 All right, our next caller is Cody from Michigan. What's up, Cody? How can we help you? Hey guys, so happy to be here. I actually have a pretty specific question I would love to get some help on. When I was younger, about eight years ago, I was surfing, and I hyperextended my shoulder when the board hit it, causing kind of the muscles to tear that connected my shoulder to my chest. And since then, I haven't really been able to do a full range of motion on my bench press, and dips and flies tend to give me some issues there. I really thought it was like a bunch of scar tissue until recently, when I listened to your Y-warms or a waste of time, and maybe found out that it might actually just be tight muscles, and was kind of curious your perspective on how to tackle that, so I can kind of get the most out of my workouts. Yeah, I know. So it's actually a good question. Oftentimes injuries lead to long-term dysfunction, and if it doesn't get solved, it leads to long-term pain and issues. So I've had clients who come to me with back pain, and I'll say, okay, well, why does your back hurt? And they'll say, well, I actually hurt my back. But oh, when did you hurt your back? And oh, 15 years ago or something like that, right? So what happens is the injury causes compensations, nothing gets corrected. Those become your default, right? That becomes your default movement pattern, and then it doesn't get fixed unless you can fix those movement patterns. So what I would do is I would work very intently on shoulder mobility. I would work on some of the movements, for example, that you find in Maps Prime Pro. I would do those on a regular basis. I would prime my movements. And then something easy you can do is those challenging exercises, the ones that when you do them, you feel kind of weird or a little off. I would actually practice those movements, stay within your limits, and slowly increase your range of motion. So when you do your fly, for example, go down to the point where you're like, okay, this feels okay. I know if I go a little further than this, it'll hurt me. Don't go heavy, by the way. Whenever you're doing correctional exercise, you're going light. And then slowly increase your range of motion over time. Oftentimes that by itself can help solve some of the issues. I'm trying to picture the injury right now. So I'm assuming like he went down like this, right? He caught himself on the board and then it tore right there. So yeah, what happened was the wave caught me but not the board. And then when I was kind of doing a somersault in the water, my arm came out and the board caught my arm and hyperextended it back, actually dislocated my shoulder too. And when I hit the ground, it popped my shoulder back into place and then I had a bunch of bruising and pooling in my actual bicep from the injury. Nasty, no surgery, nothing you did afterwards? No, so it was just physical therapy for months and I couldn't even bench the bar for about six months. Of course, of course. And then so, which this actually brings up like a follow-up question to Sal, your point is if I'm doing my actual workouts, where I'm trying to do heavier weight and not correctional, should I just continue to work in my range of motion while doing the other stuff on the side to increase that range? Only if you want to not improve. No, don't worry about challenging weight while you're doing correctional exercise. Don't forget that there's many ways to, if you haven't listened to the episode where we did nine ways, I think we called it to progressively overload. We always tended like, and we're all guilty of this, me too, right? To go to weight as the way to progressively overload the body to get more results. And it's only one of the many ways that you can continue to overload the body. And someone like you, I would challenge tempo first, almost always, and range of motion first. So to progress in that area, instead of you adding weight to the bar, pause at the bottom of the exercise and hold or create an isometric contraction and slow down the tempo, or do unilateral work. We were talking the other day about alternating dumbbell presses. These are the type of movements that I'm going to push you in the direction of, because we can still build your chest and build your shoulders and build the body without necessarily always increasing the weight. Yeah, I would look at this more as an opportunity to really address where you're at in terms of the stability and overall function of the joint. And so to really find the thresholds and see exactly where those lie in terms of your range of motion, where's my limitations? Can I go there? And can I stay there? And can I increase tension in the muscle and build more support around that? And then inevitably, your body will start allowing you more range of motion because it's secure there. And that's going to translate back to when you get into weights, you're going to be able to lift more, and you're going to be even more functional and without pain. Cody, have you done? Did you do Justin's webinar that he did on Prime? I haven't yet. No, I actually have Prime. I just haven't, to be honest, haven't used it as much as I should. Do the webinar that Justin did. He does the wall circles to me are like one of the first things that comes to mind. I would try and get really good at those. And he takes you through those in that webinar. So go to the free webinar, watch that, and get good at that movement. We did those specifically too because the intent of it is, and this is something Adam brought up with another question, it's the intent is everything when it comes to these types of drills and really understanding your body and where those limitations lie and like how to gradually progress your way through that. So it's not something that you just all of a sudden, you just gain access by doing these miracle type of exercise. It's really the intention you bring into the exercise and then it needs to be coached through. So this is one of those things that we put out to help you through that process. And Cody, back to the, using heavy resistance and whatever, here's the problem with using heavier resistance when you have dysfunction that's causing problems. The second you push heavy weight, the second you push lots of intensity, your body will revert to the recruitment pattern that it's most comfortable using. So to give you an example, if I only ever type on a typewriter with my two index fingers, at some point I'm going to get kind of good at it, but I'm never going to be as good as if I used all my fingers properly. So if somebody came to me and I didn't practice typing properly at all, I've only ever done with my index fingers and someone says, type as fast as you can, I'm going to go with what I know. And the truth is that is the fastest way I can type. But if I want to go even faster, I have to back off and practice intently and slowly with a lot of awareness with the method and technique that will allow me to eventually surpass my previous best. So if you add weight and you go heavy, you're not going to correct anything. Your body's going to go to what it does best, which is this kind of default pattern and you'll never get any better. So you got to back off. But that doesn't mean you can't progressively overload. You can still overload the body with things like tempo and isometrics and slowing the rep down, challenging their in range of motion. Like, so there's great ways for you still to build your chest and see progression. We just always, all of us are guilty of this. We just tend to default to like, oh, more weight, more weight. But I mean, Sal's point in a situation like this, you will always go back to your default pattern if you try to increase weight. It's just natural. So then you got to fight that urge. And I've been doing that. I've just been messing with a shorter range of motion and getting stronger in that specific half range. That's right. You're actually making your dysfunction stronger. So the more, the stronger you get with the dysfunction, the harder it will be to correct because it's now a stronger, more solidified dysfunction. So good job. Well, I mean, well, then looking at like maps anabolic, which is what I'm currently following. Am I then intended to do the flat bench press but working more on the mobility during that cycle versus like the weight? Correct. Remember, we wrote these programs for the average person, but you have to listen to your body and you have to individualize it. If I were training you, that's how I would train you. I would not train you by pushing weight on those movements. No way. That'd be the wrong thing to do. So it's fine with the deadlifts and the squats and the movements that are okay for you. But when you get to those other exercises, you're focused on range of motion. You're focused on technique and mobility and function. You're not focused on adding more weight. And trust me, if you do this right at some point, you'll go back to being able to push the weight and then you'll surpass whatever you're doing now by far. Well, this is a perfect example, again, too, of like, you know, to your point. So we created these programs with the intent that clients would learn from the stuff we talk about on the show, how to change and kind of modify it. Yeah, because anabolic is a perfect like a format or base to be following. I think it's a great program. But like if you were an actual client of mine and we're on anabolic and today is, you know, incline barbell press, you know, I might take you to alternating, you know, dumbbell presses in incline instead of that. And I'm going to put emphasis on the depth and range of motion, the control. We might add a neck and an isometric pause in it. Like I'm going to challenge your issue and try and get you better at that opposed to just loading the barbell. But then the rest of the program, I'm following it like, you know, right to protocol. So the idea of what we created these is like, okay, here's a solid base for 99% of the population, but then you have these exceptions to the rule like Cody who, okay, we need to just modify this one thing for him and this will better you. So you can follow anabolic, but then just adjust little things like that. It's perfect time for the call. I just finished my first cycle through. I'll restart with your guys's tips in mind. Thank you. Excellent. No problem. Right on. Yeah, you know, the audience doesn't know the challenges that we actually have had as trainers, creating programs to sell online to the potential masses. This was actually a big issue for us because I love writing programs, but you know, you got to remember, I was a personal trainer for a long time. Justin and Adam were both also personal trainers for a long time. And when we wrote programs, this is what good trainers do. I don't write a program until I assess someone until I watch them move. And the program changes with each workout, depending on all of those things. It's extremely individualized. Oh yeah, not only that. How many times did you guys call an audible halfway through a workout? Right. I might have assessed you. I might have seen you a handful of times, wrote your exercises for the day, thinking that I built something perfect for you, start to see something and then see something that I didn't see before and go, oh wow, audible. Instead of this exercise, and I'm going to do this instead, or maybe Cody, I'm training him for a while. He's never mentioned this to me. And so we get into bench and I'm wondering why he's off. And then he tells me that I'm like, oh shit, well I'm going to address that now. And so that is a perfect example. Yeah, we had to just think of like foundational, fundamental ways to train the body that translates to almost everybody. And then from there, it's like, okay, so you have at least a benchmark, a standard of what you're trying to pursue, but there's room in there to be flexible, to adjust and modify things, to individualize. Individualizing it is everything. And that's just something that comes with practice. It comes with experience and knowing what to do when situations like this occur and like how to adjust then. So we can bring you back to sort of that framework. Yeah, well the truth is we wouldn't be selling online workout programs if we didn't have a podcast that people could learn from. If we didn't have YouTube channels with more instruction, if we didn't have a backend. Almost 2,000 episodes, like we've tried to be able to explain all of these concepts that you can then apply within that framework. So it's a lot more complicated, unfortunately, than people think.