 I'm gonna make the bicep dance this way that way this way that way all right now that you're entertained Check this out. We're gonna give away maps prime pro right now to one of you lucky viewers You lucky people here's what you can do to win free access to maps prime pro So in this episode we talk all about how to get back into shape from an injury or a layoff So what I'd like you to do is to tell us your strategy from the last time you got injured And how well it worked out for you tell us in the comments in the first 24 hours your injury what you did how it worked out If we pick your comment as the best comment will send you maps prime pro for free You also have to subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications So got to do those things one more thing in this episode. We do refer to four programs We talked about maps starter maps prime maps prime pro and maps at a ball by the way each one of those programs Is well over a hundred dollars each so if you got all four of them will cost you something like five hundred something dollars Because this episode is a one-time thing and we're talking about all these programs that can benefit people Here's what we're doing you can get all four for one payment of a hundred and forty nine dollars and ninety nine cents So it's a very short-term promotion one forty nine ninety nine You get access to prime prime pro starter maps anabolic go check those out go to maps july Dot-com again, that's M. A. P. S. July Dot-com all right enjoy this podcast You know one of the most frustrating things in Fitness has got to be and it's also one of the things that I get some of the most questions on consistently is like how to start back up with training after either an injury or Pregnancy or a long layoff Like where do I go? Where do I start? How do I get myself back into it because and the reason why it's such a challenge? Of course if you're injured It's like okay. Well, I just had surgery or I just healed from this injury How do we prevent that from happening again other times? It's You know, I I can't just jump into what I was doing before or I did jump into what I was doing before and a quick To realize yeah, that it was not a good idea I love this conversation in fact I think this is the what the third or fourth time that our marketing team has told us that they want to hear a Conversation about something specifically based off of their research and what they've heard people and asking and emailing and they've put together this and Yeah, I don't think that we've ever talked specifically to this And obviously we have to do the best that we can to speak in general because they're if we were Rehabbing a specific injury. There's obviously very specific exercises But in general there are some rules and principles that you kind of follow as a coach and a trainer When you get somebody who is recently coming off an injury or a surgery and how do you start them? And what is that progression kind of look like and so I don't think we've actually outlined an episode That kind of covers this. Yeah, no, it's a good topic I think it's an important one because so many mistakes are made at this point I can think back to the few times that I've Been injured or had to not work out. I'm normally extremely consistent But the there's two times I can think of off the top of my head one was I had shoulder surgery so on my left shoulder I had my AC joint resected so they had to actually remove some of it and that was a healing process and I remember the challenge of going back Into the gym and working out because part of you this is and this is also by the way This is a challenge that trainers run into when you train ex-athletes. Mm-hmm. You remember. Yeah vividly your fitness and your capabilities So you have this kind of skewed Concept of what going easy is gonna be like you overestimate like oh, well, you know normally warm up with this weight Yes, so this is easy I'll just do this and I made I made big mistakes doing that which took me so much longer To recover and get back to where I was I really feel like there's two major categories of people in this situation Right that have been injured either one Your experience knowledge knowledgeable and you have an understanding of this and you have a tendency to do too much Which is what you're alluded to or be you're the person who's absolutely clueless you completely rely on or terrified to get back to it Right. Yeah, exactly. And so you avoid things because what happens is you go through rehab and normally rehab is very very basic To just get you back, right? They don't their goal is range of motion. That's it, right Yeah, and many times you you don't get back to optimal range of motion many times They put you in a little circuit with six or eight other people inside the room and you're doing some very generic basic exercises And there's not a lot of emphasis on detail and range of motion and form and technique And it's really just let's get this joint moving again And so they can go back and do basic functions and get back to real life And then from there you have to go figure it out And this is many times where this fell in our lap and you get this person who now just had this You know knee surgery or shoulder surgery like you're talking about or back surgery and you know Now I get this client. Where do I start them? And what does that look like and and the first thing that always comes to mind is stability and connection Like we've talked about this before when you you you break and let's say your arm and it's casted up For months at a time or whatever and then they break it and they open it up But you notice two things right away one There's obviously this massive atrophy that's happened though your arm or your leg Whatever gone just gone away and even the ability to move those muscles in that area all of a sudden feel so weird It almost feels unfamiliar like wiggling your fingers feel so weird or flexing your quad after it's been you're like well This feels I don't feel connected. You are okay So you're hinting at or alluding to the big thing you need to focus on so I think a lot of us when we see an injury And we see that it's healed We think oh the muscle is healed the tendon is no longer torn the bone is healed So now all I got to do is just kind of go easy and start working out and everything should be okay Okay, so what happens when you're injured and you immobilize something or you can't move it or you're not moving it like you used to You don't just lose muscle. You don't just lose strength You don't just lose, you know, maybe even bone density and that kind of stuff after long periods of time You also lose neural connections. You actually lose the ability To connect and control this muscle. So Let me let me give you an example. Maybe you've never been injured or ever been in this situation But maybe you've had a long layoff So you worked out consistently for a year You took three months off You go back to the gym and you get back under the bench press or the leg press or the squat and you notice right away You're shaky. You ever notice that like you take time off and normally when you press it's real smooth But then all of a sudden it's like What is going on? Why am I all of a sudden? Yeah, my body's unfamiliar with this movement. I've done a million times Yeah, it's like your muscles are laughing or something. I remember as a kid I'd be like this is so weird and what it is is you've lost that ability to really connect and control that muscle You have to have that first Before you can progress to anything else that is the most important adaptation because if you push Beyond that capability what you'll end up doing is creating this really bad Imbalance and movement pattern issue which will then make the injury come back In a hurry. Yeah, I mean you you end up and you see this all the time people end up like creating these compensatory patterns as a result of being immobilized and having something that Maybe they can't place as much pressure on one foot or You know the Certain ranges of motion going left to right, you know, some of their joints are going to be susceptible to wanting To not stabilize the way they used to and so you feel your way through a lot of these movements But a lot of times you're trying to you're trying to blow right past it and get back to who you used to be And lift the kind of weight used to be do the kind of rigorous activity You're capable of previously, but if not addressed and not focused on Through this transition Could create some real problems down the road Well, my my very unscientific way of explaining this to clients would be like this it'd be like, okay If you had an injury Okay somewhere with a be the knee arm whatever and it's in mobile right gets injured. You're not using it anymore You tear your acl your mcl or you break your form. You're not using it anymore So it's immobile cast it up or or in a brace or on the crutches or in a wheelchair What ends up happening is the brain Stop sending neurons there like it was before so and I'd use a number like this just for just for the sake of explaining this I'd say so when you go to wiggle your fingers like this your brain sends a hundred neurons over there to move it And that's what it requires to do to do this activity Well, once it gets casted up and it's no longer moving like that what the brain does is it reprioritizes those elsewhere It says okay runes that area. That's right. It says. Oh, we're not having to do this anymore We no longer doing that the body wasted energy. That's right It's wasted So we're we're going to send those other places and and prune it to your point and stop doing that And so then you get uncasted or you are now out of rehab and it's time to start exercising again You don't auto automatically just go from zero to oh a hundred neurons back to a hundred neurons firing there I have to retrain that mental connection first there To reprioritize those nerve that neurological connection to get there and that part is so crucial to the recovery Yes, because you're you're when you're telling your body to do something it understands movement not necessarily connection to the muscles And so to the point we were saying earlier If you don't learn how to stabilize and connect You're going to develop these Compensatory systems these where other muscles are doing more work or you're moving Your leverages are changing and moving and then if you push past that and you keep working out Now you strengthen this bad movement pattern. That's not ideal. Which makes it so much harder to correct Uh in the future, you know, I remember one client in particular that I worked with she was a D1 soccer player. In fact, she was an alternate for the National women's soccer team. So like super athlete and she hired me And I trained her for a while and she was very very fit. She's one of those clients that She could pretty much do anything that I would tell her to do. She was just a gifted athlete Um, and I trained her about two or three days a week with uh with resistance training and then she got pregnant And as she got pregnant, of course your body changes and at some point you're not able to engage your core Like you could before now before she was pregnant, you know, she had like almost a six pack super tight We did all his core exercise She loved working out her core very connected very strong once we got in the third trimester Which is three months long and leading up to that even there's changes in connection because of the growing baby But especially in the third trimester because she was so small Her her belly started to really stretch out and we just you can't connect to those muscles like you could before We couldn't do sit-ups. We couldn't do crunches. We couldn't do ball slams We could do some rotation, but that really got limited too And then she had the baby and we had to wait for a while She had to see sections so we had to wait for a while and then I remember when she came back She was so like, oh, I can't wait to work core, right? So here's a girl that we used to do active planks with a weighted vest in perfect form, right? And I took her and I said, okay, here's what we're gonna do I'm gonna have you do planks off of your knee and I'm gonna stand behind you and support you and she looked at me like Why I could do I could do all kinds of stuff. I said, okay, you sure about that Let's get on the floor and try it out and she was like, this is so weird. She's I can't activate my core I can't I can't turn it on I said try doing a vacuum. She's like, I can't I can't pull it in I said before we do exercises We have to relearn teach your body how to connect to those muscles again If we don't do that everything else we do not only is a waste of time But we'll become very detrimental So the first thing you should focus on when coming out of a layoff or an injury Is to stabilize and connect. How is that different than traditional strength training? It's slower much slower. It's more deliberate and oftentimes you want to use something that encourages Connection like a physio ball. This is where physio ball or swiss ball training is tremendously valuable Well, this was the idea of map starter when we created it, right? Obviously we were thinking in mind the client who is their first time in the gym or deconditioned And or somebody who could be an advanced client who's been injured or had surgery and is now returning back to the gym The same principles apply to both those people the same if you're somebody who's never really lifted weights You also don't have a stable as it connects. That's right You also do not have a good mind muscle connection to everything in your case So that person is not connected to almost everything someone who's been injured is probably very disconnected to the area where they are injured So the same principles apply of the the stabilization and connection and that's really the foundation of that And I think a lot of people that we talked to through the podcast They they avoid that program because it looks too easy or basic or oh, I've lifted before for years And so they think that oh, I shouldn't start there Give me the other program that looks fancier or looks looks more difficult You don't identify with it Right, you know, especially if you've done it before and you're you familiar with working out and You have experience that to be able to You know humble yourself and and take pride and ego out of it and go where you really need to go That's a hard step but Honestly, that's one of those programs like it it addresses all of those things immediately that you need to to focus on which is Being able to recruit where you need to recruit more efficiently again and to be able to reconnect It places you in these Instable type environments with like the stability ball or you know These type of moves that are a little bit more focused on balance and and and being able to ground yourself properly But that's that's what you need to build back upon to get you into the kind of shape that you were going You know before you got injured listen I've been training for 20 years and still I when I've been off for a couple weeks or for sure a month or longer I go back to many of the principles that were written in that program So maybe it doesn't look identical being injured to all of it But I I recognize that listen There's no need for me to lift like maps anabolic or maps aesthetic If I haven't trained in a month if I haven't trained in a month these same principles apply to me I still get that same shaky feeling if I haven't been doing a movement because I've lost that I've been more sedentary. I haven't been training inside the gym And so there's no reason for me to skip that that foundation even with someone who's an advanced lifter like myself Right and it's not just that you're preventing injury again or that you're preventing muscle imbalances, which can cause pain That's all those are all true. You're laying a foundation. It's it's or even that right? Here's the here's the selling point You get there faster. I'm telling you the truth You don't get there faster if you skip this step. You actually get there slower So if your goal is I want to get back in shape strong fit whatever is As effectively and fast as like it's possible Then you have to do this step skipping the step means you will take much longer Even if you don't injure yourself even if you're lucky enough to not hurt yourself Skipping this will slow you down so much. It's going to take you much longer. I'll use a silly example All right, let's compare two exercises Let's compare a seated dumbbell shoulder press on a bench So the bench is set up so that it's supporting my back and my I'm sitting on it versus sitting on a stability ball and doing a shoulder press right obviously I'm not going to use nearly as much weight on a stability ball. It would be stupid too. It's not a heavy exercise I'm sitting on a squishy ball It requires me to stand upright. It requires me to activate my core. It requires me to balance and ground my feet This is very different than driving into the floor with a shoulder press when I when I'm on a bench I can't do that on a ball. I'll throw myself off or lose my balance. I have to balance how I ground I also have to press Balanced if one is off. I'm rolling off the ball. It's very very challenging and I have to slow down So what is this doing? This is making me or forcing me to connect and stabilize To this exercise if I skip this step and I go on a bench. I'm going to rely on the bench I'm just going to lift weight. I think I'm going to be doing okay And again risk of injury goes up and it actually takes me longer to progress There's literally no way you can rush through those exercises. Yes, which is the actual brilliance of it. It's just Because that's a natural tendency A lot of people have when you know, you're you're really motivated like I really want to get back to good shape I want to get strong again But you know like kind of going through that sounds boring You know doing all these like connection mobility type exercises can seem like really arduous When in fact if you do something like that worth the with stability ball You are fighting it the whole time and you're trying to maintain position and grounding And you're getting a lot of incredibly challenging intense work But it's all still centered around that stability focus. Yes, and I want to be again I want to add more to this so it's so let's say I injured my shoulder and now it's healed and the range of motion is good And I got clearance to work out, right? It's not just connecting to the shoulder. So you got to understand the body is very complex. It doesn't think of itself as Separate parts, right? It doesn't think itself as arm and shoulder or whatever. It's all one. It's body. Okay So not only do I have to connect to my arm being able to do the shoulder press I have to connect to this movement and to my core and to my legs and to my back It's relearning how to use this this area that it's very disconnected to but not just that It's also relearning how to use it while everything else is supporting it So this is why you don't go into machine and lock yourself in position And rehab your arm and why that will be less effective than sitting on something like a stability ball Going slow Stabilizing and connecting when you do that. It's the whole body has to kind of rehab By the way, this is why they show studies just to kind of take a little left turn They'll have studies where they'll have someone immobilize one arm So they'll they'll simulate a broken arm and then they'll have half the people train one arm The arm that's not immobilized and half the people not train either arm And you know what they find the people that train one arm actually lose less muscle From the arm that's that's immobilized. Why because a whole body is connected and it communicates. So that's why Stability and connection is a is a whole body thing. It's not really just an isolated This is the area. I hurt my knee. Let me connect to the quad and the hamstring It's how do I connect to the whole body while I connect? Here's another example Look at a a dumbbell row, right traditional dumbbell row If you don't have connection or stability issues your knee is on the bench hand is on the bench You got good posture rowing the way you're doing great, right? But if you have connection and stability issues because you haven't worked out for a while either because you're ill injured or whatever Well, try this instead bend over place one hand on a physio ball instead now I'm supporting myself with a physio ball, but what does it require me to do? I have to be very balanced in order to perform this row problem too much pressure on that arm I'm just gonna send you I can't I can't put too much pressure on my arm And in fact, I have to keep stability in that supportive arm Just like I have with the rowing arm and in my core and balance my feet And I tell I'm telling you if you start with stabilization and connection You will get back to where you were before much much faster Now there's another part to that or another thing that that you need to do and it's not uh Necessarily in a different order. In fact, you I think you do this simultaneously and that is uh priming for the body So before you go into work now and think of somebody too like uh, you who had a who had their arm in a sling, right? So you get your arm in a sling because it was broken or whatever And then you finally get it out and it's you're able to go back to rehab and stuff The problem is you're in this kind of rolled position and in an awkward non anatomical position of the body and then you're going to exercising The body doesn't just go snap back into perfect posture You've got to relearn that on a neurological level also And so knowing how to prime the body in specific areas to get you back into that Neutral spinal element then you go into your stability type of training and that is the the ideal situation for that client Yeah, so priming is different than a warm-up But you can think of it like a warm-up in the sense that it's done For 10 minutes or so before your workout pre-workout. So when you get to the gym instead of You know walking on the treadmill or doing static stretches or I don't know looking on your phone for 10 minutes as your warm-up You do priming you prime your body. So what is priming do it prepares your body For more connection through movements that require no resistance. They're all intrinsic. Most of them are intrinsic, right? So a 90 90 for example On the ground might be used to prime my hips in a particular way a combat stretch Might be a way to prime my ankle mobility Prior to a workout I may do Movements for my scapula or my shoulders to prime them before I go into Maybe overhead presses or forward presses or maybe even rows. By the way, here's something that's very important With priming priming needs to be individualized So what I mean by that is you want to prime your body For the areas and things that your body needs to be primed for priming for other things won't hurt you But it can be a total waste of time like like, you know, justin and I Would prime our workouts probably very different If I prime my workouts like justin I would get very little value compared to the value He would get because you know, our bodies are different Yeah, and I I do like to think of it In terms of like placing your body back in the most optimal alignment and positions for joint function and and You'll notice individually Where that happens and occurs a lot of times you'll notice that more so when you're fatiguing in your workouts or You know, just trying to carry yourself throughout the day and maintain good posture What tends to occur and for the majority of people a lot of times it's it's Kind of coming for everything's making its way forward. So my head's coming forward. My shoulders are coming for I'm in this kind of you know forward crouching position. I'm reaching for everything in front of me And I mean this is typical because of the lifestyle that everybody's sort of had to Accommodate to now with work and being at a desk and so a lot of these things tend to show up As taking you out of optimal alignment, which is what we really want to address that before we now Add load and stress to the body Which will exaggerate those those types of Disfunctions even further, which you know leads to injury Well, and this is the real motivation behind maps prime and you know, how do you do this in a way that is at as Individualized as possible, but helping potentially millions. I mean that was and again probably why and we've said this before Why we're probably most proud of that program because of the difficulty it was to how do we make this general enough that The average person can be in a situation like this and go like, I don't know what to prime I I know I've been hurt. I know I'm not moving up to leave this on myself But and you're telling me that sal says that his is completely different than just now I'm well, how do I can't tell how they should press? So what does that look like? Um, and that's where this the the assessment came right where we do the the three zone assessment We broke the body up. We divided it in three areas We looked at some of the most important basic functions that everybody's body should be capable of doing Most certainly be able to do if you're going to go perform Exercises and movements and then a very simple pass or fail Not of trying to measure and get every percentage or what's worse or better It's just you can either do it or you can't do it optimally If you can't do it optimally There's an area that we need to address and work on and again looking at areas that we saw as the the most ideal Uh functions that everybody's body should be able to do. Yeah, by the way in in maps prime We include uh, what are called fortification workouts for really bad trouble areas So where you can do specific workouts for? You know certain areas of the body that you may have Of challenges with yeah, and that was another thing back to the whole You know, you go to physical therapy and they sort of try to just regain range of motion Like where's the bridge? Uh, and that's something that we tried to create to kind of help the transition process of well I don't know if I'm like really ready to start adding weights back in the routine But I I definitely want to keep working at getting stronger at this new range of motion So that's something to focus on is those fortifications. Yeah, so think so think of it this way to simplify for people who don't have prime Right, so you're going to the gym. You had a shoulder injury It got worked on you're going the first exercise you're going to do You know you listen to the podcast like okay, I'm going to do a stability ball overhead press But the problem is because your shoulder was immobilized for a little while The the scapula doesn't really you know externally rotate or to press really smoothly on one side And so you're like, okay It's so it takes you four sets of doing this overhead press on a physio ball to start to feel it right Or maybe you don't you're like, oh god, no matter what I do It doesn't feel right right clicking sound. Yeah, so stuff started so proper priming again It's like a warm-up, but the way you're warming up is specific So in this case you might do some wall circles or some scapular circles And what you're essentially doing is you're getting The movement and you're connecting to the movement a little bit So you're saying okay You're getting the shoulder ready to move in this position because when you overhead press, you know using the shoulder He is an example. There's a lot of moving parts. It's not just the arm that comes up It's not just the major movers. It's the supporting cast to stabilize. Yes And so the priming sets me up. So when I jump in The first set that I do is already functional. It's already working now Why is this important? Is it just because it cuts down time on your workout? Well, that's part of it But here's the real value. Let's say I go in and it takes me five sets to get my shoulder And sometimes never by the way, so if you're experienced You might be able to figure out it doesn't feel right and start to move, right? But let's say it takes you five sets, right? You just did five sets of strengthening a bad recruitment pattern So keep that in mind if you took you five sets to start to feel normal Those were all five not just wasted sets but five sets that actually trained something wrong So why not go into it moving right wide right away? So you don't start to do that because I can't stress this enough It may be hard to go back to the gym when you're not connected to your muscles when you have You know when things are weak. I promise you it's harder I have more challenges training people who are fit with bad Movement patterns who have them so solidified They've built so much armor and strength around a bad recruitment pattern that we have to back out for a long time It's like I think there's a quote from bruce lee where it says, you know He could teach someone who doesn't he's never done any martial arts had a kick Easier than to teach a black belt who knows how to kick the wrong way because they've learned it So the wrong way so many times getting them to relearn it is is a big pain in the butt So priming does that it sets you up for your stabilization and connection work out So right away you're training the right movement pattern. It also helps prevent Some long-term issues that tend to happen from injury also So this is something that I okay low back injury is one of the most common injuries, right? I think it's up there with the top two or three like it's gotta be number one Yeah, I think it is right. So I think it's number one two or three, right? It's definitely one of the most common things. I think we've seen it a lot and everything from Bulge discs or throwing backs out to straining muscles in your low back But what ends up happening is somebody hurts this low back and then they become in mobile They're either bedridden or they can't really move or do anything for weeks sometimes months at a time And then they decide to get back into training and then because maybe the low back is healed or feels better And then they sort of do exercises and all the exercises that I'm doing is end up hurting the low back more And they're confused and I think it's because they have a week back And a lot of it more often than not actually has to do with like what's going on with their hips Because they were in mobile and they weren't doing anything They weren't training their hips and this dynamic ability that they have to do they lost it They lost it. They've lost that neurological connection that we're talking about They're not distributing the load and the force to the other major muscles that contribute to that That's right. And the the body is so resilient and amazing and it will get so that person could go in squad Or lounge or do an exercise it'll get through it But what will end up happening is the body will overcompensate in other areas Most likely the low back and now the low back is on fire when you try to do these basic leg exercise and movements because You've lost that good connection to good range of motion and mobility in the hips And it actually isn't the low back. It's because when you got hurt in your low back You stopped moving around you stopped using the hips the way they're supposed to they've now lost that net They've pruned that neurological connection there or reprioritize it to other parts of the body And then you go, okay, I'm better. Let's go back to moving again and the hips go like Oh, we don't know how to move like that anymore. And then the low back goes. Don't worry. We'll help you out And then you go fuck that hurts that bothers me and I have a bad back. It's like no It's not because you have a bad back. Yes, you hurt your back. Yes, maybe you had a bulge disc But what's happened is you've become in mobile You've lost that neurological connection to those hips and the ability for them to internally externally rotate like they should And now the rest of your body is overcompensating to try and help you out And so that this is the the real value to me when I think of priming for someone isn't just Getting you ready set up for the workout getting you to do move optimally But it's also to prevent this future chronic pain that comes from injury Yeah, I tell you what like if you're listening to adam and you're like, I don't know man Is that really what's happening? Try this out Take one foot and put in a quarter inch rise in your soles Just lift one foot a quarter of an inch and then walk around. Oh god, don't do that And then tell me and then tell me how you you wouldn't even notice a quarter inch You might not even notice right away. You just walk around but it kind of feels the same Tell me how your back feels by the end of the day You'll start to feel pain because of the compensations that are going and that's such a small Little thing that again, you might not even notice when you put it inside your shoe So that's kind of what adam's talking about when you're immobile. It's not just your back that's injured Everything else is not moving and it's important to get them to move properly So when you get into the workout, you're again, you're training those those proper recruitment patterns. So things improve much faster Okay, so another aspect is correctional exercise now The reason why this is different than what we're talking about although Stabilizing connecting priming technically is all Correctional in the sense that it's getting you to move better Correctional exercise more specifically is treated very differently in this case, right? So let's say you're doing your stabilization Connection workouts you're in the gym You're training your major muscle groups. You're doing them in a way where you're stabilizing connecting You might be in the gym three days a week. Maybe four days a week max doing this, right? So you're spending 45 minutes to an hour Doing these exercises correctional exercise is very different. It's short and super frequent Super frequent you're doing 10 to 15 minutes Twice a day every single day. This will get you to recover and and to improve so fast This is probably one of the most valuable things that you could do now Why is correctional exercise not as long not as intense but so frequent couple reasons one When you're correcting something if I apply too much intensity and too much load my body's going to move The way that is more optimal for itself, which means it's going to avoid what I'm trying to train So if I have a weak area or a weak movement pattern It's going to skirt around that because there's too much load and my body's like just move the weight Don't worry about this whatever and that's just what your body does, right? So we can't go super hard Super intense or super long now. Why so frequent correctional exercise Literally is teaching new movement patterns. Well, I have to do that more than the old movement patterns and the old movement patterns I'm doing all the time if I'm walking a particular I remember when I years ago I had my knee in a brace as in it was straight because I dislocated my knee cap And I walked in the brace so that I actually could walk in it But one leg was straight So I was walking kind of funny, right and I did this for like it was it was like two months When I took the brace off I had this weird movement pattern that I had learned Over a two month period and so I literally had to consciously walk a particular way And I had to do it more than the than walking the other way in order to learn this new, you know, this better recruitment pattern So correctional exercise needs to be done this way. You find the right exercise Let's say you have it. Let's say you have an ankle injury. Let's say you you twisted your ankle and you heard it So now it's healed But now that it's healed your ankle mobility your functional ankle mobility meaning It may be able to move the way it did before but it doesn't have strength like it used to So the mobility is kind of not the same. So you want to strengthen it You want to get it back to where it was before well twice a day for 10 minutes Do something like a combat stretch where you're connecting to this new range of motion and do it very frequently What you'll find is in very short period of time You'll get back to where you were before by by doing this kind of practice I know i'm gonna start to sound like a damn commercial here But this is also The motivation behind prime pro and the the reason why we went and looked at all the major joints in the body To give people this direction. How do I know you bring it? Oh, I hurt my ankle But is it how do I know it's not working properly? I can walk I can run I could do all these exercises But how do I know that I've I've lost maybe the range of motion in one ankle and not the other And how do I know that that's limiting me from potentially squatting really well? And or how do I know that that's causing issues in the rest of my body? Well, that was the idea behind that. How do we simplify this? So you can go through and you can test each joint and again a very simple pass or fail either You can move the ankle and it's full range of motion Or you can't and a lot of times and what we're really looking for so you know as a coach Right because nobody is perfect and very few people are extremely mobile in all their joints I'm really looking for discrepancies from left to right Those are going to be when it comes to chronic pain and rehabbing somebody The things that where there's major discrepancy from left and right asymmetry That's going to cause the biggest issue if you have somebody who just rolled their ankle to your points out And they can they do the test and they're they would say they they rolled their right ankle Right and they do the they do the test for their left ankle and their knee can pass their toes Three inches and then they go to do their right one that was injured and it can't even get to the toes That person when they squat I don't even need to see their squat and I could tell you what's going to happen when they break 90 degrees When they break 90 degrees their hips are going to shift over to the side that has more range of motion And that's going to distribute the weight all the way over that opposite side You're going to get low back pain and get issues in your knee and your hips on the other side So that's why this is so important and this is how you how you figure this out as you go through all these These major joints you test them and as a as a consumer or an average listener not a coach a coach Hopefully we're training or helping to see this thing, but it's an average person Going through this. This is what you're looking for. You're looking to see is there a major discrepancy from right to left And I'm looking for the grossest offenders and then I'm going to go after that and then I'm going to do exactly What you said Sal is I'm going to do it as much as possible I'm going to focus on that side with the most discrepancy And try and catch it up to where it has an equal amount of range of motion as the other one So my body is balanced when it moves now the yeah a lot of the Focus for this it requires a completely different mindset Uh, and you've you've brought up frequency But also intention is is at the most priority with this entire process because You can go through these movements and see You know watch a video and kind of kind of look and see where you want to be or like where your limitations are but You really need to feel your way through this and be able to Squeeze and activate these muscles and feel that contraction because that's really what is going to start allowing That signal to come back to the brain that oh, this is this joint supported now this joint support I feel supported if it feels like things are responding And so now that's when all of a sudden you get this breakthrough Where your body starts to actually have that that that you know automatic response it used to have For very specific types of movements where you we had limitations before so the it's all about that effort In that intention going into these types of corrective exercises That will help really move you forward and progress you quite substantially I'm so glad you brought that up because when I think about the the number one mistake that people make when they go through this program Is they they do it with the wrong intent They just go through the movement That's right and what you have to understand about that is going back to the thing We keep talking about with the neurological connection when you've been injured The the the brain says stop right there because we could get hurt And you've you've trained that new pattern to only allow that joint to go right there because it's afraid It's going to hurt if you go any any further than that So when you're trying to regain that new that new range of motion or find that range of motion that you used to have You have there's there's an intensity and there's an intention behind that intrinsically very conscious and focused 100% And by the way, this was the this was the motivation to the the free webinar that we produced to help people through this Because one of the number one things that we got back from people who had prime pro Was just they weren't certain how to use it or how to do it And so we created the the prime pro webinar. That's absolutely free I take you through some of my favorite movements from prime pro And the most important thing for you to watch for in that video is me talking to you through the exercises And the intent that you should have while you're doing it Otherwise you just kind of passively go through these movements like a stretch and you never regain that range of motion Yeah, it's prime pro webinar.com by the way. Um, so I'll tell you a story So I remember had a client once who got a hernia And he had to have the hernia repaired. So as he had it repaired, obviously he's not engaging his core He's keeping it from engaging on purpose. I remember when he fully healed He started to develop a low back pain And one of his si joints started to feel pain a little bit low back pain up a little higher as well And so all I did was I said, okay, here's what we're going to practice Here's a correctional exercise and this was appropriate for him I had him do lying pelvic tilts essentially you lay on your back knees bent feet on the floor and you Pelvic tilt and essentially activate the core is what's happening and I'm moving You know back and forth going from anterior to posterior pelvic tilt So it's like I'm arching and then flattening my lower back And it was hard for him to do at first But I told him I want you to do 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night So essentially you're going to do like You know 20 reps and rest a little bit and 20 reps and rest a little bit until 10 minutes is up And then do it again in the evening and then let's see what happens within one week The back pain was gone and within one week. We were ready to progress To more challenging core stability type exercises But it was because he did it frequently. He did it and he was very good about it He did it twice a day like I told him every single day and that back pain was gone But that's what you have that's how you have to treat correctional exercise If you really want it to work. Okay, so I'm sure people now are wondering What do I do then once I get stable? I get connected. I did the correctional exercises I'm priming properly. I think I'm ready now To start to really get strong and build back your base and build. Yes Focus on the basics Refocus on the skill of the basic exercises your squats Your overhead presses your barbell rows Your bench presses your deadlifts like those exercises, although they're not all the exercises You should ever do for your entire life. They are the ones that give you the most bang for your buck Both in terms of muscle and overall strength and overall functional strength now, of course Adding other exercises later is going to give you much much better results But initially focus on those basics and get strong with those basics That's when things really start to take off in terms of muscle gain and performance Which is a very maps anabolic type of foundational program Now, what would you say is the time frame that the average not obviously This is very individualized based off the injury that somebody had somebody who You know broke their back or their arm versus somebody who strained You know a ligament or something that you may see a difference in time frame to get here What would you what would you suggest to somebody or how would you Tell them to gauge are you ready to move into maps anabolic now And how long would you run through starter and using prime and prime pro? What's kind of a generic answer? Yeah, I would make sure obviously that the joint is responding and and stabilized and and that's something that You feel like okay, like I I am able-bodied again Like I feel like I can do most exercises, but I don't necessarily feel strong in them Like so there's a difference in that It's not that I'm on my way back to what I used to be. It's more that I just feel like I can actually apply pressure now to Susceptible areas of my body that I've been working my way back up With all this corrective work. So do you feel pain-free? Yeah, do you feel connected to basic movements? And do you feel like you can do basic movements now with some load? Typically what you're looking at for most people is anywhere between 30 to 90 days Of course, it could be longer depending on the injury, but in my experience It's usually around a month to three months before you really start to get into those compound basic heavy lifts again By the way, okay I want to be clear too when you're focusing on stabilizing and connecting and priming correctional exercise You are still building muscle. So I want people to know this could still get in shape doing this Yeah, so it's not like oh gosh, I have to do this for 60 days and my body is going to look exactly the same at the end of 60 days I'm so glad you said that because I think that's one of the misconceptions about Doing rehab or priming or mobility work is people all sudden assume that it's like Oh, I have to postpone my goals of looking better or feeling better I have to just worry about fixing myself when no you can actually do both at the same time Yeah, your body as you're progressing as you're getting more connected As you're getting those neurological connections, then you start to build muscle You start to build strength your body starts to look good Then when you move into the traditional Lifting which typically should look like this and yes, it does this is very much like maps and a ball It should look like this two or three days a week full body Each workout is starting with the big muscle groups We're moving down to the smaller muscle groups by the end of the workout And you are focusing on those big Compound barbell dumbbell type lifts for the most part So once you get to the point where you're 30 days in or 60 days in you're like, okay I'm ready for these compound lifts. You've built some muscle. You've built some strength now things really start to take off Now, let's say you avoid all that let's say You don't follow the protocol. You don't stabilize. You don't connect You don't do the correctional work. You just jump into Dead lifts and squats and rows. Are you going to get there any faster? No, you'll actually get there much slower So don't fool yourself and think that there's a shortcut here There isn't there's only one way to get there and that's the way that we're explaining anything else is going to result in sub par results or sub par performance or returns But once you do it and you do it, right You will be surprised. I mean like I said, I told the story about my shoulder And when I had shoulder surgery, I mean I kind of learned my lesson I took a couple steps back and then I took my time And then the doctor was shocked at how fast my body was able to respond and get strong But I had to learn my lesson first. I definitely pushed a little too hard Well, there's also too like going through that process of like, oh my god Like it set me back so much But then the one time I really focused on Adding more support around my shoulder. I had the same kind of limitations Uh, when I would bench press I would go back in do all that work and find out Oh my god, I just passed through where I normally would plateau. Yes And it's like I got I have even more support my shoulder. Therefore, my body was like, oh, I can produce more force Yes, and I got stronger. You don't want to be this person. Okay. You don't want to be this person who's like, oh, yeah You know, I used to be really strong and stuff and then I injured my knee I had surgery on it and I get back into working out But I always have a bad knee now or I always got this bad shoulder now That'll happen. You if you don't do this right like this is so important to do this process So that whatever you injured doesn't become a permanent pain in the ass because it can be I tell you what Half the people in the gym that I would talk to when I'd manage gyms They had this chronic pain and about half of them was from an injury that healed It healed but the pain kind of stuck around like, oh my back now they're working around it Or they're getting some kind of like, you know aids, you know, like some kind of like sleeves or things to deal with How they have to sort of immobilize it. It's so funny that we're having this conversation Because I know Katrina will be listening to this episode in a couple days and when she's listening to this episode She's going to be kind of shaking her head like freaking Adam, right? So we she had surgery a couple months back and She was out for six weeks. So she was completely immobilized no training whatsoever and recovering from the surgery Doctors orders no weight training no nothing for at least six weeks And then she was back to training and she's of course asking me, you know What does that look like? And it sounds a lot like what we're talking about right now a lot of prime on a prime pro and starter And you know, it wasn't but a couple weeks into starter that she was like, hey, I'm feeling a lot better Like can I skip to anabolic right now? I said no, why why would you want to skip to anabolic? She goes because I feel better. I feel good right now She goes i'm doing i'm doing really good and I feel better. I feel connected to my core again And I think I can go there and so that I go Are you seeing progress from being in starter right now? Are you are you stronger this week than you were last week? Do you feel like your body's changing from the previous week? She goes, yeah, I said, then why would you do that? Why if you're doing less right now? Okay, and you're not pushing as hard as you know You'll be pushing when you get into anabolic and you're seeing progress in your physique You feel your strength is going up. You feel your body is changing and you're improving and you're not plateauing Why would you do that ride it out ride it out? And it was this we had this conversation for literally like four of the six weeks of the of the program that followed Because yeah, because when you're somebody like her or us who's been lifting for a long time You have this tendency to want to hurt because like you hurry up and get back I'm glad you pointed that out that it is not a shortcut and that's what I kept trying to tell her It's like you are not going to get to your ultimate goal Which is this the body you're trying to get back to Any faster by skipping to anabolic if you are getting the results From starter and prime and prime pro right now by doing those movements ride that wave Not only is it safer and smarter for you that way But you're actually progressing perfect and you're only setting up a stronger better foundation For when you ramp it up good at handball plus let's say what caused your injury was not a freak accident So you didn't get hit by a car. You didn't fall off a ladder But rather your your knees been bothering you for a while and then it's it's just too painful And you have surgery or you did something that seems mundane. I was running at the park. I turned boom I you know, I hurt my hip or my knee and what's going on oftentimes It's movement pattern issues and imbalances that led to that injury. Okay This is your opportunity not just to rehab the specific injury But rather correct the issues that led to that injury in the first place, right If you don't make that conscious effort Then you may heal your knee or your elbow or your shoulder or your back But you never fixed what caused the problem that happened in the first place What do you think is going to happen soon? You can go right back to where you were before so you do all those things Then you get into the basic lifts going into it stable Strong devoid of major muscle imbalances or bad recruitment patterns and here's what'll happen You're going to get strong linearly smoothly Consistently and your body is going to build muscle and it's going to feel like you're on turbo. It's going to feel I hate to use this word, but it's going to feel effortless. What I mean by effortless is when you hit it right Your body just progresses and you actually start to ask yourself like wow. This is weird Why am I feeling so good just working? Yeah, normally I have to push so much harder to get these kind of results It's because you did everything right You you you taught your body the right way you prioritize the right things And now not only are you going to get there faster than you would had you not done these things But you'll surpass oftentimes surpass where you were before or cure or fix what caused the injury to happen In the first place. Look if you like mind pumps information, you got to head over to mind pump free Dot com we have tons of guides there to help you with everything from building muscle burning body fat Getting a better squat we even have guides for personal trainers. There's like 15 guides all free Mind pump free dot com you can also find all of us on instagram So you can find justin at mind pump justin me and mind pump sal adam at mind pump adam One more thing we talked about several programs In this episode what we've done is we've bundled them all together For a huge discount. So normally each program can run you Well over a hundred dollars each individual one. Well all we talked about maps prime maps prime pro starter Maps and a ball like you get all four For a hundred and forty nine dollars and ninety nine cents and that's it and the website to get those or to learn more Is maps july dot com An important part of development if you want somebody to be able to do transfer Okay, so if you want someone to do the same thing over and over and over again Then okay like you can have them trained by doing the same thing over and over and over again But if you want transfer, which is their ability to take those skills And apply them to new challenges, which of course is like the essence of not only athletic creativity, but