lot of people but ultimately uh in whether it's six months two years three years some of these deep ranges of motion are going to come back and and people are going to have to revisit that because they are going to come back and, and people are going to have to revisit that because they are going to cause issues. Um, so that's, that's my, uh, prediction for, for not everyone. And maybe, you know, maybe some people they do it such controlled fashion. They, they do it, you know, systematically and they do it in lower volumes and they make sure they're doing it more strategically

than others. Um, so I think this goes back to the other question about the 90 degree thing, which we can discuss why from a scientific standpoint, I would, I would go there. So I hope that doesn't sound like, like I'm bashing on the like deeper range of motion and like trying to be, you know, cocky about my methods. It's just how I'm kind of looking at it. I do. I do agree with you that the deeper ranges of emotion will

fuck some people up because a lot of people, when doing any type of movement, when you get comfortable, you kind of, I guess, lose your, or you stop doing things as carefully as you did in the beginning. Partially because maybe your stuff starts to feel really good and you

start to get a little bit cocky and you start to maybe do things you shouldn't be doing in an unsafe manner. And then it could come to bite you in the ass. So I can understand that aspect of things. But the thing I'm curious about, like, why, like, I can get, I can get that because there's, there's always user error. Like there's always user error. But if an individual is being smart with those deep ranges of motion, they're not going with to failure or or doing every single day right just like crazy amounts of volume on those joints within anything can be done to to

be unsafe for example if someone with uh with the 90 degree joint angles you mentioned that there are people you see them doing it online and they're like oh this is 90 degree joint angles and it's just like it's not good you you even see that is not what I'm talking about. That is ugly. Just like when it comes to people doing ATG split squats, fucking Nordic hamstring curl step ups. I see that shit online. I'm just like, oh, you gonna fuck yourself up.

You know what I mean? But the individuals who are doing it in a safe way, who are, they're modulating their volume. They're not going too crazy with it. Just like with what you're doing in, in the optimal setting of the way it's being done. I don't see how it would come back and bite them in the ass, but anybody who does anything in an unsafe manner, it's going to fuck them up, you know? Right.

So, I mean, I mean, I can get what you're saying, but do you, do you, do you agree with that? I mean, I can get what you're saying, but do you agree with that? I do to an extent. And I think that if you do it like that, I think there could be a lot of scenarios for a lot of individuals where they don't necessarily see obvious issues potentially ever, I would say. And maybe they only see the benefits. I would say. Okay. And maybe they only see the benefits. Um, but I would still argue it's a little bit of a mixed bag of, you know, a lot of benefits, maybe a few, a few consequences, possibly a few negatives. One thing that, um, I think as we get maybe more into the, some of the science here, it'll maybe be a little bit more clear, but, uh, in terms of,

you know, what, what I believe. Um, I believe. But one thing that I've noticed a lot with my athletes and just people I've worked with, you know, not everyone who comes to me, I have, I'd say 50% of people that come to me, athletes, general populations, they come to me broken down, injured, they tried everything, they did this. Okay. And, you know, we fix them up. Okay. And like you said, you, it's kind of like not surprising. You have them do controlled motion and have them get everything aligned. Oh my gosh, it feels so much better. Okay. But I also have a lot of athletes who come to me that use deep range of motion. They can squat deep. Um, and, uh, but one thing that a lot of that, I would say every athlete has areas of tightness. Okay. Uh, and

areas that they have to foam roll, they have to stretch, they have to get soft tissue work done. Okay. And so even the athletes that have, that demonstrate the highest quality of mobility in their training, and I can do all these, uh, more extreme ranges of motion. One thing that changes when we actually switch them over completely to 90-degree joint angles, okay, in my eccentric isometric protocol, is they no longer have to stretch. They no longer have to foam roll. Their need to get continuous soft tissue work goes out the window, and their need to do long, exaggerated warm-ups becomes almost non-existent where they can just jump into heavy weights.

Not that I have them do that because that's not the smartest thing, but they can do that. I always like to say every human, every well-functioning human should be able to sprint dead cold and without getting injured because that's, you think about survival aspect of nature. That's probably the most basic survival, you know, activity that we have or skill that we have. You know, if somebody's going to mug you, hold on, let me stretch out

before, you know, one second. No, you've got to be able to take off. Obviously there's some adrenaline components with that, but you know, you shouldn't be pulling something every time that happens. So the ability to do that, the ability to be able to produce high force, jump in into a training session, everything feels good. It's like, oh no, I don't need to stretch. Why should people have to constantly stretch their hip flexors, their hamstrings, their glutes? Why are things constantly tight? If training is really that beneficial and therapeutic, why all these soft tissue modalities? Why all this stretching and corrective exercises? So one of the things that I see when I switch everyone over to the 90 degree principle is those things no longer become even a discussion. They

are at first people like, Oh, what should I do for stretching and foam? I'm like, don't worry about it. Like, I don't even tell them like, stop doing it. I say, Hey, it's not something I really recommend or advise. Um, and, but as we continue, you do it as you feel needed and eventually they pretty much all unless you know it's one of those days where it's like man they just did you know 40 uh 40 yard sprints they're just laser shot they may do a little bit of foam rolling just to kind of loosen it up if they want um but so to your point there that's that's something i've seen it's like okay they had high quality of movement but we got it higher and it wasn't from going with more range of motion or more mobility it was from just teaching them optimal range of motion so again a lot of these things you know

you could you can go back and forth on i don't think there will ever be a study or a body of evidence that comes out and says, this side is the best. And this side is, you know, N mobility or N range motion is the way to do it. Nine degrees is the ultimate way. Everything else sucks. There will never be a research study like that because research doesn't work that way. And all the research we see right now in kinesiology, it's so convoluted and so contradictory and it's so mixed. There is evidence supporting extreme range of motion. There's evidence supporting 90 degrees. There's evidence supporting smaller than that in terms of range of motion. So, you know, I don't think there will ever be a way to prove it.

There will be ways to have good arguments and support for it. and support for, and I think what you're saying is, is about as good as support and is, is probably as, um, uh, very detailed and correct way of looking at it as I've heard anyone say it, to be honest. Um, so, and it makes me even think, okay, like maybe in the future, I'll have to experiment with a little bit more, even though I feel like I've experimented with a lot of range motion in the past, but I think the way you're phrasing it, the argument that you're giving it, the support you're giving for it is outstanding. Do you have your athletes do anything?

Cause you're mentioning kind of loaded and you're mentioning like with certain amounts of weight. Do you have your athletes do anything that is maybe unloaded that is taking them through some other type of range of motion is there a particular well i think we just broke up there oh oh okay sorry we're back some some broke you said do i have athletes do anything yeah have your athletes do anything unloaded uh through different ranges of motion um like um i've seen you show examples of uh like a goblet squat and things like that you do things with like less weight

or unloaded where the athlete may be taken through a larger range of motion squat? Or even in the case of the bench press, when somebody is warming up with the barbell, do you just say, hey, just take it all the way to your chest? And once we get a little weight on there, then we're going to kind of switch to this other way. um i used to uh probably up until about eight years ago i was i would you know when i started kind of stumbling across this whole research with the 90 degree thing and and i was like oh okay cool so 90 degrees is a great way to train let's mix it in and let's try these and then the more i used it, and people often ask me, how has my training evolved? The way my training has evolved over the last nine, ten years since I started this kind of journey with my PhD

is that it's become more stringent, more rigid, and more strict. And I know that sounds bad because it sounds so dogmatic. And a lot of people are going to be like, dude, you're just going to exclude everyone from that. This is what I believe to be true. I can't help that. I'm just stating that. If I offend people,

that's not going to do about that either. We live in a world where everybody wants to be offended in some way. Not you guys. I'm talking about the listeners. Everything's got to be politically correct and everybody's got to be offended in some way not you guys i'm talking about the you know listeners and uh you know whatever uh everything's got to be politically correct and everybody's got to be happy but um so yeah it's it's uh i even lost my train of thought there but uh yeah so but going down that that uh method of like you know more range of motion um i i've come to the more the more i went through this more strict i got the more is like okay at first it's like oh around 90 degrees and we'll mix it in and we'll do some end range it's like

okay maybe we'll stop doing quite as extreme end range and a little less and do like more like close to 90 i'd see people like get their movement more often to the point where it's like oh i have pain when i do a squat let me make adjustments it's like oh okay let me the point where it's like, Oh, I have pain. When I do a squat, let me make adjustments. It's like, Ooh, okay. Let me look at it. It's like, Ooh, man, that's actually like right at 90. And then, okay, let's have them do some mobility stuff. Ooh, that still hurts. Okay. Let's exclude that. Let's go back to this motion. It's like, Oh man, they're at 90 again. And I saw this happen so much. So this happened to my own body. It's like, okay, this like kind of pair the shift of paradigm shift. It's like, okay, it's a 90-degree thing. It's not like I wanted it to be this because honestly, nobody else does it and I get a lot of flack for it.

So it's not like I wanted this to be the end all be all, to be honest. The deep astrograph stuff, the extreme mobility, if that was what I thought was optimal, I would have loved that because I think it looks cooler. I think it's an easier sell and having a PhD and pushing those methods. I think I could have got more followers. I think I could have got even more traction than what I'm doing now, because it's very against the norm, what I'm doing and what I'm preaching. I want to say that in my experience, just in my own lifting, you know, I started powerlifting when I was pretty young, and I always just thought, if I can demonstrate full range of motion, which I never really was a person

with a lot of great mobility, wasn't really like an ass to grass squatter, but I was squatting at depths that would be well within the ranges of what you would see that would pass in a powerlifting competition, stuff like that. And I used to think the use it or lose it technique was something that would actually work, but it didn't. Like over the years, I've just gotten tighter and tighter and tighter. Now, I will admit I do not specifically go out of my way to work on my mobility. I'm not, you know, spending time stretching and doing those things. But from the time I was young, I was under the impression that if I do these things through full range of motion, I will not get tight. But I'll give you just a

small example of like something like a bench press. My range of motion has gotten a little bit better on a bench press, but it's very hard for me, even to this day, to do even like a rowing exercise to get the weight to my chest because of how tight the muscles are in the front of my shoulders and through my chest. It's hard for me to get under a squat bar, you know, getting my arms in a correct position for a squat because of all of the bench pressing over the years. And the bench pressing over the years has always been full range of motion. So if it's true that you should be able to, you know, use it or lose it type thing, I've been going through these range of motion, maybe more so than anyone on the entire planet for 30 some odd years.

And I still lost those abilities. So there could be, there could be some valid things to what you're saying. There could also be valid things to what Nsema points out. Like I wasn't necessarily going out of my way to maybe stretch and open up these muscles, but I was doing things that I thought were full range of motion for a long time. Bench pressing, flies, cable crossovers, dips, all these things that clearly put your arm in good position, but still for some reason, my result was a negative in terms of my mobility and flexibility, as opposed to being a positive. That could also be, you could also factor in the fact that I use performance enhancing drugs and maybe they're somehow at fault as well. So it's

hard to kind of pinpoint what it is, but I have been using what I would consider to be full range of motion for a long time and didn't reap the benefits of being able to keep those positions better. They have mainly just gotten worse. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's the common trend that I've seen. That's one of the things that kind of made me become a believer in this,

this 90 degree stuff is that no matter how much people, you know, worked on their mobility over time, they just got tighter and tighter. But if they cleaned up the quality of their mobility right that did work at first and i did that okay this is what i'm saying and i hopefully this never happens to you and i'm like you know i'm not saying like oh watch like you just wait man don't you put a curse on me joel

it's hilarious no no but uh so that but that's you know one of the for example one of the first uh exercises that i did to really get my hips to start feeling better when all this stuff got messed up with my with my hips and my knees and back on squats when i was 24 25 was a deep lunge from two boxes i would get uh in two boxes and basically drop down, drop my knees below where you would go to the floor, right? You do a lunge, you go to the floor, you're, you're limited how deep you can go because you can't have your, your body go past the floor, obviously. So I did that. That helped. Okay.

And that was obviously a deeper range of motion I'd ever been doing. Okay. In terms of lunge made me feel better for a time. And I started to develop issues from that. Okay. And it actually helped my squat. And I, you know, started doing more of extreme RDLs, stretching out my hamstrings, really work on the end range. And that helped for a time. Okay. But then eventually all this stuff started to backfire on me. And I got to the point, it's like, why is everything backfiring? Some of these things work for a week. Some of them work for six months. Why did this keep happening? I felt like I was going around in a circle, just driving myself nuts for a while because of that. And it was very frustrating. So I think to your point, Mark, that's what I've seen.

It's like pushing those mobility boundaries is actually the very thing that actually can cause tightness because a lot of this stuff comes back to inflammation. Inflammation, as we know, is one of the number one things that's linked to just about every negative aspect of the human body, whether we're talking about sickness, whether we're talking about hormone issues, whether we're talking about muscle spasticity, inability to move the joint through its full range of motion, it all comes back to inflammation. The research is pretty clear on this. One of the things that causes inflammation that contributes to the greatest degree of inflammation that I found in the body is taking muscles through an extreme range of motion, particularly loaded. Okay. And just over time, the tissues, the tendons, the muscles become so inflamed. And that's the very thing that actually ends up limiting mobility. It may not at first, it may open some things up because it's

just for whatever reason, maybe it just, you know, you know, neurally or maybe structurally, it starts to open some things up. I can't explain all that, but that's what I've seen is that inflammation, anything that may produce inflammation. And when you go through a deep range of motion, this is kind of starting to get to some of the science of 90 degrees. You hit 90 degrees. OK, the muscles are firing at their maximal capacity. This is why I always go back to it. 90 is maximal range of motion. I can't go deeper unless I let some of that tension go. Okay, now I let some of that tension go, I can get deeper. I let a little more tension go, I can get even deeper. I let all my tension go, I can get to a bottom of an ass to grass squat and just sit there hanging out on my tendons and ligaments. Okay.

That is going to produce inflammation over time. It may not immediately, but what's eventually going to happen is that inflammation is going to limit mobility. And this is where people are having to do foam rolling and stretching and corrective exercises for 20 or 30 minutes before they go into their squatting session because they're so tight and stiff. If I had to right now, I could go into probably, I wouldn't want to go past 315 on, and a lot of people would say, oh, that's like an eight squat. Well, I would consider it a 90 degree squat, whatever you want to call it. I would do my 90 degree squat and I could do it without injuring myself because nothing's inflamed. My body feels great. Everything feels loose. Everything feels mobile. If I need to get into an extreme range of position, it's there for me. My astrograph squat is better now than it used to be. And this is one of the things I've demonstrated in a few videos of me showing that I can still do an astrograph squat.

It actually feels 10 times better now than it used to because my mobility is freed up because my tissues aren't inflamed. But when I was pushing that and constantly training those ranges of motion, I was starting to lose my mobility. And I've seen this trend, not just in myself. Again, I always have to replicate this and make sure it's something that I see repeatedly in all my athletes, all my clients, and a lot of different walks of life. It's something that I've almost never not seen. So first off, I want to agree with you because, for example, there was a period of time, I, I think it was, it was either early this year or like late last year. I just wanted to be able to do the splits just cause I was like, ah, it's not going to help me athletically, but I just want the skill.

Um, I was getting close and then there was a time I was rolling in jujitsu and I pulled my hip flexor and I was like, I shouldn't have been trying to over mobilize and try to do the splits. It wasn't serving me. So there's definitely a level of trying to over mobilize and it can actually be, it can become a detriment. Especially if that athlete cannot control that range actively,

but they can get there passively. It's not good. It's not good at all. But the one thing I want to kind of respond to as far as the, the, the, the extra range of motion being problematic over time. I agree with that too.

Because when you're, let's say you're doing an ATG split squat. I think everyone on this channel knows what that is. Or a really, really deep squat. Athletes generally try to progressive overload things over time. Progressive overload meaning increase your volume, increase your intensity, the load you're working with within those ranges. And they just want to get stronger with it. But there's a certain point where you don't need to be able to squat ass to grass 315 pounds or 400 pounds. And when you do that too often and with too high intensities, it can shoot you in the

foot because although you might be able to show that at that time, the intensity is too high and it can actually be causing you problems downstream where now you've just pushed it a little bit too far and it backfires. Athletes don't generally try to maintain something that's there and hold onto it. They try to push it. So when trying to push anything, for example, deep, deep ranges of motion, if you keep trying to push the loads and the intensity you're doing with these, it can cause high levels of inflammation and then cause injury and then backfire. So the thing I would kind of push back there is once you get to a certain spot, let's use the Jefferson curl, for example, because

chiropractors hate the Jefferson curl. There's a lot of people and the Jefferson curl for everyone listening is if you're standing straight, you're literally allowing your spine, you're allowing yourself to get into spinal flexion. You're not keeping spine neutrality and you could be using a load to get down to your legs. Right. But then there are certain people who are like trying to do this with a 225 pound barbell and it looks impressive on the internet, but at a certain point, you're just going to get a pop, pop, pop. It's not going to be fruitful for you with that range. But if you can do that with some decent load and your body can, can get there safely, it can be beneficial. But that's the thing.

You've got to modulate that intensity and you don't always need to keep pushing what you're able to do. So there's that. But there's the other thing you mentioned that you don't need to stretch, right, or do mobility or whatever before you work out. And I agree with that, too. And the funny thing is, is I see that on the other side too. Like what you're doing right now. Yeah, that's good. Athletes shouldn't need to foam roll and stretch and do all this. But on the other side of things too, like Ben has mentioned, and even myself, I don't have to, I never, I haven't foam rolled in years. You know what I

mean? I don't have to stretch. I don't have to do anything. I can literally go into the gym and just execute movement because my body is ready to do it. So I think the big overarching theme with all of these things is that you have to moderate the intensity. You need to moderate the progression of which you do any of these movements. Because if you take it too far, you can fuck yourself up. If you take anything too far, you can fuck yourself up. yourself up. If you take anything too far, you could fuck yourself up. But if you get to a point and you're able to demonstrate it and it's working well for you as an athlete, you don't have to keep pushing your ability to work with that load. Does that sound kind of, yeah, no, I think, I think that's on, I think we would agree. All of us would probably agree on that. I agree with

that for sure. Um, yeah. And even what you said, uh, it reminds me of something that I see a lot with athletes, the ones that do the most hamstring stretches and the ones that work on their hamstring flexibility because they have you know tight hamstrings they're always stretching them always stretching yeah those are the same people that pull their hamstrings the most when they're when they're running especially you know always it's like and and you think about you know something like non-contact where somebody is sprinting like why would should somebody ever pull something when they're running and sprinting? It's probably one of the most common injuries in sports right now is people who run and pull the hamstring.

Wait, what happened? I consider that to be a neuromuscular hiccup or a neural misfiring. You wanted to produce some type of action or force or movement, and your body basically didn't do what it was supposed to do. And this goes back to some of the neuromuscular elements, and this is one of my arguments for training deeper ranges of motion or end range or at least doing it too frequently, right? It's because how we move in the weight room, okay, ultimately trickles into and transfers to every

area of movement. It's one of the areas that I studied is motor learning. Okay. And it's looking at like the neuroplasticity of the nervous system, the plasticity of it and how it changes over time and how we, you know, if you look at somebody with a funky walking gait, okay, chances are when they sprint and run, you're also going to see elements of that in there. And if you watch them squat, you will also see elements of that in there. Okay. And so how we move in one area transfers into the other to change someone's movement mechanics and to change someone's biomechanical techniques when they're doing fast movement running sprinting very hard to do we try it it works to an extent happens so rapidly if someone is like you know too externally rotated with their hip when they're sprinting like

how do you fix that like oh stop externally with their hip when they're sprinting. Like, how do you fix that? Like, oh, stop externally rotating your hip when you're sprinting. Like, okay, that'll last for three seconds, if that. So we know that one of the only ways we can reprogram the nervous system to fire properly is through very slow, deconstructed, systematic training scenarios. Strength training, right? Or if you want to call it corrective exercise or anything, it's a very slow, systematic situation where we can really hone in on biomechanics. We can analyze it. We can adjust it.

We can fix it. We can reinforce it in their central nervous system, right? Okay. So at that point, we say this is how we can alter or change the nervous system and rewire it. the nervous system and rewire it, we have the issue of this plasticity and motor learning of how we basically train starts trickling into our movement. So if we're training with deeper range of motion, okay. And let's say we're training like a lunge, for example. Okay. And this is something I started to notice when I started doing those lunges, uh, those deep lunges, my sprints, my hip flexors got so freaking tight when I sprinted because I was overstriding

because I was constantly practicing these lunges and it got ingrained into my nervous system that instead of producing these not sharp 90 degree angles with my hips, they went past that. I learned how to breach my body's natural protective barrier and I started having more tension, more tightness, then the need to stretch became greater and greater. And that was actually the very thing that was actually causing the issue. So this is where we start getting into some of the science. And even from a muscular and structural standpoint, sarcomere overlap and myofibrillar overlap and, you know, acting in myosin the length tension relationship we can start altering that in a negative way we can start uh you know basically where our muscles start

operating under overly lengthened conditions which is something we don't want to eat we don't want them to be overly shortened we don't want to be overly lengthened we want them to be in that optimal position so that again if we're sprinting the muscles lengthen shorten lengthen shorten through their natural range we don't want them to over lengthen and if we've been practicing over lengthening we've been practicing going past 90 guess what hamstring pull and that's again why we see so many of these these um non-contact injuries and they're becoming more and more common so that's that's uh you know just kind of my um two cents on that but uh even um there something I don't want to, I know you probably have other questions about it, but there's something else that you mentioned with, you know, okay, get your mobility, improve it. But at a point like, okay, like enough's enough.

You don't need to like keep getting more and more mobility, right? Okay. So I think any strength coach in this field who really understands the science would agree with you on that. I agree with you on that. Okay. So we come to the conclusion at that point that there is such a thing as too much range of motion, right? Okay. Because it's basically like, how far do you go?

You go until the muscle rips off the joint or do you stop a little bit before that so if we say that then we're basically saying maximal range of motion is not optimal because we're saying that well we don't want to go too far okay so if maximal range of motion is not it's not optimal then we're basically saying there's something in between and we have to look at the science and say where is that in between because when we look at yoga studies okay and we look at like dancers one of the things that they found okay you hear me sorry i can hear you okay okay one of the things they found was uh the dancers and the yoga individuals who participated in yoga, the ones who could most easily get into the positions, the extreme positions, were the ones who had the most issues. They were the ones that oftentimes need hip replacement.

So just because our bodies can do it, it's like, oh, we didn't push it too much. My body was fine. I was able to do it. It's like, okay, we know that doesn't work because look what happens to these yoga people. it. It's like, okay, we know that doesn't work because look what happens to these yoga people. It's the people that actually couldn't get into the extreme positions with the yoga studies are the ones that don't have the issues because their bodies fortunately shut it down. It basically sent them the optimal inhibitory signals and said, Hey, we're not, we're not doing this. It's the ones that had the unfortunate scenario where their bodies allowed it. Guess what?

It became problematic. So. And that's, that's exactly what happened to me when I was, uh, doing, I was trying to get to the splits and passively, right. I was just letting my body sink in. Right. And then I went into doing an activity, the activity being jujitsu, um, and being put into that range with load. Now I have an opponent loading me in that range that i i could get into but i didn't have weighted control there i pulled it but so now i'm curious about this because i agree with you there but i guess the experiment that i'm personally trying to do on myself is trying to figure out how much mobility how much active mobility can i be able to achieve

with it being good for sports so when i say say active mobility, it means like, you know, doing things like a deep sissy squat with load, doing things like, you know, the seated good morning loaded, right? Letting my torso get all the way down to my hips, but it's loaded. So it's not, I'm not heading into these ranges passively. I'm not heading into these ranges passively. I'm controlling these ranges with the weight, with the load, and allowing myself to be able to control those ranges loaded. I think that there could be something there because it's not that you're just slowly stretching. You're having to work against the load. The muscles are now like we're lengthening, but we're lengthening while getting stronger. That's where I think this could be something that's really, that actually can be strengthened for athletes. Because if you're just stretching, I still do like to just stretch here and there.

It's not because, not like, I don't see any specific application because I'm already mobile. I still like to stretch because it feels good. But with load, I think that's the thing that can help athletes to be resilient in those ranges. Not just stretching, like doing a stretch, but using load and, and, and working against that load actively. Do you see what I'm saying there? Yeah, no, I see what you're saying. I think that might be the missing piece within it. No, no, no. I think, I think what you're, you know, I always get asked the question like, oh, well, if you don't train these extreme positions, like you're going to get injured

when it, when it, uh, when your body is forced into those periodic scenarios. Cause you know, I think most, you know, kinesiologists, strength coaches, yourself probably agree a lot of sports, most emotions,

most biomechanically efficient positions do happen at around 90 degrees. Yeah. But there are going to be periodic scenarios where you're not, you're going to have to move out of that uh to an extent and so it's like okay if you're not training 90 then like what happens then so i know those are i mean those are uh interesting interesting points you made and especially about controlling the range of motion i mean obviously controlling the range of motion and being able to uh teach your body to absorb force through a large range of motion rather than just like passively letting the

muscles totally shut off now with that said some of the yoga studies they looked at different types i can't remember all the names of the different types of yoga but a lot of them were not just the you know contorted position ones some of them were you know hey these are exercises that are loaded with body weight loading and tension so it wasn't just a scenario where it was like hey they were just going into you know a, a full body pretzel. There was some loading and tension, but I think like, this is, this is back to them. One of the first thing I said, scales, like all this is scale. So I think this is important for people to think of it on that. It's not just this black and white picture, like, uh, like what you said. So power project familiar, how's it going? This episode

is brought to you by our sponsor, Merrick Health. Now, Merrick Health is owned by somebody you know, Derek, from More Plates, More Dates. But Merrick Health is the premium telehealth TRT and HRT clinic where we have something called the Power Project Panel that has 26 different labs that give you all the things you need for men and women. But also, if you guys are interested in TRT or HRT, you can actually work with a doctor from Merrick Health, and they'll go ahead and they'll tell you which tests you need to get along with giving you the treatment that you need. You need to check them out. Andrew, can you tell the people how to get? Yeah, absolutely. So we have links down in the YouTube description as well as the podcast show notes, but you need to head over to MerrickHealth.com.

That's M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com. And yeah, if you are interested in TRT, you can actually contact them. You'll hop on the phone with them. And when it comes time to actually start paying for some of these panels, just let them know that you've heard it through us and you want to use promo code PowerProject15, and that's going to save you 15% off all the recommended labs that they give you. Again, links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Highly recommend it. They are the premium telehealth HRT clinic, TRT clinic. They're really, they're second to none. So head over there right now. What about in terms of being jacked? What about, you know, a lot of our listeners are obsessed with

being jacked and getting bigger. So if someone, you know, is trying to, I guess, you know, have bigger legs or have a bigger chest, do you still promote these partial rage emotions? Yeah, I do. Because to me, one of the probably the most obvious way someone can get jacked, in my mind, is to stay healthy long term. Because if you're not staying healthy, you're constantly getting injured. Good point. You're not going to get jacked. You may get jacked for a few months

and you get injured. And so plateaus and injuries are the number one thing in my mind leads to hypertrophy plateaus. So I do my training, whether you want, whether somebody agrees with like, oh, well, 90 degrees is optimal

for gaining size. But if someone agrees with that or not, I think we can all agree that staying healthy is key. And I would argue that the way I train is one of the best ways to do that. But there are some other things there too. Yeah, what about like, I guess, motor unit recruitment? You know, something along those lines. And maybe in the case of the squat, maybe if you're not going down all the way, maybe you're not training, you know, all the muscles around the knee the same way. Like, I don't know what your

thoughts are on that. Yeah. So there is actually, there are, I mentioned this earlier, there are two sides of the human subject studies. I wanted to kind of break up the science here into human subject studies and also studies where they just examine like the muscle tissue where they're not maybe necessarily looking at like, okay, take these individuals in and have them do like a strength training study. Instead, they actually look at what's going on intramuscularly in a muscle. So there's two types of studies. So if you look at the human subject studies, there are some studies that say, hey, EMG activity was highest when they went to 90. There are other studies that say EMG activity was higher when they went deep or asked to grasp.

So, you know, we're left with this like, okay, well, which side was it? Because you can't, you know, they both can't be right, obviously. So this is where if you actually look at elements of muscle physiology that are not just based on bringing in, you know, 40 individuals and myosin, the way they work together. And we, and it going back to that length tension relationship, it suggests everything we know about structural muscle physiology suggest that 90 degrees is where we have the most motor unit recruitment. Okay. So this is where people say, Oh, well, the research is split. It's like, okay, it's split, but now we have to go further if it's split and say, which side is correct. And to me, you always have to go back to the foundational principles

of the science. And then this, and that's what I found because it's like, okay, again, maximum range of motion, 90, 10, 10, 10, everything's firing, relax it, it goes deeper. So there's, there's definitely that element in regards to your other question about if you don't go deep, maybe you wouldn't train the glutes or the posterior chain because that's a really common question, right? People say, oh, you train 90 degrees, great for quads. You're not going to get anything out of the glutes and hamstrings. That comes down to the coaching and cueing that is used or lack of use, I would say, in these studies. Because oftentimes the way research studies are done, I've been in many of them, I've been a part of some of them, and I've witnessed many of them. The coaching and cuing that is given to participants

in research studies is horrible. Unfortunately, because of that, there's very little we can actually derive from a lot of the kinesiology studies. It sucks to say. It's not like, okay, just disregard everything. But we have to take every study, especially human subject studies, where they take them in and do like strength training. We have to take a little bit with a grain of salt, still look at it, but we can't just take it at face value. Because if you have someone squat, they're not sitting into their hips. They're not sitting back.

Guess what? They're going to have to reach excessive depths to have any semblance of gluten hamstring activation. So in my, so my answer to that would be, again, if you're going to squat with lousy squat form yet, you're going to have to go deep to get your posterior chain to fire up.

But with a proper 90 degree squat, you sit back into the hips, you know how to load it. Then in what I've seen, 90 degrees it was where it maximally happens which again some of the research studies show that surprised to be honest when the research study says that like 90 degrees is best i'm like man they must actually had some some trainers in there giving them proper cueing that's amazing so that's a big that's a big point

right there because because when you see a lot of people squat, like a lot of people are like, oh, my knees hurt when they squat. And then you watch them squat. A lot of people, most people that squat don't know how to hip hinge. They don't know how to sit back and see their hips. And like, once you sit back here, my glutes are firing already. Yeah. Or someone's shoulder elbow hurts when they bench press.

Right. And it's like, maybe they're, you know, maybe for a long time they haven't learned how to use proper form and technique i'm i'm a huge fan of a box squat and i've been utilizing box squats for many many years are you a fan of the box squat um and if you are like in in in what fashion like would you have someone maybe do more touch and go because i see you doing a lot of uh like isometric holds and stuff so maybe you wouldn't necessarily be a fan of a box squat because maybe it's relaxing the athlete too much. But I've always liked it because A, it gives me a target. It gives me a spot to stop at every single time. So I know exactly

where I'm going. I can dictate the weight by changing the height. I can go in accordance to how my body feels for the day. So if I don't want to give up any position in my lower back or don't want to have to shift forward or anything like that, I can raise the height of the box. If I feel like, you know, handling a little bit more weight, I can raise it up. What are some of your thoughts on a box squat? Yeah, no, I think the box squat definitely has a lot of a lot of merit. Before I even answer that, the box squat, you squat, if we look at the trends in powerlifting, box squat has become very popular. Pin press, board press, floor press, spotto press, rack pulls, how are all these partials becoming so popular? In my opinion, it's because powerlifters

have had to learn to adapt over time to stay healthy so they could actually compete in their sport because you know training full range i think a lot of there were a lot of uh injuries from that i think uh whether they whether a lot of powerlifters want to realize it or not or admit it i think a lot of these uh like the box squat has become popular because of necessity it's's a bit of to avoid injury. So I do think it's, uh, I do think it's superior to an ass to grass squat. Um, and you, you mentioned this a little bit, my, my main beef and contention with the box squat is that, um, you're not relying on your nervous system to dictate to you where to stop. You're not saying,

okay, I'm going to go down to where I find that maximal tension, 90. Oh, there it is. It's like, no, you haven't. And it's not arbitrary, but it's semi-arbitrary because unless you find a 90 or a box squat that is made specifically customized for your body, that it happens to be your exact 90 degree squat, then it's probably going to be a little above or a little below 90. So it's giving you that stopping signal before your nervous system tells you what optimal range of motion is. So, but besides that, I do think a box squat definitely has merit and I like it. And I think it's superior to going deep, at least on a consistent basis.

What's the, what's the cue for the squat that you might recommend to somebody who's listening to this now that maybe hasn't seen a lot of your work? Like, what's the feel? What's the correct kind of terminology so they know that they're getting to the right spot, I guess, the right depth? Like, what should line up or what should it look like? Yeah, I think if I just had to narrow it down to a few cues, first off, keep your feet perfectly straight and very activated.

So don't just let them like pan taking the floor past foot. Activate the foot. Why so much emphasis on the foot being straight in your opinion? Yeah, it just goes back to that joint centration topic we talked about earlier. It's like if we looked at someone jump, we're not going to have the feet rotate out. That would be a mismatch of force vectors. You have force basically distributing it outwards. We're trying to produce force straight down.

The best way to do that is have everything vertically stacked, not rotated out. And when we do that, we're going to feel like the force is going straight through rather than around or to the sides where we have that unequal weight distribution. So we can get more into that in a second. But I think the straight foot position, make sure their hips, knees, and ankles stay in line, like I said. Sit back a little bit to their hips without actually folding over. Okay. And then stay as tight as possible from head to toe and find your first natural stopping point. And that's it. Great. And so to just kind of ruffle things up a little bit

here on the show today, I decided to invite Mike Israetel onto the show to discuss this a little further because he's on the opposite spectrum of you. And, but I think we're all professionals here. We're all adults, so there's no reason to fight, but I think we can maybe just have our audience learn a lot more through you guys being on some, on some opposite ends. So here is Mike Gizertel. Popping on in.

Hey buddy. Jesus. Why would you get get up what'd you get a pump before you came on here what the hell um i i know that the onus could be on myself and my extreme musculature but mark i think we have to take some time to look at your mustache and examine you know is you know i was going to say something highly politically incorrect, referencing children, et cetera. What who let you out of the house like that? I have the police been informed. This is pretty much in SEMA's idea. He said it looked great.

It was my my aesthetics coach. I stay really close to Gen Z, so I know what's going on. And SEMA and SEMA, you are yourself very aesthetic, but you but you're really, I think, playing a sick joke on your friend. I know. I think he's trying to bring me down more so he looks, you know what I mean? No. Anyway, great to have you on the show today. Thanks for having me on.

I'm sure you've seen some of Joel's stuff, and I think it would be great to get in some conversation because you're promoting a full range of motion and Joel has a different perspective. Yeah. Team, team, full range of motion. And he's on a different team. So let's open up some discussion on that. Oh, sure. Joel, pleasure. Yeah. Nice. Can you guys still see me? It broke up there for a second. You guys. We got you now. Okay, cool. Yeah. Nice to nice to meet you Yeah, nice. Can you guys still see me? It broke up there for a second. You guys. We got you now. We got you, yep. Okay, cool. Yeah, nice to meet you too, man.

Yeah, so listen, these guys just called me randomly or texted me rather, and they were like, hey, this guy's on our show, and you're full of hate and rage, so come on here and be mean. And I was like, oh, I can't do that. mean? And I was like, oh, I can't do that. But perhaps, you know, in the spirit of intellectual inquiry, if I may ask you a few questions about your training methods that I've seen, you know, a lot of what I've seen is on Instagram is perhaps lacking context. Would that be okay? Yeah, definitely. For sure. Super. All right. So just actually, maybe four total questions. Yeah. So there's a few of the claims made in your videos.

The very last actual post is where most of these come from on your Instagram. So one of the little captions or little pop-ups, I don't know how to do those on my own Instagram. I'm not that TikTok savvy. But it says that 90 degree stopping process of various kinds at 90 degrees is better for the joints and i i'd be very curious to see how you arrived at that position okay yeah um for instance i just want to say uh i actually have great respect for everything you do because i've seen a lot of people post like, hey, Mike, jump in.

You're always very civil the way you handle yourself, very similar to Ben Patrick. So I really appreciate that because there's a lot of professionals in the field. And, you know, we can disagree and all that stuff. But there are some people who just go off bashing the daylights out of people, calling people out. You don't do that. So great respect and admiration for what you do. So even though we may have different views, I love what you do, man. So yeah. So one of the things there, so first off with the captions, like you have two seconds to catch

people's attention. So yes, some of that is like, hey, there's not, I can't give a ton of context because it's Instagram, right? Okay. So it doesn't give me a chance to fully explain everything. I have to put up kind of like the quick thing that's going to get people's attention. And it's not that I don't believe it. I do. But like you said, I think there's some context behind that.

Correct me if I'm wrong. You are more in the bodybuilding side of things a little bit. Would you to an extent? My own personal pursuit in training is bodybuilding. It would be it would be comical if I did anything else looking like this. Well, actually, I'm a tennis player. OK, but I also compete in Brazilian jiu jitsu and I do that regularly. I used to be a wrestler and I power lifted highly unsuccessfully for a long time. I've also coached a bunch of actual real athletes like volleyball players and basketball players. So I have some background, but yeah, mostly I just do highly unathletic jujitsu and bodybuilding, which is entirely unathletic. Yeah. No, it's nice. Very cool. Um, so one of the things is like for that post, that was with the quarterback, Taylor Heineke. So I was using him specifically because he's had shoulder issues mainly from when he fell on it.

He separated his shoulder. And so this is just an example. He could not do any type of chest pressing unless it was. I mean, this is literally directly from his mouth when we'd be working out, like he'd be saying like, man, if I go even like this much past 90, it hurts. Like it hurts bad. If I stay right there in that range, it feels totally fine. Now that's an extreme example because he had a separated shoulder and some very high impact and trauma in there. But I have noticed this trend in other individuals, people who've come in with shoulder issues or maybe even people that were apparently

healthy. But I've seen where oftentimes that full range of motion becomes a problem. And over time, the position that doesn't require any adjustments or the position that doesn't require any, you know, adjustments or the position that doesn't cause any inflammatory response is that 90 degree position. And again, I would argue it's because that's where we have maximal motor unit recruitment, maximal cross bridging. So our ability to absorb force and keep tension off the joints is going to be best. So that's kind of my rationale for that. I gotcha. And so a lot of physical therapists, and this is kind of a position stand in most of the associations now, is they say like, probably the first thing you want to do after injury initial recovery occurs

is try to expand the range of motion to as much of normal physiological range. And also sort of an offshoot of that in the study of mobility and sport performance a lot of those experts tend to think that mobility which is flexibility plus strength like your ability to exert strength through the fullest range of motion possible is kind of the cornerstone athletic development so do you see yourself deviating from that sort of mainstream position and for the reasons they're kind of experienced in your clinical practice or do you think maybe that has some merit or there's maybe some middle ground there? What do you think about that?

I think there's definitely some middle ground there because, for example, I can just give you almost verbatim what I did with – I'll go back to Taylor because this is the post that we're talking about. He separated his shoulder. This is in the game playoffs against Tampa Bay last year. He fell on it, d diving into the end zone. So he came back nine days later, and, you know, range of motion was definitely a thing that, like, hey, we had to get that back.

It's not like, oh, like, let's keep the joint immobile and create as much tension as possible. It's like, no, no, no, like, let's get what I would consider full range of motion. One of the exercises that I had him do was a dumbbell pullover, right? Laying on his, on his back on a bench and doing a pullover. And I believe the natural or optimal range of motion for that is actually a

pretty large range of motion where he's going all the way back, back, back, back, stretching that. And we gradually open that up. Same thing with overhead movements, taking them all the way.

Cause at first, you know, it came in as like, Oh man, that hurts gradually, you know, really worked on, it's like, oh man, that hurts. Gradually, you know, really worked on keeping the shoulders packed a little farther, a little farther, a little farther, started opening up. So it's not that I'm opposed to range of motion. I think, like you said, there's a lot of common middle ground there.

I think there are certain positions, especially when we start loading it, where I would say that going too far beyond 90 is not as optimal. But, you know, there are probably scenarios where people go past that and they would be just fine. So it's not necessarily that I'm against range of motion. I think it comes down to the position, but generally 90 degrees, I would argue, is kind of where that optimal range of motion is under loaded conditions or high load, high impact scenarios. And that's kind of based on your clinical experience, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, clinical experience. And then just, you know, like we said, we went back and forth on some of the science because there's flip sides to every side of the science.

As you know, you have, you know, whether it's, you know, the ketone diet, paleo diet, whether anything we talk about in the sports industry, there's always two sides of it. One side says this, the other side says this. Anything we talk about in the sports industry, there's always two sides of it. One side says this, the other side says this. So I think you can look at the research, and there's probably research supporting both sides, what you're saying and maybe what I'm saying. But I think what helped me kind of apply what I have seen and believe in it more is just what I've seen experientially at that point and anecdotally just from working with athletes. So when folks come to your account and they're trying to look for tips,

do you think it's good for them to think of it in the context of like, okay, if I'm injured or I have a history of these sorts of problems, maybe I should limit my range of motion? Or do you think everyone, for the most part as a default, should stick to kind of the 90-degree thing and not really go any lower than that? On something like a on a bench press, I think they do need to be careful on other exercises, even, you know, if they want to do like certain shoulder mobility exercises that are unloaded. exercises that are unloaded, those, I think that's a little bit more of a gray zone. I think there will be a lot of drills in there that probably would be helpful for folks, especially after an injury, just help to kind of like even neuromuscularly, like just get rid of some of

those inhibition signals so they can start opening up their movement. But under the loaded conditions, that's where I'm talking a bit more specifically about, especially something like the bench press, which for a lot of folks just causes issues. And, you know, a lot of individuals have pain, a lot of inflammation when they do the bench press. And I think it, as a result, a lot of folks stop doing the bench press. They say, Hey, I can't do it anymore because it hurts to me. I think everyone can do a bench press if they do it properly, you know, good shoulder and elbow position. if they do it properly, you know, good shoulder and elbow position. And I have found that the 90 degree position allows them to do it most safely and pain-free in my experience.

Part of the reason for the success of the slingshot is because bench pressing can wreak havoc on some people. Yeah. Right. What do you think of like, this position has been, I think, very well explained recently by a gentleman that goes by the name of knees over toes guy. And this is a hilarious thing to just pack your name to, but I think it makes some good points. And I think one of his points is that, you know, athletes that get into extreme ranges of motion and learn to slowly and carefully produce tension in those ranges can actually, to a large extent, insulate themselves from injury risk. And think about something like a sport like Nsema does, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you know, an athlete like him, he's in positions that are just

really not all that fun and extreme ranges of motion, inverting with your legs behind your head, getting your arms sort of broken off this way and that. And if they don't practice in those extreme ranges, there's some very good rationale that. And if they don't practice in those extreme ranges, there's some very good rationale to say, like there are actual rates of injury in those ranges that they will encounter in sport for sure, whether they like it or not, it's going to be higher. So what do you think about the idea that maybe

if we prepare athletes gingerly, carefully, methodically to expand the ranges of motion until they can get into really extreme ranges and still produce force, what do you think about the idea that knees over toes guy, for example, is a good proponent of that we actually reduce the injury risk by getting into those ranges comfortably and slowly? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know if you saw this earlier, I was mentioning, we were briefly talking about knees over toes guys, I was saying that he and I actually agree on a lot more than what we disagree on. So I think the one area that you just called it out is the range of motion, uh,

component that we probably have differing, uh, uh, different views on, um, a few things that I would say that one of the keys to making sure that an individual, uh, who, who maybe goes through more extreme range of motion, like a, like a martial arts, a sport or jujitsu, or maybe even, you you know dancers or rock climbers it's another one wrestlers um one of the keys that i always say is hey you just got to practice your sport okay that's one of the best ways to keep that sport specificity that range of motion for that sport so i'm not saying hey like oh like don't even practice your sport like that but in my opinion one of the best ways to prepare the body for that sport is actually practicing that sport.

And if it requires large range of motion, then when they're practicing that sport, I think they obviously need to get into it. They need to be prepared for it. One of the things I would also say is that people have been getting into extreme range of motion in their respective sports for decades, no, centuries actually, or millennia. And it was well before the dawn of the fitness industry ever came about. So it's not like we needed deep and range strength training or deep and range fitness training to get people to be able to perform deeper positions in their sports. People have been able to get into those positions for years.

And I would actually argue that the ability of individuals to get into these extreme positions now is worse than it's ever been, even though we've been emphasizing this so much. So I would say that one of the best ways to make sure individuals are ready for extreme positions is make sure the muscles and the tissues are healthy in general. They're not inflamed. The muscles are able to absorb force so that if they are caught off guard and have to get into a more extreme position, their muscles are healthy. Their tissues are healthy.

They're not inflamed. Their body's not sending inhibitory signals because there's so much pain and discomfort. It's like if, you know, if somebody gets put in like an arm position where, again, I'm not a martial arts expert, but if they get put into a certain position and that shoulder has been, you know, inflamed and tight from just, you know, doing excessive range of motion, maybe like on bench press for some reason, okay? If they get put in that position, their body's probably going to shut it down even more. They're going to have no strength there. Whereas if the tissues are healthy and they get put in that position, they'll probably have better ability to absorb force. But I also

understand what you're saying. It's like, Hey, we're not talking about doing so much training in that position where it produces inflammation. So, um, but again, I would argue that humans have been able to do these extreme positions well before the, uh, fitness era or end range training, everything about the training that I do does not take that ability, that innate inherent ability away from them. We're just adding to that by giving them a therapeutic stimulus to make sure their muscles are stronger and more resilient, resilient. Do you consider your training therapeutic and not ergogenic then? I would consider it to be both. Okay. Interesting. And then, okay, another claim real quick, you are claiming in a few of these videos that 90 degrees is better for muscle growth. There's like a pretty decent volume of literature now that directly examines full range of motion versus partial and the full wins almost every time.

There's also a considerable amount of literature on the fact that muscles, when they produce tension while being stretched, actually yield a bigger hypertrophy response than if muscles that produce an even larger amount of external load when they're not stretched. Do you think that that still confers some sort of advantage to 90 degrees? To me, it seems like if you're just analyzing, I'd say, oh, yeah, a very deep stretch seems to grow more muscle. What do you think about that? Yeah, I would say the stretch with tension is in fact, in my opinion, it's not just overload. Like you said, stretch with tension is probably the most important factor for stimulating the hypertrophy response. So I'm not opposed to stretch. I'm just opposed to excessive stretch because what I'm saying is that when you do a proper 90 degree position, the muscles are actually very stretched. Biomechanically, it may look or visually, it may not look that deep, but the muscle fibers themselves are really lengthened

because we were creating so much active tension. And, you know, I'll try to adjust the screen here just for a second, but I think, Mark, you mentioned this a little bit on the bench press. Someone is doing a bench press and their shoulders are internally rotated to get any semblance of stretch in their chest. They're going to have to keep going down and down and down and down. And finally, they may actually start to get some stretch in their pectoral fibers. But if they know how to set their back, open everything up, then, you know, by the time they're 90, in my opinion, if they're actually keeping everything fully engaged, their muscles will be maximally stretched at 90. They won't be able to go deeper unless they lose tension. So, again, I'm all for the stretch.

It's simply that there's a point, and I think everyone would agree that there is such a thing as too much stretch because if we just said, hey, stretch until you can't go anymore, we would say a stretch before the muscle rips off the bone. We know that's not optimal. So it has to be some happy medium there. And I believe the balance of that point is at 90. That's a fair point. I mean, we kind of see this like when we're doing an exercise like a row, you know, some people will say, hey, you know, pitch those elbows back as far as you could possibly get them. And now we're kind of hearing some other folks saying maybe there's a slightly different way of doing them. Maybe you can just kind of drive the elbows down and kind of do that reverse shrug type movement, and you can help load the lats. Interesting points, I think, you guys going back and forth here, and I think this is really helpful. Do you have another question, Mike?

One more. Go for it. So a lot of the exercises you're exhibiting are what we would call in sports science, unstable training. So essentially it's intentionally generated to be, the exercise is intentionally designed to be unstable. And what we found in unstable training in the research literature is that it fails to produce very high forces. Because of a lack of stability, high force production doesn't occur. So we kind of have this bifurcation in training where if you're going to be unstable, it might as well be in the techniques of your sport.

So, for example, if Nsema is practicing not getting swept, it's going to be super unstable because it's part of his technique. But when he wants to load his hips and his chest and everything to be stronger for jiu-jitsu, it seems like the specificity principle should dictate that he gets real stable on like a pop or bench press. And then with maximum stability can exert maximum amounts of force. So he's training a high force production in the gym, which is kind of what the gym is supposed to be for. And then like to your earlier point, the athlete does the athlete stuff and goes through all these ranges of motion and all that stability stuff.

So when I see the unstable training that you're doing, my first question is kind of like, if they got more stable, wouldn't their muscles get stronger? And then we could take that new strength and put it into the sport. Cause like, so, so for example, if I see a grappler that I have to go up against and he benches three 15 on like a wobbly situation, kind of halfway up and down, but we're scary guy takes a lot of strength to do that but if i see a guy sing 400 plus 500 in a stable bench with a lot of power i'm like that guy's fucking kill me and i don't want any part of that so uh you know isn't isn't it better to maybe get more strength uh when in strength is optimal another quick example is like

if it was raining on your head if the sun was shining really bright you wouldn't be able to lift as hard so you we have gyms with ceilings and air conditioning, so that doesn't happen. So, and then, you know, it'd also be a bunch harder if the music was blaring or hated the music or someone was, you know, yelling at you at three in the morning and you didn't go to sleep. And then it'd be like, well, it's kind of a different challenge. Well, yeah, that's a different challenge. You end up lifting less and that challenge is less because it challenges your actual muscles and tendons less to get stronger so don't we want to be kind of at our best foot forward real stable and strong with barbells and dumbbells so that when we get real strong we can transition to exhibiting that

strength in that athletic context of sport what do you think about that you know that's a great question i'm first off you're analyzing it way deeper and more scientifically than most people do. So I like that because oftentimes people just like ask the questions like, dude, are you even thinking about how you're phrasing it? So I like that. I think so. Just real quick on that. When you said if you saw someone benching 315 unstable, like, you know, some crazy instability variation, maybe hanging band or a ball. And then you saw another guy doing, you know, 500 for a few reps. Like obviously the guy who was doing the 500, that's like, oh man, that's this guy who probably pack a lot of force. Personally, I would be more scared of

the guy who can do both. So my argument would be not to do one or the other, to have the capability to do both. But I would also say that, you know, being able to do 500 and doing that on a more frequent basis is more important than the 315, but periodically incorporating the unstable variation. So one thing that probably goes a little bit more on notice. Are those videos on your Instagram of your guys benching and squatting to depth and deadlifting super heavy loads real stable? Because I think most, if not all of your guys benching and squatting to depth and deadlifting super heavy loads real stable? Cause I think most, if not all of your videos seem to have some kind of instability component. Yeah. So one of the things I always say, um, and I need to do a better job of this on Instagram is 80% of everything I have my athletes do everything that I do. It focuses on the

foundational movements. Okay. Now I say this a lot and I, I'm, when I post exercises, I say this a lot, and when I post exercises, I do intentionally oftentimes go after exercises that are a little bit more eye-catching because I know that for me to reach the most population, the largest portion of the audience, to make the biggest impact, because that's ultimately what I'm trying to do, is how do I get people to notice things, read a little bit more and to, you know, basically take a look at what I'm doing. If I just posted deadlift, squat, bench, and even though we do a lot of those, and that makes up a stronger majority of my training than just unstable versions, I'd probably get a quarter of the people looking at my things. My reach, my potential to impact people's lives with what I believe is our, you know, helpful methods, it would be less. So I do try to tell people that, Hey,

the unstable versions should never replace the foundational movements. They're added, they're extra. They have to, the athlete has to earn the right to be able to do those before we even touch those. I have a lot of athletes come to me the first few months of training. They're, I don't want to say they're disappointed. Like, dude, when do we get to do the stuff I see you put on Instagram? I'm like,

Hey man, you got to demonstrate to me that you can do the foundational movements properly first. So that's just kind of my answer. Now I would argue too, there are some, um, benefits and, uh, with some of the unstable training, like, you training. For example, we just take something like foot and ankle activation, which I think is very underrated and very important. Some of the unstable versions, even if we go as extreme as the BOSU ball, which honestly, probably less than 1% of everything I have my athletes do is on the BOSU ball. But I do periodically use it because I know if they can really learn to activate their feet on there and create a stable platform, even if it's just like one time out of the entire duration

that I've worked with this athlete for a few years, if they experience that one time in their mind, even in their nervous system, it's like, ooh, okay, I see what you're saying. My feet have to activate like crazy in order to stay on there. If they can get that one time and then we just, Hey, that's all it needed. And they can kind of see and get that to transfer into some of their other movements.

That's good enough for me. So I do think there is some benefit to stability training, but I do think a lot of coaches overuse it. And it's like all this, Oh, functional training, functional instability. It's like,

Oh, it's all we do. It's like, dude, come on, you got to lift some heavy weights. You got to learn how to pack a punch. Like you said, you've got to learn how to produce force.

That's the most important thing. All of the biomotor capabilities in physiology are built around the foundation of strength and force production, and there's nothing better than the foundational movement. So I don't disagree with that one bit. Got it. I totally understand. Yeah, having a big following is important i have a tiny following and i live alone and i'm addicted to masturbation i don't want to go still

you don't want to go hey hey i see you i see you on the forums masturbation addicts hey i'm not talking about masturbation homie it's porn masturbation is great brother i clarified that hey nobody here is yelling at you about it. Stay calm. I see your forearms, though. I see the forearm game. Oh, yeah. I don't train my forearms, baby.

I know what you mean, brother. Yeah. What's with this lighting? Nice. Yeah. Isn't it weird? Am I in jail? Am I at a CIA black ops facility?

And they're like, all right, you can talk for half an hour. Guys, I got to get going. I got to run. We appreciate it. Is that okay? Yeah. Am I released? That was. I got to run. We appreciate it. Is that okay? Am I released? That was fantastic from both you guys.

Most people would be on both sides would be kind of unwilling, and I forced this on Joel. So, Joel, you're a savage to be able to take this on without any preparation. Thank you so much for your time today, Mike. Like I said, Mike, even having talked with you now face-to-face like this, I have even more respect for you as a professional in the field than I already did because I saw the way you handled yourself even just on social media. So it was nice talking with you, and I'm sure our paths will cross again.

Likewise, Joel. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This was super awesome and open-minded of you to take on such short notice. Nsema, always a pleasure. Mark, cut that thing off. Jesus Christ, you're going to get arrested. October 24th, we have a seminar

here with Ben Patrick. Both you guys are invited. We'd love to have you guys come check it out. I'm going to check my schedule, see what the masturbation stack looks like. All right. I'll see you guys later. See you later, pumpkin head. Hey, Joel, thank you

so much for taking on those questions questions i know that mike was gonna like uh dig deep and i know that people watching people listening are like you know that we oftentimes have people we have um a lot of nutrition people come on and then people are like what would lane norton say about this so we like to mix things up here and we like to, I think what's probably your most convincing point, I don't even know if you, well, I'm sure you've said this before, but I think your most convincing point was we've been able to demonstrate these ranges of motion long before fitness came along. actually, and maybe we were demonstrating them better, which is even crazier because maybe we went through range of motion. Maybe we did certain things, uh, in activities where we weren't doing these things loaded. We didn't sit as much. We didn't lifestyle. Yeah. We didn't sit as much. A lot of lifestyle things have, uh, probably created, uh, many, many problems. But I, I, what I love about true professionals is that they always go back to

their original statements. And you kept doing that throughout that entire time, uh, kind of just mentioning that in your opinion, that you're continually, maybe for some people continually, maybe kicking up inflammation that may be unnecessary by taking your body through these ranges of motion. I think that's hard to argue, especially when you're an established professional like yourself and you're seeing it day in and day out. And you're not only seeing people doing well with it, but you're seeing like drastic improvements, especially when somebody comes to you and they're an NFL quarterback, you know, you're dealing with like the best of the best already. And then you're having them have

improvements, especially in the case of the quarterback you're working with, who had a separated shoulder from, you know, landing on his own shoulder. Yeah, no, I mean, I, you know, it's, it's I think the era of social media has made it where everything is taken out of context a little bit and people, it's just very easy to kind of misinterpret things. And because, you know, people are used to seeing like, oh, well, you know, A, if it's not acid grass, it doesn't count. And then they see something that's not that. It's so easy just to go, honestly, 12, 13 years ago,

I would have been one of those guys. I would have been like, dude, this guy's a pansy. Like he doesn't know how to squat deep. He's just doing this because he doesn't, you know, have the ability to go heavy. So it's very easy, I think, in this era of social media where people have no consequences for speaking their mind negatively and ripping people apart. So it's, but yeah. What about some of that unstable training?

I find that to be unique and interesting, some of the stuff you're doing and what would your thoughts be, you know, 10 years ago, if you saw somebody, uh, hitting the weights on the side while the person's trying to do a squat. Um, and how did you even come about some of this stuff? Yeah, I would have said that guys don't trust him. I would have said what these guys were saying. He's a Charlotte and don't, uh, you know, snake oil salesman. All of which are very complimentary, by the way.

But no, I, you know, if you look at those things, you have to look at, first off, I think you got to go back to the research studies. Okay. Because I would have guessed guessed i would have predicted that if you do a research study on any of these unstable variations okay they would probably show a a not a very good response a negative response or a very little positive response because again you take 40 participants who've never trained this way before you have one or two lab rats tell them, hey, go do squats on these bands

where it's hanging and then, you know, get five reps and then they're trying to gauge what their, you know, percentage of their max should be while they're doing it. It's going to be a disaster, an absolute disaster. Their ability to produce force is going to be severely, their ability to even just control it without becoming, you know, injured

and having a disaster on their hands, that's going to be problematic. And even their ability to fire the correct muscles will be all over the place. So whether you want to do EMG, whether you want to do a force platform, whether you want to do some type of biomechanical analysis, it's going to be horrible. One of the things we do with the unstable training versions is, I mentioned this earlier with Mike, is that they have to learn, they have to earn the right to be able to do those versions by first mastering the basics. So one thing that I use the unstable variations for

is not necessarily because those unstable versions are going to produce such a phenomenal response. What I use them for is to reinforce to the athlete that everything that we've been doing, that you have to continue to do it because if you don't do it on these unstable versions, you won't be able to do the exercise. So a lot of the times, you know, if you're talking about packing the shoulders, tucking the elbows, locking the back in, if you have an athlete do a hanging band chest press, if they're not doing that, it's going to be all over the place. I've had so many aha moments where athletes are like, oh man, that was so crazy hard. Now I understand why you've been telling me,

keep my shoulders packed, tuck my elbows, fire my lats. Because if I didn't do that, it felt like that ball was going to fly all over the place. Like, yes, it reinforces those cues that sometimes they need that because it just ingrains a stronger neural blueprint into their central nervous system. But there are elements too of, you know, sometimes you just never know what a unique and foreign stimulus can wake up. You don't know if it's going to maybe wake up some dormant motor units or muscle fibers or areas of the body that haven't been firing. But some of these variations may force those areas that haven't been firing, or maybe a little bit more neuromuscularly complacent may force them to wake up and turn on. And then we turn them on just maybe even one or

two times. And we go back to normal squats or normal bench press. Guess what? They feel so locked in. So it's not so much. It's like, oh, that exercise is the magic. No, it's still the foundations that are the magic, but let's explore a few other things and see if we can get some of those added little benefits from the unstable versions to transfer back to the bigger foundational movements. I think a really cool thing that's going to happen when a lot of people go and they look at your Instagram page and they see these unstable movements, you kind of mentioned it here and there, but you talked about the feet and the ankles. And when a lot of people are having to do these movements that you're talking about,

the big thing that a lot of athletes are missing out right now, and I see this in powerlifting, especially when people are squatting and deadlifting, and in athletics, is the ability to create force from the feet. A lot of people can do squats without creating force through the feet, and maybe they can squat a decent amount of weight. But once people learn how to control the feet and like you mentioned grab the ground and with a lot of the unstable movements that your athletes are doing whether it's a one-hand press and their backs on the bench and maybe one of their feet are up and then they have to they have to grab

the ground with their foot that activate and helps them activate the foot hamstring and glute they're aware of what their feet are doing. And if everything starts at the feet, these athletes are now finally understanding, whoa, if I can just, if I can root my foot, create that stability, my whole, everything up to my hips, my back, my shoulders, everything's going to be that much more stable. And that'll, like you mentioned, neuromuscularly, it'll help them learn how to activate this through everything else that they do. It's a pretty big deal. Exactly. it's a pretty big deal exactly and that and creating that full body tension so that it you know basically creates motor control that along with the feet and ankles which actually go hand in hand because if you see someone fire their feet and ankles the number one thing you'll see is full body tension you almost can't uh you can't exclude the two it goes together and same

thing with the core you get someone to fire their core and their feet, everything gets tight. And honestly, if you get them to fire one of those things, they'll probably fire the other as well. And then one other thing I would also say about the unstable versions of the exercise that I do, they often come in the subsequent workout after they've done some very heavy training. Because with these athletes, it's like, Hey, how do we continue training at a high intensity without having to constantly give them heavy loads? You know, I work with, um, a running back, Chris Carson, he's really strong. And I know that if I just have him do heavy, you know, he comes to me sometimes four days a week or not now it's the office in season, but off season four days a week. And I'm a pretty big believer in full body training.

in season, but off season, four days a week. And I'm a pretty big believer in full body training. And I can't have him do heavy barbell squats, heavy barbell squats, heavy barbell squats, and keep him fresh, especially if he's got his skills activity that he also needs to do three or four other days a week. But I also want to be able to practice the squat pattern and ingrain proper technique and activation into a central nervous system. So how do we do that without, you know, doing the same exercise and also give him an exercise that forces him to be mentally engaged to the highest level? Well, sometimes those unique variations that provide a unique challenge and unstable stimulus, it forces all that we can go lighter, but we still have high levels of muscle activation. Also gives them an exercise like, whoa, this is different.

I've got to be fully locked in, mentally engaged, or else I'm not going to be able to control this. And that level of mental engagement from a scientific standpoint is shown to be one of the most important things when it comes to mastering a skill. If the mental engagement goes because the person is on autopilot, because they've doing the exercise so repeatedly they're not learning anything anymore so that one that's what another thing that these unstable versions uh produce i agree with that a lot i think that's actually um there's some great utility in uh just knowing how to use similar exercises with less resistance um maybe you have uh you know you maybe use a band or use a chain or use some sort of unstable way of lifting weights. Even something like just doing more reps, like maybe typically you do sets of 10. Well, after you start to build up a certain strength level, if you're

squatting 405 for sets of 10, maybe it's good to squat 315 for a while for sets of 15 or sets of 20. Maybe even switching up the tempo. And now you get to use a plate or two less in some cases, but still yielding a really, really powerful result. Totally. I think, like you said, that's a good way to put it. It's like, how do you reduce load and maintain intensity? Cause that's a great way to spare the joints in any way we can

do that. I think that's a win-win oftentimes. Not to say we always substitute that for the heavy stuff, but we don't have to always train heavy, heavy, heavy. So, and honestly, it's a, it's a, like, it's a really big deal what you're mentioning there because like, um, a lot of, a lot of, uh, like we've had a lot of coaches that were strength coaches or like ufc fighters or athletic athletes a lot of these especially fighters let's say fighters have a lot of different coaches and all these coaches whether it's like the the speed coach the fight coach the strength coach etc everyone thinks that they're what they're doing is the most important thing so the strength coach like loads the athlete with there's tons of volume, tons of intensity. And then the athlete can't recover for what they got to do on the

field. They can't recover here. But what you're mentioning exactly, there's so useful for people like even myself, I can see myself. I haven't, I don't really squat crazy heavy anymore because I don't want to squat 500 pounds to that depth because I know that I can do it. But the next few days, I'm going to feel that level of fatigue. So already by this conversation, I'm realizing that I can go take four or five plates even higher than that. And I can stop at 90 degrees with control and I can come back up. And the next day, because I didn't go into such deep hip flexion and such deep knee flexion, I'm going to feel good enough to go do another really good workout. But I was able to get that load. I was able to work with that, that training intensity and be perfectly safe because

now my back isn't reaching any type of weird, like not weird, but I'm not getting into any type of compromised position with that heavy load. So I can still get that benefit without having to go to those deep ranges of motion. That's where this stuff can come into play massively. The Westside Barbell Method, the conjugate system that Louis Simmons refined and developed so well is based on a lot of these principles. And now that I'm kind of walking myself through it and thinking about it a lot more, there was so much partial range of motion movement. motion movement. As we mentioned earlier, rack deadlifts, block deadlifts, partial range of motion, bench pressing off of boards or pins. Many, many variations were used in the bench, in the squat, in the deadlift. A reverse band squat was a really popular exercise where, you know, you have the bands assisting in the bottom of the squat

and allowing you to kind of overload the weight. And even people would take weights that were heavier on a kind of higher box to just gain confidence. When they went to competition, they could lift more. And the only times you really saw full range of motion, especially when it came to the deadlift in terms of Westside barbell people and the many people that Louie Simmons assisted to deadlift over 800 pounds. And even in some cases over, over 900 pounds was on what we would call a speed day where you're doing a dynamic effort work and you're trying to move the weights as fast as possible. But those weights were usually in like a 60% range. So the recovery from these kinds of workouts can be amazing to the point where the conjugate system, the Westside Barbell Method, you max out every single week.

You cannot find another program that normally allows for that. Maybe your program might allow for that. But in a lot of cases, you can't max out every week. You're going to, you're going to go backwards. You're going to kill yourself or you're going to get severely injured. What have you seen from a recovery standpoint from your athletes? I mean, they must be able to do some of these major movements with pretty good weights, probably pretty darn often right right no definitely it was interesting to time your time talking about louis simmons and westside barbell um a lot of the stuff that i do

it's not like oh man you're thinking way off the wall like a lot of this stuff has been done to varying degrees hey i'm doing a little bit differently but like you mentioned a lot of these things uh louis simmons been doing for decades a lot of the unstable variations, the hanging band, guess what? Who's the first person to do that? He did it with a bamboo bar before anybody even did it with a normal bar. Bamboo bar is about 10 times more unstable than a traditional barbell with hanging bands. And he found that to be incredibly effective for his shoulder or his pec.

It was his pecker shoulder. And he was able to come back and still do bench press because of that. People say, oh, the hanging band is so stupid. You won't see any strong athletes or powerlifters. It's like, dude, best powerlifting coach of all time. This isn't something I came up with. In regards to your question about the recovery thing, one of the things I always have to take into consideration is recovery because the athletes don't just come to me to train. They come to me to train in between their skills days too. Sometimes

they got to be able to go back out to the field that day or the next day and be able to do their speed and agility and their skills work at maximal intensity. So they need to feel recovered. I always tell them, hey, you may be a little sore, but it shouldn't last more than 24 hours. Honestly, three, four hours from now, you should feel pretty good. Occasionally, if we really go hard, maybe like on a Friday when I know they're going to take the weekend off or really maybe trying to trigger more of a hypertrophy stimulus with a little bit more volume, maybe they'll feel a little bit more banged up, but usually it's just muscle soreness. If they're walking away from it and being like,

oh man, my low back, my knees, hold on. I did something. I did something wrong. I didn't coach you right. Maybe went through too much range of motion, too much weight. Technique was off, compensating. So I'm always looking for the athletes

to train as hard as they can while still being recovered. And one of the things I always say is train as hard and as heavy as you can while still being recovered. And one of the things I always say is train as hard and as heavy as you can while still being as therapeutic as possible. When you consider both those and take those into consideration, I think you get the best of both worlds. And I mean,

just, just kind of to kind of piggyback off of what you just mentioned there. When I was focused on powerlifting, one of the reasons why I did have to get that meniscectomy was because I was squatting to depth consistently and often, like too often. And it wasn't beneficial for me. If I was able to handle my training in a way where I was still getting there, but I was able to take days off and do other things that were still beneficial for me, and that my fault i would have been i probably could have avoided that right so it's like you can still get these benefits especially within within sport like athletes don't have to squat ass to grass like they don't have to squat ass

to grass with heavy loads right um they can still get that intensity and still make progress without having to get in those ranges but also on the other side when you do have to get in those ranges. But also on the other side, when you do have to get into those deep, deep knee flexion, et cetera, stuff from more Ben Patrick, that type of stuff. When doing that, you also don't have to load that with excessive amounts of weight. I think that's what people kind of get twisted here. That's beneficial to do, but you got to be careful with the intensity. It's like, it's the dosage. All right. You don't need to do an ATG split squat with two, 100 pound dumbbells in each hand to reap the benefit of deep knee flexion and strength within that range. If you do it with a good enough load to let you get there and control that range and control the eccentrics, it can be massively therapeutic.

No, I think you're definitely talking about this in a more practical practical and and you know sound way of looking at it not just you know oh train huge range of motion go heavy go deep or go home it's like no no hold on there so it's a little bit more to it than just that and it's funny that a lot of the the people on social media and on the internet who will hate are often the young 18 to 22-year-olds who just started lifting a few years ago or a few months ago. They're like, oh, no, it doesn't count. You've got to go deep. It's like, dude, just keep lifting a few years longer and get back to me. Like, yeah, just a little longer.

It takes a little bit more time for some of those methods to kick in for your body to realize how banged up it is. So, yeah, those are interesting points you made. What you got over there, Andrew, you got a question? Yeah, actually I did. Uh, let me get a little bit closer over here. Well, first off, Joel, thank you so much for spending so much time with us. Um, I'm trying to rack my head around everything and I don't want to sound like those 18 year old kids, but, um, I've been studying a lot of like biomechanics lately. And when I look at your Instagram account, some of it, it just like I said, I'm trying to wrap my head around it. I don't want to be that that young kid, you know, I'm probably older than you right now. That is like, no, bro, like that's incorrect because that goes against biomechanics and all that.

But like the one that I saw recently, and this is a cue I've seen here in this gym, you had somebody doing a barbell bench with a band around their wrist. And I think the cue, and I'm sorry if I butcher it, but the cue was to get like a lat activation, to get better pec activation and everything that i've learned about biomechanics um it's sort of like that would cause reciprocal reciprocal innervation with trying to uh use something to separate your uh your basically your arms your limbs that would separate your pecs even though what you're trying to accomplish when you're working your pecs is to contract them so with something like that like that's just one example um how can like how can using a band help you uh get a better pec uh contraction if the band you are pushing against is trying to go out it's just you know what i mean like does that make

sense yeah no totally cool one of the things you have to do in uh the field of uh biomechanics is you have to separate every movement into the concentric and the eccentric phase because if we look at uh things like co-contraction there's some studies that show co-contraction is what we witness with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's people. But then there's studies that say, oh, co-contraction, you need that. You need high levels of that to maintain control of the joint. It's where it happens in the movement. If it's happening in the wrong spot, that's what we would equate with like, okay, this person has like some type of muscle spasticity seen with Parkinson's. So if you're producing, for example, co-contraction on concentric movements where you're trying to, you know, move your limb fast. Okay. And you have co-contraction, guess what?

It's not moving. It's stuck. Okay. But if we're taking it through the eccentric, okay, like a bench press and we're getting co-contraction, co-contraction, then that co-contraction releases. That's what we're looking for. And then you produce reciprocal inhibition on the opposite end after the eccentric. So it's all about where these happen. So back to the band chest press, you would say, oh wait, this is not producing more chest activation because it's assisting you. It produces less activation on the concentric, but more on the eccentric because it's assisting you, it produces less activation on the concentric, but more on the eccentric because it forces you to use your back and your lats to co-contract on the eccentric. And that opens up the pectoral fibers. So on the, and I actually mentioned this in the post,

I said that, you know, there will be a little assistance on the concentric, but it's a worthy sacrifice for folks who need to learn how to contract their back and spread and open on the eccentric because that's how you wake up the muscle fibers, the pectorals. You can't get to the pecs until you actually use your back to happen on the eccentric. The band teaches that, and that teaches reciprocal inhibition, where you basically release the antagonist, being the back again in this case, so the agonist, the pectorals, can maximally contract. It's like a slingshot. How do you get maximum power? You've got to keep pulling it back, even though your trajectory that you're aiming for is this way. The farther you pull it back, the harder you pull it back.

Harder, harder, harder, harder. Explode. It launches. That's exactly what we're looking for with all these contractions. You have to look at what end of it. Is it eccentric or concentric? The band version is intended to help with eccentric. If we wanted to produce stronger pectoral activation, like a squeeze and maybe some greater degrees of constant tension in the chest, then we would actually do the opposite. You would actually have bands point from the other way and we would contract intensely on the concentric to create that constant tension, but it wouldn't be helping you to produce proper eccentric muscular contractions to the same extent because it's actually spreading it for you. It's not teaching

you how to use your back. So it's all about the goal and purpose. Both of those versions, I've used them both. Both are very helpful for that particular individual. He experienced occasionally some shoulder issues because he didn't know how to fire his back well. And that version actually like that day, he was like, Oh man, I have no pain in my shoulders. I do this because it taught him how to fire his back. Yeah. Sometimes you just need something else to concentrate on too. I've found this in the case of the bench press, teaching people to use their biceps when they're lowering the weight to try to pull the weight towards them and or use their back. But if you can kind of imagine once you go to bend your elbow that you're kind of flexing

your bicep like you're doing like a reverse curl, it's actually very hard to like do or mimic or even, but even just if your mind goes there i've found that people are like yeah my that was weird i just went through that range of motion it didn't hurt my shoulder at all it's just a little bit of a distraction technique and it's also a little bit of a cue and maybe by doing that they're just pulling their elbows in slightly and it might be taking pressure off somewhere else yeah that's interesting i think too i think that the bicep now i'm gonna have to try that because i think that would actually produce some good co-contraction because it teaches you to like pull the bar down rather than just letting it fall yeah and then uh and as far as the some of the

the single leg movements like um i've seen like you you've used like some some bands on some barbells and then had some people lunging which is i think pretty beneficial but even just like some of the single leg movements where like they're actually on one foot um how does that carry over into sport um i'm just imagining like if a like a lineman's pushing against the other lineman there might be some situation where he's pushing off but he's not uh he's not balancing on one leg and then pushing off so how does that carry over into sport? Yeah. Actually, I would say that example right there is one of the few scenarios

where an athlete is spending more time simultaneously on both limbs because a lot of sports and a lot of scenarios, they are spending more time on one limb or the other. When we're running, it's basically on one limb or the other. When we're running, it's basically constantly one limb or the other. When we're cutting, when we're moving, most sports are actually played on one limb. It just happens so quickly and they transfer to the other side. And so one of the best ways to even out asymmetries as well, besides the fact that we're, you know, teaching them how to be stable on one leg is to train unilaterally.

You know, we don't, it's basically, if you think about single leg training, you could say it's analogous to dumbbell training for the upper body. It's just that, how do you actually make sure you're loading each leg individually when you're squatting? Okay. Unless you have the, one of those leg presses that is a bilateral, it's independent on both sides where, you know, you're pushing equally on both sides. There's really no scenario where, you know, that you're loading symmetrically unless you're doing a single leg exercise. So that's one of the best ways to do it. It's very, uh, even if you don't agree with instability training, I think most people would agree with a symmetrical training like dumbbell training to make sure both sides are equal.

So you can think of single leg training like that. And I want to actually like I want to piggyback off of that, too, because it's like even I've noticed the jujitsu. I do quite a bit of single leg work, like single leg hip flexor raises where I'm having a balance on this foot while I'm bringing my hip flexor up. And I've noticed that even my balance and obviously you're not running in jujitsu, but sometimes you're on your feet, sometimes you're having to pass on your feet. And my single foot balance and my ability to create force through one foot while doing things with my hands has improved drastically because of that. So there's a lot of utility in those types of movements,

especially for athletes who are having to run on a field and change direction and obviously be on single legs from time to time. Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, the single leg thing too, even if we're going back to things like muscle dysfunction or biomechanical deviations, okay. But we talked about this earlier about, you know, externally rotating on the squat and how I'm not a big believer on that. If you externally rotate on a squat and aren't in neutral, guess what? You're collapsing. You're, you're losing your balance. If you valgus collapse, you're collapsing, you're losing your balance. You're not going to be able to maintain balance.

How do you maintain balance on one leg? Force vector has to be perfectly straight through the limbs. And this goes back to one of the reasons I'm a big believer in straight foot and straight limb position on the bilateral squat, because when we do single limb, it should pretty much be a very similar to bilateral. Just like if we're doing a dumbbell bench press, we wouldn't, you know, do a dumbbell double like this in a single, a totally different way. It's like, no, they should be pretty similar. It's just, you're doing one arm or two arms. So it's the same thing with the single leg squat. And ironically, when you look at the research, uh, on some of the squat studies, again, people say like, Oh, how come you use some studies to support your, your,

your methods and you Harper and others? Well, I'm doing it. So there, but, um, there is some research that shows that they know that co-contraction is huge for knee health, okay? Like the bottom of a squat. If you're not co-contracting, you're not using your hamstrings, puts a lot of tension on the knees, okay? When they looked at different squat types, okay? And again, individuals were probably cued horribly, again, as they always would be, but at least they looked at a lot of different versions and we could say, Hey, you know, we can make some comparison. They found that the only group that actually produced co-contraction and had hamstring activation in the bottom of the squat, that was enough to keep their knees healthy was when they looked at the single leg squat. It did not happen

on the bilateral squat. It only happened on the single leg squat. And probably because they had to actually stay in line probably because they had to actually stay in line, they actually had to use their hamstrings to pull down. When you go around the knee, you're actually not using your hamstring to pull down. You're relying on gravity to just collapse, to go through the hamstring. The hamstrings are very good at firing in a straight line. When you go around them or internally, they don't fire very well. They're very good at producing flexion in a very straight line. After that, you use your abductors and adductors to compensate. So even from a co-contraction standpoint, the single leg exercises are key. And we know co-contraction is one of the most important things for proper

muscular contractions, both biomechanically and neuromuscularly. Okay. So I'm looking for it. I can't find it, but I'm just going to go on good faith. I was actually hanging out with a bunch of people a couple of weeks ago, some jujitsu guys, and we were talking about you. And one of them had mentioned that you will sometimes blindfold athletes. i was looking for it i'm not sure if that's even true but if it is what is the uh the benefit behind that there's a few jokes i could have thought of uh shoot uh no um okay yes i i've the blindfold thing. I usually I'll blindfold myself with

the videos to show, you know, cause usually when you do eyes closed versions, people can't see it and they'll just like gloss over it. So I've done some eyes closed, uh, exercises. Um, and you can get the same effect from a, or a blindfold exercise, but you get the same effect from closing the eyes, but a visual from having it from the audience observing the blindfold has a little bit more of a dramatic effect, obviously. But the eyes closed train is something I use a lot. I know we haven't talked too much about that. But basically, everyone relies excessively on their sense of vision or their sense of sight to get them through movement and sense of of vision, there are some issues with that because we, first off, it's very slow.

Sense of sight takes like 300 to 500 milliseconds to basically have an image go like you see that in the mirror. Okay. Then it goes to your eye. Then it goes to your occipital lobe. Then you have to process it. Then if there is something that needs to be adjusted, it has to go back from your occipital lobe to your spine, to your nervous system, to your muscles, and then you make the corrections. Very, very slow process, okay? It's

a little faster if we're not using the mirror and we have our surroundings, but it's still that speed of vision and speed of sight, very very slow sense of feel or proprioception or speed of, um, like, uh, muscle spindle activation. It's about 10 times faster. Okay. So what happens is when we rely on sense of field to make adjustments, we can catch the error before it transpires. So we can feel before we're about to deviate, we can feel like, Ooh, I'm about to shift to one layer. I'm about to externally rotate. We can make the adjustments with vision. By the time you catch it, it's too late. The error has already happened. So by training eyes closed, it forces us to focus on sense of feel. It eliminates the visual distraction

and we have better sense of feel, better kinesthetic awareness, better proprioception. And when we go back to actually having the eyes as a base a little bit of assistance we have even better performance better stability better motor control but with the eyes closing if you do like a split stance or a split squat lunge eyes closed your form has to be perfect especially if you're using heavy loads one of my things that might be the video you saw is i was doing 100 pound dumbbell lunges one in each hand, eyes closed or with a blindfold. It was to present a point. If you don't do it with perfect form, if you have valgus collapse, hips externally rotate,

core is not tight, your feet and ankles aren't fired, you're losing balance every single time. So that's one of the other reasons I use the eyes closed training. That makes a lot of sense because you're also – it might help you to concentrate more you know because you're you're shutting down this uh experience of like you know seeing we've seen michael hearn do this but we we've trained with him before he closed his eyes especially like on a single leg or single arm uh movements just to try to almost like i guess calm the body down a little bit too and put put more emphasis and concentration on contracting that particular muscle. So it makes a lot of sense to me.

Oh yeah. No, uh, Michael Hearn, my arch nemesis. No, I'm just kidding. He's my arch nemesis.

It's a joke I have even with my brother and a few of my friends because growing up, you know, looking at some of the muscle magazines, that's what I always aspired to. And I never got there. Obviously the guy's a freaking Adonis, just,

uh, he's incredible. Yeah. Incredible. The guy is a freaking Adonis. Right? He's a savage. Incredible. Yeah. Incredible. And it's crazy because – I know this is kind of we're getting off topic here, but he's always bashed on for like, oh, you're not natural, all this stuff. I don't know whether he's natural or not natural. But something I've heard bodybuilders say that it's a very good point. And I'm talking like, I think even like Sean Ray said this, the guy has consistently looked the same for like the last 20 years, 25 years.

Like you don't consistently look that way unless you're doing it pretty naturally. pretty naturally okay like if he's going off on like huge cycles okay like you're gonna have some dips and your body's not gonna be able to look that same way like year in year out for like i mean he always looks this way so i don't know i'm not saying he's natural okay but if he is doing cycles and he's doing things um that's not what you would typically see. Yeah, and regardless, it's impressive no matter how you see it. Yeah, it's amazing. Incredible to see. Okay.

Did you? Go ahead. Okay, so I want to ask this because I've never. Okay, so we've learned a lot in this podcast. And I think the first time I ever saw anything about you was in 2020 i think you know what i'm about to mention because i i want you to let me know what these were you know what i'm talking about no i don't wrap in the rapid functional pulses oh shoot dude bro what are those what were they that was the first time i ever saw who you were i think it was more plates more dates

or something he was like he showed i was like okay i'm not gonna i just want to know what were they um they were the you know the yeah oh maybe is that like uh just phil phil derue maybe do something similar to that i don't know maybe real fast movements with like bands or something but there was no weight i okay i know there's probably something to it but visually it just looked so funny what were they uh yeah no i uh that took a few takes because i was cracking up so much and my brother was filming me and we were cracking up so much so um so that was it that was I think like two months after COVID. Yeah. All right. And basically tons of people reaching out, like, dude, like, what can I do to like get my heart rate going? Like, you know, something simple. I don't have any equipment.

Like I'm stuck in the house. I'm, I'm basically quarantined. Um, so I had used those in the past, um, just to like play around with quick activation. It's not something I use like on an ultra frequent basis, but I remember things like, Ooh, these are, I remember when I've done these just very periodically, it spikes the heart rate. They look incredibly goofy. And, and I was like, you know what? I'll put it up. It'll be kind of a joke, but kind of not kind of something that they can do and actually get some benefit from it.

If they need like a little bit of a very high intensity stimulus uh and something that like i'm sure everyone's gonna be bashing i put it up and uh yeah it's definitely uh it's uh it's nice to know that's what you know me for though that's no that's just initially how i how i was like because i never saw any of your content before that but then i saw that i was like whoa what is this hey you do get a pump and your heart rate does go up, but it just looks shocking. Well, that was actually the main topic of the episode, but then we started talking about full range and partial. So that's, you know, it kind of took, it was going to be the rapid functional pulses two hours on that. If my training solely switches over to rapid functional pulses and everything else is garbage. And you know, I've gone off the deep end.

Joel, thank you so much for your time. Are you, you got any projects that you're working on that you're excited about a book or anything like that or programs that people can check out? Yeah, I just have, you know, training programs and my, my main book, it's the one that took it. This one took me like eight years to write. Um, it has basically, it pretty much highlights my entire journey. Um, and it gives all the research that I went through and I kind of try to explain to the reader that, Hey, this is what I found given this research. I given the research, here's like all the bread crumbs that I followed. Uh, maybe you'll come to a the research. Here's like all the breadcrumbs that I've followed.

Maybe you'll come to a different conclusion after you look at all the steps that I did and all the different research studies. But here it is. I lay it out for everyone. So it's a 600-page book. It's called Movement Redefined. It's on my website. And then just different training programs, you know, from explosive workouts for athletes to more, you know, functional based. If someone's looking to get their joints feeling better. So there's all my website, advanced human performance.com.

Then I got all my social media stuff. As far as projects, I don't think, you know, I got some just interviews with the, you know, like NFL things just for some of my athletes, but that's, that's not really, that's more just for marketing publicity stuff, but. Cool. Where can people find you? Just on, on social media, I think it's just Dr. Joel Sedeman. Like I said, advanced human performance. I'm on, I'm on Tik TOK now. I saw you guys are on Tik TOK too. Yes. Yes. So it's yeah.

Tik TOK is a, is growing growing man they talk about the haters wow they're on another level on there so yes yes oh yeah these kids barely got out of diapers and they're trying to tell me i don't know how to do anything it's like it's like it's hilarious man like i can't even take them seriously it's pretty funny i love like you know like give them a little little push too to keep oh yeah it's like sparking the, you know, like give them a little, little push too, to keep them going. It's like sparking the fire. Give them a little, give them a little more fuel. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, no, all the different social media places. But yeah, they can just check out all the,

and I have a lot of free articles so they don't have to buy my products to get more education on my methods. There are literally hundreds of free articles and information on my website, advancedhumanperformance.com. So thanks again for your time. Really, really quick, like in regards to the programs, you mentioned a little something earlier about how some of your athletes, like they don't just walk into the gym with you. And now there's like bands and they're on, you know, on one foot and all this stuff. So with some of the programs, like, do you need all of this crazy equipment or is it suitable for anybody, whether it be a home gym or just like a traditional gym that maybe might

not even have bands and some of those things? Yeah, there's a few programs and they're, they're stated on there. I think it's like the advanced 30, 60, 90 day training, redefined programs that are crazy. And that like, Hey, if somebody's got access to a full gym and they want to go nuts and do, you know, everything that I do, uh, they can. Um, but all the other programs are meant to be done in a typical gym setting with barbells, dumbbells, cables, and that's about it. Um, some of them are even body weight. So again, uh, most part, I tried to make it as user-friendly as possible, not just because I wanted most people to be able to have access to it, but because again, the majority of my training is actually based on that. Great. Again, thanks for your time. Have a great rest of your day. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks, guys. Take care.

Yes, sir. That was fucking great. It was. It really was. First off, I hope one day he can actually come here and we can, we can do stuff because like, you know, the thing is, is I think when, when people see his content, one thing is that number one, he's great at marketing what he does. Like what he does is it's sound like we talked about this before, but especially like with athletes, like it's even me, I'm like, okay, I don't need to do four or five plates all the way because i know how that'll feel i know how much fatigue i'll feel but if i limit that range if i

go to that those 90 degree joint angles i can still utilize really heavy weights without feeling the fatigue later on um but and this i gotta watch it he's got big biceps he's got fat biceps yeah okay so is this what what spurred up like all this stuff on like tiktok where they're like yes this is it that was like that was the first thing i ever saw but it was during covid and he was trying to make stuff that people could do without weights and yeah you would get a solid pump from that you would would get a pump. Have you ever seen Aurelius do that? Oh yeah. Yeah. He freaks out.

Yeah. I think I told you guys before I tried to mimic like what my son was doing one day just cause I was like, man, he kind of like when he's screaming, he kind of goes crazy. I tried it and I was like, holy shit, that takes a lot of effort. And I couldn't nearly move anywhere near as fast. Like they move their arms so quick. You're like, what the hell? But to that point, when people, people when when anybody who just does traditional strength training goes and they look look at his page there's always this visceral response like oh that's fucking

bullshit oh you that's that makes no sense or this is whatever and understandably with the way that it's marketed because like he knows how to market he's like this is the right way but when you talk to him there is a middle ground right so i i think that's why i'm really happy that we had him on because we were able you know how we love to marry things like what doug brignoli was here you know he's all about this is the biomechanical way to do things but we were able to we were able to wiggle in some ah but what can we do here so same thing with joel his stuff is sound and we can see how reasonable it is and how beneficial it is. And I'm happy about that.

I'm psyched about that. It was great having Mike on the show, too, and having him pop in. And it's like once you start to hear these guys talk back and forth, I would say that Mike is definitely like a lot heavier on the research, at least from I guess I have more knowledge of Mike. So I would say that he has researched stuff a little bit longer. I'm less aware of Joel's history and background. But as you can see, as it starts to unfold, it's just all very debatable.

It's all very debatable. We're all very open to interpretation of like, you can sit there and point to all these studies, but what study, by who, on what subjects, in what fashion, you know, when you do a study and you say that, you know, full range of motion has been shown to help increase hypertrophy more so than, it's more so than what, Done in what way? That's the thing that gets to be really difficult to show.

It's been shown to increase hypertrophy in what muscles? Because maybe the exercise matters. Maybe it's not always the best thing to always go full range of motion on all exercises. As we know, training your back feels way different than training your chest. Training your biceps feels way different than training your hamstrings. Your biceps and your hamstrings are both muscles that pull, but they feel different. You know, it's kind of hard to, as you flex your hamstrings longer and get more used to it, you can learn how to flex them in a way that you can almost have a similar feel. But to get that like kind of peak squeeze that you get on the bicep, there's really not another muscle you can squeeze to that same way.

Maybe the calf or something anyway, or maybe the forearm. I don't know. All these muscles, they work so differently. They're all muscles, you know, but all these exercises are so different. It's very easy to make good convincing arguments for many, many different styles of training. I thought the most compelling thing he said the whole time, and it's something I haven't really thought about before, but the fact that we may have been moving better, and this is not a knock on fitness. This is not a knock on being not moving around a lot, but we probably used to be able to go through range of motion a lot better than we do now.

And because of that, because people are so stiff, because people are coming from their couch to the gym, from their office to the gym, maybe he's got a lot of good points. Like maybe we're, you know, shoving our bodies in positions that they're not great at doing. Again, I would also side up with a lot of the stuff that you said where it's like, well, you know, hold on a second. Why can't we work towards both? You know, and that's what he said to Mike Israetel, I would be most afraid of the guy that can do both. So how do we become the guy that can do both?

Maybe we work on things simultaneously. I've said many times on this show, anybody that is looking to be successful in business, you have to work for a paycheck as you work for your fortune. And it's not necessarily that you want to be rich at some point, although that is some people's goal, but you do have to figure out a way to pay the bills. But as you're paying the bills, maybe you got a side hustle, like Gary Vee talks about a lot. Can you be pursuing strength at its highest level and have a little side hustle with, I'm going

to be able to, one day I'm going to be able to move a little bit better on some of these movements. One day I'm going to be in less pain than I used to be. All these things, they're all available to us. It's a matter of how we want to work towards them. And I 100% agree with what he said, that maybe people moved better. And that not maybe, they did move better. Because you,

you see like a lot of people that are talking about, Oh, my hips are tight. My back is tight. This is tight. This is tight. And then you, you,

you look at their daily life. They wake up, they take a shower, they get into their car. They're sitting, they go to their office. They're sitting for five, six hours.

They maybe wake up to go to lunch and maybe take a little bit of a walk, but they go back and they sit in that seat. And then they decide to go to the gym after sitting for all those hours and do squats and do lunges and do all these movements, right? When they've literally been in this position all day long with both of their legs, right? Athletes too, student athletes that have to sit in classrooms and study and work. And then they have to go to practice, right? After doing all of that.

Absolutely. We used to move better. And the lifestyle is not helping the actions that you have to take in the gym. So with that being said, when athletes are told, or when, when you need them to want to do like deep knee flexion things or squat to depth, they can't do it safely because their bodies aren't able to actually get into those ranges in an efficient manner. And doing that, like he mentioned, like, this is the thing about the dosage. I, I, when he says like these movements are going to degrade your knees or degrade whatever over time, I can understand what he's saying with, because most people can't get there safely. And then when they do start working on that, they do too much intensity. Like everyone

just wants to squat more and more weight. Everyone wants to do this with more and more weight now at a certain point you will right wreak havoc on yourself if you don't have good dosages and have good intensities intensities mean the weight that you're actually working with but if you control those factors and you slowly progress it you can end up in a place that it's healing and and like i think i want to mention this too because when when people look at the stuff that ben patrick is doing he's not having people atg split squat every single day of the week nordic hamstring curls aren't a thing that you do three or four times ben patrick tells you to be very careful and i think people miss that they miss that he's like you shouldn't feel pain he he he consistently reiterates painless pain-free movement i see the stuff

that ben patrick does i'm like i'm gonna do that every day. And then Ben's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that every day. You know, he'll say one time a week would be good for you, Mark, because you're just, you're just getting started on some of these things. Then maybe you progress into two times a week and so on. But yeah, you got to be, you got to handle everything with some tender, loving care. You got to be very cautious and move, proceed with a lot of caution. And how often are people willing to proceed with caution? Even me, even when I started that,

I was like, get all pumped up, man. I got pumped up. Even like when I started doing that, I was like, yeah, I don't want to do this once a week.

I want to do this twice a week. I was, I was doing stuff with a little bit of pain, which probably wasn't the smartest, but you know, if you can do it painless, you can reap the benefits. Yeah. And I like what Ben Patrick patrick had said on on our podcast i think it was something like um he he

only wants you to squat like your body weight on the bar and then anything after that is like you know it's whatever you want to do but i was like that's actually pretty legit like i think if i can do the big three at my body weight on the bar, like forever, like that would be sick. Like I'd be ecstatic with that. Yeah, exactly. And he like, even when he, uh, those movements that he has people do, right. There's standards.

Like there's some things that 50% of your body weight, good. 75% of your body weight or 1.5 times your body weight. That's where you can stop. Like these aren't things where like – bodybuilding ideals of progressive overload don't always seep into this realm of training. Bodybuilding, you want to move more volume on those biceps, triceps, shoulders. You're trying to move more and more load over time. That's not the nature of everything that you're trying to do in the gym. Yeah, you don't always need heavy weight on stuff.

And Simo was saying the other day one of his favorite tricep movements is a tricep pushdown. It's such a simple exercise. What are the odds of getting hurt in a tricep pushdown? I mean, it's like, I mean, it's, you can get hurt doing anything, but the risk to reward on that exercise, the reward is great. The risk is super low and you don't need a lot of weight and no one ever asked you about how much you lift on that. But for some reason on the other exercises,

we're like, Oh man, if you're not lifting at least two plates, you know, it's like, it's just not, you're just thinking it's just not that much weight. And it's like, that's actually very incorrect way of thinking. Because anytime that you think something is kind of light, when someone says, Oh, I bench, says i bench you know 135 think about 135 pound dumbbell like that shit is kind of heavy you know and it's gonna it it's gonna it's gonna look heavy at the very least right just sitting there so i think uh we have like just distorted views especially us because we've seen people lift some crazy crazy weights over the years but you don't need to lift crazy weights to get great stimulus. I mean, there's ways of going through a lot of this without smashing yourself,

without thrashing yourself. There are going to be moments where you do go through that, and one could argue that it is important to do that on occasion. It's important to kind of learn how to push too far, how to push too hard so that you know where to kind of where to have the majority of your training sit. But for the most part, a good 90 percent of your training could be done effectively, efficiently, very safely, all the way to the point where stuff barely makes you sore. You're pretty much just getting mostly all benefit. Occasionally, you're going to get something here or there, a little owie on the elbow or something might happen.

But for the most part, it should be all good. And if it's not, then you might want to examine a lot of the stuff that we talked about today and try to select, hey, is the full range of motion stuff a little bit better for me or should I maybe try some more of this kind of stuff that was presented by Joel today? And absolutely go look at Joel's page because like, for example, I think, I think a lot of Joel's stuff, actually,

almost everything is, is very, not only is it able to help people build and build levels of strength, but it is therapeutic because like he has a lot of control eccentrics when the things are explosive, things are usually explosive, but not with crazy heavy load right who else do we know that we mentioned doing this podcast that does a lot of like slow eccentrics single leg work and has had massive longevity within the sport of bodybuilding mike o'hearn absolutely mike o'hearn 50 something and still killing it he's a beast wanna take us

out of here Andrew I sure will so links to Joel's Instagram and everything else you mentioned will be down in the description below

but you guys want cereal we want cereal I love cereal I still eat cereal even though are you gonna try to shoot it

no it's too packed yeah there's too much going on there I can probably make it okay it was not bad it's too packed. Yeah, there's too much going on there. I can probably make it. Okay. It was not bad.

It was pretty good online. Anyway, we were supposed to not eat cereal once we hit a certain age, but I called BS on all that because now we have Magic Spoon. So links to them down in the description below and podcast show notes as well. When you guys go there, you'll receive $5 off your variety pack. Highly recommend it. Please follow the podcast at Mark Bales Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z and SEMA. Where you at? I don't see my in yang on Instagram and YouTube and see my yin yang on TikTok and Twitter.

Mark. All I got to say is Mike is a tell us fucking ugly man. He's coming at me man he's coming at me he's coming at me about my mustache. You see that head? He's got these things right here.

What is that? He's like a jacked Dr. Evil the way he had the light set up. The way he came on that screen frightened me. I had to back away for a second. Yeah, he popped in

and he was like no guys I promise I'll be nice and he comes in looking like that. He's flexing the whole time? He just got done doing push-ups. I mean, what's the deal?

No, he finished beating off and then he came on stage. Yeah, he said that was a thing. He said that was a thing. We got to have him back on the show again, right? I'm just fucking with you. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength.

Catch you guys later.