 Our next caller is Hannah from California. What's up, Hannah? How can we help you? Hi First I just want to say thank you guys. Thank you for everything. You guys have changed my life and changed Many others lives and you guys made me a better trainer. So thank you guys so much for everything So my question is just regarding powerlifting and the longevity of it I've been doing powerlifting for about four years now since I was 18 just as a hobby and Now I have decided I want to take it to a more competitive level I want to compete at IPF worlds one day, you know, I really want to take this far But an issue I keep running into is trying to figure out how to take care of myself You know, I've been going to the doctor about certain things and little issues I'm having and he tells me the best thing is to quit powerlifting and that it's just hard on the body So I've also heard like you guys talk about powerlifting training how you guys love powerlifting training But one rep max is they're just not you know the best for your body But that's a lot of my training and so my question is how do I make sure I'm taking care of myself, you know For the long run, but also pursuing this dream. I have Becoming, you know, a really good competitive high-level powerlifter. Are you are you currently following our powerlift program? I'm not are you following a program? Are you just doing your own thing? Yes, I'm well I was following a program right now I took a little bit of a break and I'm about to start a new program next month Okay, because I would think that I mean hopefully if it's a good Program that you actually shouldn't be doing one rep max is much at all In fact, a good program should set it up to where you peak at your meat and you that's where you do your one rep max Most of your training should be at a much lower intensity. Is it designed that way? Do you know? Yes, yes, it is but just getting close to the meat even like the last two weeks of doing You know one rep or even on competition day that a dream comes over you and sometimes Your body, you know really far, you know studies on injuries related to sport So this there's two pieces of advice. I'm going to give you and in one comment the comment is The typical doctor's advice for anything is to stop doing it. That's not always the best Not always the best advice go to button. I mean you won't hurt anymore That's for sure, but then you won't powerlifting more and then you know Obviously you're gonna miss out on a big part of quality of life. All right, so here's a piece of advice that I have for you so one Studies show that one of the just one of the best ways to avoid aches pains and injuries for any athlete This is general advice now is to cross train So what they find is for example that runners who cut out some running and do some cycling for example Typically don't lose stamina and endurance, but they do reduce their aches and pains This is true for resistance training as well So generally speaking depending on how far out you are from a particular meat I would recommend doing cycles of bodybuilding style training or You know more athletic trainer type move. I was gonna go in the same direction Yeah, I was going in more of the performance of like, you know, because it's so You know one plane one dimensional I would definitely in like go through a cycle of just trying to get through like, you know lateral You know frontal plane like more more planes of motion to reinforce and yeah If you look at your season Obviously when you're training for a meat, that's powerlifting training, right? But the time before that when you're let's say off season Then you could do like I said bodybuilding or like a maps performance times type of workout and then more specifically Mobility work is gonna be extremely beneficial. I mobility work benefits everyone But boy does it really benefit power lifters because power lifters are constantly pressing their body Or or hammering the seams if you will because it's the same movements over and over constantly getting stronger And if there's a little bit of a deviation in form or technique or a little bit of a mobility issue The average person might not notice it But because you're constantly pushing the same exercises your squat you're deadlifted near bench press Those can become big issues mobility work makes a big difference. So like right now when you're if you're in season I would definitely do Some mobility work every single day maybe two or three times a day ten fifteen minutes twice a day That should help a lot, but in the off season you got a cross train. Don't just power lift all the time Yeah, I would add to that too mobility You know lateral training is gonna highlight a lot of those You know imbalances and things that you know Instabilities that may be you know under the surface that you might not necessarily pick up on because everything's so bilateral And everything you can do kind of like is is controlled that way So to add a little more instability by doing unilateral training will kind of show you Maybe some areas of improvement that you can reinforce and then you're gonna feel the difference of that going back into powerlifting We could also probably get a little more specific on what mobility drills if we know what what what are the injuries? Or what is the doctor? What are you going to the doctor for is it is it hip stuff? Is it ankle? Is it knee shoulder? What do you got going on? I? Have I believe it's a compressed nerve We didn't find out the doctor pretty much told me he had no idea But a lot of tingling throughout my body mostly in my upper back So because there wasn't really any answer he could give me he said the best thing is to just stop Yeah, that sounds like it's coming from the kind of cervical part of the spine It's so you're feeling it down your arm and in the upper body I'm feeling in my upper back and then on my legs. Oh and then down to legs Okay, so hips and shoulder Hips and shoulder mobility is we're like the guys were just recommending every, you know, two or three times a day for 10-15 minutes I would love to see you do so if you don't have prime pro we need to get you prime pro Take prime pro and focus on Hip stuff and shoulder stuff and do that two or three times a day every day And in addition to some of the advice the guys already given I think that you will see a world of a difference from that alone. Yeah, Hannah, when's your competition? I Actually had one this weekend. I had to drop out because of my back So I'm planning to go to nationals in May next of next year. Oh, okay. I'm so glad you did that Okay, so I had no idea that it was a nerve issue This is something we want to treat a little bit more carefully because we're talking about a little bit of ankle You know pain or joint pain Mobility work and you know stretching and that kind of stuff can help Nerve stuff you don't want to mess with because you could you could go from tingling to like Oh my god big-time weakness on one side of my body or a lot of pain that takes months to heal Since we're since we have till May, which gives us a lot of time I definitely think you should switch your training away from powerlifting. This is your off season right now I think it would be smart to go really easy and light for a couple weeks two or three weeks and then move Into something like maps performance watch the intensity and focus on perfect Technique and form that's that's where I think you should go right now Now after you're done with maps performance if everything feels good You're feeling strong that you can jump back into some kind of powerlifting training if you don't have maps performance We'll send that over to you. Okay? Thank you so much. Thank you guys. No problem. Thanks for calling. Thank you You know this makes me want to communicate this particular point in fact I was on a podcast yesterday and this was one of the topics of discussion, which is we often look at maximum Performance as the as healthy right but the truth is if you're pushing your body to any limit You are sacrificing longevity and health for performance nothing wrong with that by the way I mean I do that there's a quality of life thing that you need to factor in But if you're trying to be the strongest or the biggest or the riptist or have the most stamina the fastest or the fat You are going to be sacrificing longevity and health for that. It's good to stretch your Abilities and your capacity in that direction. And so you know to pursue that is you know, that's a valid goal But yeah, you got to realize that everything else sort of You know get sacrificed along the way, but you got to come back and reinforce it and build out the hole again So you got to consider, you know moving in another direction to then benefit everything else. Well, we we worship Athletes so much. Yeah, and we assume that because they look amazing They do these great feats that they're extremely healthy and it's not true at all Some of the most banged up beat up the clients I ever got where people that were Athletes most of light so their body fat percentage is low because they're so goddamn active But really that repetitiveness of the same the same thing same pushing the limit Yeah, same movements pushing the limits going as hard as fast and as long as you can all the time Sport sport is not technically healthy for it. What does that mean? Can you Intermittently play sports and it actually benefit your life and you be a healthier person. That's yes I'm not saying that sports is bad But we have this misconception that all athletes are really healthy because they have a low body fat percentage or something You know, it's money while they're redlining the whole yeah Yeah, totally in fact if you took the top three Professional sports and you averaged out the lifespans. I would bet that they have a shorter lifespan than the average American and that's mainly because of football But even if you took football out looked at the average lifespan of a professional basketball player baseball player At most they probably match the average American because they offset. They're active. They're fit They burn calories, but then what offsets that is just pushing your body all the time Let's look at the top tier athletes now and what they figured out like you got your Tom Brady James like what are they like hyper focused spending a million dollars millions of dollars on recovery and in figuring all that out so they have that kind of Longevity in their peak performance. Well, and even if Sal's point about longevity isn't true for sure The chronic pain you were gonna see so like maybe they don't die soon I guess football does I know the life expectancy of a football player is really low And maybe there's not much of a correlation to like how long they live But the quality of their life you find an athlete who's played sports for 30 years And you're talking about back pain shoulder pain knee pain hip pain They do this this hit me for this hit me like a ton of bricks I was in my early 20s and I didn't really understand this fully and I went to this big fitness convention And when I was a young kid, I was a big pro wrestling fan So like the iron sheik and mr. Perfect and also Anyway, they were there at the convention signing autographs and by this point These guys are in their 50s and 60s, right? They were they were they looked like terrible health They had poor I mean they would get some of them had had Keynes and walkers could barely move And I remember looking at my heroes who used to jump off the top rope and do back flips and be like Oh my god This guy's in his 60s and he can barely move and then it dawned on me like of course those guys were doing crazy crap to their bodies You can't run like that for too long without suffering the consequences. And that's when I realized like, okay It's great to push your body limits. There's some fun to that but you are sacrificing longevity Was it the was it that movie the wrestler? Oh, yeah, Mickey Rourke. Oh that highlighted it perfectly No, it did a good job of highlighting what you're talking about Hey, if you enjoyed that clip you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here And be sure to subscribe