 First question is from mrs. Lyft to hunt. Why do I struggle to put weight on my squat? I am a long lanky build and have tried different stances and cannot break 300 That's a that's a really good question. There's a lot of reasons why it's not fair. Yeah, it's tall people There's a lot of work harder potential reasons why your weight might not be going up So I'm gonna talk about the most common ones One of them is is your workout programming might need to change. You might be doing the same stuff over and over again It's not working Maybe you're doing too much or too little. Maybe you're stuck in a rep range. So move things around a little bit the second Most common reason is believe it or not lack of stability and mobility That will oftentimes prevent you especially if you're lifting decent weight. You're squatting 300 pounds So I know that you at least know something about squatting. I mean, that's not that's not nothing's 300 pound squat It's pretty significant. So that tells me, you know, how to squat you've been pushing yourself What might be preventing you from moving up is that your body doesn't your body senses instability. It senses Lack of mobility and it just won't allow you to get stronger. I mean, I'll give you I'll tell you a story I had a client once that hired me who was experienced. The dude was pretty built We would have conversations of the gym I must have impressed him because he decided to hire me and I was at the time I was a younger trainer I remember thinking like well this big dude is gonna hire me. That's pretty cool And his main goal was to get his bench press higher now his bench press was I don't remember what number was stuck out But it was significant was like 350 or 360 pounds something like that. And so I remember talking with One of my other trainers who was really experienced and he and I said what should I do and we talked about programming and he said Try working on his shoulder stability. So oftentimes that's the problem So he came and saw me and I did very basic shoulder mobility movements rotator cuff exercises and shoulder mobility stuff and Within a couple weeks. He added like five or ten pounds to his bench press that he'd been stuck at forever And it was all because his body was more stable. So he was able to exert more force So if you're not doing regular mobility work That could make a huge difference. There was also the possibility nutritionally. So And this happens to me a lot when You know when you get back you and when you get into training and if you're died, especially if you're dieting To lean out or lose body fat, and then you're also wanting to increase your squat strength. That's hard to do You know at one point your body adapts and gets as strong as it's gonna get for the amount of muscle that you have on Your body you've you've got to a point where you're getting you're generating as much output as you can for that And you literally need to build more muscle to get stronger And if you're not feeding the body enough nutrients to build more muscle, it's really tough and that's not to say that somebody can't be in a calorie deficit or Following maintenance calories and see strength gains and I would always go to my programming first But if you've done a really good job Let's say you like you work and cycle through the maps programming Which we know what that looks like and you're still struggling with putting on Weight on the bar for your squat The other thing I'd ask you is to look towards your nutrition and have you gone on like a mini bulk and actually try to increase calories It's and this is very common for a lot of my female clients You know it's where it's was always really difficult for me to get a client to that that was female to hey Let's let's increase calories and put some weight on you know Most of them come to me and be like Adam I want to lean out while there's weight and they they're always eating around you know 1500 calories and I'm like hey Let's let's boost you up to 2000 and really push the strength component So I would actually look there too So if you haven't looked at the programming I'd look there first then the next place I would look is actually my nutrition and and actually try putting yourself on like a two-week calorie surplus And watch what happens to your squad now Justin you have a really good squad Are there a complimentary? Exercises that you that you have found that contribute to your squat more than other nutrition like cheese Yeah, I think too for me. It's changing up the protocol and changing up the acute variables So a lot of times if I'm not as connected in my squad, I'll do pause squats If the problem for me is digging myself out of the hole So if I'm at the bottom part of my squat and I'm having a hard time digging my way back up That's gonna be a focus of mine. And so sometimes I break it up almost like a power lifter where I'm looking at You know the different parts of the lift and where I can improve those specific parts of the lift So that would be pause squats would be one of them for me But also just taking the time to then change it up and and focus on unilateral training That's something that I I tend to do when I have when I'm in a rut In terms of like progressing on my squat I take that as an opportunity to then do what you mentioned in terms of mobility wise but also Apply exercises that directions where I'm in a split stance. I'm you know doing lunges. I'm doing Bulgarian split squats I'm doing unilateral type exercises To then really regain that that that stability You know to then go up and apply to to my back squats