 Knee pain is one of the most common types of pain that people report today's episode We're gonna talk about how to fix knee pain better yet how to prevent it from ever happening in the first place So you're gonna love this episode. Let's talk about the pain. Who's got the worst knees here? Worst knees. Yeah, all of us are pretty good with me. Yeah, you've had knee surgery. Yeah, I've had knee surgery Have you had knee surgery? I mean I had I didn't have surgery But I did strain and then slightly tear my MCL, but okay. Yeah, no cool story. I had dislocated knee cap That's about it. Oh, you did. How did you do that? my 13 years old playing at a park playing volleyball with the family and I landed weird and my knee cap went out to the side and Then that's what after that. I had to rehab it ruin the barbecue. Yeah, I know I know more sport ball I retired after that I was I was saving I was saving a baby. So that's how I Drove in front of a car and of course you were no a guy landed on my knee It wasn't even like a good player or anything We were both going up for a rebound and like I like planted and with my leg was straight and he landed on it Just well, so what's interesting is? I looked up the statistics for how many people Report knee pain 25% of Americans report knee pain. So it's definitely one of the most common ones I think back pain might be a little bit more back pain is higher. Yeah, but knee pain is right there second it's super common and a lot of the a Majority of that is not the kind that we're explaining where you hurt yourself and then it hurts until it heals It's the chronic type. It's like, yeah, yeah, it's like I hurt my knee But that was 10 years ago or you know, it just bothers me. I can't do certain things. I'm just getting old And there's this myth out there that it's overuse that people will hear that it's an overview Oh, it's because you're using your knees too much Here's something that kind of flies in the face of that Reported knee pain has gone up 65% in the last two decades. Wow So and I don't think people are moving more. Yeah, they're moving less and yet you're getting more Reported knee pain. So that right there shows you that it's not because well I mean, I would make the case that that's exactly why it's going. Yeah, right Yeah, yeah, 100% you know, this obviously this conversation is it's spurred from the This we just had a caller not that long ago who brought up prime pro and this is not the first time this has happened We've actually had this had multiple times where someone has purchased our maps prime pro program Which goes over all the major joints in the body and the mobility movements to it and people go wise or nothing for the knee Mm-hmm. And so we've had to explain this like and we normally address it in a short version When it gets asked, but you know, it's like, you know what? Maybe we should do an episode explaining since this has happened so many times where people don't quite understand Why we there's not these mobility drills for the knee Isolating just the knee like we're looking elsewhere, right yet. Everybody but everybody correlates knee pain is like an issue a major issue So where okay, what do I do about it? And very few people understand where it stems from or the root cause And so I think it's important to now. This although it's true that often times Joint pain is the result of things other things happening in the body so that that joint Ends up operating over time in a way. That's not optimal. So that's true a lot of the times with the knee it's almost always true because The knee is pretty basic in compare in comparison to the joints that are closest to it The hip and the ankle and so this is why and we're gonna talk about this in today's episode Hip and ankle issues are what tend to cause most of the knee pain because if you look at the knee first off Yes, you need to have strong Muscles that support the knee so your hamstrings your quads or should I say strong stable muscles, right quads the Abductors adductors those all should be pretty strong because that helps support the knee But the knees pretty basic in the sense that it really only flexes and extends, okay? So what does that mean? That means you can bend your knee or you can extend your knee, okay? There are ligaments attached to the knee that prevent it from really doing anything else or that keep it stable So like you have like the ACL PCL that keep it from sliding apart You have lateral ligaments like the MCL LCL that keep it from bending sideways The meniscus which is a shock absorber that prevents it really from twisting too much all those things all those Ligaments and cartilage is is there to keep the knee kind of stable so that it can try to keep it in place And it's a track and then to add you know a little bit more complexity you have the knee cap which kind of floats on top of the the femur that the big bone of the of the leg and it kind of glides if you take a knee cap off and look at it underneath it There's cartilage and it kind of slides over a groove every time you bend and extend your knee So that's how the knee is operating and if it's not operating optimally If some ligaments are having to do more work than they're supposed to in terms of supporting Or if the meniscus is constantly being strained because there's stuff going on with the ankle of the hip Or if the knee cap is tracking too hard to the left or the right Then you start to develop chronic problems and you can see the issue in the knee Oftentimes so a doctor can go in and be like oh Inflammation here in the meniscus or there's a slight tear or you have patella chondromylacia Which is underneath the patella where it's all kind of chewed up That is yes. That's one of the reasons why the pain is there But the root issue is that the knee is not operating optimally and again It has a lot more most of time to do with the hip and the ankle I'm glad you went that direction because I also think that there's a bunch of people that get lost in this conversation that Don't understand that they fall in the category of this chronic pain Because they got diagnosed from a doctor they go in and they're told they have tendinitis Right bursitis they have arthritis and so they think oh, this is this isn't something that I could have solved This is not something I could have fixed. It's like I just got a bad bad draw the cards older Yeah, I'm getting older and so it's like that But that falls in the category of chronic pain in fact like before we had done the episode I just wanted to see what um, you know, google chat gbt said for like the 10 most common reasons for pain and like every single One of them were all these, you know bursitis the arthritis the tendinitis and all the patella or stuff everything is all Things that are related to poor movement or weakness in those other joints that then end up Causing a drawn out amount of time and so I remember talking to I would tell clients like when they come in And they oh, I have really bad knees And then I'd say oh, well, you know, we need to address hip mobility and ankle mobility and strengthen those areas And they'd be like, oh no, no my doctor says that I have tendinitis or I bursitis or I have arthritis And I shouldn't do squatting and I shouldn't do these things and like I was always trying to overcome That diagnosis from the doctor because it made people believe that they have this thing that they're forever going to be plagued with And there wasn't something that we can do to address it and Potentially eliminate it completely because a lot of people don't understand that just because you get diagnosed with those things Doesn't mean that you you're stuck with it for the rest of your life All right today's program giveaway is the rgb bundle maps anabolic maps performance and maps aesthetic Here's how you can enter to win leave a comment below this video The first 24 hours that we drop it subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications if you win We'll let you know in the comments section. We're also running a sale right now in some programs Our beginner workout program maps starter is 50 off And then we have a bundle that includes maps anabolic and maps prime. That's the starter bundle We made that also 50 off if you're interested click on the link at the top of the description below All right back to the show We have to differentiate something because common does not mean normal Okay, so knee pain is common, but that doesn't mean it's normal. You're not supposed to have Chronic pain in your joints your your body is very well equipped at regenerating at lubricating and at moving Um at at tamping down inflammation when it needs to Producing inflammation when it needs to so it's really good at these things But if things are moving in suboptimal ways over time and you're overcoming your body's ability to heal and recover And lubricate then you start to develop these chronic issues and yet then yes The pain is coming from the fact that you have swelling underneath your kneecap But that's not what caused the swelling right to begin with so it would be like wearing It would be like wearing one shoe with a with a five inch rise And then you walking around and then your back hurts and so the doctor's like oh the back pain I can see where it's coming from one of your discs is over here But they never address the fact that you're wearing a shoe that's so much higher than the other right It's the same thing. So yes, you can look at a knee joint And you can see you know tendonitis and inflammation and Cartilage that doesn't look right and all that stuff and yeah pain's coming from that But there's a root reason as to why that's there in the first place And it's because that knee is not operating the way the way it should it's doing more than it should or it's Compensating for the joints surrounding it and again, that's the ankle and which is also why What ends up happening a lot of times is people end up taking Quarter zone shots and it's one of the worst things that you can do because it ends up masking What's really going on and you get this temporary fix? And I get it because it feels like magical right after you do that right you get that shot And all of a sudden it brings it Nails down all that inflammation So the pain goes away and you feel like oh my god I feel so amazing and then what a month to three months go by and then you have to go do that again I think oh this is just going to be part of my routine as I go and get these quarter zone shots all the time And it's like dude, what's going on is that you're not addressing the root cause it's causing the inflammation And we can get to that and fix that yeah In fact, if you look at the data on quarter zone shots oftentimes majority of the time what they do is actually accelerate The degeneration of the joint and they cause Worst problems later on there's two reasons for this one is it's really hammering inflammation down you need some inflammation For your body to heal that's that's a signal right your inflammation is is literally your body trying to heal itself That's why if you cut yourself you get some red and some swelling because it's sending things to heal So if you tamp it down completely it really stopped the healing process pain's gone But now there's no healing process going on but then too Now that the pain's gone you don't have a signal telling you that you're moving wrong So you just move wrong more so walk more Squat more in bad ways and so you see the acceleration of of joint issues As a result, so it's a temporary fix it improves your quality of life in the short term by the long term It's it's not great. You got to figure out what the hell The root issue is so to give an example of kind of what we're talking about So, you know because people are like well, how's the ankle and the hips? Relate to the knee so we'll look at the ankle for a second for a second When you do a full squat if you're standing you're doing full squat Your hip has to bend your knee has to bend and your ankles have to bend So let's look at the ankles for a second as I squat My ankle has to bend now if my ankle is tight or my foot is weak Or I lack mobility in it and I'm trying to squat more and I'm pushing myself down to squat more What'll happen is my feet as I'm squatting will start to turn out to compensate That twisting that's happening in the body. My hip can handle that no problem. My hip can twist Okay, my knee can't So I'm squatting while my knees are twisting out and what's preventing my knees from twisting apart my meniscus Well, if I squat enough times that way I'm going to strain my meniscus. I'm going to have inflammation there Maybe a tear of course a doctor go in there and say oh, we could trim your meniscus make you feel better But then you keep squatting never figure out what's going on Where in that case if I had just worked on my ankle mobility Now when I squat my knee wouldn't have to rotate out But because the knee doesn't rotate and that rotating is happening under load Well, now we're causing problems. That's just one example But again, if you look at the ankle itself It's it can bend laterally It can flex and extend it can rotate to a degree and then the foot itself has some movement Then the hip is also a very uh mobile joint in comparison to the knee So if the hip and the ankle aren't able to stabilize and do what they're supposed to do Then what happens is the ligaments and the cartilage in the knee All of a sudden start to support things you don't want Ligaments and cartilage to do the support you want muscle To do this So imagine if you're holding a weight here with your elbow bent in your bicep tense Now imagine if you extend your elbow all the way So you put your elbow at the end of a table and then put a weight on it and your elbow It's like an arm lock, right and your elbow is now supporting the weight How bad that would be for the joint? So that's kind of what happens to the knee over time when those things aren't functioning the way they should Well, I mean that's uh in terms of like my actual injury when I was playing football It was because of the surface so it was normally, you know, you have a little bit more give and your foot can kind of move and slide You know on a type of like a grass surface versus like this this was like a very thin astroturf like I was basically on like a really sticky kind of like an astroturf that's almost like There's no give no give it's it's like cement just in a sense, but I was wearing like Regular shoes astroturf shoes and so like I wasn't used to cutting with those I go to cut this way and my whole body keeps going that way which then I was going to rotate but my foot just got Caught and so now put all the pressure and buckling right there on my knee And so it just stretched out my mcl to like a crazy degree But that's the thing is it's I mean your ankle and your hips They have to be able to have that kind of travel and movement in order to keep it in good tracking Isn't that one of the the challenges that they've had with Like figuring out how to make fields the astroturf fields is to to make it as close to like grasses Because one of the things about grass is it grass ends up being a lot safer It's forgiving it is because it kind of gives out right so if your cleats get in there It tears through the dirt grass where you don't get stuck in something Isn't that what yes? So now they have that other kind of turf that's got like the rubber rubber rubber in it Yes, it actually has a little bit of uh, you know something you could kind of dig into Versus it being that like a burp stop. Yeah, so just another example is if you look at female athletes female athletes suffer from acl tears at something like I mean, it's it's a multiple. I believe it like seven I mean versus male out like female athletes are much higher risk For acl tears and you think well, how why when they play the same sports like what's going on Well, it's it's as a as a girl goes through puberty Her hips start to widen first and the and the pelvis of women tend to be wider anyway So there's a stronger angle from the hip to the knee requiring more support From the ligaments you add in that you add in the fact too that women wear high heels a lot more than men Do they do so you you throw that in there on top of that And now how you how do you prevent this in female athletes? You really work on hip strength and stability and the you cut when when female athletes do this it reduces Their injury of of their knees Significantly because their hips now have the ability to stabilize But if that's not there Now you're relying on all the ligaments and stuff of the of the knee to support you and that basically is You're basically playing with fire. How much can my ligaments handle? And how much of my body weight can it support when I move the wrong way or twist And it's not as much as muscle. It's not as much Well, and then there's this idea of oh, which some doctors will recommend to these patients is Stop squatting, you know, and of course, I would not barbell back load You know squat heavy with one of these clients that are in this condition But this idea of let's just eliminate a movement pattern like that that is so fundamental You're gonna you're forever going to have to get up off the toilet You're forever going to have to get up out of your bed out of your vehicle like so this idea of Oh, well, you shouldn't squat anymore It's one of the dumbest things that someone could tell a patient because that is such a functional movement Sure, loading a barbell for 200 pounds and doing a barbell back squat is not the most ideal situation that client But to to tell them to stop doing a pattern that they're going to need to do for the rest of their life Is only going to make this condition worse in the long run. It is and by the way the data They're starting to figure out a little bit like for example when they tell people in older populations It's time to use a cane or a walker They're much more careful because when you tell somebody who's having trouble walking To start using a walker the decline in their ability to walk Accelerates because he stopped practicing walking another reason why doctors will say this about exercises because it's like well Oh exercises big deal stop doing them But really it would be no different than you saying go to the doctor and be like, hey my foot hurts when I walk Well, stop walking, right? Nobody would settle for that. Well, no, I gotta walk, you know So if you don't do these exercises Your ability to do them declines even faster Now we're not saying do these exercises if you can't do them But the answer should be let's figure out why you can't do them Let's get you to a point where you can do them and then let's do them So we never lose that skill and let me tell you That is the the best way to bulletproof your joints is to be able to keep them strong Through all these different exercises of movement. Yeah, really it's a lack of strength at the end of the day For the most part anytime a joint isn't like stable and functioning properly There's some kind of a an instability There's there's a lack of strength somewhere there that we can address to help kind of embolden that Response of it being protected and being functional now. Here's the interesting thing about knee pain. I'd love you guys's Feedback because this is all my anecdote. So I haven't trained millions of people, right? I've trained probably a hundred, you know, or so and then thousands maybe by proxy But of all the common injuries or chronic pain issues My success rate was very very high with knee over time very very high and I I want to guess it's because The knee flexes and extends and it was much more simple And I could really work on mobility and strength on the ankle and hip and just strength on the knee And it it was like I was like nine out of ten times. I would have significant improvements Versus like more complicated joints like the hip or the shoulder, which would take me a little work I don't know if you guys had any similar experience. Yeah, for the most part it was like that I mean I did remember one real difficult situation with dancing like clients because of the the So they've hardwired this type of movement where they're just constantly kind of Outerly pushing out and playing and all that kind of stuff. So that would be something that you have to sort of Repattern that and that takes a few years to really like repattern it and get everything to track the way it should I had tremendous success with it. Once I became educated on yeah Once I became a corrective exercise specialist and understood what was going on first part of my career I was terrible. I was the trainer who like, oh, we'll just avoid these things avoid them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you can't squat Okay, let's go here. Let's do this because you can't do these things or oh your doctor told you that Okay, don't worry. We won't do that. We'll do this instead Later on when I became more confident in what I was able to do and then I realized the root cause and like how Common this was in my in a lot of my clients It was it was actually an easier fix than you would think Yeah And what I mean by easy is not like it didn't take consistency and discipline of doing these movements But it wasn't like this really hard thing we had to do I would do like get down and do a a hip mobility test with somebody or an ankle mobility and it was glaring It was like this person could not get their knee to travel even close to the end of their toes much less over their toes It was like, oh my god We lack all kinds of ankle mobility and if we lack ankle mobility there We probably were probably weak in the ankle in the foot So that was an obvious thing and then the same thing for the hips I remember the first time that mine got tested with brink and realizing like My inability and I actually had okay hip mobility wasn't even horrific But I saw how how much more range of motion I could have if I had better connection there And so it was very glaring to me like oh wow There's so much room for improvement in these joints as we get and I used to give this analogy to clients that Man when we're young when we're kids we do so much play right where we're Rolling around and you're cutting left and you're cutting right and you're spinning around We're doing all these things where we put demand on the hips and ankles to have to To rotate and move and flex in all these different directions And so we stay good and connected to it even if you're familiar with it Yeah, even if you're not really super strong in those areas where at least good and connected What ends up happening is we get older and especially when we stop playing sports and playing like this Is the body just prunes it off If you don't take your hip like this and rotate it all the way around or move that ankle all the way Yeah, your brain goes. Oh, we don't need this anymore So let's stop sending neurons over in that area and prioritizing that movement Let's send it in other places where we do still have demand And it prunes it off and it doesn't mean you don't have the inability You just have to retrain that neurological connection and then once I can get you to do that That all of a sudden it frees up all this movement Yeah, I mean that's really where I found the most Success you started dressing it and with mobility hip and ankle And then really like incorporating and programming intentionally in lateral movement and Rotational type strengthening movements So you just learn how to respond in real life situations a lot better where that's You know, that's where all that potential for injury is going to occur anyways And so what we're strengthening those types of movements So that way you're equipped better for if you you move quickly or you twist all of a sudden Or you're a weekend warrior and you're doing a basketball game or whatever it is Like your body is is better equipped to be able to be strong and supported around your joints Yeah, so just just to put it plainly our bodies and brains Have this amazing ability to learn they also have this amazing ability to unlearn The unlearning process is very important. It's what keeps us efficient machines. Okay It's what keeps us alive. So if you're not using something you lose it the old adage If you don't use it you lose it you really do like if you were to lay down right now in bed and not get up for 30 days I promise you when you got up Walking would not come as easily nor was running or nor withstanding So if you don't do certain things You'll lose that that ability And in other words your body's only ever as strong Or as fit or as mobile as it thinks it needs to be right So if you want to move through life Pain free if you want to move through life feeling like man, I feel really good You want a fitness mobility and strength capability that's far higher than your daily demands Then if you step off the curb you jump to do something you got to grab the kid from the back seat or whatever Not a problem. By the way, those are all ways that people hurt themselves often because it's just above their capability Because they had to do it in a way that was a little faster or whatever than they were they were used to So that's the the kind of the the crux of it now back to the knee We got to get the ankle strong And stable and mobile and we got to get the hip strong and stable and mobile Then the knee can move the way it's supposed to right and then you don't develop any problems I just talked about one issue right the ankle not being able to really Uh flex properly When i'm doing a squat making my knee need to come out if my hips are weak similar things start to happen When i'm squatting or lunging or standing or sitting down if you ever see somebody try to Stand up in their knees Buckle in Then you're looking at maybe some hip issues that are going on So uh, we're going to talk about all those but I think we should start with basic lower body strengthening exercises because if you look at the average person I could really this is general but generally speaking if the average person's knee hurts Generally speaking they just lack strength Generally we can get more specifics But the average person's pain today is a result of lack of strength and getting them stronger Overall in movements that are you know, uh, that really mimic good, you know movement patterns Getting them stronger overall tends to Take away a lot of this type of pain so long as the movements are properly executed What you just said is where we align really well with the strength community. That's anti mobility people, right? Right. So there's there's a divide in the the strength community and the like like super mobility people and We come from a camp of like both. Yeah, but there's a there's a camp in the strength community That's like, oh, you don't need to do all this gumby mobility, you know, just squat Yeah, just squat more just and and there's some truth to that and it's exactly what you just said right now because In most cases it is just purely weakness. You're just weak in that area You haven't even attempted to build strength in that range of motion and once you start to do that You will increase this range of motion. You will get stronger You will become more stable and that many times will solve a lot of issues But the reason why I don't like to stop there because in my experience of all the clients I've trained It's not always that way. There's also other cases where we have to address mobility But I just wanted to highlight that because yes the time we've been doing this podcast We'll raise your motion even yeah Well, there's people that like try and pit us against even some of our friends that are that come from the strength background That that tout that all the time we've like you just need to squat more and practice You can practice bad patterns. That's right. I'll be my yeah, that's right But what sal was saying right now, that's where they we align there's truth in both Look, that's right. If you if you are if you've never Swung a baseball bat and you go to a coach. Here's what the coach is going to do They're going to break everything down. You got your feet got to go here Bend your hips here your knees here. Hold the bat in this way. This is how you rotate Here's what happens at the back leg You got to watch this and that's how you practice at first But then when you get good at swinging a bat, all you got to do is practice swinging a bat You never have you don't have to practice all the pieces anymore if you're an advanced strength athlete Yeah, you probably all you ever need to do is squat But that mobility stuff comes in handy When you're when you're not an expert when you don't have great movement pattern You take the average person off the street. Yeah, tell them to do a barbell squat It's probably not going to look good There's a lot of mobility mobility movements So we need to work on and then to take it back If you're that strength athlete and you're pushing the weight well the stronger you get The more little tiny discrepancies in your mobility start to become glaring Well, then mobility becomes more important again for that advanced athlete So there's definitely truth in both. Yeah, uh, but you need both They're both very very important. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's movement education for the individuals So it's like you have to know your body's abilities and and it's limitations as well And I think that you know going through mobility It's it's an important part of that process of connecting and figuring out, you know My entire joints ability and like where where those lines are and where that's established and In a pretty safe way in terms of like just loading it and they're just trying to like master a complex movement Which yes, you can you can sharpen a complex movement and get good mechanics and like, you know Reinforce that and end up getting strong. So yes, you're going to be in a good place If but again, they're they're more educated. So they've been doing the process a lot longer. So they know what a good squat feels like They know what it feels like most people don't get into that right pocket So let's talk about some of the best knee protecting movements. We've mentioned already the barbell squat or squats in general Squatting is one of the best if done properly, right one of the best Knee protecting Movements you could do if you're squatting well You're strengthening everything that you need to have a stable knee now It's not perfect in the sense that you never should do anything else But generally speaking if the average person did good barbell squats, and that's all they did They'd probably be okay. They'd probably be okay. They wouldn't be as good As if they did other stuff as well But a barbell squat is is up there In terms of protecting the knee when done properly because it strengthens all those all those muscles Yeah, yeah, no ends. It's one of the fundamental places that you go to the next one would have to be and I think you Categorize this similar to is you a single leg stuff like so single leg squat or single leg dead lift I think is another great place. Yes now Why single leg because your body does a really good job of compensating when one side is weaker Or not as stable than the other and you it does such a good job that you don't even you can't even tell Like you can't even tell half the time until you try doing things on one side versus the other Here's an easy way to test it. You don't have to do anything complex See how long you can stand on one leg and balance and then see how long you can stand and balance on the other leg And I guarantee you unless you practice this You're probably way better on one side right there that shows you there's a difference between one side of the other So single leg exercises are great Single leg deadlifts are one of my favorite exercises for the average person And I do them with no weight I would have clients just balance on one foot and they would go down toe touch That's it just go down See if you could touch your foot and stand back up without your other foot touching the ground Or if they're beginners, I'd have them just touch their knee to start with Great exercise at strength we're stressing them with a more unstable type of a situation where it's like now you're just highlighting The feel of like how everything sort of compensating in order to try and get you to Stay within that You know optimal position with your hips So I have I have a movement that I would and this was later on like years of training I started a piece together and I would tell my clients like here's a movement I want you to learn and it seems so Probably gimmicky for some trainers That you we might have I might have teased about in my early career that I now go I want you to be able to do this for as long if all the exercise I show you if you can do this one exercise It encompasses so much that's going to protect your knees hips and low back And that I would have them stand on a box stand next to a box at this tall Facing like like so your parallel the box close next to up Open the hip step up single leg toe touch come back down. Oh, that's everything So it literally gives you the stability component in there You have to have good hip mobility in order to open the hips up and to step all the way up like that You have to be able to stabilize with the the ankle on the foot and then to hamstring over and touch the The toe is such a good basic movement That if you can just keep the ability to do that for a long time You're gonna you're as far as knee pain and hip pain goes You're gonna you're gonna cover a lot of the bases just being able to do that I love that. There's all the split stance exercises, which are good too They're not necessarily single leg because you have the back leg supporting about like a lunge all the versions of lunges Bulgarian split stance squats and then this one Was at at one time Only athletes use this tool But the funny thing about this tool is I think it's actually not that it's not valuable for that It's very valuable for athletes I think that this tool is more valuable for the average person, which is a sled. Yeah A sled is so valuable because It's such a low skill. You don't need a lot of skill to to push a sled I've had old people push a very light sled. I've had really strong people push a heavy sled It involves the foot and the ankle and the hip There's no like having to lower a weight under control so they don't get sore And I can drag a sled. I could push a sled. I could do it laterally. It's like It's one of the best things you could use well and you see like I know of things names ben johnson I was just going to bring him up. It's the comment about how we I wish I would have I've been doing that with my clients forever. Yeah, I wish I would have Intentionally done it for this reason. Yes. Yes shared the sled drag for bulletproofing your knees Because I swear to god, he went viral. I know he was on I know he got on Yeah, rogan show and like huberman. I know a lot of people have shared him and he's got great content This is not a knock on him whatsoever. I love his stuff It's good stuff But I mean it's like and there was nothing revolutionary about what he was teaching It's like if you if you understand corrective exercise how to bulletproof your knees, those are the ways Especially ankle mobility, right? Yes So if you're if you're directionally kind of digging in your heel down and pushing back and your knees Just naturally will be in that like forward position where it's going directing it over the toe But it's all the stress isn't hitting it there because you're directing all the force backwards So it's like helps you too to kind of get into that position if you have a hard time with Mobilizing your ankles like that. Yeah. All right. Now. Let's talk about some of the best mobility movements For the ankle and the hip by the way these you would do before Doing your squats and deadlifts and split stance exercises The truth is you should do these if you have bad knees you should do these as much as you possibly can Not just before your point all the time. I mean, yeah, I this was one of the The biggest things that broke through for myself, which is typically right We always talk about like we're good at training our clients or and we're terrible at ourselves until I had to go apply this for myself And to working working on my ankle and my hip mobility and I saw what made the greatest difference Was these, you know, when I was teaching at orange theory, I remember this is getting down and doing the combat stretch You know every hour for a couple minutes not long not hard Just Frequently doing it all day throughout the day in these little bouts I'm a huge improvement on my ankles and my hips And I didn't realize how much better that was for me until I took myself through that versus like Programming it how I used to as a coach like oh before you see me Make sure you go over and do your Couple mobility drills and then we're going to get into our workout not realizing That my clients are probably only doing that when they see me those three times in the week And they'll be at far more benefit if they if they practice this frequently throughout the day Yeah, now mobility reason why we're not saying I know it says combat stretch But they're not called stretch movements because you're not stretching although you do feel a stretch The idea with real good mobility is to connect to better ranges of motion Okay, so we talked about combat stretch That's for ankle mobility when you're in the position where you're moving forward with your knee and you feel the stretch What you need to do when you're there is to pull your toes up activate the tibialis You need to spread your toes you need to push into the floor activate your calf You need to fire all the muscles That are in that position Otherwise all you're going to get is more flexibility and more flexibility isn't going to make you more stable You're just going to be able to move more but now you can't control it So all the stuff we're going to go over When you're in these positions you have you want to try to lift your leg and twist your leg and activate all the Muscles that are holding there and make it hard so you can connect to those new ranges of motion That's what gives you the mobility that we're talking about so combat stretch is one for the ankle I love 90 90 for the hips 90 90 is phenomenal because it's internal to go to external rotation When you're in that position try to lift your foot in your knee try to press them into the floor try to Pull your your foot up behind you try to activate all those different Positions on that and this is something again that you're doing You know one of the things I want to do is we go through all these movements and we can we can wrap the episode up with like giving kind of a Protocol of what this would look like and When I'm programming when we're trying to bulletproof our knees or work on somebody who's got chronic pain Mobility is every day all day meaning as much as you can right at the bare minimum every day I want to do at least Two or three of these drills from my ankles and my hips that that make the greatest difference And doing it as frankly Frequently as possible and then I'm strength training two or three times on the strength training exercises that you're you were talking about earlier Yeah, so what for for most people what it tends to look like You know more realistic is in the morning you wake up do five to ten minutes when you're watching tv at night You know the floor do a little bit you do that twice a day You'll see some pretty fast progress if you do it just twice a week You'll still get better it's gonna take a lot longer And that's the point we're trying to make is that unlike other forms of exercise With this the more the better tends to be just practice. He's king Yeah, short foot is another one short foot You're literally trying to activate the muscles that are in the bottom of your foot or the arch of your foot Most of us are totally dead there very difficult. Yeah, it's very difficult We're very flat-footed the majority of people Yeah, and it's weird because when I first tried doing this it's like the muscle didn't exist I couldn't do it. I can't I can't do that with my foot Then when I was finally able to do it as I practice more and more I was able to get those muscles to fire Why do you want to strengthen your foot because if your foot is weak? It's like you're standing on stilts and your Your foot is just there and all kinds of weird stuff can happen with your foot and ankle if it's not strong Short foot is one way to strengthen it. Yeah, and then lastly and we're giving you just kind of the most common basic ones because there's a lot Lateral tube walking that's really really good For activating those muscles that abduct right that bring the knees apart and the hips You see now a lot of fitness influencers doing this to build their butt It's this is not a huge muscle builder But it can definitely help build your butt if you have trouble connecting to that area So then you do the other exercises that build the butt and you can you got better technique Now as far as resources for this obviously we created Prime pro which was specific to addressing things like this. So you have that If you're not buying a program from us, then we've created all kinds of youtube videos You can look these up on our youtube channel. We've gone in great detail addressing Knee pain so all these movements that we've talked about they're all on Webinar is a great one to go through. We've got the prime pro webinar Which is absolutely free to you and then lastly if you're not already utilizing ask mine pump com You can ask my the ai tool and it'll point you in the right direction on how to solve this problem So if you have family or friends or you suffer from chronic pain, there's no reason why we can't fix this now Now honorable mention. Let's talk about foam rolling just for a second foam rolling Does have an initial pain relieving? You know benefit so like you'll hear people say, oh, I foam roll my it band And my pain and my knee is gone Yes, that can definitely happen, but it's not solving the root issue What you're doing with the foam roller is you're loosening up The muscle and the in the fascia here on the side of the leg But they were tight the reason why they were tight in the first place is because your body protect you Your body's trying to protect you and it sees that there's a mobility issue So now it feels better now I go do my exercise, but I never solve the mobility issue This is why if you foam roll for knee pain, you have to foam roll every damn time You work out. Otherwise your knee starts to hurt you. Does that mean foam rolling's a waste of time? No I think foam rolling is phenomenal before mobility If I could foam roll now I can get into positions I couldn't before then do the mobility The mobility is uh where the where the magic is it's also a great place like where you talked about earlier Where sometimes the pain in someone's knee is just purely out of a weakness thing and they just need to practice more A great way before I go into squatting with somebody is to kind of foam roll the hips foam roll the calves Full home the it foam roll the piriformis Get that all foam rolled and then go into the movement so that they'll have better better range of motion and better connection to Exactly. By the way, it was prime pro webinar.com that it will show you a lot of great Free mobility stuff and I like that because like like our program maps prime pro You actually have adam on there coaching you how to do them because if you just look at a picture Tent is everything. Yeah, if you just look at a picture, you're not going to be able to do it Right perform them, right? There's a way that you have to connect the muscles when you do those movements Look, if you like mind pump head over to mind pump free calm and download some of our free guides You can also find all of us on instagram. So justin is at mind pump justin I'm at mind pump to stephanel and adam is at mind pump adam