 Welcome back to the scorecaster. It's Tim and Jaco. We are on the... I think they call these a Chesterfield. Whatever it is, I'm lounging. I have... There is... I have had a photo taken on one of these before, Tim. But that... Would you want to Google to find it or... We'll move swiftly on. Otherwise, we'll get into all sorts of problems like we've done the last one where I was oversharing. Possibly my favourite podcast Q&A moment today. Yeah. We are lounging because we've actually worked quite hard today. We've done quite a lot of filming content. So I'm feeling quite relaxed. I'm excited about some of the tutorials that are going to come out for the people's helping them with a lot of the problems of them. So I have adopted the pose of if somebody will sleep on a chat show. Yeah. Question master. I thought I wanted you to kick off. You had you had you had a nice one. Adopts the question. Sorry. Some people are just listening. They can't see it. For those that can't see I'm lounging. This is a really interesting question. We're going to cover off a little bit on lower body to start off with. Yeah. So question came from David Farrant. He's currently travelling around the world. He starts off hijackering Tim and that's in order of who's most likely to be doing a flag at that particular moment. So he thinks we're all more likely. Yeah, rather than he's gone off. That must have messed up the algorithm slightly. We're not saying Tim and Jack are yet. Love the podcast. He's in. You're in books and videos currently on the sixth month holiday around the world. Working through the back catalogue of the podcast is keeping it entertained. So he says we've mentioned before back in our core videos about tight lower body restricting the ability to perform certain exercises properly and therefore is wondering if we had a collection of favorite low body mobility exercises that would improve flexibility. Hips are tighter than a nun's nasty. I don't know what that means. What does it mean? I think it's that it's on the tighter side of tight rather than loose. Let's leave it there. I've never heard that phrase to be honest. It was the first for me. Generally, when he's not on holiday, he has a office job and doing the same stretches or just sort of like static stretches. It seems to be doing the job for him and it's pretty boring. So from somebody who actually knows a fair bit about having a tight lower body, David Jackson. I am a working, a working progress. Is that the right word? I work in progress. There we go. And feeling the benefits massively of loosening off hips, particularly hip flexors. The effect of that has then on hamstring length and then that whole lower body hip mobility. And then the days when I just spend a bit more time on that and I've done, haven't been to yoga for quite a while, to be fair, for various different life reasons. But yeah, my own little bit of work along with some yoga, how everything that's stacked up on top of that, core wise, but then particularly shoulders, benefit fitting from that massively. Probably one big thing that we all do a lot of, I do it. It sounds like he's doing the office job is sitting and the hip flexors getting tight just in that position. And I think if you go into, particularly when you go into like L-sit type stuff as well, when you go in that short position and you realise that not only are your hip flexors tight, they're actually weak as a nun's, whatever he said. Nasty. So, one of the first things I would suggest if he's spending a lot of time sitting is getting into those hip flexors. And it's the same process that we go through with the upper body stuff we look at like, some self massage followed by then some release work, whether that's actually statically or whether it needs to be a bit more moving through range and a bit more mobility style, but particularly for hip flexors getting some of the contract to relax style stuff. So, getting the butt on, starting to feel the relationship between when you squeeze your butt on and you push your hip through, whatever type of hip flexion or hip extension to stretch your hip flexors you get into, start to feel that relationship between when you fire your glutes up, how that then pushes the hip through, how you then feel the intensity of this stretch has come on, relax and start to let that go through. That's almost like a static stretch, but you're actually working in and out with some, yeah, there's some activeness to it, yeah. I think the low body mobility question is a really interesting one and in calisthenics it rears its head in a number of different ways because when you're doing like for you, for example, when you're doing some of your plunge progressions, like you actually walking around, you wouldn't know you've got a particularly tight hip, which you do pretty well, but as soon as you take your feet off the ground, you're trying to stabilize elsewhere, super tight, super restricted, you can see it straight away, the system is just then kind of compromising somewhere else. So if you broadly kind of categorize your mobility work, you've got static, active and then what we would call dynamic based movements and I'm still to be convinced that there is a single solution which is going to work. If you go and read some of the research around stretching, some people would say that static stretching interventions are absolutely no benefit whatsoever. However, if you look at that from applied perspective, you look at gymnastics, they do tons of static stretching and they are some of the most mobile athletes that you're going to find. If you go to a bit more of a movement-based approach and you start to do, like we did a strength and play workshop recently and we covered quite a lot of lower body mobility exercises, moving in and out of range, deep squat positions, finding different crawling patterns and challenging hip mobility in those active positions, that tends to kind of help to loosen things up. The big thing to kind of pin this back to though is like rather than going what is tight, hamstring is tight, if you're trying to make some intervention towards it and it's not improving, then it's not just a chronic tightness issue in the hamstring, there is another reason why that's tight. So the rest of the chain somewhere, the body's got a reason to create that hamstring tightness if it's not improving with some consistent work and that's the one thing is like people that are mobile commit time to mobility. That's why people that do yoga move so well because they do a lot of yoga. There's a lot of stuff that we're doing in our history like sitting and calisthenics and when we played rugby, it's all actually promoting in an environment of tightness. So that would be my one take home is probably think about a consistent commitment, but you make a really good point David about static stretching being pretty boring in that if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to do it. I hate sitting on the floor in a stretch position five minutes. I'm the same, it's boring. However, getting in the gym and started to move around in some different kind of more dynamic type mobility exercises. I quite enjoy and I feel like my legs are getting a bit of a workout at the same time. So there's a few different ideas in there like why is it tight, but then also like adding in that strength and range and that's what the dynamic things give you rather than just sitting at N range in a slack shape, moving in and out of these shapes actually starts to develop a little bit of strength and proprioception at N range. So and then combining what the research is saying, there isn't a magic bullet, but what I do think is important to start off with is find something that you like that it gives you some of the enjoyment and fits into what your lifestyle is like and something that you can consistently do and then do that for a period of time and take stock. Yeah. And I'd identify some of one of the things that I liked podcast, the URI Mamastit was he, but he was doing it in front of us, but he talked about like, if he wants to do something about your flexibility mobility, like, yes, have some standalone sessions where you do it, but just his encouragement and I really took on board as a great point was get moving more often throughout your day. So if you have got a desk job and you can end up, we're probably going to do this Q&A now and we're going to sit down for about 40 minutes. And what we should really be doing is getting up and out of that position and start rather than just being stuck in one shape. So identify times when you spend a long time in one position or identify other like repetitive movement patterns that you do that just get you good in one position or one flow where you're actually going to then get tight, trying to get out of the opposite of that. So, you know, the fact that being sitting with your knee bent in your hip flex, then trying to get in that straightening those things out like for some of your progression that you talked about, like my straddle and my hamstring length and a ductile length in that straddle position affects my my planche progress as well as the fact that I'm just not strong enough for my planche thing as well. But like trying to the strength, I always think that the strength is hard to do. It takes time to build up the flexibility, the mobility side of things as well. It's difficult and does take time but it's a bit of a it's a bit of an easier win in terms of like energy levels. I'll sort of say as it's not as brutal to I think that the two go hand in hand. That's the way to look at it. You've got to start to get range of movement but you've got to gain strength in that range. The body is going to keep that and have the confidence to move through the range. Otherwise it will just default to what it knows. We might be asking people sometimes sort of say why haven't we got any sort of lower body type work? And it's for the reason that it's actually quite complex for us to unpick. And the end result of that would be to be able to do a shrimp squat or a pistol squat or some other variation. There isn't as much in calisthenics alone for lower body, which is going to keep you engaged for that long. Those movements are good. But we are going to be doing some more low body work and we will be putting some mobility stuff out. We've got a big project coming out later this year where we're hopefully going to have or we will have lots more prescriptive advice around mobility for the lower body, corrective patterns. The lower body can be a bit of an open for Pandora's box if we start to kind of just go a little bit sort of like here of five things, which are great because it's very individualized. But yeah, definitely an area we're going to do more on. But I think rather than saying these are the best things, you've got to go and find something that works for you. Resources have a look at mobility world with Kelly Stara. It's great stuff in there. And then also start to look around people that do ground based movement for some more dynamic mobility exercises. Go and see what gymnasts are suggesting for static based movements and start to have a look at what is going to work for you. And to be honest, for me, I'm hyper mobile, so I actually have a gift of not needing to worry too much about it. But my general approach would be to use all of those things. Yeah, I saw I do some of Kelly Stara stuff. I do some stuff that I've learned from a gymnastics coach. I do some stuff which I've seen from people like ground based movement practitioners. And that for me feels like the combination works. But that is all done with some self myofascial release, like using that massage ball and hip flexors to start to take some of that neotinus out first, and then start to work through some rig. Yeah, yeah. Just build that into your everyday life and habits, I think is a nice one to So in summary, clear as mud. That reflects what the research says that literally going if you read the science of the journals, we actually know, interestingly, if you read the journals, we don't actually know what we're stretching. We think we're like clever as humans, we've got this exercise physiologists have sorted out. People don't know if it's neural tissue, if it's muscular tissue, if it's joint capsule, if it's fascial tissue, we still have got no idea really what is what is actually changing for range of movement to improve. And that's why I've got all these different options and different forms of massage and XYZ. So I think the best thing we can do at the moment is use a selection. Yeah, and I think that we will definitely make some content around some of this, like it would be a nice bit of, we get more and more questions about it. So we could try and describe where you might get into now, but it's we're going to be much better putting together some low body mobility stuff, low body strength stuff and we'll build that into some tutorials as well as some of the members stuff once the members site is live. It was a big secret. Sorry, I wasn't supposed to say that. But there is going to be that coming later in the year. So there's going to be a heap load of stuff on that as well as we'll crack some stuff on for YouTube as well as to show you some of those examples. David, I hope that's helped. I don't know if you're still on holiday, but I guess if you are, I enjoy it. What if we're still listening? Yeah. Right, so we also have a second question is actually like we've got, it's coming a few times, few on email asking about circuit training, which a lot of the time has been based around some of the lower body stuff we do and also like the amount of cardio work we do, specifically Ryan, our friends over at Simply Guys Fitness on Instagram. So he doesn't think he's heard us talk much about cardio or Metcon work and wants to know what our thoughts on this type of work. He's heard us mention things like bike rides and sprinting and jogging, but never explicitly into factors about training, our training ethos and mentality around cardio and Metcon. Not a snappy question, I admit. Thanks Chris and Ryan. Great question. Where to start on this one? My thoughts on cardio or metabolic conditioning work. Yeah, good. Do it. Do some. When we're talking about what specifically, I think my, he's asked a good, because he said, he talked about like what are our ethos mentality around it? So my like ethos around cardio work now that I do compared to say when I play rugby and what I might say to somebody if they, if they want to, it's going to depend on what their goal is. Like if they want, if it's like they want to run a marathon or they want to do their first 5k or they just want a conditioning session to go alongside their calisthenics work, what I'm going to tell them to do or advise, what I would advise them to do would be different depending on what all those different things are. When it comes back to my own ethos now is now, I used to do lots of high-intensity stuff because that was what was beneficial for, for fitness for rugby. Whereas now with my, with my cardio work is more, it's a little bit more social although it gets very competitive very quickly as soon as we walk out the door. But it might be a run with my wife or it might be a 5k park run or it might be going out on the bikes and doing 10 miles or it could be 40 miles and it can be trying to go up some, we found some stupid climb that we're going to try and do or it might just be nice and leisurely. It depends on how I'm feeling because for me that side of cardio, that side of training isn't about, I don't do it for, because I'm trying to get my body fat down, I'm trying to get my fitness up, I do it because I enjoy it and so I do things that I enjoy and it's a bit of a, it doesn't feel like a training session because I approach it like that but I know that it's good for my body, it's good for my cardiovascular health. Calisthenics has got a role to play or you can use calisthenics as part of a circular conditioning based workout. It's just a matter of putting things together to then actually create the opportunity to get tired which is what you're looking to do. I think one of the difficult things with conditioning within calisthenics is you've got to pick the easiest stuff because throwing hard movements like pull-ups and potentially like some of the other progressions it might play around with into a conditioning workout you're going to lose quality and every time you move because you get tired that's a fact that's going to happen as a session progresses. Every time you start to give yourself permission to move with poor quality you're teaching or reinforcing faulty moving patterns which are then not going to help with the long-term gains. So my thoughts around cardio within calisthenics is yes great and use body weight movements to do that and all you've got to do is pick them and movements and put them next to each other in a workout and short rest periods, reps and stuff you can play around with but make sure that that's still happening with your in line with your ability to move well. So my recommendation would that be if you might start with pull-ups but you're using drop sets as you go through a circuit so that you're actually you're stopping the movement when you get to a stage where you are starting to compromise the movement quality or you're starting to do some clusters where it might be it's a set of 10 pull-ups mixed with a load of exercises but you can't balance 10 out on set number four so actually it becomes five sets of two for example. So you then got that compromise of going well that's actually now I'm not going to get that tired but you've got to question what you want off the back of it. If you want to just go down a few purely fatigue group then I think your benefit is of mixing in that just a more standardized high intensity or hit trading session if that's what you want to call it where you're using prowlers or lunges or using push-ups or body weight rows it really doesn't matter people with those a whole surge a while ago a few years back now and people would be like oh it's sanity if you've seen insanity or p90x and what do you think about those I'm like well think about it it's just loads of hard stuff and there's no rest period so the result of that is you get tired like it's not rocket science it's just lots of difficult things. So I haven't really got any prescription on it like if someone's saying to me right as a metabolic session I have no worries I'm just going to put a load of exercises together but I'm not going to put in stuff which is particularly going to be massively require a huge amount of movement precision because I don't want that I don't want to mix those two things together and sometimes the easiest way to to get a metabolic adaptation is doing stuff which is not calisthenics like throw some stuff here but like running is great for it. Sledge of pushes if you're working in a gym you look at crossfit and some of the stuff that they do around metabolic conditioning burpees bar like jump urban and bars all that sort of stuff box jumps you can use all of that sort of stuff and it's just understanding what your outcome is and how you're going to stretch the section to ultimately get tired in game. Whether that's endurance based work of 30 minutes non-stop or if it's short bursts of like 10 second work whatever it is personally for me I prefer to spend the time that I'm in the gym doing stuff which is moving towards the calisthenics goals. I can go for a run and do my conditioning work outside of those sessions so my because of where life is at the moment my time that I get to actually be in a place where I can train calisthenics is quite high value to me so I'll maximise that opportunity. If I was going into the gym and doing a metabolic session that's for me is just lower down a priority right? I think it's one of the great things about calisthenics about Cardio is that like it is a great opportunity to not do it in the gym and to get outside if you're living in a hobby country or it's a nice. Enjoy it doing rows and that sort of stuff. We're going to go to Mike's gym in Marbella in September that's the sort of stuff that I'll enjoy because actually like it's a metabolic session it's an obstacle course racing type vicinity but it's going to challenge me and move my way around doors but it'll be fun. Whereas going for a 10k run for me he's like I'm going to get a fairly board fair. Whereas some people actually love running so it's like what do you want and what do you like so if you want a cardio session like you've got to understand that then you can't use strength parameters and you're not going to get stronger from it but you're going to get a cardiovascular response and it's in terms of adherence to it it's got with stuff that you like so choose things that choose things that you like to do. They say put them together and that might be in the gym or it might be outside it doesn't necessarily matter it's understanding what it is that you want out of it rather than doing it because your mate's doing it or doing it you've seen other people on instagram doing it what what do you actually want and then build your training around that. Yeah and it doesn't have to be complicated. Yeah like I've done sessions before a cardio session I was on I remember one that I was doing more cardio work when I was on really training camp in Thailand start 2016 before the games and there's a set there's a stadium by the swimming pool that we're training at and I would just be doing like broad jumps up the steps I'd get to the top it'd be 10 body weight rows sort of push up some skipping and I'll be back down and that was like that was it skipping whatever I could do which was gonna elevate my heart rate skipping's a great one. You don't like it though I've skipped before we've talked about skipping before you're not a massive fan because you'd say it's like stationary you'd rather go for a run than a skip. Probably yeah or a running skip that would be cool. Like a playground. We're doing that like that yeah yeah like just running around town like skipping that'd be cool. So that is again a fairly ambiguous question but it's just there's so much stuff you can do and that's the art and design side of that. It would be wrong of us to say you must do high-intensity stuff 30 seconds on 30 seconds off and you must do x number of reps and sets in this much rest period because that's just one thing that you could do. Like it goes actually point about now do what you like if you said to me Tim we're going to do a sprint session outside I'd be like yeah great or I'm going to come in the gym and I'm going to do some form of like boxing in there or it's got some hammer hits like sledge hammers that sort of stuff high high intensity work short bursts that's me all over if you say I want to go for 10k everyone do you want to come I'm like probably not boring yeah for me yeah I don't really like it that much and so again yeah I think that's probably I'm sorry if that is ambiguous but it's hopefully there's some stuff in there just gives you the freedom to actually do what you probably know you want to do. Yeah make some decisions. Now our general E plus is yes have cardio and conditioning working program is important and just prioritize it in line with whatever you're working on but for general health yes we need to be stressing the heart and the cardio respiratory system to to create fitness in that component not just working big and if you're just starting out like start easy yes start easy and just build it up that's that's that is definitely the way to way to go. So the final question from Instagram Reese the Jack I think it's like the Jack Jack Jack he says here lads here's my weekly question he asks a lot of questions. So thank you for asking question engagement if we didn't have any questions we'd have no Q&A it would be just an A. Just say just was rambling on I don't know that's what it is anyway. I've heard in the past don't skip leg day and you lads look like you skip up no he hasn't said that. That is one of the phrase of the fitness industry I just we could do away with that. No skip leg day. What he said don't skip leg day is the reason he's asking about it is it being he's heard about it being large muscle groups and large muscle groups when you train them effectively or how you train them it's going to vary. Producing a better hormonal response that can have a positive effect on the rest of your adaptation for your body and is there any truth in that and therefore if he wants to make his handstands better should he train legs? But he says he doesn't have he doesn't really have any time for a leg day so it sounds like Reese does a bit of it skipping leg day himself but hopefully Tim's answer is not going to scare you too much. So first up the caveat is I haven't looked at the research around the subject area for some time which is probably a few years. Going back to where the question probably stems from there was a thought process and a belief that if we were doing compound large multi muscle group multi joint movements at the beginning of the session like heavy squats or deadlifts or something that could spike our anabolic hormones, testosterone, growth hormone, blah blah blah and start to give us have a potential benefit on the rest of the session that we're going to do. The last research conversation I had with somebody about this was a guy called Stu Phillips and actually the research that they done was said that the response from doing heavy work like squats wasn't actually big enough or sustained enough to actually make any difference on it. But as I said I don't know if that is the the most current thought process on that. My general short form answer will be don't worry about it. You could if you wanted to but what I do know is that improves upper body strength and handstands is training upper body strength and handstands and if you want to put some lower body stuff in there is definitely a benefit of having a total body type session if your weekly program can entertain that. So having some leg work in there and then doing some body stuff will be of benefit because you get to hit those muscle groups more regularly. Dialing down to the testosterone or the the hormonal response is not something that even I as a strength and conditioning coach working with athletes and particularly worried about because there's always so much other stuff which makes a big difference that would be something which I'm kind of thinking about actually one, two percent potentially with some individuals. And with those you'd be talking like high intensity low low reps very high loads for you you know I've back in the day deadlifted 200 kilos once if I went in the gym now and did a load of like 100 kilo deadlifts it's just not going to be it's not going to be if there is if I can get some sort of hormonal response that's we're debating how big it is it's definitely not going to be stimulated by unless I go in the red zone and absolutely go chops in my deadlift would improve and maybe my handstand might improve my pushing strength but like you say what's going to definitely improve my handstand pushing strength and other aspects of my body is me training those effectively that's the most important thing I sometimes think if I look at like sprinters that 100 meter sprinters there is obviously some benefit of doing high intensity work like that because you look at a majority of good sprinters and they carry a decent well-built solophysic and I can't just be down to the genetics of people that happen to be a sprinter so I think there is something that I'm going to hold my hands up and say it's not something that I've looked into but my focus would be just yes including if it fits in but don't let that be a deciding fact I've got to do legs of those I'm not going to get adaptation from my handstand especially when you're talking skill there will be very little benefit of any sort of like hormonal response on on skill adaptation really the only response is going to be if there is one on muscle mass and potentially strength but again there's probably a number of other things which you could do to optimise your training programme before you start worrying about that I think Reese is living in the real world like us has got it sounded like he's struggling for time anyway he trains three times a week at the moment he said so try and put another one in was unrealistic and if you are restricted for time like everyone that isn't a professional athlete then you need to be prioritising the things that you want to work on you enjoy doing and like doing there then you're going to make the most most progress focusing on them fantastic happy yeah I think so yeah I think as I've probably got some more I could talk about like skipping leg day but I don't think I need to yeah cool well I think then some of the other cardio stuff we talked about earlier when we're talking about running cycling and where you was box jumps all those other things like that's training that's legs that's training that's training legs and it's training in a way that it's probably going to give us longevity long-term rather than trying to make get my you know there's certain things that people train for that need a heavy squat a heavy deadlift dependent on your sport but if you want to be like fit and healthy when you're 60 70 then squatting heavy with a big weight on your back christian your spine might not be the most beneficial thing to do so I get maybe if I get three or four sessions a week just an example of what I'm doing lower body wise at the moment it would be a set of pistol squats and then I would go weight vest like you've got a track in at the gym so I'll be doing like fours and backwards lunges into a set of body weight squats and I might do that three or four times and that would be pretty much what I do and the reason for that being I like the endurance side of that it gets the heart going goes back to conversation about it gives me some form of metabolic adaptation but also my life is going to be a point where I'm going to go for a run or I want to go climb a mountain with Jack when he's a bit older and it's that sort of stuff I actually got no interest in whether I can deadlift 200 kilos or 180 for one rep because it just doesn't excite me that much anymore it's the function that I'm more interested in but my decision to do a leg day on a Friday has got absolutely nothing to do with the hormonal response I'm expecting to get as a result of anything else in a week because also just one last thing like we do a lot of work of body like pull-ups use a significant amount of muscle like so and and also from a dipping perspective if we're using those big up body compound movements if there is something from a hormonal perspective you're probably going to elicit some of that from just doing like weighted pull-ups particularly the size of your shoulders possibly large muscle groups yeah I got that adaptation in my turtle shall I think yeah yeah they just ate it too so I think that probably brings us to the end yeah I'm hoping there's some gems in there that people can decide from so I feel like we've skirted around and and very sometimes the way in exercise science and training that you don't always sort of know that there isn't always a definitive whether more often than not there is not a definitive answer than when there is one yeah there's sort of it depends on sir yeah but then hopefully we've hopefully we've given you enough context around that so you can start to beat it together for yourself and you understand that us today and no you have to do it like this for a lot of these answers would be wrong of us to do that it would just be one option of many things that you could do I might go and have a look at some research later on today to find out where we are at Hormones so I've got a bit of homework for you so I appreciate that a bit more reading to do for me perfect so if you've got any questions yeah comment them in below or email wherever you're seeing it Instagram Facebook comments DMs anything and ask you questions about anything that you're working on anything you need help on if there's some massive themes that people are coming through we'll do like the low body mobility it sounds like we need to do a tutorial for YouTube on that there's any other big things that come up we'll start to then that can drive the content that we make for you rather than it just being me and Tim going oh I want to do a video on this today we can service you better and more if you let us know what you want what you want help with well said David until next time class dismissed