 Hey, welcome back to The Scorecast, thanks. We have got a special guest with us, and it is Mr. Ross Edgley over there. So who became three this week? It's exciting. What was that? Two became one. That's different. That's mean, yeah. Anyway. Spice Girls. Well, we're letting Dave. Ross is his first time. So he's not allowed to be question master. Yeah. You are. Hulkamania. So you can start. Just for anyone who's listening on the podcast. Oh, yeah. Dave's wearing Haley. I always, I always wear a headband. If you know anything about Ross Edgley, you'll know that he's got a headband obsession, is that fair? I've got quite a collection. It's his thing. Yeah, it's always got to have a thing, right? This is my thing. You have a thing. And I have a Hulkamania band. I don't have one. Because I have a Hulkamania band. Look back on all the other videos, you'll see. Anyway, we're going to mix up a little bit. Question, I'm going to be question masterers. No, but you've got a couple of additional ones, haven't you? Yeah. And we're going to jump around a bit because we've, the question's been flooding in. People found out that Ross was coming. And then we're going to kick one off because we've done a bit of a workout together involving some pull-ups. We had a great question from, I would love, I always love reading out their names. He doesn't practice them before. So I'm very bad. I'm dyslexic, basically. Quite difficult to say. Makes Tim likes, enjoy it. So Dobby underscore Weasley says, how, and this is specifically for Ross, how do I do more pull-ups? Does the height of the pull-up bar from the ground matter? And I, that's not fair, is it? Dobby says, let's just not say it. Because when Ross was doing them, because he's not as tall, he had to actually use a box to reach the bar. So the height of the bar did matter because if the bar was too high, you can't reach it. You're not going to have to do any pull-ups. Do you know what? That actually does raise a good point. Okay, genuinely. One, I do need a baby step when we're doing them earlier. But two, if you use a baby step and you start your pull-up from the top of the movement, you can then use the stretch reflex. We were talking about that. So there's the eccentric phase. So you're eccentric, the lats are engaging, but they are lengthening. So therefore that concentric phase, when they're contracting it going back up, is going to be that much more powerful. So if you do, like me, use a baby step, it will be easier than trying to, again, because I'm so short and but like a hobbit, if I was to be like that, I'm there on my tiptoes, that is going to be a harder set for me because I'm starting it from a dead stop. And we were talking about this moment where you are interrupting the stretch reflex and it is starting your repetition from a dead stop, the same way that if you were floor pressing on a bench, instead of like using that stretch reflex, bang, and the elasticity of the muscles from a dead stop. So doggie actually raises a really good point there. And I think it's just to add to that, that he's talking about doing more pull-ups, something that we might recommend for someone, say if they're, you can do five. Once he's done his five, does he do another couple of reps of eccentric because when he can't actually, he's got the strength to do the concentrate and sort of joking aside, having a lower bar would help him to be able to start at the top and just do it alone in phase. We mock originally, but it's a very good question. It's doing me a curve ball, yeah. You didn't know where to go, did you? Yeah, it's good. Right, so second question is from on YouTube, so thanks to, he didn't normally, for someone to get their question read out, they have to bombard us with them, positive reinforcement and, we like to get nice compliments, it's been a great question. Sometimes they go like, oh, amazing, but anyway. Yeah, it is, it's not, yeah. Poor play. Yeah, I get it, I get it, yeah, yeah. So his name, I'm not sure if this is actual name, as can happen on this, so his name is, hi, I'm Frank. Nice. If that's his real name, it's great. First day of high school, he's taking out Frank. And he says, how can I, I feel like I'm shouting. I'm gonna turn it down, let's bring it down. It looks so good. How can a busy student, I assume he's talking about himself, it's like, you know when you go like, oh, I've got this friend, he's got a problem. It's not this thing. Yeah. How can a busy student build a decent physique while at home and not having much free time? It's gonna pass, you go. Yeah, well, again, we're talking about this. People are rooting for a treat on a YouTube channel, because we've covered a lot of this already. But we were saying, you know, Han Salyan, 1936, famous physician, basically, I was gonna say, it's a bit of a sad story, it's not a sad story, but he was giving rats a little bit of poison, a little bit more, a little bit more, and they developed this kind of tolerance to it, whereas he found giving the rats a lethal dose of poison, you know, they killed over and died. Yeah, sad story. But he was by giving them a little bit of a, well, yeah, apologies to any rats watching. But what was interesting is by building up their tolerance, he found that stress and stimuli was the key to adaptation, that is the law of adaptation. And what's happened is, you know, years have passed and now in strength and conditioning, we were saying your body doesn't know whether you're in a gym, it doesn't know if you're lifting a barbell or your body weight, it doesn't understand in terms of cardio, you know, looking at lactic threshold, VO2, and those physiological adaptations to endurance. It doesn't understand if you're rowing, cycling, you know, quite often, it understands stress and stimuli, that is it. So in terms of, I'm a busy student and, you know, I can't get to the gym, brilliant, then master a hamstand pusher, I mean, you possess a obscene depth hamstand pusher team. And I still wanna see what you can actually over head press, but what's amazing is your shoulders just understand, yes, we can generate force with a barbell or your body weight doesn't matter, we can generate force. I think that's an interesting thing because again, thinking about what it's like to be a student, I've done quite a lot of best to see work over the years in student sport. And some of the challenges are around budgets, obviously. So if you're not paying for gym membership because you know how to use your own body weight, you can trade a home. That actually maybe gives you a little bit more feeling to get the right nutrition, get your body count nailed down because actually you can make better choices to be fair, like university gym membership is cheap, like 90 quid for a year's membership, but still like budgets are tight. And that's the other thing. So if you understand how to use your own body weight and how you can train like you say, you can implement stress and body weight is not the beginners. It's so many progressions. I mean, I train at home all the time, busy work, family to look after. So even sessions, I've got a pull up bar which was you can get off the Amazon or Argos for pretty cheap because you're putting your doorway. So you've got options for set of rings, 15 quid off Amazon for a set of rings. And that's going to give you all the training tools that you need if you know how to use it properly. And then the other thing is just get the nutrition point. Like you've got balance going out and having a few beers. But being around university environments, that's just a lot of students these days that eject. Like a lot of students, people, I don't know how they do it, some of them, but there's people like students who ain't good at it. Like it's possible to, they've actually got quite a lot of time to get in the gym and you can train six, seven times a week. Even saying he's busy, maybe he's not doing job training, he's got two hours. We maybe did a proper degree, like me and did engineering work, 25 hours of lectures a week. So he's busy. The other thing with being able to train at home, because he's doing his body weight stuff potentially, means he's going to save a lot of time like that, even if just to commute to the gym or not like. I know for me, sometimes I find it, sometimes training at home can be hard in that like you go to the gym, it's a space where you always work out and your brain, you almost know that, whereas at home it's like, sometimes I find it, I can find it hard to get like a hard session done at home, potentially depending on my life. You've got a gym in your home. Yeah, lots. And I think to that point, it makes you a bit more creative, because we were talking as well about training variables. Too often people, if you go down the gym, you are probably limited by this range of motion on the peck deck. And then over here, we've got like, you know, hamstring girls and you know, but no, if you're at home, all of a sudden you're like, I don't know, start doing some crazy dealt work with a can of beans, you know, or like quite often when I'm on holiday, unfortunately my girlfriend is, you know, my waiter. So I'm like, right, hop on my back and start doing better, you know, so you get so creative. And that's another thing that, again, we've discussed, they're in for a real treat on the YouTube, but training variables just get so creative. Too many people, and I always say this, think in terms of sets and reps. Verkoshansky, one of the greatest strength and conditioning coaches, pioneered Soviet Union training principles. And you know, he's, was there saying, you know, the repetition and weight scheme that you see in gyms all over the world, in the North Fitness magazines, that is fine for the average coach and the average personal trainer, but we must think beyond that if we to achieve our goal, which was kind of optimal human performance. And it's the same, you know, too many people think, oh, how many sets is that? How many reps? You know, three sets of tenors, you know? Exactly, yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, five reps and that strength, but any more is hypertrophy. But you do too much, that's endurance. And then you're gonna tone, you know, toning, once I did 21 reps and it was completely out of the window. No, you know, don't think like that. I mean, we were doing the wall walk. Oh my God. And the runway, gunway, just think outside of repetitions and weight schemes. And that's the thing, training at home can be such an advantage. And sometimes I do it just to get creative. I sometimes have seen, I've lost his Instagram when he was training at home and he put me at stake at the same time. Like sometimes at home, I'd do one, I was like, I was doing some planche push-ups and over in the mail. So he multitasked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It does, it does. I won't say it's the most intense session that I do. No. But it's still training. Yeah, yeah. That's what I've done. So I'm Frank, I hope that answers your question. If you're not sure about like, we've said basically, yes, you can do some body weights at home. We've got a free beginner's guide. If you get all the pushing and the core stuff doesn't need any equipment. The pulling stuff needs like a bar or some rings. Like Tim said, you can get dead cheap off the internet. So the beginner's guide is free. You can get that in the comments, sorry, in the description below so you can get that free and you can get yourself started. You can certainly get started with the pushing and the core stuff. It's just for pulling movements and rowing stuff. We need something to pull against. So rings or some sort of bar, but you can get a simple setup at home for that same sense of time. And then can you get a decent body? Well, yeah, there's the answer. You can get more than that. You can set yourselves a bit higher. You can get better than that. Better than decent. Agreed, yeah. Right, real simple. I mean, Ross... You're not from Ireland. I think that's a good idea. It's a good TV one. They look good on you. Cardio, if this is from Leonardo on YouTube. It's a... Maybe... The fake list, amazing. I don't know. That's it. But if it is... What is interesting... The cardio... I did notice that there's a couple of... Sorry. I'm in trouble to hear. I hate the way it does that. Right, short answer. Is cardio necessary for fat loss? Go. Short answer. Cardio is valuable to create a calorie deficit. The laws of thermodynamics, calories in versus calories out. Yes, they do apply to us humans. And cardio is just a valuable tool to create that deficit. How you do it, whether it's high intensity interval training, low intensity training on a row or on a cycle, doesn't matter. Just use it to create, one, a calorie deficit and two, to improve how your body assimilates food, improves insulin sensitivity. Therefore, your body's able to assimilate carbohydrates a little bit better. Short answer. We could go... We could take that into calisthenics and we could go actually just put a circuit of exercises together. Short rest periods, high volumes. I mean, CrossFit is doing exactly that sort of thing. It's not actually cardio, but it's just strength training done in a high intensity environment. And we could do the same... We go pull-ups onto push-ups, onto dips. You're going to get your heart rate up. That's going to do the exactly same thing as going for a run. It's just going to get a slightly different stimulus and it's more strength-based rather than endurance-based when you're getting better at doing that kind of work. Rather than getting better at going for a run. It was exactly what we touched on before about... It's about knowing what you want out of your training. So understanding what you want, then why you're doing the things you're doing. If while you're doing what you're doing matches up with what your goal is, then that's great. How you get there is a whole range of things that way to do it. Work harder, that's the thing. If you want to burst some fat, you've got to get your end of your ear and you've got to get your intestine up. Yeah, exactly that. Right, my second question. I'm going to go straight in. This is also going to be a relatively quick one. Chris Holden, six from YouTube. He is asking about, he says, when I do pull-ups, I get real bad lower back pain afterwards. Is it coming for beginners? Do I need to strengthen my lower back? What's the best exercise if so? Just to give you an idea, I'm 40 years old, I'm five foot 10 and he's lost a little bit of weight. But he's also, he's got five to six good pull-ups in a set but he's obviously getting some sort of back-niggle off the back of that. Right. So I'll go my initial thoughts after you guys jump in. I'm going to, first of all, I think the back pain could potentially, for me, without seeing it, it's difficult and this is just spitballing ideas. But if you're losing control of the midsection on your pull-ups, so you're allowing them back to arch, which happens when the lat shortens. So the lat, which is a major movement, major mover in your pull-up, is going to come from the front of the bicep here, goes all the way down, round the back onto the pelvis. So when you shorten it through the pull-up movement, what it's going to try and do is going to arch the back. It wants to kind of create a shortest position as a concentric force action. So that can actually start to put some pressure on the lower back. So when we coach pull-ups, what we're looking to do is make sure that the midsection core stays engaged, keep the pelvis in neutral. Yes, it's harder, and but it looks like a much more strict form. The body moves on a nice line. It holds good tension, and we're not seeing this arching through the back. So if you've got some weakness around the midsection, that's going to throw up two things for me. One, your core maybe needs a little bit of work because that's why you can't hold good position. And two, if the core is weak, that potentially lends itself to disc problems and potential, like just vertebrae, not having enough space to move, bumping against each other, generally causing a little bit of a grumble. So there's a couple of things there for Maya to play around with. Often people get back pain. I'm going to let one of you boys pick up on this. You come across people before where they go, I've got back pain, so I need to get my back stronger. So what I'm going to do is hyper extension. Is that the best, is that what that actual problem is? The back isn't, is it painful because it's weak? My experience is absolutely cause weak. It can't hold posture and control, whatever you guys want. So it's something like the dead bugs that there's a free video on YouTube for you can link to that down there. For dead bugs, which will help build up some of your core strength, which is like a bloke. As we'd always say, if you've got an injury or pain, you want to get checked out properly rather than just, cause we haven't seen you. We don't know what that is and we're not physios. So we're not medical practitioners. So you want to try and seek some proper medical advice really first, but then working with some of these things or some of these ideas of what would help try and reduce the pain and get you back into pain free movement. And as Tim says, that tightness in your Latin, losing that mid-section position will have an effect on that lower back position, something else that might be happening, like the same with the teens, but if you're real tight to your thoracic as well, and as you're trying to pull yourself up, you're trying to get those shoulder blades back and down together, the only sort of way, if you've got a strength through there to be able to retract it, and you'll start to arch through to give you that feeling of getting them back, whereas actually what you're doing is just arching through you and busting your rib cage up to give you that feeling of retraction through the shoulder blades. So that's a common week, like core being weak, being weak through mid-load track, run void area, that's something that we see often as well, and then compensations that could lead to lower back pain potentially, but I'd say if we haven't seen you, it's difficult to say. That's exactly that. I can't really add much more to that. That was exactly it, but what's brilliant is, we were talking about, again, it's going to be great, we'll be gorgeous, we've already kind of covered this, but that kinesthetic, that biofeedback, it's amazing that your community start to ask these questions. It's amazing in other sports, powerlifting, guys will deadlift for years and not ever wonder why they're getting niggles. Steering back pain. Exactly! And they'll just put more weight on and more weight, and that's what's amazing about all calisthenics and body weight conditioning that it will highlight that. And I think from my point of view, I can't really add much more what Tim and David said. Like I said, it's always hard because we've not seen you and it's law of biological individuality more different than we are alike. So you'd have to see all of the limbs and everything in action, but having said that, it's brilliant that you're already asking these questions of yourself because within that kinetic chain of your pull-up, something is wrong and it's amazing that you've identified it because it's the amount of people who would have just cracked on and gone, oh, you know, maybe it's just like a little bit of a thing, no. Ask that question. The last question comes on Facebook from Oliver Kelly. Sounds like it probably is his actual name. Real name. Real one. It might not be. He might have like... Like Leonardo DiCaprio. Well, if he's a teacher, often they'll have fake profiles like because they don't want the kids to find them. Okay. Let's not get bogged down. Okay. His question is, do you like my name? Not your name. So Oliver, he says, hi guys, I have a Q and A. I've a Q, QA is a question for us. Why is handstand an easier exercise than a planche? I am finding the planche on bars a little easier than handstands, which to him he thinks seems odd. Thanks. And now I just thought one thing on this, before we get into just the time at DeSign, that it links back to that first question about about that pull-up. Because I was going to say, one thing I was going to mention on that was that the height, we were laughing initially again, the height of the bubble, like, because we're thinking gravity, but it literally makes no difference whether how high up it is. You know, it changes as we go to the moon, but on Earth, if we're training, gravity is the same as constant. And then you were also talking, Ross, about how the body just adapts to the stress we put on it. So it doesn't care, it doesn't know if you're in the gym or at home, it doesn't care if it's a barbell, or if it's just pushing really your body with it, whatever, just whatever the stimulus is, it will adapt to that. And that's because gravity is constant, it doesn't change on this, so your body doesn't care. With that planche and handstand, the thing that's changed, gravity hasn't changed, the thing that's changing is your body position. So in a handstand, we're vertical, and we're trying to stack on top of each other, so you've not got an awful lot of distance from any pivot points to any levers, whereas in the planche, you take that and you go 90 degrees, and you go bang, your hands are on the floor in the middle, and your shoulders are, however, x distance away from your hands and your legs are x distance to the other way, and your shoulders are having to take a huge amount of force, the maststands are distanced for that lever length, whereas in the handstands, you really haven't got that, you're stacked on top of your pivot points. So the handstand is easier in terms of strength, but more difficult or harder in terms of balance, and the planche is the other way around, so the planche would be harder in terms of strength, but easier in terms of balance. And that's just because that's just physics. It's good that we've got something with the first class from Master's degree engineering, isn't it? It helps. It helps. It's a university, it's an aluminum part of the aluminum. But that is it. Every exercise has a strength curve. To go back to some of my experience with a barbell on a deadlift, for instance, most people will be able to lock out that deadlift at the highest point. There's easy, but getting it off the floor, well, no, the strength curve, looking at anything the same to beach weights, let's look at the bicep curve as well. A lot of people, when they're there, that's the easiest point, because again, gravity makes it easy. There's not an awful lot. When you're at a right, that's going to be hard. And Olympic lifting, that strength curve starts to get more intricate, but it's still there. No one was talking about that force-philosophy curve. Again, you're in for a treat, come on there. But we've already spoke about that, but it's the same. And what's amazing is looking at, again, law of biological individuality, when you can start to see people like Oliver, he will have different strengths and weaknesses. And generally, not just saying it, it's one of the things that you guys, coaches, I've been a massive fan of you guys for ages, because you're able to do that, not only with Olympians, but Paralympians as well, to say, where are your strengths? And I think with Paralympians, I find it fascinating, we were talking about some of the adaptive nature of the human body, that when you have someone like an amputee, they super-compensate in different areas that makes them incredible. And as a sports scientist, I'm like, that's amazing. And so that sort of strength curve, that particular exercise, it might be a new exercise, it might be a new sport, it completely changes. And again, it's amazing that a lot of the guys on your community are already sort of questioning that, because I think this is getting deep, but Aristotle, the only thing I know is I know nothing. And I always try to say that everyone encouraged them to become like an epistemocrat and question everything, even your own abilities, your own knowledge, just question everything, because in reality, no one knows. And again, when we talked about this earlier, some of the world's best athletes were just the ones that chose to do it their way. Usain Bolt, on paper, is too tall to be a sprinter, because he rocks when he comes out of the blocks. He takes him a while to get up to full speed. Well, he's a fair few gold medals there, isn't he? You know, his bio-mechanics are all right. We were talking about Michael Johnson. Tim, you made the great point, you know, that yeah, if you remember, he used to run upright and it was too, but you said, yeah, force, you know. Yeah, his stride is very short, but the force that you could actually generate with the floor. And sorry, I've gone off a complete tangent, but it is looking at everybody individually to ask why is that easier for me? What's my limiting factor? How can I make that no longer a limiting factor? Once you can do that, as I discovered today under your masterclass with the human flag, you know, I was like, yeah, strength's all right, mobility's awful, and you're like, cool, let's work on that, and even after a few, you know, it wasn't great, but it was better. And it was less of a limiting factor. And that would be the same for Oliver and his limiting factor. Potentially, if you find that handstand harder, it's just a skill acquisition. You just haven't learned the kinesthetic awareness of where your feet are. With you, if you're in that planche position, you find it easier. You'll be one of the few, you should take, actually, we're proud that you're probably one of the fewest people in the world who finds a planche easier than that handstand. Yeah, yeah. The planche is hard. That is true. Like it's flipping hard. Yeah. So if you've got the shoulder, the anterior deltoid strength, the core connectivity to hold that planche and flip and go for it and show everyone you can. Work on that handstand and find some nice progressions, which mean that you can start to get up against the wall and you can teach yourself that skill acquisition phase or process of actually how to control, how to make small money, fine motor control adjustments, where are my feet in relation to my hands and how am I gonna build on that? And it's just, you get what you're trained for. Like I'll be interested, actually, to know if you've just done a lot more planche training than handstand. Because it might just be the users. That's where you've stacked your time. So you're not better at it. Yeah. As it goes back to what we were talking before, as you get what you're trained for at the end of the day. Yeah, absolutely. And I think a great take-home message for everyone from what Ross said is like, ask more questions. I think it's a great message. And it also helps us for our Q&A. Yeah, yeah, everything. More content. I mean, in a sort of serious, really serious way, like ask questions, like why am I doing what I'm doing? Like why is that? And then someone's like, why? Why? Ask those, be like a kid almost, like, why, why, why? And then if someone, if you haven't got an answer, go find it. If someone can't give you the answer, well then why can't they give you the answer? Perhaps maybe you don't need to trust what they're saying. I mean, in practice, like Trey, and we mentioned it earlier again today about, like program design, how am I going to structure this? And like, we want to educate you so you can make your own program of decisions. If you know what you need for you, then that's way more effective. You're going to get way more out of it. And then I was just going, here's 12 weeks, just follow this. Yeah. So be proactive and understand that you don't need to be a sports scientist, but hopefully we've put out enough stuff which helps you to actually start to piece some of this stuff together. Absolutely. I think that's one thing as well. And again, I'm going to keep this short, but I'm a huge fan of Ralph Wildo Emerson, famous American essayist, and he used to always say, teach a man principles and he can create his own methods. Genuinely, that's one thing why I've loved coming down here and actually meeting you guys for the first time, because long before I actually met you and I followed you on social media, you are one of very few people who teach people principles so they can create their own methods. You don't say, here you go, follow that rep set, so just go do that. No, you actually teach people, and I've learned it first-hand today with the human flag. You taught me principles. We deconstructed the human flag, and I'm like, oh, and now I know how to do that. I can actually apply that to other things. And so genuinely, I think that's amazing what you guys do, but asking questions on that, it becomes a community and a collective, just exchanging ideas. So definitely give Ross a follow on Instagram, at RossHersley. Other social media platforms? Yeah, I think I'm on all of them. Find him. Find him. They're soon to be blessed with photos of human flags. You'll have to be like, taught him some stuff today. And if you have on that question, if you've got any questions, comment in those below. Massive thank you for most of those who are coming down. Have a great time. You're gonna see a load of videos on YouTube with us training with him. If you haven't subscribed to his YouTube channel, that's up by, we'll put that on his head. Bing! If you haven't got our free beginner's guide, that's up there, out of the way of my head. And for last week's queue, or the last Q&A that we did, that's down at the bottom there. So until next time, you can do it. Fastest missed. Fastest missed.