 Our next question is from Kaylee from Oregon. Hey Kaylee, how can we help you? Hey, how's it going? Good. So my question for you guys is how to promote longevity through powerlifting and address muscle imbalances. I've been powerlifting for about a year and a half now and the first year I was doing super strong, hitting new PRs every month. Things were going great. And then within the last six months, I've had two or three different issues that have either caused me to stop training for an extended period of time or have to completely change what I've been doing. Okay. So have you done any focus on mobility during this period of time or are you still lifting heavy? I have been still lifting heavy. I've started addressing mobility recently, but I don't really have a plan. I don't really know where to start with that kind of stuff. Okay, good. You know, this is like, we just talked about this on the episode about how every modality has its strengths and its weaknesses, right? Yeah, that's right. Like in powerlifting. It's three lifts. It is. But one of the best things about it, I mean, the strength comes on like crazy, the muscle comes on like crazy, the metabolism boosting benefits from it come on like crazy, but then the drawback is you're working in the same plane all the time and this is where the hips, the knees, the back all start talking to you. You know, one of the challenges with fitness, especially if you enjoy what you're doing, it sounds like you really like powerlifting quite a bit. It reminds me of the, sorry. I'm absolutely obsessed with it. Okay. It's okay. It reminds me of the phrase, you want to have your cake and eat it too. So the reason, the meaning behind that means it's you have your cake and you want it, but then you eat it and it's gone. So you want both. I want my cake, but then I want to eat it, but then it's gone. So you feel like you're torn. What do I do? So the reality is you can't have both, right? You can't continue to lift heavy and push your body and improve the mobility, or at least solve the root reasons why you're injuring yourself. You have to focus on one or the other. Now here's what's going to happen if you continue to focus on lifting heavy. Not only are you going to re-injure yourself, but you're not going to get any stronger because nothing prevents progress like an injury or a muscle imbalance. Now here's what happens if you focus on mobility for a while. Will you lose some strength in your core lifts? You will, but you'll dramatically improve your mobility, potentially solve the root reason of why you're hurting yourself, and then you'll get stronger faster than you did before and surpass what you were doing before. So this is all part of the plan, and it's going to require you to move away from the thing that you're so passionate about, but because you're so passionate about it, you got to focus on something that will improve your longevity and your performance. Yeah, you got to shift in and out, and you got to phase out of what you're doing in order to then reinforce your joints so you can keep like you're seeking for that longevity in those lifts. So it just needs to be more planned out. So there's ways for you to work specifically on lateral training, mobility, exercises, and then build yourself a ritual and routine. This is why we also created our prime program is to constantly assess yourself, assess the quality of your joints and the movement of your joints and if they're supported. So to go through just those three tests, you find out a lot about what's going on with your shoulders, with your knees, with your ankles, with your neck, everything else involved, and then figure out how to take just those few exercises specifically and ritualize them in the morning and throughout the day while you can still get back to your main core powerlifting lifts. Kelly, have you followed the free webinars that we've done? Oh, she froze. Oh, she was like, yeah. Okay. That happened to me twice today. Yeah, well, she'll hear this anyway. So I know where you're going. I think she should go and go to our mapsprimewebinar.com, follow the webinar, see where she's finding any imbalances, and a routine that I would recommend to her would be the following. I would recommend priming before and after every workout and then switching entirely to unilateral training for at least a couple months, which means she's not going to do her favorite powerlift lifts, but that's okay. It's like pulling an arrow back. You pull it back before it takes off, moving forward. I could see some value in not completely eliminating the list because she's so, this is sport specific a little bit, right? But I would definitely bring the load way down, right? So maybe I would do a lot of mobility with technique work. So I'm never going to be moving above 50% of what I can handle. I'm going to go do a lot of mobility work. We've talked about this on the show before. Like something like this, and I think we've all experienced this, right? So let's say I'm really working on getting my squad up, but then I'm noticing these. I mean, this was to me today, okay? So today, Sal was training legs. I was training legs. I would have loved to crush them like he did, but immediately I could feel my hips talking to me. So then what did I go over and go do? I was on the floor doing 90-90 mobility work, working on stuff of all my pelvic control, then I was going over doing lateral stability with single leg deadlifts, really lightweight and trying to control it. This is what this person needs to do. Like you've got these issues, your body's talking to you, regress back a little bit, focus on mobility. I don't think it means you necessarily have to get rid of the lifts, but you definitely don't want to be loading it. Well, think of it this way. It's like we've used this analogy before, but it's like you're building this amazing house and you just start building it. You're now at the frame, and then you notice the foundation is messed up. Do you keep building the whole house? No, you stop. You take a step back. Oh, we got to fix the foundation, because what ends up happening if I build the whole house with the messed up foundation? I'm not only wasting my time, but my whole house is going to have to get torn down at some point. So this is all part of getting stronger. Now, the reason why I recommended that she switch entirely to unilateral training is because I understand her mindset. Yeah, the temptation. I'm very similar. You put me under a barbell with a squat, or you give me a barbell in my hands when I do a deadlift. You start stacking plates. And that's it, man. Then my ego takes over and I'm like, let's see what happens. I feel good. Let's see how much I can lift. The only way I've ever successfully gotten my body to balance out was almost to eliminate those exercises for a little while. No, that's a very good point. It's a very good point, because we're all guilty of that. You're all, especially when you've been doing mobility for a while and you're feeling great, because there's that temptation of like, wow, I feel really good. Yeah, I feel really good. Let me see what today, if I could pull some good weight today. So no, that's a good point.