Longevity ultimately is be being able to
maintain function as you age because
again it's it's not the the number of
years but the quality of the years. So
all muscles in your body serve a
function. You're training these muscles
to get stronger and you're training
these your your balance and you're these
are all skills that can be learned and
improved. They're all trainable. If it's
trainable, it's fixable.
>> Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast
where we discuss science and
science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and opthalmology at
Stamford School of Medicine. My guest
today is Jeff Cavalier. Jeff Cavalier is
a master of science in physical therapy
and a certified strength and
conditioning specialist. He is
considered one of the world's foremost
experts in training for both men and
women to increase the strength and size
of their muscles, their overall health
and longevity. Today we discuss some of
the things that are not often discussed
and considered the small things but that
are actually the big things because they
allow you to do the big things for your
health and fitness and longevity decade
after decade after decade and to do so
painfree and while making continual
progress. We also discuss the typical
big things, the specific multi- joint
exercises and cardio workouts that
create the greatest results. Today
you'll learn some simple exercises that
will strengthen and protect your back,
your shoulders, even improve your foot
strength, which most people don't think
about, but turns out to be foundational
for everything, your pressing and
pulling movements, leg training, and
your cardio. And that will allow you to
live your daily life with vigor and ease
at any age. I must say, I'm a longtime
fan of Jeff's work, which he's been
publishing to YouTube and elsewhere as
Athleen X. As you'll soon realize from
today's episode, Jeff is far more than
just another fitness trainer. He has
deep knowledge of human physiology and
kinesiology and he really understands
that everybody's situation and body is
different and thus needs different tools
to address and solve their specific
problems and to achieve their desired
results. I should also mention that Jeff
and I went to the legendary Gold's Gym
in Venice, California, where he took me
through an arm workout, so biceps and
triceps and forearms. and he showed me
what has become his kind of signature
move, which is face pulls, which are
essential for improving your posture,
for your rear delts, and for general
stability of the shoulders. So, you can
find a link to those workouts in the
show note captions. Before we begin, I'd
like to emphasize that this podcast is
separate from my teaching and research
roles at Stanford. It is, however, part
of my desire and effort to bring zero
cost to consumer information about
science and science related tools to the
general public. In keeping with that
theme, today's episode does include
sponsors. And now for today's discussion
with Jeff Cavalier. Jeff Cavalier,
welcome back.
>> Thank you for having me. This time
actually nice to come out to California.
>> Yeah.
>> A little workout in.
>> Yeah, we have a studio this time. Last
time I think we were in a in a rented
apartment in in New York City.
>> It worked.
>> I said it then, I'll say it again.
You're the man. I've been watching your
videos and following your training
advice for many years. I would say Mike
Mener, Dorian Yates, and you. That's
>> that's uh
>> I've merged the principles and um
>> very high humbling praise for me for
sure.
>> Well, you're 50.
>> Mhm.
>> Never touched gear. That's uh slang for
steroids. You're not on TRT. You've
never done it.
>> And you look amazing. I know you're very
disciplined with your diet, your
training, but you know, you have a
you're married. You have two kids. You
you put in the work all over life. and
you know you're a testament to what's
possible if people do things right. So
today I want to talk about a number of
things but something that I believe is
not discussed enough which you discuss a
lot and it's just been transformative
for me because I also happen to be 50 is
we both know that the big things like
doing the regular compound multi- joint
lifts regularly that's all critical. We
know the big stuff is critical and
people talk about the big stuff all the
time, but you talk about the small stuff
that makes the big stuff possible for
decade after decade. And I credit you
for fixing my back pain. I credit you
for the fact that I basically have no
pain despite training very hard for, you
know, more than three decades. So, let's
talk about the small stuff, which is not
actually the small stuff. These I think
of it as the the kind of hinges and and
uh bolts on the system that allow that
system to work. So
low back, shoulders, neck, these are the
pieces that nobody wants to train, no
one wants to think about, no one wants
to talk about. So let's start right
there. How can we keep our lower back
strong and painfree
while also doing things like deadlifts
and squats, etc. I'm glad you're talking
about all of this. Obviously, it's like
uh it's such music to my ears. But I
think the background of being a physical
therapist is is what set the stage for
my focus on these things. Cuz when I was
younger, prehysical therapy days, uh I
did all the dumb stuff, too. And I did
all the things, just the big things, and
realized that it wasn't necessarily a
path to longevity. But in the in the
immediate and in my 20s, I was literally
breaking down then. Like I had knee pain
then. I had back pain then. I had
shoulder pain then. So, I think people
who are in their 20s these days have the
luxury of having access to videos like
this where they don't just say, "Oh,
that's just um maybe a hard workout."
Now, they start to say, "Well, maybe I'm
actually doing some damage here, right?
Maybe I do need to pay attention to the
smaller things." And when you have
enough videos out there that showcase
these small things, for instance, you
mentioned back pain. We talk about a
major cause of back pain not being
structural back pain, right? A lot of
the times the back pain that we suffer
from in our lives is not surgical. It
doesn't need surgical treatment. It just
needs the right addressing of the
muscles that contribute to that or how
we allow muscles to get tight that that
shouldn't get tight if we did full range
of motion on certain exercises. Right?
So in in in particular, I mentioned the
glute medius, right? And the glute
medius is is a muscle that is going to
control hip position, hip movement. So
if it's controlling the position of our
hips, that means it's controlling our
pelvis. And if our pelvis is tilted or
twisted or forward or backward,
obviously the spine is literally
adapting to the position of the pelvis
beneath it because it's connected
through the sacrum. So how is that not
important? Right? So all these muscles
that connect to the pelvis that change
its position are inadvertently going to
change the position of the low back
directly the lumbar spine that is going
to likely cause dysfunction down the
road if you don't address that. So it is
these little tiny muscles and these
little tiny exercises. So, I made a
video years ago about an exercise that
you could do to help to loosen up if
there was a a a knot in the glute glute
medius, right? An area of spasm, a
localized area of spasm. Because when
the spasm's there, you adjust the way
you move, right? You're in pain. So,
you're trying to move around that spasm.
Something as simple as a leg raise down
and back while holding down that that
pressure point on the glute medius helps
to alleviate some of that that that
discomfort and and in and that spasm to
the point where you could restore normal
motion again because you're not avoiding
pain and all of a sudden the back pain
goes away. There's nothing structurally
there. Fine. That's a great video. It
helped. I think 50 million people have
seen it. We'll put a link to it. This is
the one where people you should everyone
you should watch the video. This
literally erased my back pain. What I
thought was going to require surgery.
You lie on your side. You uh, you know,
one leg, you know, is in front of the
other, toe down on the ground, you put
it up and back. Um, Jeff provides a a
beautiful description of what is
essentially a very simple movement, but
if you do it properly, the pain
evaporates. It's wild. And I thought it
was a back issue, but it was a glute
medius issue.
>> Yeah. And again, you feel you can you
can feel referred pain anywhere. But but
what what happens next is great, you
solve that area of spasm. Why do we get
spasm? Oftent times it's because we're
providing artificial stability to an
area of weakness because spasm is is
basically the muscles holding on and
saying, "I need to protect this area."
And so if the muscles around the low
back are protecting that area, there's a
reason for it. It's probably because the
muscles that are supposed to be stronger
are not strong enough. So that doesn't
mean that you do this one thing, you're
done. Yes, you might have no back pain
that day or you might have relieved that
episode, but it means that there's an
area of weakness that could benefit from
strengthening it. So you come back and
you start to do glute media
strengthening. I I demonstrate an
exercise where you you put yourself up
against the wall, right? And you stand
on the leg outside the wall, furthest
away from the wall, and you let yourself
drop. You just let your hips drop,
right? They get lazy. When they drop
like that, you're the only way you can
get them level again is to slide
yourself back towards the wall. And
that's abduction of the hip that way to
get you back to level again. That is the
glute medius dysfunction to get you back
to that level position. Well,
ironically, every time you lift a foot
off the ground to walk, you're getting a
pelvis that drops side to side, right?
Every time you go in single leg stance,
the pelvis is going to drop a little
bit. The people that have less control
of that have more of what they call a
trendelenberg gate where the pelvis
rocks side to side as they walk.
>> It's like if you were looking at them
from the back, you know, uh pick your uh
preferred opposite gender folks and then
uh the butt swinging from side to side.
>> Might look good on Instagram, but it's
not going to it's not going to do good
for your back, right? So, you go back
and forth. Well, all that uncontrolled
motion starts to wreak havoc and
eventually those muscles start to say, I
got I got to provide this artificial
stability. So, what do I do? I spasm.
And so if you don't extend the plan
beyond the fix, how do you then build
that strength up to prevent it from
coming back? And so I'm all about not
just the fixes, but but really about the
preventative things you can do to to to
save this off long term. So we'll talk
about the structure of a bas a really
good basic program. And many people talk
about that, you know, sets, reps,
splits, etc. But let's just assume for a
second that somebody listening to this
is training their lower body twice a
week.
>> They're doing compound exercises and
some isolation exercises, but they're
dealing with some back pain or they're
not like 20s, they're in their 20s or
30s or structurally they're blessed and
they're not dealing with it. What are
some additional things that we would
call small things that make the big
things possible for much longer and also
make people stronger at the big things
that people can do? Would you say uh
back hyperextensions? Would you say
watch your video on medial uh glute
medius training? What would be the
exercise to insert and how many times
per week to do it and when?
>> That's a good question. So yeah, reverse
hypers are an amazing exercise. Um, I
like doing them because they're very
easy to do anywhere. You don't have to
have resistance on them. They make a
great machine that actually provides
resistance. Straps over your legs that
you can lift additional weight on. But
the challenge for most people, remember,
they're chronically weak in these areas.
So, even just their body weight lifting
of their own legs is going to be a
significant enough challenge to get
overload. But you can literally do it on
like your bed in the morning. You can
get up. You lay enough of your torso on
top of the bed so that you're not
falling off the bed, but you can just
have your legs hanging off your bed and
your body up on top of the bed and do a
reverse hyper.
>> So, raising the heels,
>> raising the heels
>> so that they're parallel with the floor
>> as level as you can get them. You know,
again, the bed's a little a little soft.
So, sometimes you kind of dip down as
you're lifting your legs up, but it's
it's it's sturdy enough that you can get
to almost a parallel position to the
floor. I like to make sure we'll talk
about this, but like you're moving the
muscles are doing the work and not
momentum, right? So, you want to hold
that contraction briefly at the top to
convince yourself that you actually were
able to perform the movement. So, you
get up, hold it for for a second. And I
think what's important on that, too, is
people who don't have the strength in
their glutes, cuz it really is a glute
weakness issue, not necessarily a low
back issue. it. A lot of times it's
weakness in the glutes that's
transferring the load to the low back
that can't handle it. And people get the
symptoms in the back, but it's the
weakness somewhere else that's causing
that. So, I like to focus first and
foremost on the glutes, glute max, glute
me, is to make sure that they're strong
enough. And again, if you test even big-
time athletes, we would test their
rotational strength of their hips. Some
of the strongest athletes, some of the
biggest squatters, some of the best
lungers, right? They're lunging over 200
pounds. they you put them in position,
you try to bend their their uh their hip
into internal or external rotation of
their of their bent knee, they can't
resist it at all. So they it just goes
to show you that all the squatting, all
the big lifts aren't enough to
counteract the smaller muscles, right?
There are different functions. A
rotational muscle of the hip is not a
sagittal plane muscle of the hip. It has
a different function. So they all have
to be strengthened. So along that along
that line, we will do the the the
reverse hyper as a good sagittal plane
exercise focusing on the glute. When
they get to the top and I tell you to
contract it, squeeze so you know that's
the glute that's squeezing and doing the
work, not that you're arching at the low
back, that you're using the muscles that
are already overworked in the first
place. So get that up there. Squeeze.
Reinforce that it's the glute that did
the work. Great exercise. The glute
medius, like I said, the hip bump. Super
easy exercise. You could do it anywhere
against the wall. You can do anywhere
against the wall. Any anything you can
do
>> like a butt bump. You you basically
raise the leg that's closer to the wall
like 90° outer one you're standing. It's
almost like you're trying to slide that
hip that's along the that's closer to
the wall up the wall. So it's like Yeah.
It's like a kind of like side booty bump
to the wall but sliding it up. And and
this is sometimes where you have to
invest and this is the small things but
you know they're also small investments.
>> A little mini hip band. You know the
little elastic bands. They're just
loops. The little fit loop they're
called. Put it around your heels.
>> Lay on your belly. Bend your knees to
90°.
>> And then just try to open your feet
apart,
>> right? Spread your feet apart. So now
you're strengthening rotation of the
hip. Or hold one steady. Let one leg,
it's a little hard to show here, but let
one leg come a little bit in front of
the other and then try to cross it over
the other one. So now you're getting
external rotation of that hip. So you're
working external rotation against
resistance, internal rotation against
resistance.
>> Super easy things to do. You can you can
attach a band around your around your
ankle and then you can do lateral hip
swings but with a component of rotating
against the resistance of the band too.
So I'm moving my leg out and rotating
out at the same time. How do you do
that? Just focus on your toe. If your
toe is turning out, your hip is turning
out. If your toe is turning in and your
hip is turning in. So you don't have to
focus so much on how do I move that.
Just focus on what the foot is doing and
you're turning. As long as the knee is
going with the foot, right? You're not
just spinning the foot. the knee and the
foot go together. So, there's there's
simple things and again, you might need
a band or a mini band or something to
get these smaller muscles more
specifically, but it's $10, $15 for a
band. It's well worth the investment if
you can get rid of these long-term
recurrent issues that keep come, you
know, back and and causing agony every
2, three months as a reminder of what
you're not doing.
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to save up to 40%. Once I realized that
the glute medius was causing for me back
spasm issues that were severe enough
that it was immobilizing,
but then it was resolved by the
information you provide in your videos.
I started doing the um the hip slide up
the wall movement. I still do that. the
reverse hyper and then the one that you
put in a video and again we'll put links
to these that I found uh a little bit
more uh of a setup
but seems really useful is where you
take some sort of rope or dog leash
>> and you put it around your waist and
then you actually have a weight between
your your legs hanging a couple inches
off the floor and then the goal is to
walk and it makes you kind of have to
kind of monster walk or
>> and the idea is to not let the weight
swing and hit your your feet. Now, I
know that sounds really awkward, but it
really works and I know it works uh for
a number of reasons. And by the way, all
this strengthened other lifts for me
dramatically. I was kind of at a
sticking point with a number of of lower
body lifts and upper body lifts. And it
really seems like it helped create a
real stability in the lower back glute
area.
>> What is that dog leash thing doing? Uh
it's very simple, right? Just tie a
weight between your legs and then you're
trying to walk but not let it swing.
what why does that work?
>> Anytime you can take these smaller
exercises and bring them a little closer
to actual function, I think it's better
is better carryover. So, if you're
talking about actually being on your
feet and walking, that's a step towards
function. That's that's you're going to
be more useful, I think. Um, but what
you're doing is, as I mentioned before,
every time you pick up a foot off the
ground, you're in single leg stance. So,
when you're in single leg stance, if
you're not contracting the glute medius
on the side that you're standing on,
your pelvis is going to drop. You drop
in the side because you're you're not
balanced anymore. You're going to drop
towards the up leg. You may not drop if
you're consciously trying to stay level
because you're firing the glute medius.
But for someone that has a weak glute,
you just have them stand on that one leg
and you're going to see that pelvis
drop. So, when you're doing this test
and you're adding the weight to the
equation here, the weight is really to
create a pendulum effect, right? Because
when you start to move anything, that
weight's going to want to go in an
exaggerated way. So, what what we're
trying to reinforce is, okay, can you do
this and take these slow steps in these
single alternating single leg stance and
prevent that that weight from shifting
so much, i.e. because you're dropping
too much that it would hit or bang into
the other leg. So, you have to be able
to walk slowly through a single leg
stance and not allow enough of a drop by
having good contraction and control of
the glute medius so that it would
minimize the the the weight itself. It
would quiet the motion of the weight
itself. So, you're reinforcing how hard
can I keep this thing engaged as I walk.
And you know, if you could do this, the
faster you could move yourself and still
have minimal displacement of the weight
would be a good indicator that, wow,
you're really starting to get good
control and strength in those in that
glute medius. Another thing I like to do
is um we call a suitcase lunge, right?
So, you do a a lunge where you offset
the weight on one side. So, you carry it
in the if I'm going to lunge forward, I
put it on the opposite leg, right? Hold
on the opposite side. What that's going
to theoretically do is obviously when I
lunge forward, I'm going to want to fall
to the side of the weight. Picture
having even like a 50 lb weight or a 60
lb weight in your hand. It's going to
want to go that direction. In this lunge
position, if I can straighten my self
out and keep my torso rigidly in place
the whole time, then I can really
strengthen that glute medius on the
opposite side. And what's cool about
that is it's also done on a in
conjunction with a sagittal plane lunge.
So now I'm starting to plane in train in
multiple dimensions and planes at one
time. So a lunge in this direction
suitcase carry offset only one dumbbell
not in the other side. Obviously you're
going to get that desire for the body to
fall towards the side of the offset
weight. And again that starts to shift
the pelvis up. The only thing will keep
it down is by keeping the hip in
abducted and level. And that pelvis
stays level. So we'll do that with a lot
of our athletes and work up to some
pretty heavy weights there too. And
again, it is a kill two birds with one
stone type exercise because you still
get the benefits of the lunge, which I I
love as an exercise.
>> So, let's say somebody is going to do
some hip slide up the wall or andor
reverse hypers if they're lucky enough
to have a gym with a reverse hyper
machine or or even a just a high bench
or hyperextension machine, right?
Classic hyperextensions.
>> You just go face inward the upper body
moves and um for classic hyper uh heels,
>> which I like too, by the way. That's
more direct low back strengthening
>> which is always good like we can always
strengthen our low backs that those
muscles need to be strengthened but
again I I would say more often the time
times the source of the low back pain is
coming from the muscles but beneath them
that are weak chronically weak like the
glutes. Okay. So, reverse hypers, the
hip sliding up the wall approach, maybe
the dog leash uh with weight between um
legs. Doesn't have to be a dog leash,
folks, but you get the idea. To try and
minimize the hip sway.
>> Should those be done at the end of a
lower body workout when the lower back
and glutes are partially fatigued or
very fatigued or done separately at a
time when they're really fresh?
>> Two times. I think I think you could do
them on a dedicated day at a dedicated
time. So I I approach my ab training as
ab training and I always keep it
separate. I just like to focus on I'm
going to do 5 to 10 minutes of core
strengthening right now here and now
separate from my workout because I don't
want it to be an afterthought. I think
it should be it's a it's a key component
of what I do to keep a strong core. So I
want to focus it and I don't want to add
it to the end of my workout when I'm
already mentally checked out. Right? So
I do that. I think when you start to
have these issues that require special
programming, right, then you should own
that special programming because it's
yours. It's what you need specifically.
Others might need things for their
shoulders or for the rotator cuff, but
like whatever special programming is, do
it as a small routine on its own day at
its own time or even it could be on a
workout day, but a separate time that
you just go through as a routine. 5
minutes to 7 minutes three times a week
or so. That's it. If you want to put it
on a training day, it's actually not a
bad idea to put these smaller muscle
exercises or smaller focused exercises
after your bigger training cuz a you're
not going to compromise your big
training and the goals that you have for
for that, but you also are pre-
fatiguing some of those bigger muscles
that are going to want to dominate these
small movements anyway. The
compensations that you're going to see
on these small movements are always
going to be the big muscles trying to
kick in and do what they've always done,
which is take over. And you're trying to
get them to not. So, if you can pre-
fatigue them a little bit prior to doing
these small exercises, you're actually
setting the smaller muscles up for more
success.
>> Yeah. If I could travel back to my teens
and I started lifting when I was 16 and
20s and 30s, I would have started doing
all of these things a couple times a
week or even just once a week even
before there were there was any pain
because I had the same I don't know if
it's arrogance or just ignorance that oh
you know pain like that's what old guys
talk about like I have no pain I feel
fine like you know but I think by
training a certain way without pain for
a very long time it's almost like the
spring is getting compressed ressed
because it means that unless someone has
perfect mechanics and they're covering
all their bases through other sports and
and things of that sort, it's almost
like the stronger stronger stronger you
get, you're just setting yourself up for
one of these things to go. And in my
case, it was this lower back thing. And
for some people, it's their shoulder.
When you're young, those things that
that appear as post-workout soreness,
even can be masquerading for long-term
pain problems and dysfunction down the
road, right? cuz you're again when we're
young we just feel hey I'm sore I had a
hard workout yesterday I'm a little
stiff again we get through it we manage
it it's not that uh interruptive of our
life at that point so we move on but I
believe that those are
many examples of what is potentially
happening beneath the surface that if
you continue down that road that normal
workout soreness becomes more chronic
joint pain discomfort movement
limitations and and we also lose range
of motion as we get older. So, if we're
not focusing on actually trying to
maintain that, it just starts to pile
up. And it's one of those things where
you look back, we look back years later
and go, "Wow, I can't believe I've lost
this much range of motion or I can't
believe I've gotten to this state." When
it really was just accumulation of many,
many of those days of doing things where
you weren't paying attention to all the
little things. So, it doesn't really
creep up on anybody. It's like it it's
it's happening, you know, and it's
happening every day. It's not like you
can't intervene. You just have to be
aware of what you need to do to
intervene.
>> You have a post that really humbled me
and people are going to laugh. They're
going to be like, "I can't believe you
can't do that." Well, now I can do it.
I'll explain what it is in a moment. But
a longevity test.
>> Oh boy.
>> That includes test of balance,
>> strength,
>> and um inner fortitude. And that's the
put your shoes and socks on standing on
one foot obviously one foot then the
other not sitting down but doing that in
the morning every day. And I'll tell you
if you're training hard that lower
back's going to ache a little bit when
you first, you know, first thing in the
morning. This is a very cool test and I
force myself to do it now. And I have to
say a lot of mornings I'm like I just
want to sit down and put my shoes on,
you know, and I got this puppy now and
he's grabbing my shoelaces which makes
it even more dynamic. But in all
seriousness, it's it's a very
interesting, very simple test. If you
could just explain what it is, folks,
trust me, you want to do this every
single day. So, they call it the old man
test is is gender neutral, though. It
could be a woman test. Everybody is fair
game. The goal here is to simply put
your sock and your shoe on the floor on
both sides. Lay them down in front of
you. Um, untie your shoes, make them
sure they're they're loose enough that
you can get them on your foot. Stand on
one foot to begin the test. lean over,
pick up that shoe or pick pick up that
sock, put the sock on, pick up that
shoe, put it on, tie it, and then put
the foot down. Only after you've tied
the shoe can you put it down and then go
and do the other side. And it is
difficult. It is very, very difficult.
It happens to be one of the tests that I
do a little bit better than other tests,
but um we were joking before. I told you
that I about twice a year I still get
back pain every now and then and mine
came from leaning over to put my sock on
the other day and my whole back felt
like it was going to blow up on me like
that. So there's a lot going on inside
the body when you're doing this, right?
Why would my back all of a sudden seize
up on me when I'm going to pick put on
my sock? because you don't realize the
responsibility that those lumbar
parispinal muscles have in trying to
control even just leaning forward and
they're trying to make sure that you're
doing it at a pace that's safe for your
spine. So doing this every day is a
little mini workout for those muscles.
And again, we we I I think we tend to
get so lazy as we get older and
complacent and so that once you start
sitting down, you're just going to sit
down when you put on your socks and
shoes. What's the need to get up and do
this every day if I'm comfortable
putting it my, you know, doing this
sitting down or, wow, this was easier
because I sat down today. You can't be
seeking easy. If you seek easy, you're
going to get old a lot faster. So, this
test is testing your balance. It is
testing against some of the mini dynamic
control from those muscles in the low
back. It's is testing your ankle
mobility in a way because you're going
to get a lot of this going on the
perturbation through your ankles and
your knees and it's testing your hip
strength because again once you go on
one leg you're now talking about pelvic
control the same way we did before. So
you have to have good strength there.
But it's not uncommon for people to not
be able to pass this test. But with
practice like anything else you're
training these muscles to get stronger
and you're training these your your
balance and you're these are all skills
that can be learned and improved.
They're all trainable. I actually put a
a video out not long ago about um
different measures of of longevity. And
one of them was that test. Another one
was pull-ups. Another one was the number
of push-ups you could do. We we could
talk about these after, but the number
one was like going back to your glute
media strengthening. Can you lay in a
side lying plank position with the top
leg up about 45°? You could keep it
stacked. It's a lot easier to stay in a
plank position. You raise that leg off
of the other. Now it's all relying on
that lateral pillar strength of the
underside hip, the one closest to the
floor. So one arm down or stack on the
on the on the elbow.
>> Okay. Heels stacked at first. Yeah. At
first.
>> Okay. On your side. So side plank, not
just lying on your side. Side plank.
>> It's not the the uh the picnic date
stance. It's uh um you lying on your so
side plank and then you're going to
raise the top leg up to make a 45° and
see if you could hold that even for just
30 seconds
>> and it's difficult. You'll feel a lot of
shaking. You'll feel a lot of of u
sagging of that bottom hip because
you're you're asking your glute medius
on that underside leg to hold you up
into that position. So the beauty about
that series of tests though is that
they're all trainable. So if it's
trainable, it's fixable, you can improve
as you have, right? You've you're now
much better at at the test.
Oh yeah, old man test. Yeah, definitely.
Um there are mornings when I want to
cross one leg over the other kind of go
into like what do they call it that like
kind of pseudo crow pose they talk about
in yoga like rest the ankle and the like
and sometimes it people are probably
laughing at this. Go try it folks. Some
people might do it just right away is
very easy. Many people will find this
difficult like to the point where like I
don't think I can do this but quickly
get good at it.
>> Yeah. Strength is not even like a
determining factor or predictor here
either. You could be very very strong
and do incredibly poorly on this test
>> because you're not strong in these areas
or you could just have bad vestibular
balance, right? You could it could be
that alone. Once you start to lean
forward or look down, you don't have
good control. But there it is testing a
variety of things. And if it if you do
poorly on it, you can look a little
deeper, investigate a little deeper
through additional tests to try to find
out exactly where your weakness is. But
it but it's a good broadspectctrum test
to see how how good your your functional
balance is.
>> Yeah. Some people people might wonder
how do you work up to it? There's
something called Velcro shoes. No, I'm
just kidding. The uh or slippers like
there it's easier, right? It's going to
be quicker. Right. Right.
>> Yeah. I think um it's definitely worth
trying and uh I think identifying these
weak points um I think is just so
critical and I'm probably going to say
this 20 times during today's um
recording, but for the young guys and
gals who are thinking, "Oh, like that
thing is so easy." Trust me, with time,
it's the gradual creep of little things
that you stop doing. I'm going to add
the side plank uh in because I'm I just
haven't been doing much planking, not
much isometric stuff. And I'm sure that
I've got a weakness somewhere along the
chain of muscles that's required to do
that properly. Yeah.
>> And what I love about these sorts of
small things that support doing the big
things for much much longer, hopefully
forever, is that they don't have to be
done as part of the standard workout.
and they can be incorporated into like
you're watching something on Netflix and
you just kind of move some furniture out
of the way and you just do these at that
time which is really cool and important
because it's not just about like an
additional workout because people are
slammed. They've got so much to do and
like how am I supposed to do all this
stuff and be with sunlight and this and
that but it's straightforward.
>> Yeah. Well, that it look I think the
thing that you've done better than
anybody is practical implementation of
the things that are going to benefit
people that are not time consuming or
overly timeconuming. They're e easily
implemented. A lot of what I focus on is
when we're talking about these drills or
exercises to do, a lot of them are body
weight or a lot of them are done in
minimal space because the more elaborate
it becomes or the more timeconuming it
is or whatever it is, there's just so
many reasons for people not to do them
and they are going to be viewed as the
extra stuff until they become adopted
and they realize how much they're
helping them. It's always going to be
viewed as the extra stuff originally. So
to get someone to buy into the concept,
open up the time frame where they can do
them. Let them do it during watching
Netflix. Let them do it while me while
I'm on the floor doing some crunches
after I've already done my workout. Like
open up the restrictions so that you're
still getting the effect, but you're
you're you're minimizing the the uh
prescription of it. So it's so demanding
people don't want to do it. So, one
thing that we I don't think we've ever
talked about on this podcast is that
many people don't just work out, they
also play a sport. Uh maybe they do golf
or maybe baseball or softball, maybe
they swim. In every sport, there
obviously dominant patterns of of
movement. And there's a lot that's out
there about how to train to improve
those patterns of movement. I'd like to
ask the opposite question. Let's say
somebody played baseball or golfed or
whatever their sport was and now they
have imbalances that are the consequence
of having done some activity like a golf
swing over and over and over standing in
a particular way and they have pain and
they are thinking about longevity not
just of their golf game but of
everything else tennis whatever people
just pick your sport. I think this is
very common and not commonly discussed.
What can people do to compensate for
these unilateral movements or for these,
you know, you know, always left foot
forward type stance things that won't
compromise their their game but also
overcome any pain and imbalances? I've
always been curious about this. That
brings up the point of like how sport
specific training has evolved over the
years. There was a time when sport
specific training meant doing everything
that you could to replicate the motions
of the sport and trying to strengthen
those movement patterns. I think gladly
we've moved past that stage of of
training because you can get better at
that movement pattern by simply doing
that movement pattern. You can increase
the strength of your entire body by
increasing the strength of your entire
body. So the focus of the weight room
can be to do your general strengthening
bilaterally, right? in regardless of
what movement pattern direction your
sport favors and improve the strength
there and the function there because the
carryover to your movement pattern is
there. Like when you get stronger and
then you go back to swing a bat, you're
going to still have the increased
strength that you built in the weight
room in your swing of the baseball bat.
And you can throw harder if you're a
pitcher or you can throw further if
you're a quarterback. if you improve
your overall arm strength in your upper
body strength. A lot of upper body
throwing strength has nothing to do with
your arm. It has to do with the
stability of your core. So, if you're
getting much stronger in your core, you
can have more torque generation to throw
the ball further without having to do
anything to your arm. So, I think the
the strategy should be that when you're
a playing a sport and devoting a lot of
time to it, whether at the professional
level or not, you you still should be
focusing the majority of your strength
training and conditioning work towards
your overall balanced physique, trying
to get strong across your entire body.
Let the skill work be the skill work.
And if you want to focus, there are
certainly few few things. We mentioned a
couple when we were at the gym
yesterday, but a few things that
specific athletes can do to improve
their specific skill and that's fine
from a strength training perspective.
And that's fine. Like maybe more forearm
work if you're having to swing a a
racket or a bat, right? That's fine.
That can that can be done in addition to
your basic core lifting. But to go back
to the days where the strength training
was was basically replicating the
motions of the sport, especially
nowadays where you've got athletes who
never stopped playing their sport. It's
young athletes. They're they're playing
baseball year round through all these
fall leagues and winter leagues and like
there's way too much repetition of the
same movement pattern. And that doesn't
end well because you you can see what's
happening these days with pitchers like
it's almost a right of passage. when how
many years are they going to be able to
pitch before they have to have a Tommy
John surgery?
>> What is the Tommy John surgery?
>> Their owner collateral ligament, you
know, basically being replaced or it
tears in their elbow. They're out for an
entire season. But it's like some of
these pitchers, it's like you want they
want to get it done early so they can
hopefully come back and then have a
string of years where they can dominate.
It's it's it's crazy. But I think a lot
of it is coming from a lot of overuse, a
lot of repetition, not enough moving
into other sports and movement patterns
to balance off the strains and stresses
that they're going doing in that sport,
their chosen sport. And it's and it's
and it's causing a a lot of uh avoidable
avoidable stress that again just fixing
it through a more managed well-balanced
approach in the weight room is probably
key number one.
>> It's interesting. That's not the answer
I expected, but um really cool to hear
that. So, doing the uh classic
all-around weight training, you know,
squats, some deadlifts,
>> the goal should be to strengthen to
strengthen your body to improve your
flexibility everywhere to, you know, if
you're talking about, let's say, a
situation with a pitcher where you have
hyper mobility of your shoulder because
you're your your move your throwing
requires a lot more range of motion than
than a non-throwing shoulder.
You don't have to say, "Well, I'm
mobilizing my my shoulders now, so I
have to do a lot of mobility work on my
on my my throwing shoulder." That might
not be necessary. In some cases, you
might want to not do that because it's
already mobile enough because of the
skill work. So, it's not like a a broad
you do everything you do here, you do
there on each side. You you might want
to actually steer away from some of the
things that you're repetitively using in
the in the in the sport itself. But from
a strengthening standpoint, you'll never
go wrong sticking to the the core lifts,
building up your strength in those core
lifts and and bilaterally strengthening
your body and your balance and your
coordination and your explosivity and
your power. You're you're not going to
go wrong. That does transfer back over
to the sport itself. People think that
it has to be in this sport specific
motion to transfer back over there.
That's not that's not true. One thing I
noticed yesterday when we were training
as well as in your videos is that
whenever you have the opportunity to do
a movement standing as opposed to
seated, you'll do that. Whenever you
have the opportunity to stagger your
stance a bit, not fully lunging, but
offset your stance a bit, you'll do
that. And then you also talked about
>> even on a on a dumbbell curl, leaning a
bit toward the side that you're curling
up, assuming you're doing alternating
dumbbell curls, uh can be very useful.
Would you sort of explain the general
logic for that and then maybe we can
touch into a few of the specific
examples? I have a phrase if you want to
look like an athlete you have to train
like an athlete, right? And and the the
what that really means is like sure
people might want to look athletic. They
want to have an athletic physique. They
might want to have the six-pack abs.
They want to have what they think is an
athletic looking physique. That's great
because a lot of people want that. But
you have to train for it. It comes at a
price. You have there's a way to get
there. And I believe that the way to get
there is by training like an athlete.
Doesn't mean you have to start going out
and doing again the all these things
that people thought is what athletes
need to do to be athletic. You just have
to start a caring a little bit more
about what you do. So treat it like
you're an athlete. And these little
things matter. It goes back to the
original point. The little things matter
just like they would if you were if this
was your contract on the line. Every
little thing would matter. But more
importantly, functionally, what do
athletes do? Most athletes, not all, but
most athletes are on their feet. Most
athletes move around. You move around,
you're not squared up with your feet
right next to each other and and unless
you're, you know, I mean, in one phase
of an offensive lineman's uh duty, they
stand up and their feet are square, but
they quickly stagger their feet for more
stability. So, you need to be able to
operate from that position, I think, as
often as you can because
it's not to produce professional
athletes. is to produce a body that's
functioning the way it prefers to
function. Why do we default do that? If
I told you, Andrew, I'm going to come
over here. I'm going to try to push you
over right now. Would you stand up like
this or would you put one foot back?
Like, by default, you would instantly go
to one foot back and you try to lean
into me and get get more stable because
your body instantly knows that's a more
stable position. If I can train with
more stability, I know I can decrease
injury risk no matter what I'm doing.
You talked about even something as
simple as the curl. When I
it's not just looking at the bicep, but
when I turn towards the bicep and I kind
of screw I I call it screwing down. As I
screw down on that weight, I'm able to
stabilize the torso a little bit more
over this shoulder. Or I can even dig
the the arm into my side a little bit,
engaging the lats, stabilizing the
shoulder girdle, so that when I lift the
weight, I have more tension in the
biceps, number one, but more stability
that the biceps can work from by
stabilizing the entire shoulder girdle.
When I'm out in space like this, it's a
little bit more of a freewheeling deal
here where I don't have that stability.
So, is something going to happen or go
wrong from doing that? No. But that's
not creating the most functionally
stable body. So, by turning your body
around that arm, keeping it stable in
your side and curling, I'm able to
create a little bit more stability
there. I take it to the same the same
way down to the ground with a lunge.
When you lunge and do my favorite, a
reverse lunge, which takes a little bit
of the stress off the anterior knee,
stepping backward, step backwards rather
than forward. Just again, I'm sensitive
to that cuz I have pretty bad knees from
those early days in the 20s of doing
things wrong with flat feet.
You want to as you step back a take a
little bit of a wider step on that back
leg. So you're creating a wider base of
support, more balance, right? Rather
than being completely narrow cuz not
just staggering my stance, but
staggering and widening my base of
support.
>> This is key. It's funny. If you're
you're in the gym with people, I I'm not
a trainer, but occasionally I've shown
some people how to do some things and
you say widen your stance, they
immediately put one foot further out in
front of the other. But what you're
talking about is getting them the space
between the
>> um the insides of your feet further
apart. So w literally widening outside
shoulder
>> lengthening your stance.
>> Right. And and and especially as you
lengthen your stance, widening them in
in in conjunction is going to create a
wider base of support, more stability.
So when we do that, you step back, you
create a little bit of that width and
balance. But as I go down into the
lunge, you'll find
if you don't lean your torso or turn
your torso a little bit in the direction
of that forward leg and kind of do that
same screwing down effect that I talk
about, that front leg will wobble a
little bit. You'll feel that the hip is
a little bit more unstable. Back to
again that single leg suitcase lunge we
talked about where that hip drops and
you get a lot of that instability. I
want to be able to turn and sort of
screw down on that hip. And what I'm
doing is basically kind of tying the
muscles of the pelvis together, muscles
of the hip, co-contracting and creating
more stability so that now when I ask
that quad and and and glute and
hamstring to to work and push me back to
a standing position, it's working more
efficiently because it's on a stable
base. I I've mentioned before if we were
gonna jump and try to get a the highest
vertical jump jump we could, would you
jump off this ground, this floor, or
this table, or would you jump off of
sand?
>> Jump off a firm firm firm.
>> You jump off of sand. As soon as you try
to place force down into the ground,
it's going to dissipate because the
ground itself is moving. Well, we want
to create as much force and efficient
force as possible. Want to have a stable
base. So all that co- contraction of the
hip when you screw down into it or even
in the shoulder girdle when you're going
to then operate this this elbow flexion
shoulder flexion movement of a curl then
you basically get a more efficient
movement. So stability is a key for more
efficient movement and also I think
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around a little bit here, but I I'm
recalling the many things that have uh
reversed or eliminated pain that is very
common in anyone that works out. And one
of those, you mentioned it, is pain at
the kind of inner elbow point, kind of
forearm, inner elbow. And I figured I
had an elbow problem. I had something
going on with tendonitis of the elbow.
And you know, it
>> turns out it was further away from that.
It was all happening at the level of the
grip.
>> Yeah.
>> And you said, and I listened fortunately
on pull-ups
>> to not let the bar be at my fingertips,
to try and get my knuckles over the bar.
Yeah. Right. And you have a beautiful
demonstration of this. It almost sounds
like that trick that kids do where they
go, "Hey, pull my finger." You know, um
it's not that trick, folks, but where
you um got to put some resistance to
each of your own fingers, like your your
index finger, your middle finger, your
ring finger, and then your pinky finger.
And when you do put the pressure on that
pinky finger, you can feel it right at
that elbow.
>> And so, sure enough, I was causing this
elbow pain by doing, you know, uh
pull-ups and and slipping off the bar a
bit, and I'm at my fingertips. As soon
as I took your advice and got my
knuckles over the bar, even though it
puts requires a little bit of a wrist
bend, sure enough, I haven't had elbow
pain in a decade. It is uh one of those
things that can happen so quickly, too.
Like, you could go from having no elbow
pain to the very next day having elbow
pain or even right after the workout
doing elbow pain if you're doing a lot
of chin-ups with this issue where the
where the bar is too far away and it's
just an overload issue. essentially the
the muscles, the flexors, the deep
flexors of the forearm that run down
into the fingers. It's it's actually the
the ring and fifth fingers, so the
fourth and fifth finger that tend to be
the the weakest and least resilient to
that kind of stress. If you're gripping
through there and that bar gets deep
into the into the fingers
>> or if you do it where you're doing a
curl, even the bar sits too deep into
your hand there and you try to curl
heavy
>> toward the ends of your fingers.
>> To the ends of your fingers. Yeah.
and not into the into the actual meat of
your hand. It's just a lot of strain
more than that that muscle is really
built for to handle and those tendons
get a little bit strained and it can
immediately feel like a knife in the in
the elbow feel and it takes a long time
to go away because how many other
exercises do you do where you're
gripping and and requiring the grip to
be in place to do that. Now, if you want
to intentionally do this, you can do it
intentionally. let's say a an underhand
lat pull down like they call it a hook
grip because what people want to dis
discourage people from doing is pulling
down too much with the bar, right?
Causing too much forearm involvement in
whatever back exercise I'm trying to do.
But in that case, you're really trying
to hook through the stronger fingers of
the index finger, middle finger, right?
And and even the just, you know, you're
getting a little bit of assistance on
the ring finger, but you're really
trying to hook through there. All four
fingers might be on the bar, but most of
the force is being held through there.
And you're you're still pulling down a
lot through your lats to build to pull
that bar down. So, it's not like you're
just letting it hold all the weight. But
that that little hook grip is meant to
discourage any meaningful wrist flexion
that would take over and take away some
of the work of the lats. But if you got
a history of elbow issues, you don't
need to use that grip. Like, that's just
it's just not worth it. the extra
benefit of a little extra forearm
involvement may not be worth it for you.
But for people who find that they don't
have elbow issues and they want to get a
little bit of that, you can do it in an
intentional way, but you really have to
kind of steer away from making these
fingers do the bulk of the work. How did
you figure that out by having that issue
multiple times?
>> Yeah. I mean, I was just again, you
know, just blown away. I was like, okay,
I've got this inner elbow pain and I'm
like curling and I'm doing my tricep
work and my back work and I'm wondering,
okay, what's wrong with my elbows? And
you know, I'm I'm at that time, you
know, young guy. I'm like, what's going
on? And then
>> and then it makes perfect sense as you
pointed out, you know, ring finger,
pinky finger are are are taking too much
of the at the load at the near the tips
of the fingers, force myself to put the
bar or the or the dumbbell in the meat
of my hand. Yeah. Now, we take a more
traditional grip, right? You're not like
relying on that those distal tendons to
have to do all that work and manage that
load. Now, now the hand the hand can
hold on to hundreds and hundreds of
pounds, right? So, if we can just get it
into the meat of the hand, now I'm
getting all the assistance of the
intrinsic hand muscles on top of it. So,
now it's no longer a strain or a stress
to those particular tendons. But believe
me, uh, two things contribute to me
figuring these things out. Number one,
being a physical therapist changed
everything for me because I had to think
of things differently. Number two, when
you're treating patients, not everyone
everyone presents the same. So, you have
to come up with alternative ways to get
to the same end result. I might be able
to tell nine out of 10 people to do a
Bulgarian split squat to alleviate knee
pain. But for that 10th person, it just
lights them up and you and they can't do
it. You have to be able to figure out
how to how to work around that. And the
second thing is that I I had the
unfortunate but fortunate experience of
having to deal with a lot of these
things through my life in the early
years and even still now. I I still do
things that cause inflammation and and
uh a need to reassess and look at what
I'm doing and maybe why. And like you, I
didn't I knew I when I first started
experiencing that pain also in my 20s,
like that wasn't I didn't have an elbow
issue. Like there's nothing structurally
wrong with my elbow. So I had to look
somewhere else. I didn't look then, but
I looked when I got older and had way
too many of those incidents happen. So
it forces you to look and it forces me
to look. I have to look cuz this is what
I do for a living. But it forces me to
look and figure out what's causing this
and more importantly, what can you do to
stop it?
>> Well, I and many others are eternally
grateful cuz that inner elbow pain, the
lower back pain. Yeah. They're brutal.
Like they they can really take the they
can really take the pleasure out of a
lot of things cuz it's not just during
training.
>> Yeah.
>> The shoulders. Um I'm going to knock on
wood in a second because I I've been
fortunate that my shoulders haven't
given me issues, but that means it's
probably just next. But perhaps that's
also the consequence of having once
again listen to your content and
whenever possible I've tried to get into
external rotation which is uh if I
reference the fawns will anyone know
what I'm talking about. So thumbs out
and uh you know giving the thumbs up but
thumbs rotated away from the belly
button away from the midline. Could you
explain where the shoulder tends to be
most vulnerable and this business of
internal thumbs pointing toward the
belly button versus external rotation
during all sorts of movements and also
just daily life? Good point here too is
on top of the thumbs is, you know, not
just the flipping of the hand itself
through supernation and pronation of the
forearm, but literally letting the elbow
kind of travel with that, right? So,
you're letting everything move together
cuz it's the it's the rotation that's
happening in this joint, this ball and
socket up top.
>> Shoulders got to rotate out, right?
We're not just talking about moving your
thumbs away from your belly button out
for those just listening. We're talking
about getting the elbows in in a bit
more. As those thumbs go out, the
shoulders externally rotating as well.
>> Yeah. Which is key. And and
the the issue with internal rotation,
external rotation is that it's in
they're both motions of the shoulder,
right? We're needing we need both of
them. We need to be able if you go back
to the pitcher, he needs to be able to
externally rotate and then of course
internally rotate to throw the ball. I'm
not saying that internal rotation is is
is the devil. What we need though is the
ability to control internal rotation. We
need to be able the ability to have
enough external rotation strength to
hold that position for longer or to or
to be able to control right the ex the
eentric control from the external
rotators is what actually controls the
internal rotation. the eccentric control
from the internal rotator external
rotators
>> from the external rotators which
controls internal rotation because as
we're lengthening the external rotators
we're controlling if we have good
control the eentric control of that then
we're slowing down the internal rotation
or at least controlling it at a certain
pace that's extremely important when it
comes to pitching. we have this rapid
internal rotation going on, right? Which
is that essentially the thumb is moving
toward the midline to throw,
>> right? And so is the so is the elbow, so
is your shoulder.
>> So if the external rotators are
eccentrically strong, they can control
that and control the the pace of that
and make sure that it's not outpacing
what your your shoulder itself can can
structurally protect. So it's important
to have that, too. But internal rotation
in the world of the of of the
non-athlete is particularly problematic
if a you're posturally holding that
position for way too long throughout the
day and which is what we all chronically
are suffering from whether we're
texting, typing, not focusing ever on
the external rotators of our, you know,
in our training. You're just getting
chronically tight and internally
rotated. And then when you go to do even
basic things like lift your arm up over
your head, you're creating an internal
shoulder environment that's more prone
>> to
creating less space in inflaming tissues
that wind up getting pinched in that
position. That basically when you're
tight internally, you get changes to the
shoulder capsule itself, which is all
the ligamentous structures that surround
it that make you more internally rotated
and tight. You can't get out of that
position. So now when I go to raise my
arm up, there's just less room in here.
For instance, I think I we might have
done this before you and I, but if I
were to have you just lean forward like
this or slump your shoulder and then
raise your arm as high as you could in
front you, you're going to that's as far
as you get, right? And you're limited
not because of anything that's
necessarily tight right there, but
structurally there's a little bony bump
on the top of your humorous that's
actually getting stuck on the upper
portion of your shoulder joint there. So
now bring your arm down. Open up your
chest as much as you can. Turn your arm
out a little bit. Now raise it up
overhead and it goes higher. Why?
Because you just created external
rotation inside the joint that allows it
now to go up in a higher position. Well,
what happens if you're chronically in
this position of internal rotation and
you go to raise your arm, you go to wash
your hair, you go to get stuff out of
the cabinet, you go to do all the things
you do every day. Every time with there
being less space in there, there's more
likelihood to pinch on a super spinous
tendon. There's more likelihood to be
pinched on a bersa. There's more any and
every time we pinch, we potentially
inflame and cause more swelling inside
that joint, which causes less joint
space, right? So, you're inflaming those
tissues, more more uh compression in
that joint, and then more pain
ultimately. And then that winds up
causing down the road things like
partial thickness tears and tears of the
of the rotator cuff that we don't want.
So internal rotation in this elevated
position is not good. having external
rotation abilities or strength that can
help to centralize what it what it
really does when people talk about
rotator cuff training is yes you're
working the external rotators but really
what its main job is to actually keep
that ball centered in the middle of the
socket.
>> I see.
>> So as you go and you raise your arm up
in an internally rotated dominated
dominant shoulder it will migrate up.
Why? because the deltoid pulls up. So as
you're raising your shoulder up, the
deltoid is pulling that humorris up and
the internal rotation of the other
muscles are already too tight,
chronically tight or just keeping it in
the front side anyway. So you're lifting
your arm up and you're getting very
little space. What the external rotators
will do is they'll keep it centered so
that as you raise instead of it
migrating up, it's countering the force
of the deltoid. So staying in the middle
and it basically can rotate and stay
right in the middle where it has to be.
You're not getting this migration or
pinching going on. So that's the real
function of the rotator cuff is to
maintain a more centralized position
with less of this pinching. So you
really have to focus on when we're
talking about avoiding shoulder issues.
The biggest thing you can do is start
training the rotator cuff,
not stop training the rotator cuff. And
if you're doing a lot of heavy pressing
or a lot of work with exercises that
tend to internally rotate your shoulders
now, then you have to do even more work
for the rotator cuff to try to maintain
that balance. If you're doing all kinds
of delt work, you're never doing it
rotator cuff work, you're just creating
more and more of that imbalance. So I
think the biggest thing you can do is
maintain mobility of the shoulder,
mobility of the shoulder girdle itself.
So the the the scapula being able to
rotate and then having strength of the
muscles of that shoulder girdle which
are the rotator cuff. Those are the
three main things you can do to keep
that shoulder functioning well and
staying out of this domination of
internal rotation with elevation. What's
your favorite uh external rotator
exercise?
>> My favorite is just simply attaching a
band to a stable. could be a stair uh
like a stair post or it could be in a
gym just a rack, right? And you you step
away. You you put the band in your hand
from the anchor point. You're going to
step out until there's good tension on
the band. If you were to let it relax,
you will pull your your hand towards
your chest, towards your belly. You
externally rotate to about back to
neutral or a little bit beyond if you
can.
>> A little bit beyond your torso.
>> Yep. Yeah. A little beyond your torso if
you can. That's even better if you have
that range of motion. Sometimes people
don't. And when you get it there, you
again hold it, right? You hold it for a
second just so you know that you
actually muscled it out there. You
didn't just swing it out there. The
number one thing people do here to cheat
and we talk about this, we talked about
it in the gym quite a bit. Your body
knows how to compensate. Like if you
ever want to know what you're doing
wrong, just look at yourself in the
mirror and then look and see what your
body's trying to do. You'll realize the
compensation is the direct opposite of
what it's not doing, what the job is is
is avoiding. So when the ro rotator cuff
is trying to externally rotate the
shoulder,
>> the way I can avoid that is just lift my
elbow away from my side. I can get my
hand from here to here if I raise my arm
out to the side. But now I'm using my
delt to do it and not the rotator cuff.
>> Keep that elbow pin.
>> You got to keep the elbow pin to the
torso. So the easiest thing you can do
is just put something underneath your
arm, a little towel. Fold the towel, put
it underneath there, and then do the
exercise. And if you find that your
towel is dropping to the floor, it's
obviously that because you're lifting
your shoulder, your elbow away from your
body and you're using the wrong muscle.
Do this as a warm-up. Do it at the end
of the workout. How many sets, how many
reps, how many times a week?
>> There's different applications of it.
You can do it before a workout. So, if
I'm going to press, like, let's say
bench press, I could use this as a good
warm-up before I go press almost as a
neuroactivation technique to make sure
those muscles are alert and firing. So,
I can make sure that they're working
when I go to press to keep my shoulders
back in in a better position. And
especially as I raise my arms up in an
overhead press, I can make sure that
they're alert, they're fired up, they're
they're willing to contribute to keep
that head centered when the arm's going
up overhead. So, I like to do them on
pressing days as a neuroactivator before
I train. And it's serving as a warm-up,
too, or on other days. Again, treating
it as my special program, which is what
I have to do because of all the issues
that I've had with my shoulders. Again,
not from this one didn't come
necessarily from bad training, but just
dumb decisions trying to throw a
baseball back with the Mets. Um, I lost
a bet. It's kind of famous at this at
this point, but like a player bet me
that I couldn't throw the ball from,
well, let's rephrase that. I bet that I
could throw the ball from right field to
third base on the fly cuz it just looked
rather short from where I was, but it's
actually a lot longer and only the
better arms in baseball can actually do
that really easily. So, I have no idea
why I thought I could, but I did. And
literally the the moment I let that ball
go, I feel like my lab went with it and
maybe landed somewhere near second base
because it just felt like a burning
zipper pain in my shoulder and I've had
to deal with it ever since. Did the ball
get to the third base?
>> Oh, no. No way. No. I think it landed
with the labor bat at like second base,
you know, like no way. So,
>> you know, I learned my lesson, but the
fact is it's something that you can
you can adopt pretty easily as a special
programming type thing. Um, there's
things you could do too to make it a
little bit more interesting. Like once
you get into position where you could do
the actual repetition, you could then
hold it in a neutral position. Neutral
for this exercise would be not in, not
out. So where your fist is pointing
straight ahead and then then take a big
giant step away from the band.
>> So you're increasing the resistance of
the band dynamically but still having to
keep yourself in that same position.
>> So elbow still locked to the side, fist
out in front of you. You're holding the
band, there's tension. Step away from
the bar that the band is fixed to, so
there's additional tension.
>> Yeah. And it's going to want to pull
your hand back, but you keep it right
where it is. And then the fun part of it
is that I could then take it even
further. I could jump out there. So now
it becomes a little bit more ballistic
and dynamic. So I can be in this
position and then jump. And if I jump
quickly, now it really wants to pull me
in, but I have to still keep that same
position here. So it's mimicking a
little bit more of a of a ballistically
dynamic force. So I could do that. I
could start to change the angle. I could
be here in this position now facing
facing the the the anchor point and it
still wants to pull me into internal
rotation.
>> The band in front of you, not to the
side. Okay.
>> And I could jump back and see if it
pulls me down this direction. Interal
external rotation is is is
>> is done so many different ways. Again, I
could be in this position here. I'm just
reaching my arm out in front of me and
turning my my my arm all the way. Thumbs
down to the floor, all the way back past
the sky, and then thumbs out towards my
side. Right? That's internal external
rotation. I don't even have a bent
elbow, right? Because we're talking
about a shoulder movement, not an elbow
movement. But when we when we do it, we
could do it down low is going to be
easier for people to start. And the more
things you start to do with external
rotation, internal rotation with the arm
elevated, the more challenging it starts
to become. So you progressively move
towards movements where you're internal
or externally rotating against
resistance in a higher and higher arm
position. Love it. I want to take care
of my shoulders. Uh for me, neck
training has been u fundamentally
important for avoiding injury outside of
the gym. got rear ended in a car. I had
just bought my first car. This was many
years ago. 2005 CRV. I'm like driving my
first new car. I' driven, you know, used
cars before.
>> Yeah.
>> Parked at the light or stopped at the
light rather. And all of a sudden just
someone just ran into me. Person next to
me ended up with some pretty bad whip
whiplash and back pain. I was a little
sore but um nothing really. And uh you
know it's not a controlled experiment
but I credit that. uh been training my
neck um even back then. Now I learned
how to do it properly from you in your
video and we will definitely provide a
link to it. I talk about this non-stop.
This video is so valuable. You don't
need any special equipment, some uh
standard plates and a towel. But this
neck thing, it's not just for fighters.
It's your upper spine. Posturally, I
feel like people don't like nowadays
everyone's posture is so terrible.
Posturally, it just makes your default
posture better. It's something we're
always all working on. But neck training
for men and women, I think men probably
would be okay with having a most of them
would be like, "Oh, cool. I get a
slightly bigger neck." Women probably
want to avoid that. Is there is there a
way that women or men, but tends to be
women who want to have a, you know,
great posture, a a strong neck, but they
want to maintain that kind of, you know,
like elegant neck. They they don't want
a thicker neck. Is there a way that they
can strengthen the neck muscles and
achieve that without thickening the
neck? Yeah, I I think that women would
be less resistant to the idea of having
a stronger neck. I think as long as we
weren't talking about building massive
traps along with it, right? And I think
that they think neck and traps cuz they
do feed into each other. The reason why
men who train their neck tend to have a
a better or much thicker look to their
neck better for men is that they're also
in conjunction likely training their
traps either directly or indirectly
through some of the other movements that
do in a heavy way. Women who tend to
train their neck directly and not
focused on building their traps at the
same time, they're just going to have a
stronger neck because they're not
necessarily the biggest muscles in here
that that grow substantially. And again,
when you look at the proportional growth
in muscles from men and women, there's
already a difference in how big these
muscles will grow, male versus female.
But now, in an area where the where the
the muscles themselves don't grow to
astronomically large proportions, you
really aren't going to get that much
size in the neck. And I think women are
chronically undertrained when it comes
to the neck. I I can't tell you how
often that you'll prescribe some kind of
an ab routine. And I'm not even thinking
about the repercussions on the neck cuz
for me it's like it's it's no strain at
all. But a lot of people will complain
and most often it's women that just
doing the crunch cuz you I don't want
them holding on to their neck and
cranking on their neck during a crunch.
>> They'll say my my neck is hurting. I
can't do that. I can't do that routine.
It's it's only hurting because of
fatigue, not because there's their their
neck is being held in one position and
their fingers are just basically
touching back there to just keep them
away from cranking. And it's also
>> that's how you want them people doing
crunches. Not cranking, not pushing the
Yeah. So just touching the back of their
head very
>> touching the back of your head lightly.
And you know what you're getting there
also is a little extra weight. The
weight of your arms back there is going
to provide a little bit of extra
resistance on a basic crunch,
>> but it's also leaving the neck
unsupported because so often people are
used to holding the entire weight of
their head and then what happens is they
start to fatigue and their ab here we go
again. What is the body's natural
compensation? They know that the eyes
have to get up when they're doing a
crunch. The eyes have to raise up. So
what do they do? they just pull on the
head and the eyes come up and they're
not doing any more work for their abs,
but they've gotten to where they thought
they were supposed to be. Natural
compensation gone wrong. That's not what
we want to do. So, when women are
encouraged to do it quote unquote right
and don't pull on your neck, they don't
have the strength in their anterior neck
to do that. So, doing this neck series
that you were referring to is a is a
great way to strengthen the neck. And
again, depending on how much weight you
use, you could just use a five or a 10
pound plate and have plenty of of of
overload there to create a stronger neck
without a lot of hypertrophy. And and
for those that aren't aware, the the the
series is simply taking a plate. Let's
just say we start really light. We take
a 5 lb plate. We wrap it in a towel,
nice cushy towel, so it's not
uncomfortable at all. You lay on a
bench, and you're going to go basically
in four different directions. You're
going to rotate your body's position on
that bench in four different ways. to
work the extensors, the flexors, and
then the lateral neck muscles on both
left and right sides. So, all you have
to do is, let's say you're starting on
your back, you lay on your back, head is
off the edge of the bench, that nice
cushy towel with the plate inside of it
is put up on top of your forehead. You
allow yourself to to lean your head
back, but as you come up, you want to
also pull your chin down, right? Because
you're not just trying to like
overextend or hyper extend your your
neck at any point. You want to you the
stability we talked about before,
whether it be the hip screwing in or the
shoulder screw, the stability you get
here is the retraction of the chin that
provides the stability to the neck. So
you have the retraction of the chin,
which is just pulling it straight back.
It's going to feel like it moves only
about a half an inch or so. That's the
position there. And then you you pull
your head back up to neutral again. You
you flex your neck until you're back to
neutral again. You do that 12
repetitions, however many, you know, sub
fatigue here, but just enough to to
cause some some fatigue. Turn on to your
stomach at that point if you like. Put
the weight on the back of your head and
then do the same thing. Retract first.
Make sure you got the stable neck.
>> Chin closer to your
>> elbow. Good way to talk about it. And
then you basically allow your your head
to to sink down forward off the edge of
the bench. And then you're going to
extend your neck back up again to
neutral or in this case a little bit
beyond into a little bit of extension.
And then you go to your side and the
same deal. You allow your head to just
bend a little bit to the laterally like
ear towards the shoulder
>> but you're laying on the bench. You do
the same thing. Place the weight on top
of the opposite side of your of your
head. And then you're going to lift up
against that weight. These are just
supposed to be done very slow, very
controlled. There's nothing crazy
explosive about these. You're just
supposed to feel those muscles. And
trust me, like if you have not done
these, you do one, you start with one
round of this and then wait until
tomorrow cuz like you don't want to do
too much cuz I guarantee you're going to
be sore. Back in the day when I played
football,
you didn't realize how weak your neck
could get in an offseason until you put
the helmet on for the first time and
just one practice with the helmet on and
you know you're controlling all that
extra weight of the helmet dynamically
and the neck would be sore for for two
three days. we had to accommodate even
to the to the weight of the helmet. So
with neck training, it's a it's a long
slow process. You just start very light.
You start submaximal and you start
building up your strength. And then when
you talk about a crunch, that's a
nothing exercise for maintaining
stability and control. When you get into
situations like you where you have
accidents and car accidents, you become
not only just resilient, but potentially
life-saving, you know, by having a
stronger neck. Gosh, if I, you know,
could highlight bold and, you know, and
and uh underline this and send it out as
far as I can that the next stuff, men
and women, it's, you will be positively
amazed at the transformations. Your
pressing lifts will get stronger. Your
pulling lifts will get stronger. You get
stronger. Aesthetically for guys, you
know, I mentioned this in the video
yesterday, but I'll say it again that a
lot of guys who work to widen their
shoulders, if their neck strength is
isn't coming up um proportionally, it
looks like they got the wrong head on
that body. It looks crazy, guys. You
look you look ridiculous, especially in
street clothes. Like, I'm not saying you
need a giant neck, but there's there's a
proportion thing there that's that's
important. If you care about that sort
of thing,
>> as I say this, I know that most people
won't take the time to do it because it
looks awkward. Mhm.
>> It's a tiny play.
>> It's a weird thing to do in a gym, too.
You know, it just seems a little weird,
but look, it people do a lot of weird
stuff in gyms and and uh this is one of
the weirder things that the better weird
things you can do if you're going to
invest sometime. Again, it doesn't take
a lot. It really doesn't take a lot to
to pay big dividends here because it is
an area that's pretty much untrained.
Again, we're not talking traps. Traps
get a lot of work, but those deep
muscles of the neck don't get trained
very often at all.
>> Yeah. So much of what you teach is about
winning the short game and the long
game. And to me, winning the long game
is about being able to come in and do
the big stuff year after year, decade
after decade. So that, you know, when
you're 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, why not,
right? I mean, the the experiment of
whether people can have great strength
and mobility, etc., into their 80s and
90s,
>> with rare exceptions has never actually
been done. And that experiment is
happening now because resistance
training, you know, especially for
women, you know, a few years back, like
if it wasn't bodybuilders, nobody did
it. Now, everyone knows this as part of
the longevity game. So, I'm so excited
that these again, what sound like small
things are getting out there thanks to
you because they really do make a
difference. And I believe that in our
80s and 90s and maybe even beyond,
people can move right and feel right and
be posturally right. There's a cool
video, forgive me for going long, um,
but we'll put a link to it that I saw.
No, it's not AI. Of a woman escaping
from a um Chinese uh resting home.
>> Okay.
>> So, she's in her 90s. She's 92 and she's
climbing over the front gate. She was
caught on surveillance camera and it's
so cool.
>> Surprised it hasn't come on my feed for
>> Yeah. So, she's crawling over the
surveillance gate and then she gets out
and then she walks away. Now, she's
she's got some a little bit of frailty
to her, but there was a drop down to the
ground of this a big iron gate and she's
just like, I'm out of here.
But it doesn't that's not to say that
when you do the things I'm saying you do
the small things that you're not going
to still have aches and pains and things
that you you have to be able to also
manage that like how can you show up
each day and still manage the fact that
yeah this shoulder is still a little bit
sore this shoulder is still or this this
knee is a little cranky.
you have to continue to show up if
you're going to um play this longevity
game, right? Because stopping
is the fastest way to slow your body,
right? So, I think to slow your body
down to a point of of really poor
quality of life, you have to figure out
how to manage through these injuries and
train around and through these injuries.
And and and in a simple example of that,
I always like to use an analogy of like
a construction zone. If there's one
street that's shut down, you're not
going to you're not going to shut the
whole city down, right? You need to find
a way to redirect traffic around there
so the city can operate. So, if it was,
let's say, that shoulder and you were
doing a I don't know, a dumbbell or a
barbell overhead press, you can't do it.
It hurts. You have to have a way to
reroute that. So, let's say it's a
machine press. Is that my first choice
based on the things we talked about?
You're sitting down, you're on a
machine, you're in a fixed pattern. No.
But if it allows you to still train,
you're getting a lot of other benefits.
Number number one, you're getting some
additional strengthening of the
inactivation of the deltoid. You're
getting some movement through the joint
itself, which we know bathes the joint
surfaces and helps to provide nutri
nutrition to the joint. You're moving
that capsule so it doesn't get stiff and
and tight. You're doing a lot of things,
right? Even though it might be choice B
for the exercise. Let's say you can't do
any pressing at all. Again, you don't
shut the city down. You just take a back
road, right? You just take another back
road. The back row might be rowing.
>> Rowing is going to still work the
shoulder joint through extension. It's
still going to provide some of those
joint benefits. It's still going to
provide the capsule benefits. It might
not be stimulating the delts that way,
but there's other exercises you can do
for the delts that won't do that. So,
our job is to figure out how we can
always have something we can do so that
the option is not or the alternative is
not nothing. Cuz that's when things
really start to go go wrong when you
when you opt for nothing. And that's
when the the aging process starts to
really accelerate to the point of even
just the functional aging, how you feel
and and and the quality of your life
will will will sink if you don't
continue to figure out ways to do that.
So I always felt my my my mission or my
goal was to empower people with these
options and these alternatives of how do
you do these things? Because again, if
someone came to me as a as a PT and then
and and my bag of tricks contained one,
two, and three and they couldn't do any
of them, then what do I do? I have to
have options four and five there, too.
And I think that's always been my
strength is to figure out not just to
have option four and five on reserve,
but then also have 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 in
case I needed those, too. And if I could
provide people with that information,
then they know how to dip into those at
the right time to keep going, keep
training. I would like to take a quick
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>> Do you do cardio? I mean, you're you're
naturally pretty lean. I know you eat
extremely well. Yeah.
>> And we can talk about nutrition a bit as
well, but um what are your thoughts on
cardio?
>> Cardio is is like the right foot to the
left foot. Like it's it's it's very
important for the overall um picture of
health. If you're if you're avoiding
cardio and conditioning entirely, you're
not as healthy as you think you are. Um
I don't do as much cardio as I should.
It's always my big confession that I
don't. And the reason why is simply
because I have to choose based on time
limitation. And for me, with priorities
being to spend some time with my family
and my boys and and and how much can I
actually get done with work and and my
workout time, I always will take a step
in the direction of of strength training
and weight training, but I try not to
ignore it entirely. when I do I jump on
a bike and I do stationary bike riding
because I can I like the fact that I can
increase resistance on the the pedals
and kind of turn it into almost a
pseudo, you know, again, the meat side
of me wants to turn into some sort of a
of a resistance activity, but of course
doing it for the duration to improve my
uh my my cardiorespiratory health. Um,
but it's also good for my knees. My
knees are quite beat up. Again, that's
that's something that I'll never be able
to reverse, at least not without modern
medicine, but I I uh I have to manage
that. And anytime I try to do anything
where I'm running or jumping, um it
tends to hurt a little bit. I do still
love to jump rope. We talked about jump
rope before. Jump rope happens to be a
lot lower impact for me as long as you
can do it properly on the balls of your
foot and absorb absorb the shock of jump
roping. But I would say between jump
roping and and stationary bike at a
higher resistance level and done an
interval fashion, those are my two
favorite ways to do it.
>> Yeah, jump rope's great. I haven't been
doing it as much as I used to. And uh
now that I got this new pup, I've got
him in his little penned area sometimes
and I'll and I'll skip rope. I I don't
let him run around while I do it cuz I'm
afraid I'm going to I'm going to whip
him, you know, on accident. I don't want
to do that. But um I'd forgotten how how
effective it is at getting heart rate
up, especially if you're doing some
double unders or speed it up or high
knees and things like that. The
coordination piece is awesome. You know,
it's one of these things like back to
the basics feels good.
>> It's also there's a gamification aspect
like you want to Yeah. You want to learn
a new skill. Can I do it single leg? Can
I do it side to side? Can I do it double
under? as you said, like there's there's
there's little built-in challenges that
I think we inherently always try to like
up the up the level of what we're doing
to see what we can do or what we can't.
But, um, that's built in that's not
really built in on a lot of the other
modes of of conditioning, which is why
people who do skip it skip it cuz it
tends to be unapologetically kind of the
the most boring part of training. If
you're used to doing lots of different
exercises and feeling the the weight in
your hands, it could be a little bit
boring, but there's ways to make that
more fun.
>> Do you like running?
>> I actually like running, but again, I
can't tolerate it. My knees are just
they they feel like they want to
detonate when I take about after about a
quarter mile. Now, I could do it on my I
have a Woodway treadmill,
>> which are incredibly forgiving. It's
like
>> Which one is it?
>> Woodway.
>> Woodway.
>> Yeah, we have we used to have them in
all the um MLB weight rooms. They're
they're basically there's no deck
underneath them. So they're it's like
running on air and best treadmill. Also
pretty super expensive, but they're
they're worth the money if people have
the ability to invest in one. They want
to run indoors.
>> Are they arked ones or are they
straight?
>> They make an arked one, but they're
straight and they're just there's just
no deck in there. So it feels a lot
lighter and more forgiving on your on
your feet. They actually have some
amazing um versions of of the woodway
that they um um called the Alter G where
they actually take the gravity away so
you can run in a gravity free
environment. Yeah. You can like which is
crazy because if you think about
>> injury rehab,
>> we've taken players with lower body
injuries, put them on the the alter G
and have them run with only five% or 10%
of their weight. So you can unweight
their body. Get them into the mechanics
of foot on the ground and running and
>> transmitting the force through the the
whole body, but do it in a in a in an
environment that takes all of their body
weight away and then progress up to now
you got 10% of your body weight that
you're running on and 20% of your body
weight that you're running on. So you
can actually progress them to not have
to go from nonweightbearing to fully
weight bearing in a in a cool athletic
way.
>> Yeah. Cuz swimming is great, but you
have to have access to a pool and I miss
swimming. I need to get back to that.
swim as a kid all the time.
>> Yeah, likewise. Yeah, every kid in my
town did soccer and swim team. Those are
kind of the big sports. I'm comfy in the
water. I I live near the ocean now, but
unfortunately the um ocean hasn't been
that clean since the fires.
>> There's a bunch of hazards to ocean
swimming that I've I've seen. One person
swim got hypothermia once, so I'm like,
I don't know. Um, yeah, I think that the
cardio piece, the big debate seems to be
whether or not if people have a limited
amount of time, which most people have a
limited amount of time, whether they'd
be better off investing in some
highintensity training, high-intensity
interval training or some, you know,
so-called zone 2, zone 3 kind of steady
state stuff for we know that caloric
deficit is required for fat loss. But
assuming caloric deficit, is there a
best cardio for fat loss? the one that
you're going to do is going to be the
best one for sure. Um,
>> good answer.
>> And I think, um,
>> it's hard to it's it's it's hard to
sustain some of the higher zone 5
cardios for long enough to have a
significant cardio um or calorie burn
effect. Uh, I did a famous video with
Jesse where I had him do um burpees,
which is one of the is one of the most
calorically demanding exercises you can
do, which is for anybody that doesn't
know the burpee. You basically quickly
lower yourself down to the ground. You
do a full push-up. You push yourself
explosively out of that push-up back to
it. You jump up to your feet again and
back to a standing position. That can
burn around um I believe it was 13 to 15
calories per minute if you did them
non-stop for a minute. Well, if you're
doing burpees non-stop for a minute,
you're likely not doing them non-stop
for many more minutes than the first
minute cuz it's a very demanding
exercise. So, while your heart rate will
go soaring right through the roof very
quickly, you're going to have um uh you
can apply even intervals to do this,
right? You're still going to start to
fatigue because of the the anorobic part
of it too through the the muscles of the
chest and the arms getting fatigued. You
just can't really do it for more than
let's say 10 minutes even interval
format. So what are you really burning
there? If you did it even straight
through forif for 10 minutes 15 calories
a minute you're talking about 150
calories. So people who use their cardio
for weight loss or caloric deficit are
going to do better doing longer distance
cardio at at lower intensity levels. So
getting on a bike and riding or getting
uh jogging or running or even doing laps
in interval fashion where it's a jog and
a run and a jog and a run. There's a lot
of different ways to do that, but to
sustain them for a lot longer periods,
45 minutes to an hour. But there again,
I and I I'm you know, I'm just I'm a big
believer that when you're trying to
create the deficit, relying on the
conditioning, we're not talking about
cardiovascular here. We're talking about
just creating the deficit, relying on
the conditioning is a much more
inefficient way to go about this than
what's actually should be done, which is
just to focus on your nutrition.
>> Cuz it's it's just so much more
effective to create large deficits or or
large swaths of deficits from cutting
back the crap you're eating right now
than it is to try to get it through zone
2 cardio done for very long periods of
time. Again, not to say that that's not
beneficial for your cardio and your and
your cardiac conditioning. It's separate
issue. But when you're trying to create
caloric deficits there, I always tell
people first, you got to work on what
you're putting in your mouth cuz the old
saying goes, you can't outrun a bad
diet. And there's just there's just no
way to really do that effectively over
time. So, of the two forms, I'd say the
the zone 2 steady state longer form is
going to do more absolute levels of
caloric burn. I don't know if you've
ever done this, but I know you're you
and everybody has to, you know, pay
attention to their caloric needs and
nutrition needs, but what what does
nutrition look like for you in a given
day?
>> So, I don't know how many calories I
take in in a given day. Um, I've never
really counted past when I really first
started out. And I think it's an
important part of the process is people
should count because it does two things
early on. They should count because it
gives you awareness. You may have no
idea how many calories you're actually
having until you actually count them.
You also become aware of many of the
things that you are taking for granted
that you're just doing almost second
nature that are just not healthy. You're
eating things that repetitively that are
just not healthy or drinking things that
are just not healthy. And when someone
asks you to log what you're eating, you
become very aware of every calorie you
put in your body. So that's part of it.
The second thing is there's an education
that goes into learning how many
calories each food has. I can't tell you
how many people they they'll think that
chicken parmesan is the same as grilled
chicken just because it's chicken and
they're very different in terms of their
caloric impact. So educating yourself on
to about what those um macronutrient
profiles look like for whatever food
you're having is part of the process too
because ultimately where you want to be
able to get to is can you make
equivalent swaps in your head on the fly
wherever you are. Right? That would be
nutritional freedom.
>> As far as what that day would look like,
what I try to do is I try to build my
base around protein. I always have. The
reason for that is I it's one of those
macronutrients that I know I need to
build lean muscle. It's one that I know
can provide satiety. Um it's one that I
know is
important to everything I'm trying to
pursue and what everyone really should
be trying to pursue. They are trying to
be healthy. So they should base their
meal around that first. Start with your
protein. And I I usually use a visual
way of doing that where I just say,
"Hey, take your plate and divide
onethird of that plate or that meal if
you're having it in separate plates or
separate dishes. One third of that meal
should come from a lean source of
protein." And that could be chicken,
fish, beef, whatever it is that you
prefer. But have that be the the the
one/3. And then divide the rest of your
plate with carbohydrates,
preferably in a 2:1 ratio with fibrous
carbohydrates to starchy carbohydrates.
So the fibers being the the green, the
vegetables, asparagus, the broccoli, and
then the starchy carbohydrates, the
rice, potatoes, pasta. I don't believe
me personally, I don't believe that I
should eliminate my starchy
carbohydrates. Again, inherently I'm an
athlete and I know that that's, you
know, served a very important purpose
for me for energy, for fuel resources,
for glycogen, for my muscles that I
don't I don't avoid that. Plus, I know
that I could never long-term restrict
myself from carbohydrates. So, when I
started out, I said, I have to adopt a
plan here that I know I can stick to. If
it was taking away pasta and taking away
oatmeal and taking away the things,
there's no way that I could sustain
that. So, I don't think that people
should try to start out on some change
to their diet where they're restricting
foods they know they're never going to
be able to maintain long term or keep
away long term. So, that if you can
learn to manage them and eat eat them in
a way that's more controlled because the
rest of the stuff on your plate is
actually helping to minimize your
cravings for that or or controlling your
portion sizes there. That's the
long-term goal, I think. And then
overarching overall that
calorically just because it's it's a
fact of nature, fats are more
calorically dense than carbohydrates and
proteins. So just be aware of your fats.
I I know a lot of people who go down the
path of healthy eating and they're
putting olive oil on everything and
avocado on everything because they're
healthy foods, but they're putting so
much of it because they want to feel
like they're doing they're doing the
healthy thing. But you're also
skyrocketing your calories. So, you have
to at least be aware where where and how
you're applying your fats because
calorically they will add up. I have
nothing against fat. I think everybody
should have it. I think it it should be
part of every meal. I'm just saying it
should be you need to be aware of your
fat content. I try to go low sugar as
much as I possibly can. I do not try I I
try to avoid processed foods. I try to
avoid um blatant sugars unless it's my
birthday and I'm having my carrot cake.
But for the most part,
>> that's really your only quote unquote.
That's not my That's not my only like,
you know, that that's a that's become an
urban myth a little bit. Maybe I'll have
it twice a year, but but no, I I don't I
don't I really try not to um indulge in
those things, but I'm not missing it.
>> I really enjoy it when I have it, but
I'm not depriving myself of it along the
way. If people felt deprived and have it
more often, you could have I could have
a piece of carrot cake uh once a week
and probably not have anything happen to
my physique. So the fact that I don't is
just really more out of habit than
anything else. But if you're in a plan
where you feel so deprived that you know
you're pulling your hair out and you're
trying to like the first chance you get
to just jump off your diet and and eat
all the things that you you really were
keeping yourself away from, then you're
on the wrong plan. So I think that no
matter what it is, whether it be keto,
whether it be the what I I guess you'd
call this a bodybuilder style diet that
I eat or
>> or I call it clean omnivore.
>> There you go. Yeah. you know, like
you're not like I basically eat the same
as you, although I I suppose I probably
a little little high on the fats
sometimes just cuz
>> I mean I I love, you know, nuts and
parmesan cheese and a little bit bit
little bit of butter and some olive oil
and stuff
>> which which are all good foods. It's
just that calorically there's an impact
there.
>> And if you're going to eat them, what I
always recommend people do is again you
could just cut back a little bit on some
of the other portion sizes to just to
accommodate calorically for what you're
doing. But I do think that that concept
of the equivalent swaps is big because
if you learn to eat the way I just
suggested and there's no magic behind
what I do. It's just been very I've been
very consistent with it is that you'll
be able to make swaps when you go
anywhere. What's a protein I could have
here today? What's the restaurant have?
Oh, they only have uh uh pork chops.
Okay, fine. I'll have a pork chop. Like
like you you can you're visually just
replacing equivalents on the plate.
Sometimes it doesn't always work. I I
just did a video where I talked about a
steak and a and a grilled chicken breast
are potentially
uh the same protein in terms of their
protein content, but they're not the
same calorically because the steak has a
lot more fat than the chicken breast
does. So, you might have a smaller steak
to make that equivalent swap out. But
that's only going to come through your
understanding and knowledge of the foods
and what they contain. So, that early
phase of learning what they have is is
important there. But ultimately,
nutritional freedom comes from the
ability to be consistent with what you
do. I talk a lot about the fact that we
can get to the gym, we can train for an
hour. It's not easy for people,
especially to do it at a high enough
intensity level, but we can train for an
hour, go home, and feel like I did my
work today. I feel good. I did what I
was supposed to do. Great. Your
nutritional job just started. you now
have to figure out how do I navigate the
next 23 hours whether I'm asleep or I'm
awake but how am I gonna navigate the
next 23 hours because that's what
nutrition is that challenge is
infinitely harder and the reason why a
lot of people struggle with their weight
is because they have to figure out how
to get that right and do that in a
repeatable way day in day out day in and
day out and I've been doing what I've
been doing here now with my nutrition
approach for 30 years 30 years so when
people ask me is it hard it's for me
it's not hard at all. But it wasn't
super easy in the beginning. It just
there's a process to go through to get
it there. And I was willing to to go
slowly, but also not sacrifice the
things that I really knew I wouldn't be
able to live without. So therefore, I
could live with it for forever. And I
think people make way too aggressive
changes when it comes to nutrition.
They're basically, you're not just
changing your diet, you're changing your
habits and you're changing your
lifestyle. So when you go and you start
making these radical changes to your
nutrition plan because you're on a diet,
it does not work.
>> Listen, what you described, what I'll
just call clean omnivore is I think is
it's just an awesome way to approach
nutrition for a couple of reasons. One,
it works. Like you said, it's flexible.
Even with travel, you can always make
some adjustment toward that. It handles
the protein needs thing
>> pretty much on its own. I mean, you have
to make sure you eat enough of those
meals and enough protein. But as you
were saying it, I I realized that it
gets people if they adopt this mindset
that you do that you have for nutrition.
It gets them out and away from the
marketing based draw of nutrition cuz
people say like, "Oh, like protein bar
or you know, high high protein yogurt."
And listen, there's some great yogurts.
I love Bulgarian yogurt. It's like Greek
yogurt's great. Bulgarian yogurt, no no
disrespect to the Greeks. Love Greek
food, by the way, too. But Bulgarian
yogurt is so good. full fat Bulgarian
yogurt or lowfat Bulgarian amazing and
yeah and it you know the Bulgarians are
known for their strength in many ways
but you get outside that the marketing
pole and you start thinking about food
for its macronutrient content
>> and its micronutrient content and
quality as opposed to like the packaging
based stuff because even the
nonprocessed or non- highly processed
foods mostly we're reaching for them
because of what's on the label like the
colors the the words and these And what
you're describing is completely
different. It's getting to the the the
actual food. I think that's a very uh
very important not so subtle
distinction. And once people make that
switch, they're really in the driver's
seat. It's not like you're like have to
go prepare every meal, this kind of
thing.
>> Well, yeah. I mean, and again, even with
some of the the push towards higher
protein foods now, again, the packaging
is brag bragging about the protein
content, but they've also increased the
sugar, they've increased the fat, and
it's like you've you've all you've made
is a higher protein. I mean, even
Snickers has a high protein bar.
>> Are you serious?
>> Yeah, I Snickers are Milky Way. They
have a high protein bar. It's like,
>> okay, this is this is insanity. So, show
me the seauite of the Snickers. Uh, you
know, I'm going to get in trouble for
this, but whatever. Um, I I want to see
how fit these people actually look, you
know, and if they're eating that stuff,
you know, it's like something tells me
they're not.
>> Yeah. Thank you again for for being a
voice of reason in in the nutrition
space.
>> Yeah. And I'm not a nutritionist, you I
I I and people are quick to remind me of
that when I whenever I speak of
nutrition. I'm only speaking from my
experience both with myself and anybody
I've ever advised on how to do that. It
works. It's it's sensible and um it's
something that could be sustained. So
for me, that's what's most important
with nutrition. And again, I don't
fixate on any one particular way. If if
doing keto works for you, great. As long
as you can sustain your your eating that
way, great. because all we're trying to
do is manage our weight long term and
and and not sacrifice other elements of
our health in the process. So, if it
works for you, cool. But this is what's
worked for me.
>> I'm starting to see more content out
there about foot strength. You've
mentioned you have flat feet. I I uh had
some foot injuries from skateboarding
years ago, broke my left foot twice,
some quote unquote snapped arches. It's
not really a thing, but um and have
started to think about, you know, foot
health and foot training and stability.
And so, on the one hand, it seems kind
of silly. is like are really we're going
to start training our feet but on the
other hand you know our feet are always
in contact with at least our shoes if
not the ground. So what are your
thoughts on um this notion of flat feet
um foot strength and how it plays into
stability and uh and performance and
just overall ability in life. Yeah, it's
actually something I wish I had done
more of at an early age. One of the
easiest ways to test this is to
especially for someone like me who has I
mean I have flippers for feet flat out
just
>> genetic
sports based.
>> I think it is partially genetic. My mom
had pretty flat feet and then I also
think that it was years of doing things
um without addressing that. So I was I
was as I started to lift weights and
applying a lot of external force and
load onto those feet that were not able
to support that, it just got worse and
worse. They they definitely they didn't
always they weren't always as bad as
they got to. But I wish I had done more
for it at an early age because even now
if I were to go back and try to train
the intrinsic foot muscles more, it's
it's just not going to reverse the
damage that I've done in the knee to
this point. So I'm less motivated to try
to do it cuz I've also figured out how
to manage with the flat feet now to
decrease the impacts of it. So, I'm not
so motivated to go jump in now and spend
extra time on something that may not
have a huge impact for me. But for
someone who's just starting to, you
know, deal with flat feet and the
weakness in the in their feet, um, I
would definitely jump in and do
something. And and the easiest test is
simply to put a towel on the floor, put
your foot on a barefoot, try to scrunch
up the towel with your feet, and and if
you start to rapidly cramp up in those
foot muscles of yours, and again, it
goes back to what we talked about before
in the low back.
The cramps are coming from a lack of of
strength. They're trying to provide
support in an area that doesn't have it.
So, if you don't have intrinsic support
or arch strength, then you're trying to
ask the foot to do too much of what it
can. Even a simple scrunching or
activation of those muscles to scrunch
the towel together is too much for you
to handle. Kind of like the weak neck on
a crunch. You have very weak feet and
you would benefit from doing a lot of
those activities that help to do that.
Some people recommend uh uh running in
sand. Some people recommend using these
towel drills. Um just even just
balancing barefoot and doing single leg
balance drills barefoot are going to not
just cause ankle strength improvements,
but intrinsic foot strength
improvements. They're all good things to
do because you can improve. They're
muscles. They are literally muscles,
too. You can improve the muscle muscular
strength of your feet. And when you do,
you can I think you can start to restore
some of the natural arch that you've
lost to the foot. If it's if it's
because of tendonous
um dysfunction that's there or
inherited, as you said, a genetic um um
predisposition to this, you may not be
able to to to have the arch of somebody
who has naturally better arches, but you
could certainly create enough of an arch
where all the arch is really doing is
it's just changing the position of your
ankle joint itself. Right? So of how the
tibia sits on your ankle. If the if the
foot collapses, the tibia is now torqued
essentially on in the in its
relationship to the foot. And so now
every time you step, whatever forces are
are being incurred on the ground are
being sent up through the ankle into the
knee into the hip into the back. So
you're just trying to maintain a better,
more natural alignment between the tibia
and the foot itself. So that's what
happens with the with the the the the
weakness of the foot is you're basically
allowing it to collapse too far to start
to create that torque in its
relationship to the tibia. So if you can
start to increase the strength of those
muscles resting, they can basically
maintain a higher arch or more natural
position that's more aligned with the
tibia and that's where the benefits come
from. Something I knew nothing about
back in my 20s, nothing. I didn't think
for at all to do that. All I did was go
put an orthotic in, right? which
basically put me in a better position
for that. It it lifts the foot up and it
puts me in a better alignment to try to
start decreasing some of the ongoing
damage I was doing to my knees by being
in that torqued position. But did
nothing to actually fix the problem
itself.
>> It's like wearing braces.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So,
>> not mouth braces, but like a knee say,
right? Yeah. Like a mouth brace actually
would actually create some long-term
change, but this is doing nothing but
limb brace.
>> Yeah. you know, um this is something
I've been thinking about and reading up
about a lot, but you might find
interesting. And I don't know may maybe
uh since you're so much uh more versed
and formally trained in in uh you know
strength training and these uh
offsetting these unhealthy compensations
and spending a lot of time looking at
how the human body degenerates as it
gets older because I'm trained as a
developmental neurobiologist and and
what we what you learn is that
development it doesn't just stop at like
puberty or something or even in when
someone turns 25. It's our whole life is
a developmental arc. Mhm.
>> And it really is an arc, right? And
people who can offset that, you know,
last third of the ark have remarkably
better lives in terms of their
unassisted living, their ability to be
there for others, etc., cognitively and
physically. To make a long story short,
it really appears that both at the level
of the spinal cord and brain, but also
at the level of the muscles that the
muscles that are furthest away from the
midline degenerate first. And it's
interesting, today we've been talking
about neck. Yesterday we did forearm
training. We'll provide a link to that.
You know, for grip strength goes, calf
strength goes, foot strength goes. And
this could be taken down to the motor
neuron level, the spinal cord level,
molecular level. There are data starting
to emerge. So, I'm of the mind that many
of the things that you've been teaching
and that we've been talking about today
of working these distal muscles,
especially as one gets older, but
ideally one's entire life, are really a
going to be a big piece of the longevity
game. I really am. longevity ultimately
is is basically in my eyes is be being
able to maintain function as you age
because again it's it's not the the
number of years but the quality of the
years. So all muscles in your body serve
a function. They're all there for a
reason almost. I think there's one or
two that were potentially they don't
actually even have a function. I forget
which ones they are but they're but
they're but for the most part they're
there for to serve a purpose. The idea
that we don't train all of them in some
way is a little bit crazy because like
we're they're they're there. They need
to be able to function for the lifetime
of of however long you're going to be
here.
Finding ways to do it where we don't
have to do hundreds of different
exercises to address all these muscles
is the ultimate goal so we can become
more efficient with our efforts and
we're not skipping them. But the idea
that they're not necessary or they're
not they don't need to be maintained or
ma or m or maximized over a lifetime
doesn't make sense to me either. Right?
So I think we need to be able to just
find ways that we can work them into
what we're already doing. And again I do
think that we have different rates of
decay too. You versus me versus someone
else. So that's where I really believe
people need to adopt these
individualized plans. We all do, let's
say, the the the basic strength
training, but then your specialized plan
that addresses your accelerated
weaknesses is this group of exercises.
And my specific plan to address my
accelerated weaknesses is this specific
exercise plan. So, but they're all
they're all there to be to be worked on
and they're all there to be maintained.
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There are millions of hours of content
on the internet about body part splits
and ways to train. So, I know you've
covered essentially all of them, but
maybe we could do a pseudo yes no uh
>> Q&A type thing uh for a moment about
body type splits and rests and training
to failure, etc. And then I have a very
specific question about training splits
that relates to real life and how to
incorporate uh resistance training
program into real life in a way that's
truly sustainable. Okay, so first things
first, how many warm-up sets per
exercise? Typically,
>> depending upon what you're doing, we
we're right off into the nuance of all
this because the nuance is really
everything here when we talk about
muscle splits and there's so many
factors that contribute to this. But
let's say you're doing just for sake of
argument, you're doing a pull workout.
If if I'm doing pull would be, let's say
back and biceps and even rear delts if
we want to put them on the same the same
day. So you would warm up your bigger
muscle group first. So let's say you
start with back and you warm up the
first exercise you're doing there. You
could do a general body warm-up like we
did a little warmup for our arm workout
yesterday, which is actually a shoulder
warmup. we talk about in that video why,
but you do a little general warm-up
first and then you start the first
exercise with lighter weights. You warm
up. I I'm I'm doing two or three warm-up
sets and I'm done. As long as I feel
like I've sufficiently uh warmed up that
movement pattern that I'm going to do
before I start to load it. As long as I
feel like the joints I've got all the
creeks out and I feel like I've I've
done the enough of an assessment of how
everything feels for that day, then I'm
ready to go. People spend way too much
time warming up to work out. You just
get yourself ready and what happens is
the workout itself becomes the rest of
the warm-up you need for the subsequent
exercises. Once you get through that
first exercise, you're usually ready to
go. And when we're talking about then
shifting focus to let's say even the
biceps, my biceps have been done been
working every one of my pulling
repetitions whether I was rowing or
doing pull downs in some way. So there's
no more warm-up after that. train work
sets to failure or stop with so-called
reps in reserve.
>> Oh, this is a great one for me. I mean,
I'm failure. I'm just I I understand the
science shows that they can get close,
but it's also very heavily dependent
upon meaning failure or not failure.
Very heavily dependent upon volume. So,
when you're looking to do a workout that
is going to have you can do it in 30 to
45 minutes, have a high impact in terms
of its ability to stimulate growth,
you're going to train to fail if you're
with with me, you're going to train to
failure. And I like objectively training
to failure because I know I got to
failure. I'm not talking about getting
to a point where I don't recognize the
exercise I'm doing, where I'm
compromising the the the quality of the
exercise I'm doing. I'm not talking
about doing it on the comp the more
compound or complicated exercises that
do require synchronized movement for
multiple muscle groups because it could
you like let's say a row a heavy row
could start to get dangerous if you're
losing body position because of fatigue.
So we're doing it on the the exercises
that are the hypertrophy based exercises
a little bit more focused on one single
muscle group a little bit more isolated
in nature. So, for instance, a uh um a
single arm row versus a bent over
barbell row. That'd be a good difference
between
>> So, you won't take the bent over bar
barbell row to fail your necess.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. For me, it's always
going to be close. My criteria there
would be form breakdown. So, as soon as
my form started to break down, I might
have had another two reps left or three
reps left, but that's it for that on the
barbell row. Whereas, if I'm doing a
here's a better example. If I'm doing a
one arm cable pull down for my lats,
which I love that exercise. Gets a
really good stretch on the lats and come
down like I could I it could look a
little ugly at the end where I'm just
doing a couple partial repetitions or
something just to just to add a little
bit more stimulus that with no extra
risk to my to my body from doing it. So,
there's the difference between them.
But, I'm always advising that you're
training towards the the the high end
unless you're training for strength,
which is a whole different game. That's
a whole different set of rules. It's a
whole different stimulus that you're
trying to build there. That is high high
loads that you're trying to manage
efficiently, not with inefficiency to
try to force muscle growth. So, that's a
whole different ball of wax. You're
really trying to uh stay away from true
failure there. It's actually not the way
you would actually build maximum
strength because maximum strength relies
on clean, efficient, well performed
repetitions done cumulatively over time.
That's how we get neurologically
stronger volume
>> and a lot more volume. Right? So that
that's a different that's a different
game here.
>> Well, so for squats and deadlifts, are
you taking them to failure?
>> No. Same same concept as the row, those
big those big presses like that. I'm not
going to or or leg movements. I'm not
I'm not doing true failure on those. I
could do other exercises in different
variations. I could do a Bulgarian split
squat to failure,
>> right? Because it's a I love that to
failure because when I go down and I
can't go up anymore, I just simply drop
the weights right to the floor right
next to me. So, there's different ways
to still do squatting patterns without
having to put a bar on my back with the
heaviest of loads that I can handle and
do and do that.
>> And then, uh, total volume, I guess, if
you're going close to failure or
failure, um, per muscle group, and I'm
not calling legs a muscle group. I'm
calling quads a muscle group, hamstrings
a muscle group, glutes a muscle group,
work set ranges, um, per workout,
>> per workout. Um, again, probably
somewhere between
6 to 6 to 10 on some of the smaller
muscle groups like the biceps, and a
little bit more um maybe 10 to 10 to 12,
10 to 15 at most if you're looking at
some of the larger muscle groups like
the quads, like the lats. I I would I
would go a little bit more. So, that
breaks down into around if you're doing
roughly three sets an exercise, you're
looking at three to four exercises to
get to those larger muscle groups. And
for the biceps, you can get away with
doing two two exercises or three
exercises for for a total of around
seven or eight sets. When we do our
workout and did our workout like what we
do to ex expose ourselves to more
exercises because we can influence the
biceps in different ways. A little bit
long head stretch, short head focus,
heavier load, more concentration work.
You can do that just by doing less sets
of the exercise. And again, when you're
properly warmed up and if you have
enough experience training, there is
nothing magic about doing three, right?
We all think three, but like you could
do two and then move on to a different
exercise that stimulates the biceps
differently. That's a better total
effect than maintaining that you have to
do three of this and three of this and
three of this and then therefore
limiting yourselves to the three
exercises. I could do four or five
exercises that give all complimentary
functions to the biceps, do two of them
each and get a better workout.
>> Yeah, I like a couple of warm-ups on the
first exercise.
>> Two two work sets, move to something
else. Two work I tend to do,
>> you know. And a few uh regular listeners
of this podcast are probably thinking,
well, how's this square with the
conversation with Dorian where it was
really like one, maybe two work sets per
exercise. He's always insisting on
taking the work sets to failure and
often beyond failure with force reps. So
>> when you start looking at it as like you
were saying like with squats and
deadlifts or rows, you're not going
completely to failure
>> in the I'm not going to say they're
equivalent. Um but
>> there is some offset there, right? It's
either taking one maybe two sets to
complete failure with four reps per
exercise
>> and then another exercise. It wasn't
like we just did one exercise for back.
Then we did the pullover and then you
know we had a row and a pull down and
then some rowing and you know and so
forth. So it ends up being about six
work sets with some uh pushing beyond
failure. You're talking about you know
10 to 12 but maybe not so many sets
where you're pushing past failure.
>> Yeah. And I I grew up watching Dorian
Yates and doing the workouts and I loved
it. Um, I found it hard for me to
maintain that kind of intensity,
especially training alone, right?
Training in in force reps are almost
impossible alone unless you have
machines that can allow you to do that.
>> So, it was more of a of a of a
difficulty of being able to stick with
that type of training or reproduce it
over and over and over again. Dorian
Yates is Dorian Yates for a reason
because in a six-time Mr. Olympia for a
reason because he had the ability. It's
like it's like Michael he's like the
Michael Jordan of of bodybuilding.
Michael Jordan did the things he could
do because he could do things other
people couldn't. Jordan Yates I feel
could do things that a lot of other
people couldn't in terms of tapping into
that pain discomfort and ability to go
further when he wanted to quit. Right
when it got to the be the hardest part
of the set he could like start to revel
in it and go further and further and
further. I don't know if everybody has
that ability. I I I can do it
intermittently but I can't do it
consistently. And so for me, I just have
to realize that and say, "Okay, I'm
going to have to back off a little bit
of the intensity, some of the force
reps, increase my volume just a little
bit." Because it ultimately comes down
to a volume and intensity game. And it
and it could be literally the extreme
examples of this. Like there's a lot of
cyclists who cycle at 80 to 100 RPMs,
but do hours and hours of that who blow
up their quads and have amazing lower
body size from their cycling. How is
that working? Well, there's a metabolic
effect they're getting too, which we
know is another stimulus for growth. But
at the right amount of volume, even low
levels of in of of absolute load can
create growth, right? There's extreme
examples of that. And I always go back
and say, she probably hates me for it by
now, but I I always use the example of
my wife who was a barber, and she used
to cut 40 40 haircuts a day. 30 to 40
haircuts a day. She was like a machine,
but she's a little girl and she has like
these great traps, like really
well-developed traps. And it's not
necessarily from the load of the
scissors that weigh ounces, but it's the
weight of the arm being held like this
all day long. No direct trap work ever
in her entire life. Massive traps that
look great, by the way. Baby look great.
But but had great trap development
because of that. That's an extreme
example. That's eight hours a day, every
day. That's no load or just again very
minimal load but extreme amounts of
volume. So in terms of muscle growth, I
always think there's always a
possibility to get where you want to
get, but you have to know how to balance
volume and intensity. In terms of
frequency of training a given muscle
group across the week, I'll just say two
things that most people don't think
about. One, there's nothing special
about a week. I mean, we use a week as a
as a as a division of time, but muscles
don't really care about weeks. They care
about stimulus and recovery, the
adaptation, the hypertrophy, the
strength.
>> So, I consider myself somebody with a
relatively poor recovery quotient.
>> I can hit each muscle group directly
hard
>> once per week. So, sets to failure. Um,
somewhere in between what say Dorian
does and what you do. You know,
yesterday's workout felt slight slightly
higher than the normal volume that I
would do. The workout I did with him was
slightly lower. So, somewhere in
between.
But there's a lot of indirect training.
Uh for instance, I'll train my legs
really hard one day per week, but then
I'll also do a HIT workout on the
assault bike. And yeah, it's not a squat
workout, but my legs get some
stimulation from that. My lat my lats do
too. And I'll do a sprint workout one
day per week. So that's what works for
me. For you personally, before you make
a suggestion, the larger world out
there, how often can you directly hit a
muscle group with the kind of intensity
and volume that we did in the video that
you know we provide a link to. I can
only directly hit that muscle group the
same as you once a week with that level
of intensity. Even in what we were doing
yesterday,
a lot of my focus is on you. I'm trying
to focus on making sure you you're doing
what you're doing right. Um, I'm trying
to like, you know, coach my way through
what I'm doing. So, it's like if it was
just me and my own gym, I might have
even zoned out a little bit more, gone a
little bit harder, got a little bit
uglier face when I was doing my
repetitions that were hard. So, it might
be even a little notch above what what
was shown in our in our video in terms
of intensity. I can't do that more than
once a week for a muscle group. Now,
>> but you're also training back, you're
also training chest, you're also
training shoulders on a separate day in
that.
>> Well, that's the key, right? So what I
So
when people recommend higher frequency
sessions or every every 48 hours or
twice a week minimum and all that, you
are also forcing yourselves into some
splits that have a lot more muscles
being trained at once. Cuz in order to
get back to them again in the same 7-day
week period, you have to do multiple in
one day. So let's just say in a pushpull
leg scenario, you have to do all your
pushing muscles. So, right off the bat,
you're doing chest, shoulders, triceps
in one day. I find even that to be a lot
to ask for for me at times, not all the
time, but especially if I'm short on
sleep and short on time that day. I I
can't get through all those and get an
adequate stimulus because I'm I'm
there's just too much work to be done.
So that creates a need to have to
condense into these multi muscle group
splits that you go through the push, you
go through the pull, you go through the
legs. Now you got to have, let's say,
one rest day, come right back again. So
you're training six days a week. Some
people can't manage that either. But
what I do is I say, "All right, if I
train, let's just say biceps like we
did, and I do them really hard." And I
even just did biceps and triceps, say,
if I did those two, I still have to get
through legs. because I have to get
through shoulders, I have to get through
chest, I have to get through uh I I
break legs into anterior and posterior
chain. So, there sort of two workouts.
I I have to get through a lot more in
the week. So, if I had to get it all
done in one week, I would run out of
time. I first thing I do is I extend
beyond the seven days. So, I break that
rule cuz I I realize like you said that
our body doesn't know the difference.
So, it's okay if it takes me a little
bit longer to wrap around before I do
whatever the arms again. Let's say in
this case, the arms again. So I break
that rule. It could be nine days for me
in terms of my cycle. But I know that
when I come back after biceps, if I do
two, let's say I do posterior chain legs
and then I do um um let's say I do after
that uh chest, right? Even just a single
muscle group. When I come back and I do
back, the reason why back is following
chest is I'm going to give my chest a
reprieve from the day before. I'm going
to go pulling when I was just pushing.
Neurologically, I'm giving myself a
complete break. But I also know that I'm
looking backwards to when I did biceps
and it was 48 to 72 hours prior that I
did biceps. When I do my back, I know
I'm going to get indirect work for my
biceps again. Guarantee. So, and if I
don't know that, I can make sure I do by
doing underhand rows. I could do
underhand pull downs. I could do
chin-ups rather than pull-ups if if I
feel like I didn't adequately stimulate
my biceps that day. So I can make
selections in these back exercises that
indirectly hit the biceps. That's a lot
of volume. That's enough. Like you're
getting direct volume. There's no rule
again that says that it has to be
directly hit to contribute volume to the
work being done by by that that uh
muscle group. So I come back and I do my
indirect volume there. And a lot of
times these studies actually uh spoke to
Brad Shfeld about this when he spoke at
my event. They don't do a lot of
accounting for the indirect work because
we can't quantify what indirect
contribution that row had to a bicep. So
there's not a lot of data around that
anyway about how much contribution the
indirect work works towards. So when
they do these studies and they look for
how much total volume they're looking at
direct work for that muscle group. So I
feel as if it's um it intuitively from
my experience I know that I definitely
get another exposure for that muscle
group and that contributes to the
overall volume. And then again if it
takes me a little bit longer to wrap
around based on how I'm pairing things
together then so be it. But I'm but I'm
getting that indirect work but never
twice directly.
So in some sense you are similar to the
Mike Mener
um philosophy not of one set to absolute
failure because he was really really on
the far end of
>> I did that too. I just couldn't sustain
that.
>> Right. But in terms of not making the
7-day week the the uh the holy grail of
how you organize your schedule because
you know Mike I was fortunate enough to
know him. Um I paid him for a consult
and got to know him over the years, you
know, before he unfortunately passed
away. And he had training like I think
it was like shoulders and arms rest two
days, you know, then it was like legs
rest two days and then chest and back
and rest two days. Mindblowing. Yeah, it
was it was mind-blowing. And the the
problem with that I think at for a
beginner is you get results. You
certainly get results but you don't get
the opportunity to develop the skill of
training. I mean there as you
>> or the enjoyment of it, right?
>> Or the enjoyment. So um three maybe four
days a week of resistance training for
me just is like the the the sweet spot.
But as with you, I found that I can give
myself permission like if travel comes
up or a poor night's sleep or some extra
workload or something like okay, there
can be an extra day after legs or you
can you can modify things. Which brings
me to uh my other question. Yesterday
after we were training, I learned
something remarkable which is there are
times when you will split your split
simply based on uh real life
constraints. And you gave a beautiful
example. I'm I'm smiling already. Um you
said, you know, there are times when uh
you're supposed to train at night, but
you go in to read to your boys or spend
some time with them before sleep and
you'll you'll like fall asleep next to
them.
>> That's more often than not.
>> Yeah. So then you'll you'll go into the
gym at your home gym at like 10 or 11
o'clock at night and you'll do half of
your leg workout
>> and then you'll split literally split
the split and come back and do the
remainder of that workout um a few days
later. I love this example because it's
the real world and obviously you're
prioritizing time with your boys and
that's what really matters. That's why
you're training in the first place. I
mean yes to have your physique etc. But
you're that's what motivates me.
>> That's what motivates you to be around
for a long time. So splitting the split,
you wouldn't suggest it to people, but
life happens. So what does that look
like? Is it that you're doing like your
quad workout and and then you're um
normally you would also do something
else, but you're doing the other stuff
later or maybe doing three sets of
squats and coming back two days later
and doing the other three sets of
squats.
>> So here's the irony of it. Um I don't
know if I wouldn't recommend splitting
the split. You know, I feel like I'm
starting to learn that splitting the
split is me breaking a bad habit that I
was unwilling to break a long time
because of because of the same mentality
that led me to think of a 7-day training
week, right? That I think what's
happening and that I've been seeing is
that splitting the split does a few
things for me mentally. It recharges me
on a night where I really don't have a
lot in the tank. If I get over there and
I was just sleeping for the last 30
minutes or 45 minutes, I'm not like in
the greatest state of mind to train. But
if I know that the requirement is let's
just get through if I'm going to do my
shoulders. Let's say um let me get
through half of what I would normally
do. I'm going to focus today on the
nonstrength focused stuff because I'm
just not neurologically prepared to do
that right now. So let's just work on
the lateral raises, the strict lateral
raises in that case. Um the um the the
hip exercise I like is a hip hugger.
It's just different exercises that I
would do that would be perceived as the
the non-compound exercises. And I'll do
those and what I find very quickly is
that because I can ease into those
exercises. They're not as heavily
loaded, but they're high intensity. It
doesn't have to become from the load. It
comes from the effort. I can ease into
them after one or two sets. I'm good.
And I'm like kind of into it. And I know
that once I'm done with these six sets
or so, I'm done for the night. and I can
come back and do my strength work when
I'm ready, which could be 2 days later
usually, sometimes the very next night.
Really, I'll just split it to the next
night and whatever was planned gets
bumped one spot. It's going to extend
that training week even further so that
nine days can become, you know, 11 or
12. Uh, but I I we talked about recovery
before like it seems to be working well
with with me for my recovery at this
age. And again, I think this I have very
bad sleep habits only because the result
of working out at 11:00 or 12:00 is you
and then and by the way, eating dinner
after that, that's my dinner time. Like
eating dinner after that, you know, I
get to bed 1:30 in the morning and I'm
getting up at 7 or I get up to bed at
2:00 and I get up at 7:00.
Th this might be what works for me best
right now because my I don't have the
recovery through as much sleep as I
should get. Now, I know a lot of people
yell and say, "Well, you need to work on
your sleep and get better recovery." I
understand that. Right now, this little
pattern is where I'm in. You know, it
can be fixed by me training earlier in
the day, stepping away from work and
training earlier in the day. I I haven't
found the time or the way to do that
effectively at this moment. So, this is
what I have to navigate. And I encourage
people to do the same thing. Find what
works with your current schedule. You
can have an eye towards fixing it, but
what works for your schedule to get you
through this time period? I think it's
working because I have more recovery
time in a less recovered sleep state
that seems to still be progressing
because I could still lift heavier than
I have been able to. I'm still able to
uh to to create effective workouts for
me. I feel I feel good. My joints are
actually feeling good. Things are
feeling even a little better than they
were. So, it happens to be working for
me. So I I I might be changing my mind a
little bit about frequencies and volumes
in terms of what I do in a given
workout. And accepting the fact that it
can happen over two days is so like
relieving cuz it's like I don't have to
bring it all today. I can just sort of
get this much done today and it allows
me to have a higher effort to handle
again some of the lower volumes that
we're doing. So it's it's like a win-win
all around and the kids like me more for
it too.
>> Yeah. Well, and someday they'll see this
and they're going to see uh so much of
your content. I mean, they're they're
they're grateful.
>> They're totally disinterested right now.
>> Yeah. But they're grateful for I mean,
they're they're going to be grateful for
the fact that I mean, you're obviously
prioritizing them uh and your wife and
your family and that's that's a
beautiful thing.
>> Well, Jeff, thank you so much for the
workout yesterday. I definitely learned
a number of things. I'm definitely
feeling more of those.
>> Yeah, we should do more. Um, and thank
you for coming back to educate us. And
you know, some people when they speak,
like not a whole lot happens except a
bunch of exhales shaped into sound when
you speak.
>> People learn and they learn super
valuable information. Everything from
the basics all the way up to the nuance.
Um, you're constantly educating yourself
already just a moment ago. You know,
you're um, you're still evolving the way
you're doing things and you share that.
And again, these so-called small things
that allow one to do the big things for
much longer and much more effectively is
really what it's all about. And you
clearly walk the walk. You look awesome.
You're 50. You know, steroid TRT free,
all of that. And you look incredible.
And so, you know, there are probably
none people who are doing what what
you're doing. You're truly an N of one
that you can encapsulate all this. And
you're just so generous with your time
and your energy. And so I'm very
grateful for you coming on here again.
>> I was so pumped. I I've been wanting to
come back here for so long and the the
negotiating the travel is always a thing
for me, but I was so excited to be able
to do it. Finally do it and getting the
workout in and come back and sit down
with you is always my favorite thing. So
thank you for having me.
>> Well, please come back again. You're an
inspiration to me and like I said,
you're a absolutely extraordinary
educator.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you for joining me for today's
discussion with Jeff Cavalier. To learn
more about his work and to find links to
Athleen X resources, please see the show
note caption. In addition, you'll also
find links in the show not captions to
the workout that Jeff and I did and that
was referenced a few times throughout
the episode. So, that's a link to a
proper workout for the biceps, for the
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