 Okay, these next set of strengthening exercises really focus on your upper middle and lower trap muscles. I find that this is probably one of the weakest area, no matter if it's a seal operator or a student here in training. This is one that's very often neglected and it's very important to help open your shoulder blades up as well. Most guys, it's very common for students to come here, be able to bench press maybe 200, 220 or more pounds, yet barely be able to hold their middle and lower trap up. If I were to line 10 students up on my table in this position and resist them, go ahead and resist me, very weak in this position right here. Also very weak in the lower trap position right here. Most guys, I don't care how big they are, I can break with one finger. Some guys are amazed at how weak they are in that position. You've got to have equal strength in your back just as strong as your pecs. You've got to have equal flexibility. You have to work on avoiding these strength imbalances and flexibility imbalances. One of my favorite exercises to work on for the middle and lower trap weakness, we call them Ys and Ts. The first one is the T position. I like doing it on an exercise ball because you can use your core along with it, but really this nice straight arm powerful thumb towards the ceiling position with dumbbells, just doing sets in this nice T position right here focusing on that middle trap. It's very common for a student that can bench press 200 pounds to barely be able to use a 5 or 10 pound dumbbell, so you really want to work on that. The next position is for the lower trap, is in this Y position, really coming up to my hands right there, very powerful movement right into that lower trap. Both of these are weak, both of them help, open your shoulder and really help with the shoulder health in combating the strength from your front side. The next exercise is incline press. I tend to find that if you do an incline press with a straight bar in a fixed hand position, it tends to be a bit aggravating to the shoulder. So I like to see more dumbbell press where your hands can open up and open the shoulder joint and doing more incline press with dumbbells than with straight bar, but really whatever is more comfortable to you as long as it's not painful. So straight bar position tends to kind of wind up and tighten the shoulder joint and be less comfortable and sometimes have some tendonitis issues, so I tend to like more of a hammer press in this position. Just tends to be more comfortable on the shoulder. Me personally, I like this position. Okay, the last exercise we'll talk about are pull-ups. I think pull-ups are a very good exercise. I think if the workout becomes only pull-ups where sometimes guys are doing pyramid sets, we're doing high numbers, 100 to 200 pull-ups in a workout, that tends to be a problem. Alright, just like we talked about, the lats get extremely strong, you still have to do pull-ups before you come here. You really should be able to do double-digit pull-ups before you come to buds. 12 to 15 would be a good starting score and most guys here can do over 20 dead hang pull-ups. So you do have to do them, but it's just important that we work the other groups so that you can get away with that without having problems. And really make sure that pull-ups are a part of your workout, they're not the only workout. Alright, I'm Lieutenant Commander Jim Cowan. We're going to wrap up the discussion on some of the prep failures before you come to buds, covering a few of the highlights that we've covered in the videos up to this point. Alright, the first thing is diet. Guys are not eating a good diet before they come here. You need to start eating a balanced diet. Make sure you have a lot of colors of vegetables on your plate, you're eating a good diet. That diet should also include a thousand milligrams a day of calcium. We've had some of the highest stress fracture rates ever reported in military training here. Our rates are down much better through these type of prep videos, but we still need good bones before you come here. I had a student today that I dropped who was only running 15 miles before he came to buds. You've got to be running comfortably 30 to 40 miles a week before you come here and have good bones before you come to buds or you will break. Vitamin C is also a really good thing to be taken. So diet rich in vitamin C, eat a lot of fruit that also helps for the bone health. And make sure you're not drinking sodas because the sodas undoes all the good of the calcium. So no nicotine. Most of you guys, well no one really should be smoking or using nicotine if you're coming here. All right, but no nicotine and no sodas that undoes a lot of the good things that you do through your diet. Make sure you're getting the calcium. Make sure you're eating a good balanced diet. All right, talking about the lower extremity failures that most guys fight before they come here. They start with bad footwear. Make sure you're going to a good triathlon store or somebody, physical therapist, podiatrist, summit in those feet, all right? Make sure they know your type of foot and they have you in the good kind of run-in shoe that you need to be in. You need to be changing that run-in shoe every six months or 400 miles. That's the recommendation for the military and that's true. You will break down a shoe in about four months with high mileage training. So if you really are running 40 miles a week, we're only talking about a pair of run-in shoes every 10 to 12 weeks. So make sure you're in good footwear. Also make sure that you're used to running on unstable terrain. If you're just running in your neighborhoods where it's nice and flat, all right, and then you come here on soft sand, it will be a big reality problem. So you've got to be doing some kind of unstable trail running, unstable terrain running, running in sand, running in soft sand. The last thing you want to do is show up here at Buds and not have been running comfortably on unstable terrain, probably up to 30% of your mileage. You need to strengthen the muscles around your shin. We've talked about these stress fractures in the lower leg, right? That's at least a 12-week roll if you come here. You need to build up the muscles that surround your shin and we've shown you that in the video, make sure that the muscles are there protecting your shin bones and keeping it strong. And the last thing, I tell people, if you only did one stretch for me before you came to Buds, it would be a calf stretch two or three times a day because most of the lower leg problems that we see somehow relate in some way to calf inflexibility. So stretching your calf muscles routinely all through the day is a good thing before you come to Buds. Also we've talked about the weakness in the lateral hips, right? Guys do a great job at strengthening their quads and their hamstrings, their calf muscles, but they totally neglect these lateral hip muscles. And so when you start to run, you get a lot of knee problems from weak hips. Most of the knee pain that we see here actually aren't knee problems. They're hip weakness. So you've got to make sure that you're working on the lateral hip strength to avoid the knee problems, right? Because that is a big failure and I see it time and time again. If I line 10 kids up, only one will have adequate hip strength on the lateral hips. Almost every one of them has weak lateral hips. And the last thing is shoulder preparation. You need to work your rotator cuff. You need to stretch out your pec in your lat muscles to undo all the strength that you're working on for pull-ups and push-ups to get here, okay? And you also need to be working out and be very comfortable in the overhead position, right, with up to 30 pounds for 30 or 40 minutes because that's coming as part of the log PT or the boat PT. It's not uncommon for an hour for the students to be overhead with a log of 200 pounds for six guys. So, you know, 30 to 40 pounds overhead for an hour is the requirement and you need the flexibility and the strength. We have a lot of our students when they're on the bicycles with 30-pound medicine balls overhead. They do a lot of overhead medicine balls on the treadmill and on the bicycle to prepare the overhead strength and endurance that they need. Also you need to be comfortable with your hands in front of your ears. Do not be behind your ears as this causes most of the nerve injuries that we see here, right? So, you need to be very comfortable with your hands, right in front of your ears, right over your forehead, and be able to maintain 30 to 40 pounds there for up to an hour sometimes. So, you need to start working on that now if you want to do well when it comes time for log and boats. All right, these are the highlights. Hopefully this keeps you healthy and keeps you out of our clinic. Good luck and we'll see you buds.