 That's what's kind of cool about this is at the beginning. Yeah, it might take a lot of work Yeah, it may seem laborious to be doing these mobility drills and that but if you if you put the work in You get to a place where the shoulders are feeling good again The hips are feeling good then there are strength training exercises that you can do to keep you mobile forever And then and then you rarely have to do that stuff, which is amazing. Hey real quick Here's the giveaway. I'm gonna give away the bundle of programs that's on sale this month to one of you Lucky viewers, so one of you guys will get it for free. Here's what they are maps prime maps prime pro maps anywhere three programs For free to one of you lucky viewers Just do this leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode Subscribe to channel turn on your notifications do all those things if we like your comment will notify you and you'll get all Three for free now everybody else if you bought those three programs at retail that will cost you $361 but right now they're on sale for $99 and 99 cents. That's it one payment lifetime access to all three programs So if you just want to sign up head over to maps april calm. All right, here comes a show So this might sound controversial, but lifting weights is the best way to get flexible Functional flexibility we're gonna make I feel like that the Michael Jordan meme where crying is like Insert that right now and all the all the yogis and all the mobility experts like they don't want to hear that Yeah, you know before we get into that's not true the why because this is true We're not just saying you know click baby stuff. We should talk about why Sometimes you see people who do a lot of lifting a lot of weights who do seem to be tight Who do seem to have poor mobility because that's what people observe and that's where lifting weights or strength training gets the That myth, right? Yeah, the myth sort of persists because of the way that people train and and again to We are a product of the patterns that we present our body And so if we're constantly going in shorter ranges of motion our bodies gonna adapt in that direction Well, even even before you do that. I think you should get into defining what flexibility is because I think there There's a little bit of nuance even with that, right? Yes, because there's there's range of motion Right. So how far a muscle will allow itself to be Extended and then there's Functional flexibility The muscle gets extended, but you also have control and strength over that that extension and those are two different things Just having that flexibility or that extensibility or the range of motion Isn't what you want in fact You know babies have incredible range of motion terrible stability terrible stability, you know In fact, I know that they recommend for example that you don't pick up young children too often By their hands and stretch them by their arms because they can dislocate a shoulder or a hip joint if you grab them by their legs And swing them around and that's because they have incredible ranges of motion, but they don't have any strength to support it So that's not what we're talking about. You don't want that, right? You don't want to be like Gumby where you have no control because that's very unstable and it's not easy No, I remember the first time that I learned this I remember training a client that was a gymnast. So I trained a gymnast and I trained a Like a yogi right so a yogi or yoga specialist done it for her whole life both female ladies both of them could like Put their legs behind their head and had this incredible flexibility But then when we would do like a strength exercise with very very minimal weight too Like I mean I some of I think one of them was body weight the other one I put like the bar on their back and they would just knees we collapse inward and they have it has like a very like like a Baby where they're they're wobbling all over the place And I remember freaking out as a trainer just assuming that because they looked pretty fit They had this flexibility So I just kind of assumed that they'd be able to perform this movement and then they're and their their body Reminded me of what it was like when I was training younger kids I just do not have the stability and control and that was really interesting to me to see that in a person That did gymnastics for most of their life and then a person that was a yogi expert I really didn't expect that to happen from that type of a client And that's not to say that all yogi experts and gymnast suffer from this there in fact most gymnasts are not like this It just happened to be this case for me where they were extremely Flexible, but then lacked the strength and stability within that range of motion. Yeah, I actually I had a client That it could it was so rare. That's why it stood out. She had hypermobility Totally inactive never worked out was never an athlete. She worked in the tech industry She hired me because she kept suffering from repeated back injuries Her hips bothered her too and her chiropractor happened to be a friend of mine And he says go see Sal you need to do some some strengthening So I saw her and she was so hypermobile like she could sit on a heel She could sit in the split she could twist her body a little place But she lacked strength so she would hurt herself often because she didn't own that range of motion So that's not what you want. You don't want to just be flexible You have to be able to own your range of motion. So that's what we're referring to when we talk about flexibility Otherwise, what's the point right of being able to just basically what we're defining is mobility Yes, it's flexibility with strength. So the combo of the both being able to have access and be able to get out of those positions As you get into them is just as important. Yes Now what controls how much your muscles can extend or how tight they feel is your central nervous system. It's the Control center and it tells the muscles be tight or be really loose now more people suffer from being too tight than from being too loose But too much tightness is not because people are strong It's also because they lack stability and often that comes from weakness and what the body does is it tightens muscles up To prevent too much movement to protect the joints and to prevent injury So this is what you see sometimes when you see guys or girls who lift lots of weights who don't lift properly Who seem to be and are very tight The problem is they train in a particular way that tells their central nervous system Protect these joints at all costs. So to give a silly example It'd be like doing a like doing curls But only ever going halfway down and halfway up and just always train that way What'll end up happening over time is you'll note This would happen is my arms would naturally want to carry themselves in that slightly bent position because this is where they're strongest This is where I've trained outside of that a lax strength and in order to protect my elbow joint My body would shorten up and let's say stay in this range of motion. This is where you're strong outside of that You're not very strong. So if I do shoulder presses halfway down if I do Lower body exercises with poor range of motion and I get strong in that short range of motion My body's gonna want to keep me in that range of motion and not allow me to go outside that range of motion Now I have tightness and this is where the myth comes from of being tight from doing strength I remember I fell for that trap for a long time I used to think that if you were this big, you know, muscle-bound guy or dude You there's no way that you're also flexible and I remember the first time I wish I remember what bodybuilder was that might have been flex wheeler or Tom Plats from this They were like famous for doing the splits into their routine and stuff It would have been flex wheeler. Yeah, and I remember seeing that going like well there goes that out the window Yeah, that's dudes ten times more jack than I'll probably ever be and can I can't do the splits So there's it's obvious not it's obviously not because he has big muscles that he's flexible like that or not flexible like that So there's something else that's going on. I never could made that connection that oh, it's because I'm training this way I'm getting so good in this range of motion so strong that anything outside of that now Which would be increasing my range of motion. I'm weak and my body is saying no We don't want to go there because you don't ever train there. You're not strong there We're gonna keep you in this limited range where you always tend to train at blew my mind Yeah, Tom Plats was like that He was bodybuilder in the late 70s and 80s known for having some of the best legs of all time or whatever squats Well, I mean you you see him splits. He would sit on his heels flatten himself out going backwards He would do these just crazy Stretching movements and showing his range and obviously very strong this Tom Plats is the guy that did I think he squatted 315 I want to say 40 or 50 times 500 pounds a ridiculous amount. I did this competition with Tom Hatfield who was this super strong power lifter squatted 135 for 30 minutes like incredible Strength also great flexibility and range of motion. Well, this myth still persists I'm fighting coaches all the time but baseball coaches basketball coaches with their athletes They don't want them working out, you know going into season or even like, you know preseason because they don't want them to musclebound They don't want it to affect Their performance their skill when in fact it would enhance it if you do it the right way the the appropriate Intensity the full range of motion and then also still applying skills training simultaneously with that you're gonna create an even better athlete That's gonna prefer well You can't blame them though because they've been proven right so many times You know how many times that have they had somebody a young athlete go train and get all muscular over the off-season Then he comes in and he can't swing a bat anymore I can't throw the ball anymore And so you start to make that correlation of oh wow every time I have a kid that goes and gets buff over the summer And then get him in my sport again It fucks up the sport the iron is short and range of motion bodybuilder style right Yeah, the irony of that that was so funny about that is that doesn't happen in professional sports anymore You name one professional sport that doesn't even golf I mean you've seen you've seen everything evolve into incorporating weight training because of the benefit and the flexibility that goes with that Yeah reduces injury right? Yes. Yeah, no that think of it this way right the central nervous system is this governor and Part of the job of the central nervous system obviously is to get things to do to move in particular ways muscles to contract Others to stay slightly contracted to create stability others need to relax for example if I curl my arm The cns is telling my bicep to contract but simultaneously telling my tricep to relax Because if my tricep contracted at the same time as my bicep, I wouldn't move. They would have to fight each other Yeah, so it's this it's this incredible dance that the central nervous system performs The other job of the central nervous system is to assess risk Can this this person wants to generate lots of force do we feel safe? Generating lots of force. No limit. It's like a limit on your car when you try to go past a certain speed All of a sudden the engine turns off right they've done studies on this And they find that the average untrained person can really call upon something like 60% of their actual strength Because the central nervous system doesn't feel stable Olympic athletes on the other hand who are very very yeah crazy almost all their strength Yeah, it's also why you hear the stories of the you know The mom under under distress saves the baby by lifting the car off the kid or whatever does some crazy stuff That's because under extreme stress the CNS it overrides it overrides All right injury is fine because we're under and oftentimes people will hurt themselves doing these incredible feats of strength under extreme Dress so that's what the central nervous system does and that's what you're training Largely what you're training when you're working out or when you're doing mobility or even when you're stretching like here's another example Let's say I do a stretch on my hamstring right now Let's say I go down and I can't even touch my toes I get down and I'm like three inches away from my toes if I just hold that stretch for a minute I'll probably gain one or two inches of range of motion within that minute my hamstring didn't it didn't lengthen It didn't change the only thing that changed was my central nervous system I was holding the stretch and the CNS said I think we could go a little further I think we go a little further and allowed me to Increase my range of motion So that's what the CNS does it controls all those things Lack of strength will tell your body to tighten up another example is very common That people have tight, you know upper trap muscles or neck muscles lots of people feel neck tension And they want to get massage and it causes headaches. Why is that so common nowadays? Well, one of the more common, uh, you know muscle recruitment pattern issues or what called posture issues Is forward shoulder right? We all sit at desk now. We all work on computers Our shoulders come forward the muscles of the mid-back weaken or lengthen They don't need to be so contracted to hold that position our body forms that way We create dysfunction and what happens is a CNS creates tightness in these upper trap muscles to help stabilize these Unstable shoulders so it keeps them slightly tight all the time Like the way to fix that literally is not to massage the traps. That's temporary We I just say even if you that's the thing you got to make sure you explain to people It's because someone will be like a bullshit. Every time I see on massage therapists in my car. Oh, I feel amazing every time Yeah, it's just a band-aid. I mean it will give you relief right now But you still got to put the work in if you want to address the yes Strengthen the mid-back muscles now that the CNS doesn't feel the need to cause tightness there to protect your shoulders Or your neck or whatever and by the way, if you're a trainer, this is to me This is where this is like the next level of like coaching when you get this is what prime pro is all about This is why we did prime like this is for like when you're a coach This is what I love about this. It could it could take you months Sometimes even longer to get a client to add 10 pounds of muscle on their body or lose 30 Yeah, or lose 30 pounds forever But you can like within weeks make a dramatic difference in how somebody feels or moves by understanding these concepts and then knowing how to address it And teach them specifically what they need to do for their body to address the root cause Change lives that way in fact one of my most effective sales tools When I would get a new client to show that my value would be to find an area of pain And you can get the CNS to change in one session now It's not permanent. You have to train it over time But you can cause this temporary change within literally one session and they would have pain in their hip I would find the problem get the CNS to tighten the muscles that need to be tightened loosen the muscles that need to Be loosened all of a sudden they're like My hip pain that I always have is gone and then they hired me because I could show them that particular value But you're absolutely right it over time over a short period of time You can make profound differences in how the CNS fires So you can through improper training make yourself tighter and more unstable But on the other end of that that coin through proper training Dramatically improve your functional flexibility the kind of flexibility that matters Okay, because flexibility doesn't matter unless you own it if you don't own it All you've done is made yourself more prone to injury. So the question then comes How can I train with weights so I can build muscle boost my metabolism look awesome do all the great stuff But also not get tighter, but rather improve my functional Flexibility what are the things I need to pay attention to when I training in order to make this happen The first most important thing Is to train with control Because when you train loose or you train out of control The CNS still believes it needs to tighten things up to keep things stable Now as you become more advanced and you've got great control and stability now You can do explosive more loose type training and you're okay, but if you're new especially if you're new Slow and controlled is the way to go because through that full range through that range of motion that you train in through control You're adding strength every step of the way and it's little things too Like even if you're doing a bench press and not realizing that anchoring Your legs and your feet into the ground Makes a dramatic difference in terms of how the body feels stability wise. So now i'm stable. My hips aren't rotating I'm not Allowing that kind of loose movement at all and I have a lot more control Which allows my body to get that signal and that feedback that it's okay. It's okay now to ramp up that force production So I can actually start loading a significant amount more that 60 percent goes up to 80 percent real fast Don't be a what I call a momentum lifter. Yes, you know, I don't know What would you guys what would you say the percentage when you like we're talking about a general gym Not like a power lifting gym not like an advanced play like you're 24 our fitness lifetime fitness Like what would you say the percentage of people are like momentum lifters? You know, it's a big percentage It's got to be high. Yeah, and I don't think they realize it I think what they do is they have sticking points and so like at the bottom of a lateral raise You see the swing and then control at the top or a curl hip thrust and then you know a little bit of a curl at the top Right a squat either a bounce at the bottom or Speed at one point slow down on another right no, they're lacking control and so they're gaining strength in uneven ways Yeah, and also to that point like um, it doesn't need to be Heavy loaded initially like you can do a lot in terms of your focus And uh creating more muscular tension even by gripping the bar a little bit more intensively Even as you're allowing the bar to come down slow or I have a nice firm grip And you start training your body in that direction to really hyper control The movement and then once you start adding weight and going through that progressive overload You really notice the difference of what that did I'll tell you I may have put the most muscle on my body ever did by Lifting heavy because I never trained really heavy for most of my career But I never felt as good as I felt training like this Training with like force forward a six second negatives and pausing at the bottom of and and just really trying to Always push my capacity my range of motion always try and and control every part of the movement And and a lot of times that that required me to dramatically reduce the weight That's why I used to like not care about pr is because it would be discouraging If I if I was comparing my bench press or my squat to somebody else's When I was really focusing on the movement and range of motion and control I'm always going to lose. Yeah I mean that that person's going to beat me all day long And so I would just take myself out of those conversations when people would be like Oh, well, how much you do here? I don't know. Yeah, I don't even know what I what I pr I haven't tried that in years because this is how I move when I train Actually, the goal is even different the goal when you're training with With incredible control is to use the least amount of weight to achieve the tension and the rep range that you're looking for in other words If I can do let's imagine we use an intensity scale one to ten one being low intensity ten being like maximal intensity If I could make 135 pounds a 10 on the scale of intensity within 10 reps Or I can make 185 with that 10 the 135 is better because that means I'm doing more control I'm making that weight feel heavier through my control and what happens you gain even strength like Today in fact, I was working out and I was jumping in There was the the peck deck, but when you go backwards on it So you could work your rear delts and the guy in front of me very common Controlled up until here once he gets here. He's got to swing it to get it to go back more Well, what part of that range of motion is he losing right that back part of the range of motion What ends up happening is he's going to get tighter Because he's strengthening here to here with control back here. It's a lot of momentum So as cns says, well, we don't own that like we own that first part. You're going to get tighter, right versus The control all the way through now this takes us to the next part, which is to train in your Fullest range of motion. I emphasize the word your Because this is an individual thing and what this means is and when I say your fullest range of motion What I really mean is the range of motion you control and own not how far you could push your body Okay, so if you're doing a squat and you can go down to parallel with perfect form But then you go down below parallel and your form is no longer perfect Your fullest range of motion at that moment is parallel Now the goal should be to earn the rest to figure out how to get yourself to go lower with that Perfect range of motion, but what you don't want to do Is train in a larger range of motion that you don't have good form or control over Because you're only making things work. You know yourself best. Yeah, I mean and this is something I was trying to stress so much Especially doing a wall circle for your shoulder, right? This is one of those really difficult ones when you have limitations and you're going to feel that immediately And it is I get questions all the time. Is it better to pull off and go through the full Circle or is it better to really find that sticking point hyper focus on that And start really just trying to gain access to that sticking point So it stop in that spot where you know, your limitation lies Really focus in squeeze, you know get more muscular tension recruit more Um to stabilize and gain access and and from there we can make incremental progress So it's it may seem like you're not doing a whole lot, but each little sliver each little centimeter Of of an angle that's progress. So you have to look at it completely differently. Now. What would you guys do? Let's use the example you just used something I think this is an area that everybody is not everybody a lot of people are trying to improve right that they're squat Yeah, so if I if you were coaching a client who we have agreed we want to work on their range of motion We we 135 is relatively light for them And we notice that after after they break parallel, they're there's breakdown in there Would you guys break that setup where like you take them to there? They for that and then you would go do some priming in between and then go revisit it Or would you do that as a separate session or before what would that look like? So if you're training that client who their goal is to get nasty grass squat We're far from it right now. We recognize that at 135 if we go any anymore below parallel They break down a little bit. Where's the coaching at? We're yeah, so First thing I would do and this is a simple this doesn't work This maybe 50% of time this would work is I go way lighter And say can we go lower than parallel without breaking down just by going down to let's say 100 pounds If the answer is no now i'm going to do more correctional exercise and i'll prime and then do a set Prime and then do a set and usually what will happen with that is i'll get another inch or two Range of motion with good form and good technique if I don't I repeat that the next workout and you start to see these incremental improvements in range of motion now Here's the deal when you do this this means you're getting stronger In other words because you're training in a greater range of motion that you own before You're actually lifting more weight technically So that means if I have a client who did 135 at parallel and three weeks later We're doing 135 at three inches below parallel same amount of reps. They're stronger. I I don't have to add weight I've just added three inches of range of motion. Well, again, like it's a different exercise at that point of focus So to your point of bringing the weight down for sure And then really like changing the tempo. So we're going very slow focusing on the negative, but then Holding so we're doing like a pause squat. We're generating more force at the bottom position And it may just be like honestly like a centimeter difference of of gain of access But that's where we start to build and then each time, you know, we can see if we can increase a little bit by depth And squeeze and hold so more of a pause squat less loaded And then just really like take your time going. Oh, I would make the case that you could even go unloaded, right? So what I what I would do this is an area one where I would use a tool that later I found which was through you which is like the dump these squat Yes, right. So this is an area where I'd use that or what I would do is like I would go find a a bench or a box that is lower Than what they they break I would do no weight. I'd have them sit on there And then I'd have like my hands I'd push on their shoulders and make them drive out of that So I want them I want them to feel me forcing against them. I want them to be Starting I love pushing like an immutable object, right? So they're starting from a little bit deeper than where they can technically go on their own loaded Unloaded but with me resisting them or an immovable object Like you're saying which would be like the dump these squat pushing against that and get them to connect Really hard with nothing in that position and then go back to another set light again Because I know I'm going to challenge the range of motion So I'm going to strip a little bit of weight off now Let's see if we can get down to that box That I just now started you in that was a couple inches lower than what you could before And that now remember this too like I'm not going to take somebody who can only get to 90 All the way to acergrass in one session But what I might be able to do in that one session is gain You know two or three more inches of depth in that squat and get them more comfortable in that Extra two to three inches and build upon that as we continue to go through the program And because you're using weights and because you're using strength training What you've done is you didn't just give them two inches of range of motion You've given them strength adaptations in an additional two inches range of motion So this is why other modalities that do improve range of motion Don't compare to strength training because they don't add the strength Nearly as effectively as strength training does because now you've trained someone I've gained two inches of range of motion Means nothing if we don't have strength to get out Yes to get back up We have to own it but because the cns realizes that there's load there the cns connects more the muscle builds It gets stronger now. We've ain't we've owned we own now the extra two inches range of motion Well, this is part of what really excites me about the isometric book that you just recently wrote that I know we're going to release soon Doug don't get mad at me for talking about it before we have it He's already mad But this is one of the things that i'm really excited about because I think there's lots of Opportunities for people to utilize a tool like that that has tremendous benefit And here's a great example of how you safely gain strength in a new range of motion that you're trying to train for a client Where you do an isometric contraction in a deeper squat than what they can do loaded to help build that strength in there So later on we can load all maps maximize the recruitment process Yeah, and all it's all maps primer prime pro like you go through the mobility movements in there That's what you're doing. You're doing isometric contractions Through these mobility movements to connect to New ranges of motion. All right, so the next one This is another reason why sometimes you see people who lift weights are very tight and that is that they don't train Or strengthen their body in all different ranges. Excuse me all different planes Most of the exercises they do are what are called exercises in the sagittal plane, right? Squatting pressing rowing overhead pressing very little lateral strengthening very little rotational strengthening So what happens is you become really strong in this one direction? That means the cns is gonna keep you in that one direction because that's the direction that it feels strongest and safest Meaning it's going to limit lateral and rotational movement. So now you go to twist your stiff You go to move sideways. Ooh, I don't feel very stable or I injure myself, right? So a good strength training routine Strengthens the body and all the planes of motion that exist, right above your head and in front of you behind you Rotationally laterally and then combining them all move and putting them all together that produces this fluid moving Strong body which uh, again, that's uh, that's great as a young trainer. I really didn't grasp this fully I remember um, it always happened to me too like when I'd be training a client and I'd get a client and they they end up calling me or telling me that they can't come to their session because they hurt themselves They hurt themselves in the garden They hurt themselves in the shower But the thing that was like always mind blowing but you're so fit I'm like we would be squatting and deadlifting and doing these They were so strong and they were like what you were picking your shampoo bottle up in the shower Or you pulled a weed out of the dirt and that like it was always some of that Where you picked up a dog food bag that weighs 30 pounds. I have you I have you squatting 200 pounds I don't understand But I didn't get the importance of that as a trainer to incorporate a lot of that came later on I remember when I hired Justin I know there was something that he was very passionate about And a lot of that knowledge and information came from working with him for years and going like Oh, I really neglect this and I was so young and dumb and I was playing sports And I was doing a lot of it so I wasn't seeing how that is as a trainer You don't if you don't notice it yourself And you don't realize how important it is until I started to get older until I started to neglect it And it's hard to see it in my clients, but that was a common theme I'd see injury happen and it always frustrates me as a trainer because I thought I got them so strong But what I was what I was neglecting was getting them strengthened a different plane It's very similar to the conversation we're having about depth in your squat It's just unfamiliar territory. Your body just doesn't have that natural response that You know bracing stability that added support That should be automatic because you're familiar with that pattern of movement and that range of motion It's the same thing in multiple planes if I'm rotating I have to familiarize my body with those patterns of movement and organize my muscles in a way where they respond properly So I'm stable and strong and I can move my way out of those positions as well So it has to be a consideration even for your average person because you do get really strong in the gym you get progress But then you know an instance comes up where you have to rotate and grab something behind you And you're gonna do it ferociously because you have strength right, but All of a sudden now, uh, you know, your body doesn't respond like it should and then a problem happens I remember in my 20s I went to the park for a barbecue with the family and I threw the frisbee around for 45 minutes And it wasn't like we were crushing it like I just throw on the frisbee and my shoulder was jacked It was messed up For a week afterwards and I'm like dude, I work out all the time like well, well, obviously I don't I don't train in any of those ranges of motion. I have no strength and stability there In fact, it's you can make this argument that There is a certain ratio of strength and balance that's in the body That you know quadricep to hamstring to glute to to lower lat to upper back to chest to shoulder to bicep to tricep And there's lots of ratios of strength that are balanced Well, if you're always training in one particular way you throw those ratios off So then what happens you increase your risk of injury because You know, if there's a certain ratio of strength that is required for me to throw a really fast Fastball for example, there's the muscles generating the force But those are the ones that are stabilizing preventing my arm from coming off my body or my Humors from twisting too much and the muscles that have to slow it down Well, if there's an imbalance in that ratio if it's too strong in one direction not in the other I'm going to cause problems. There's also this like if I'm and this is to your point, Justin If I always train in this one plane of motion and then I move outside of that range And I move into a different plane of motion My body may just call upon the recruitment pattern that it's used to in the other in the wrong range of motion So instead of stabilizing laterally, it tries to stabilize like if I were moving forward Boom, I hurt my knee or I twist my ankle. I roll my ankle. What the hell is going on? This is so weird Well, we talked about this the other day Well, I mean we wouldn't you make the case for the argument You were at higher risk even being somebody who strength trains and then you move out of that range of motion Because you have so much power you're producing a lot more. Yeah It's like somebody who has like an old classic car like mine and you decide to throw a supercharger on it But I haven't reinforced the rear end of the suspension It's like, yeah, I can beef up that motor that I'm more likely to get in an accident Or break something on my car by adding that extra horsepower Then if I would just to leave the engine alone and be like, oh I had a buddy that did that he put all he put a ton of money and Time into the power on the car didn't re-emphasize didn't strengthen the frame twisted the frame of the car Because it couldn't support the power. Your body's the same way. You get really really strong in the gym You neglect to do that rotational stuff and and make sure you protect it like that You become a higher risk of injury than the person who's doing nothing. That's right. Look at your workout Does your workout Is all the exercises in front of you above your head? Are you doing any rotation? You're doing any lateral stability? This is one of the reasons why we encourage people to do all of our maps programs It's not because you can't follow maps anabolic in prepute, you know forever or mass aesthetic Yeah, or because it's because Each program has a strength But it's also has its weaknesses and the other programs fill in those gaps, right? So training in all the different planes is extremely important to give you that functional flexibility And to prevent you from getting tight. All right. This next one is also very important Which is to do correctional and mobility work often because inevitably regardless of all the planes of motion you train all the full range of motion Because you're strengthening because you're training because you're working with weight There are going to be issues that'll start to pop up over time And it's almost impossible to prevent every single issue correctional work and mobility work Fills in those gaps. It really does like there are mobility movements and correctional exercises That are so different from traditional strength training exercises that I don't think I would reach those ranges of motion With traditional strength training exercises for example handcuffs with rotation There's no resistance training exercise that gets my shoulder through that incredible range of motion So really the only way to strengthen all that articulate all that is through correctional work Do you guys think you guys have found what that ratio is for yourself or for clients? Like what what ratio of mobility work to Traditional strength training work. Do you need to have to keep a pretty stable body? Like do you guys have an idea to keep a stable body? Yeah, like or to correct Both right? So like I mean it's like what does that look like? I have an idea for myself But to be honest like I haven't consistently done this with clients enough to see where I could go Oh, I think two to one ratio as long as you're doing, you know One day of of mobility correctional type work to your two days of strength training You should be able to protect yourself increase range of motion fix any sort of issues The way I used to do it with my clients, which is not the best way to do it was when an issue would pop up Then we would spend more time Correcting that issue and then it got better and then we go back to Strength training towards the end of my career. I figured out that if I did If they were going to do an hour workout with me 15 minutes of it If I could do 15 minutes of it to be correctional work and mobility work That seemed to be a pretty good ratio for them Yeah, that's a tough question because it again like if we're talking correctional We may need to up that frequency quite a bit to address and and to get them back patterning the right type of response, but You know something I've I and then again this kind of speaks back to us like not Favoring cardio quite as much, but I tend to favor mobility way more than cardio And so I'll program that in where a lot of people would probably Program in cardio. It's almost on a very similar ratio Of that in terms of like weight training and then in pairing that with with mobility just as a as a constant Addressing joints function stability. So that way we're continuously Making sure that we're we're keeping tabs of like how how well our our joints are Stabilizing so we can progress. So it's not like we're gonna hit these plateaus I love that you went that way. Justin because this is what this is what I experienced And this is my own this is my own personal mobility journey, right? Because in the last, you know decade or even less than that last five years I'd say I put more work into that than I ever have in my training career And I have the the best mobility and stability I think that I've ever had in my in my career today than I have in all my prior years of training And what it took to get here was a tremendous amount of work and effort in the mobility and you know trying to increase Flexibility and strength and range of motion like it took a ton of effort work It took me actually thinking about it multiple times a day Even if it means just getting down and doing a combat stretch for a minute or two Doing it as frequent as possible And I would say the ratio of that to strength was more like a four to mobility one to strength to get to any of it Now here's the cool part though I rarely do it anymore. Yeah, maintaining is a totally different because once you get there if you know What traditional strength training exercises to do to keep you like that And I shouldn't say traditional because there's things that are unconventional like the mace by the way You do handcuff rotation for You know a year of your life every single day like crazy and then you go swing a mace club Just you know every time you do shoulders and you'll be good. Yeah, or you know work on your ankle mobility Yeah, work on your ankle mobility your hip mobility to get down to a 90 90 squat Then actually make sure you always incorporate Really deep squats where you pause at the bottom and you connect and you'll like I don't do that stuff Hardly at all anymore unless I've been neglecting training in general for a couple weeks at a time Which is rare for that to happen for me That's what's kind of cool about this is at the beginning. Yeah, it might take a lot of work Yeah, it may seem laborious to be doing these mobility drills and that but if you if you put the work in You get to a place where the shoulders are feeling good again The hips are feeling good Then there are strength training exercises that you can do to keep you mobile forever And then and then you rarely have to do any of that stuff Which is amazing. I remember years ago. Um, I wanted to be able to do behind the neck pull-ups so bad Probably because rocky did them In rocky four seems logical Yeah, and you know I mean if you never did put behind the next pull-ups and you always did pull-ups to the front Like that's like you feel like you're gonna tear your shoulders off like it's not good So I went through this process of shoulder mobility work And it did it took me like six months And then I was able to do behind the neck pull downs and I did that for a little while And then I got to the point where I could do behind the neck pull-ups Now I could do behind the neck pull-ups and I never have to do anything for shoulder mobility to be able to do that anymore So yeah, so maintaining is way less volume way less frequency than getting there in the first place Yeah, what's uh, what is the uh, olympic where you overhead squat like it is the the One of my favorite things about that movement is I you have to have incredible thoracic mobility incredible shoulder mobility incredible hip mobility Incredible ankle mobility. Yes, so I hostability I yeah, of course the pinnacle of of knowing whether or not you have the Mobility and the stability to pull it off. It's so that's my favorite part about that movement is to just you know Intermittently incorporate it into my routine real like to I ain't trying to get really strong at it or be the best Like I load it a little bit so I can work it But it's really just to keep everything mobile through one single strength training exercise So if you can work to get to where you can do that moment a movement And then you can learn to discipline yourself to keep that movement in your routine throughout the rest of your life You're gonna have healthy shoulders. You're gonna have healthy hips You're gonna have healthy ankles for a very long time very true. All right So this next one this one, uh, if you do everything right, but you mess this up You're going to be tight and that is over training When you over train Your body is in this constant state of healing lots of inflammation And your cns is limiting range of motion on purpose So if you've ever overworked in a workout, you know exactly what this feels like Over time this feels like more joint pain more stiffness lack of mobility. In fact for me over. This is my number one most This is the one sign that tells me I'm overdoing it like if I start to feel stiff if I start to lose range of motion And it's just like that all the time and I get up and I feel stiff and why does my hip hurt and what's going on On my shoulder. That's when I go. I'm over training. I'm just doing too much So even if you do everything right if you train too hard or too often or both Um, this is gonna limit your range of motion and cause some some some serious flexibility issues And again, like I said, this is my number one sign. I know I'm over training when I am stiff all the time But very hard to stay under control when you're in a state of fatigue or you're you've overdone it Yeah, so I mean, this is definitely an indication Um, a lot of times too if I'm not bracing properly and I'm going just kind of going through the momentum of the the exercise And you start to notice, um, you know, you're really resting too much on your joints And you know, your muscles aren't contributing quite as much You know that for me is assigning to kind of, you know back off a little bit of the intensity of the volume No, what about nutritionally? Like what do you do you think there's there's rules? Uh to this or do you think that that plays a big a big role in this? Like do you have any any tips like nutritionally with this hydration has got to be the number one Like if you if you are not drinking enough water, you will feel tight You will feel tight you will feel joint pain. I I remember my I had a client that this blew my mind I was a relatively new trainer couldn't figure out what we got some of the back pain to go away But couldn't really figure out why it was still kind of lingering or whatever And I had this other trainer talk about just drink. They need to drink more water. They're not hydrated And I thought that sounds stupid, but they kept telling me and I said I'm gonna try this told this client Let's aim for this much water every single day They did and they're like, oh my god, something my back pain is gone And I was like, holy cow. I didn't realize that had that big of an impact I I would add like inflammatory foods to like if you're eating foods that you're intolerant to or you have a major Inflammatory response to it Um, I mean, it's really hard to move a joint through its full range of motion if there's like serious inflammation in the This this is most this is especially true for the core So when you eat Like what are the one of the hallmarks of eating something that you don't digest very well, right? You know, you feel bloated and what happens when you're bloated is your gut Distends a little bit and it stretches the core muscles out just enough So that they lose optimal control and stability So think of it this way if I take your your if I take your quad And I stretch your quadricep really hard or I even stretch a little bit and then try to get you to generate as much force You're not going to be a strong because it's in this weird kind of stretched position Well, that's what happens to the core when it gets to stand This is why pregnant women start to lose core stability, right? The baby's pushing things out So now you're slightly distended muscles now have to fire differently just to stabilize and you actually get more back pain Back pain can oftentimes be related to just poor core stability from bloat From digestive issues, which sounds crazy, but it's you know, it's it's totally notice that with the back arching and everything else Sort of compensating as a result of that. So that makes perfect sense Yeah, totally One of my favorite to highlight that and why why I asked that and brought it up Was because one of my favorite like periods of like working on mobility was when I was also incorporating fasting I always noticed like I had these great mobility It took me a while to kind of register that like why where the connection was the correlation. I thought oh, that's crazy I wonder if plus your focus on hydrating. Yeah exactly. I'm staying busy. That's so that's a good point So it kind of proves both points there, right? I was probably drinking a bunch of water more than I probably was before Because you're hungry and then I'm not and I'm not eating anything So I definitely have got all inflammation tamped down and those were some of my best mobility sessions to do that So it's a that's a great thing I think for people to think about if you are having a hard time working on this flexibility is to also potentially look into Your offenders nutritionally to totally so, you know, there you have it, right? If if functional flexibility is range of motion plus strength You can't find anything better Than strength training for that and those are the reasons why and we just told you how to do it Look, if you like our information head over to mind pump free calm and check out our guides We have guides that can help you with almost any fitness goal You can also find all of us on social media So Justin is on instagram at mind pump just and you can find adam on instagram at mind pump adam And you can only find me on twitter at mind pumps out