 First question is from official Bruce Love. I recently came upon a post where a trainer said you should never go astagrass on squats or even 90 degrees and that it has no benefit physically or aesthetically. What are your thoughts on this claim? He's talking about that one knucklehead. Is he? Yeah, he has to be talking about it. I love absolutes, right? Yeah. Isn't it great? Okay, so this is flat out, here's the truth, okay? If you have good mobility, stability, and control, then a larger range of motion, with those things, those prerequisites, right? A larger range of motion, this has been proven time and time again, builds more muscle, and it builds more total strength. Fact, done, okay? So who should not squat astagrass? Who should not squat past 90 degrees? The person who lacks the stability and control to do so. That's the person that should not do that. Or somebody training sport specific. That's the other. Oh, sure. That's the other. There's two people that you see. Good point. And those are the people that you should see not squatting deeper than 90 degrees, either one, like you said. Like if it's a specific application to sports. Yeah, a basketball player. A basketball player training quarter squats makes a lot of sense because when he springs up to dunk the basketball, he doesn't go past 90 degrees in his squat to shoot up above. So he wants to be, it's a very specific. It's all in how you generate power. And in that sport, it's not all the way down below 90 degrees. Right. So for specific application like that, that makes sense. Or if somebody has limited range of motion due to either injury or poor mobility and they can't go beyond that without their form breaking down tremendously, then absolutely they shouldn't. But that person who absolutely shouldn't should work towards that. Yes. By working on mobility and addressing the reason why they can't go 90. Your joints were designed to do that. Right. If you've ever done this, a lot of people have experienced this. I did with bicep training. I did it with back training where as a kid, working out, there's a lot of ego, especially as a young male, there's a lot of ego surrounding your lifts. And so rather than doing, I'll give you a silly one. Rather than doing like full extension preacher curls, which is a silly exercise. Right. But without, I used to stop just short of full extension because I can handle way more weight. And you know, when you're 16, 17 years old, that's all that matters. And so that's how I did curls. Well, when I was 18 years old or so, I remember talking to a fellow trainer because I first became a trainer. He had amazing arms and he told me, no bro, go all the way down. Go lighter. Don't worry about how much weight you use. Go all the way down and watch what happens. And then I added like a half an inch to my arms from going just a little bit deeper. I noticed this with my shoulders. Notice this with my back. So if you can't do a full squat because of lack of mobility, don't force yourself to do the full squat, but definitely work on mobility so that you can. This is why our program like Maps Prime Pro, for example, this is why a lot of people are finding a lot of value in it. Yes, it does prevent injury, makes things feel better. But the people who are using it consistently, here's what I'm getting from them. I did your program, Maps Prime Pro, I did it diligently. Now my squat is below 90 degrees and I can do it with good mobility. And now I've actually built more muscle. My legs look better. My glutes look better because I can maximize the potential of this exercise because of better mobility. I'm getting that or I'm getting people saying that there's no bursitis in their hips like I was suffering for or people that didn't squat because they had low back issues and it was all related to the hip complex. Now they're doing that so their back doesn't hurt when they squat. That's why this message always irritates me because it's the easier way to cater to what the client wants to hear. They're just catering to, well, you can make gains and you don't have to struggle and go really work on your mobility and try and press yourself to be better and see if you can gain more access and ability that your body has. You're not going to unlock all the potential. You could achieve by going through this laborious process of trying to gain mobility. You have to do this by doing the arduous types of exercise like the mobility drills and all these things. People don't want to do that so let's not talk about that. Let's just give you the, you can just go 90. You can get some good gains from this. But now you're limiting your abilities. Long term you're setting yourself up for restriction and movement which then causes pain and arthritis and all that. So this can just jump off a cliff. A complete transparency. This was me early on in my career. This is how all of us learned early on. Yeah. Early on, when I got my first few certifications, all of them. In fact, trying to remember the first certification that actually even, you know what it was? It was Nesta was the first one to, and I remember it caused all kinds of shit amongst my trainers and us. It was the, Nesta was the first certification that I took that actually advocated for astagrass squatting and working towards that. All the certifications before that that I had, NCSF, NASM, IFPA, what else did I have? Bro, they didn't even recommend bench pressing down to your chest. Yeah. They all, they all recommended down to 90 degrees. Now later on in my career, it's all come full circle for me and I understand why as a certification that is teaching trainers that are going to teach millions of people while they did it. It's a safety precaution. Yeah. They can standardize it that way. That's right. If we can, if we can standardize it and we know that, you know, 99% of the population should be able to at least get down to 90 degrees safely and at least bring their, the bench press bar down to 90 degrees safely without injuring their shoulder. This is how we're going to teach our coaches because it's safer, safer, you know, for the masses. But the reality is it's not better for the masses. Right. The better for the masses is for them to recognize that, hey, I don't have good form past 90 degrees because there's a breakdown and I have deficiencies because I've lost good range of motion in my joints. That should have that range of motion. And so let's work towards that. And here's the thing. What I didn't know as a young trainer was I was doing more harm than good by shortening everybody's range up for safety reasons because what all you end up doing is tightening them up more and building more muscle and you for sure lose that range of motion that you would like to gain with them. And what that ends up doing is the body overcompensates when you move and you end up causing chronic pain in other places. Now you get the bursitis in the hips. Now you get the low back pain. Now you get the neck pain going on. Now you got the nagging shoulder stuff because you never addressed the mobility. Here. Okay. Here's the truth and it's for some people I'm sure it's going to be controversial. Okay. There really are no inherently dangerous exercises. Now exercises come with risk potential. Some exercises have a higher risk potential and there are prerequisites. Right. Because they require more skill. They require more control. They require greater mobility. But there are no real inherently dangerous traditional resistance training exercises. What makes them dangerous is your inability to do them properly. What makes them dangerous is your lack of control stability mobility. But if you do an exercise and I really don't care what it is. I don't care. I don't care what exercise it is. Pick the craziest looking exercise that actually exists. Don't just make something up. But pick the craziest looking exercise if an individual can. Julie Michaels peeked through the window. Yeah. Now if a person can do the movement with good control, good mobility, good stability. That exercise is safe. So this goes for all of them. Not just ass to grass squats.