 Our next caller is Joseph from California. Hey, Joseph, how can we help you? Hey, guys, how are you doing? I just had a quick question, you know, us tall guys out here don't get a lot of love or you don't get to hear much about how to progress and lifts and really move past those plateau. So what I'm wondering, I'm six four. I've been working out for about 10 years. I followed Mike Matthews, bigger, bigger leaner, stronger for, I don't know, let's say about three or four years really taught me about that strength phase. But I just, I need some tips on how to increase my squad. I've been really stuck at, you know, always get a little bit past that 225 mark, but then coming back down and, you know, a reference I heard you guys make was in regards to, you know, you're running with a bum leg and when you put that intensity or add that weight, you're just running faster with that bum leg. So I guess my question is, you know, how and what are some tips to progress for us taller guys, six, three on our squats? Well, I love questions like this. I'm with you too. There is no love for us guys that are over six, three and above, man. Yeah, you guys have such a hard life. What was you guys? And I try and remind, I'm trying to remind Sal and Justin all the time that the way that they measure strength is weight over distance. So guys like you and I, even though we're only moving 225, we're like twice as strong as Sal and Justin are squatting double the weight. So just remember that, Joe. You and I are much stronger than these guys that are doing, you know, three, four hundred pounds more compact power range, you know, range of motion. That's exactly right. So Joseph, what are you? Okay. So what is it? You said you were doing bigger, leaner, stronger before. What are you doing now? What does your workouts look like now? Yeah. So about in 2017, 2018, I found you guys through Mike Matthews. He recommended this podcast and I just fell in love. I did first program I bought was anabolic. Absolutely loved it, bought aesthetic. Absolutely loved it. I did performance after that. Absolutely loved it. I'd ran anabolic probably about two times. I have performance and strong. I started off on strong, but you know, I was getting a little felt overtraining. I was sleeping bad. I was just really just after my workouts, I felt more tired than energized. So I kind of was in the strength phase for the last about, say, six weeks. So then I moved back into, I just jumped right back into aesthetic phase two to just go into more of the pump phase or whatnot just to get my body a break from that strength. Okay. And how are your, you know, you're focused on the squat primarily? Is that what you really want to improve? 100%. You know, I want to get to that 315, but I want to do it right. I don't want to just keep hobbling on this leg and then injuring myself have to go back to, you know, 135 to 185 to 125 and so forth. Got it. Now, how did your, did your squat strength go up going through MAPS anabolic and aesthetic and performance? 100%. I could say my overall body and strength, I had some major transformations. You know, like I said, I was doing beer leaner stronger, which is primarily focused on just strength training the whole time, a 46 rep range. But I just noticed huge results by doing the full body three to four days a week and just give myself that rest and recovery. But also the programming was just awesome. How it phased into each phase, you know, from a strength phase to a high temperature, you know, a high building phase. And then, yeah, how did you do with the consistency of those frequency builders? The trigger sessions, for instance, and anabolic and the mobility sessions in performance, you know, for anabolic, I loved the trigger sessions. I actually do them even with aesthetic and performance. How much I love those do, you know, the air squats and band exercises. I've been really focusing on my chin ups and pull ups and notice a lot of gains in my arms. But for performance, the mobility trigger sessions, they were, you know, a lot of new movements to memorize and you kind of go back in old habits when you don't have too much time and really need to probably focus more on those mobility sessions. Well, the way you would get stronger if you're tall is the same way somebody who's short would get stronger. And what I mean by that is it really boils down to the individual. OK, so number one, I would look at mobility issues and see if those are causing you problems. Typically, tall guys, they may lean forward a lot when they do a squat. They might need greater ankle mobility in order to perform a proper squat. Typically, so I would look at things like, you know, work on ankle mobility quite a bit. That's a very common one. Yeah. And then here's the other thing, OK, if your goal is to build more strength and with your level of experience, OK, now you can start to incorporate some more advanced techniques. And I don't mean advanced in terms of more intensity and more volume. I mean advanced in terms of like variable resistance. Yeah, so I would use resistance bands on my barbell when I'm doing a squat, either assisting me or adding resistance so that the bottom of the squat is lighter and the top of the squat is heavier. You can also use chains in your squats. You can also start to do where you pause your reps. So if your sticking point is, you know, right at 90 degrees, I would hold a squat there for three seconds and then come up at the top. You can also experiment with a type of a squat called bottom position squats where you get under a bar that's already at the bottom of a squat and then bring it up rather than starting at the top, lowering and coming back up. These techniques are really, really good at getting strength things go up. So start looking in that direction, aside from the mobility. Well, I'm going to go in a couple of different directions. One, so I don't know how much you've followed my journey, Joseph, like as far as, you know, strength building and where I was with competing to where when I focused on mobility. So where I'm currently at right now, like my when I was competing, I was squatting over 400 pounds. Obviously, I had a great physique on stage, but I had I had really poor mobility and that was a big focus. So I transitioned out of competing into becoming this like really trying to become this really mobile guy. Like at six, three, I wanted to be able to sit like Astagrass squat comfortably, not just get there, but be down in that position comfortably. And so I kind of let go of like, okay, I'm obviously probably not going to be squatting 400 pounds. Let's get back to see how deep I can get. Did lots of mobility work. And to where I'm at currently today is I'm probably squatting somewhere around 350 is probably kind of my peak where I'm at right now, but it's Astagrass and my legs are bigger than they've they've ever been at where I'm at right now. So even though I was squatting more weight before when I was competing, I didn't have nowhere near the depth in my squat. And so that's another thing too, is to be clear on like what you really want. Do you want to squat more weight so you can build your quads and your legs more or do you want to squat more weight just so you can squat more weight. So I had to ask myself that and like let go of like, okay, so I'm squatting less weight now, but I'm moving the weight at a greater range of motion, which is resulting in bigger, more defined legs than I had before. So that's one. The other thing I'll tell you that I benefited from personally a lot was actually our power lift program. So especially if you're, yeah, especially if you're very focused on, on like building your squad up, uh, the way that program is written, it is written to, to get your strength up in the big lifts. So it's programmed very, very well. It's very different to how I've ever trained my body. I've always trained like a bodybuilder or like an athlete. I'd never trained like a power lifter to try and get strong in my lifts. That was my first time ever really doing that. And I saw a big strength gains. And for obviously guys like us who have been lifting for a long time, you know, seeing 10 or 20 pounds go on the bar is a big deal. And I was seeing that in, in my big lifts from that program. So that would be my other suggestion. Yeah. Do you have mass power lifts, Joseph? I do, I do. I have a ton of your programs. I have prime, prime pro. It's really just figuring out those mechanics and making sure I'm doing the right mechanics before I add that intensity or add those different variations. And, um, I think focusing more on the 90, 90, I've been doing that for last year and a half. I felt a lot better. I used to get a, an impingement and you know, my lower back on my left side. And ever since I started doing 90 90, because I'm sitting at a desk all day. Um, it's, it's really helped me out. And then combat stretch and just been incorporating those on a very frequent basis, uh, when I'm sitting down, wrestling with the kids or what hell yeah. Joseph, are you, are you in the private forum too or no? No, I'm not. Okay. All right. Well, we're going to set you up with that. I'm going to have, I'm going to have Doug give you access to the forum. And then what I want you to do is I'll actually want you to video yourself squatting because right now we're all speculating on ways that we can kind of help you out in the area. I might be able to see the way you're squatting right now and point out something more specific. Uh, and that a lot of people, that's how they use the forum. So there's, uh, besides, uh, the three of us being in there to kind of help and coach people along. We've also, uh, got a ton of other coaches and professionals in there. And everybody loves to share like a, a video of them extra. And then we'll, you'll get critiques from everybody, including ourselves. Um, so we want to, and since you own almost everything, let us hook you up with that. Yeah. And then one last, sorry, Joe, one last thing, um, I can't stress this enough, especially with people who are tall, there's a lot of value in split stance exercises. Okay. It's Bulgarian split stance squats. Huge. Lunges, uh, either backstep or front step, um, unilateral exercises, step ups, uh, or single leg toe touches or deadlifts. Tremendous value for everybody, especially for tall people. Tall people seem to get so much value from doing those split stance exercises. In my experience, I've seen, uh, some of my. Addresses the, any instability. I mean, there's no way around it. And so I think that's great advice, uh, to really kind of dive into that as well. And then see how that applies, uh, you know, back to your back loaded squats. Exactly. Cool. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. I ever started to start listening to you guys. I did the split stance, um, Bulgarian squats. I, I built two, uh, step up boxes, been doing those. And then performance really got me into more of those single leg movements. So I did notice some gains there, but really just want to focus on the big four and squats. It's always been a, a keely sealed mind. So I do appreciate everything and I do have chains so I can start doing those and I do really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Awesome man. You're kicking ass. Yes. Thank you. Uh, man, he's, he's, uh, he's dialed in. Yeah. He's got all the program. I mean, he's doing, I think that's just a case of like you wanting more sooner. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's obviously, if he's ran through most of Mike's stuff, he's now got, he's got damn near every one of our programs gone through, seen phenomenal results already. Like, you know, I think that's something too. And I know you guys, we all probably wrestle with this is that, you know, after you've been lifting for a really long time, uh, those, those gains are Yeah. few and far between. Starts to get a little harder. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, a five pound increase today is like a big, is a big deal. You know what I'm saying? Or an inch more of mobility. I mean, so, you know, after you've got those beginner gains and you've seen great results from see, you know, going through a few new programs you've never followed, it's tough to see the major gains, you know, years down the road. And you, and you know, you are right. It's one of the, the only places in life where being tall might be a disadvantage. Right. It's when you're doing barbell squats. Right.