 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about fitness assessments and why they are essential for everyone. Okay, an assessment is what's going to give you your map to get to your goal. So, you know where to go, where not to go, what exercises to apply, and which ones to avoid. Without a good assessment, you not only will not progress nearly as fast as you could, but your risk of injury goes through the roof. So, in this episode, we talk about assessments. We talk about our favorite three movement assessments that address the entire body. We talk about exercises that you can do to fix your movement patterns if you can't do these assessments. By the way, because we talk a lot about specific exercises and movements in this episode, we are making sure to attach links to videos for most of these movements and exercises in our show notes, which you can get at mindpumppodcast.com. So, when you go to mindpumppodcast.com, it lists all of our episodes and it lists show notes. So, if you hear us talking about, for example, in the episode, we talk about what's called a windmill test and we explain it and you're thinking, you know, I really need to see what that looks like. Go to the mindpumppodcast.com website, look at the show notes. There'll be a link where you'll see one of us explaining it on video on how to do it. Now, if you're a trainer, you definitely should pay attention to this episode. If you're not doing an assessment for your clients, you're doing them a huge disservice. In fact, if you're going virtual right now, like most trainers are because of this lockdown, you definitely should get your hands on the program's Maps Prime and Prime Pro to really help your clients out. And of course, anybody listening right now, those two programs can really help you, not only self-assess yourself, but correct muscle imbalances and really set your body in the right motion for better results. Here's the best part, both Maps Prime and Prime Pro right now are 50% off. These are two of our most valuable programs for everybody. We think everybody should go through these two programs, regardless of your goals, regardless of your fitness level, regardless of which Maps program you're following or whatever other workout you're following. Everyone should go through these two correctional exercise programs. And if you're a trainer, you for sure should own these programs because then you can help your clients with them. Again, both programs, 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, that's M-A-P-S, fitnessproducts.com, and use the code Prime50, that's P-R-I-M-E-5-0, no space for the discount. I actually think this is a really cool topic because we discussed this off air a long time ago when we first created all the programs. And I remember Sal had already had Maps anabolic and then performance came and then aesthetic. And when we did that, one of the things that we all agreed on is that in a perfect world, if we were to create them in the order that we think they're most appropriate, Maps Prime would have came before all of those. And the reason why that is is when you think about the very first time you meet a client or a potential client, the very first thing I do is not take them through a Maps anabolic workout or a Maps performance aesthetic to have a workout. I do a full assessment on them. You have to. It would be like taking your car to the mechanic and you never tell them what's wrong with the car and he never does it. They just start taking parts away. Yeah, you just drive it up and be like, all right, I'll be back tomorrow, figure it out. It's impossible. And one of the most valuable things that a trainer can provide a client, a potential client is a good assessment is the ability to assess the individual, the person, not just through movement, but also through questionnaire to help figure out what the best approach is because the medicine has to be right for the person. So if you're going in and you have specific goals and time frames and how your body moves and hurts and all that stuff, if we consider all of that, we can create or direct you towards a program or a way you should work out that will give you phenomenal results. If we don't do that, we're shooting in the dark and at absolute best, you'll get some progress. At worst, you'll hurt yourself or cause yourself to regress. Not only that, like, and I love that you use the car analogy of bringing it to the mechanic because how many times do you guys remember this where, you know, a client comes in and either one has no idea really what their goals are, what they want to do, or two, have no clue of what they should be addressing first before they ever even consider trying to lose 30 pounds or building 15 pounds of muscle. So I remember the first part of my job with a client was convincing them of what they need to do first and the analogy of the car mechanic. It's like someone coming in, like someone like me who knows nothing about his car at all and trying to tell the mechanic what to do. Like, how often did you get that? Like how often did you get a client being like, this is what I want you to do. I don't want to do this. I want to do that. And you're like, and we're in a service-based business. So you're kind of caught in this dichotomy of, okay, what the client wants and what I know is best for them. Like, how do I? Yeah, well, I just think of it like this, like they come in and they want their car just faster. They want a bigger engine. They want to get, you know, super fast and powerful. And, you know, the mechanic sitting there will like assessing the car and seeing, you know, potential hazards, potential things that, you know, are immediately stand out that need repair or need to be reinforced in order to then even drop in a new engine and to, you know, soup it up more so that it's even safe on the road. Well, let's go back to what you said about goals. Because I think a lot of people listening are like, I don't know what my goals are. You would be surprised that you might not have a specified goal because the vast majority of the people that I'll ask, what is your goal when they would come to hire me as a trainer? The vast majority would say what? Lose weight. Yeah, no, or getting better shape. Right, yeah, yeah. Oh, I just want to get in better shape, you know. Oh, I just want to lose weight. Well, how much? I don't know, you know, 2015, 20. You need to have a specific goal and really understand the direction you want to go. What does better shape mean to you? Okay, I want to lose how much weight? I want to be how much stronger? How do I want to feel when I move? This is very, very important because if you don't have a specific goal and you just think, I just want to improve my shape, how you apply your workout is going to be less specific. It's going to be less effective. Well, not only that, to Justin's point, I love that you made the point of fixing or reinforcing. A lot of people come in and they just want more horsepower. Like I think of that as like, oh, I just want to build more muscle, right? Or I want to lose a certain amount of body fat or weight. But your body's not reinforced to handle what you want to do to it quite yet. And a lot of times that's the case. A lot of times, especially since a majority of clientele that I think most of us trained would be, you know, north of 35 years old, normally deconditioned and looking to get into better shape. And, you know, part of that process is making sure that we reinforce their joints and make sure their body is moving and operating properly before I slap a 400 horsepower engine on it, right? Before I decide, let's rev this thing up and see how fast it'll go and see how much weight we can lose or how much muscle we can build. I need to first make sure that it's working properly and running properly and reinforce properly to handle what you want to do. It's just the order of operation. That's all it is. I mean, if you want a really nice paint job on your car, there's got to be a base coat or whatever primer that they put on it first. Otherwise, it won't look good. If you want to, you know, lose weight or build muscle, get stronger, you may be thinking, well, I don't want to do all that correctional exercise stuff. I just want to get to the muscle building and fat burning. Let's just get there. But you won't. See, that's the thing. You won't get there because you didn't correct these issues, because you didn't establish good movement patterns. So it's not taking time away from you getting to your goal. It's not like you're going to get to your goal slower because you are focused on the proper order of operation. You'll actually get there faster. If you ignore those things, not only will you get to your goal slower, you may never get to your goal or you may hurt yourself. So it's not something that we're saying that, oh, you know, yeah, you could do it this way, but this is a better way to do it. What we're saying is this is the way to do it. Right. And that's why an assessment. When you get there and it's very short-lived, which is I think is probably the most common, what I see with a lot of these fitness plans and diet plans out there, they're really just trying to cater to people coming in like exactly what they want. And, you know, a lot of trainers fall into this sort of mentality of like, I'm in the service business, so I want to produce something as quick as possible for these people because this is what they expect. And to be a better trainer, to evolve as a trainer is to then, you know, account for that, but now show them the proper way to do it. Well, this is also one of my biggest knocks on the group training because most group training classes don't offer some sort of an assessment. No, they can't. Yeah, they can't. This doesn't work. It's a class full of 30 people that are all different body types, all different goals, all different age, all different fitness levels, all getting thrown into one class and, you know, running on a treadmill, rowing and then doing some lifting weights. And, you know, there's a small percentage of those people that are, that was perfect for them at their point in their fitness career and it worked out for them. There's a much greater percentage of people like Justin is saying that get temporary results that because, yeah, they're spending a bunch of calories and their goal may have been to lose weight that they end up losing weight. But you know, the number one reasons why someone cancels like an F45 and orange theory or CrossFit classes, right? It's injury. And whether that is a major injury, like when I say injury too, a lot of times people think, you know, oh, I've never heard of someone breaking an ankle or breaking a hip in one of these classes. It's not normally, it's normally chronic pain. Yeah, stuff just starts to bother you. Oh, I can't, I got to, you know, I can't do that anymore. My shoulder hurts when I do this. Yeah, now my shoulder's been bothering. Yeah, shin splints, shoulder issues, frozen shoulder going on. But hip problems, bursitis, like you start to see a lot of this. And what that is, that's an example of somebody who's tried to build all this horsepower, you know, push this, push this vehicle without reinforcing all the other things to support that. And that's one of the biggest problems I have with the group training because they don't do that. Now that's just, and that's me picking on group training. You see this too in the virtual world of coaching and training. You see a lot of coaches that will, you know, here's your workout. And it's like, okay, wait a second. You know, is that person ready for that workout yet? Or is that the most ideal workout for them? Or could we do something that's less and still achieve just as much results or do something even better? Yeah, a fitness assessment is your map. And you're trying to get to a specific destination. Having a good map is going to get you there faster. You're going to know which routes to take, the which routes not to take. And a map is very individualized. It's for you. That's what the assessment does. So some of the questions you want to ask yourself, the first one we talked about was what your goal is. What is your specific goal? By the way, the more specific you are with this, the better. Okay, so try to keep it specific and not super general. So what does it mean to you to get in shape? Okay, you want to lose weight. How much weight are we looking to, you know, lose? Okay, you want to build some muscle. How much muscle do you want to gain? So get very specific there. And even more, right? So sometimes you, when people say a generic goal to me, like, oh, I want to lose 20 pounds at them. A lot of times I'll look back at them and I see the scale. And I'm like, you know, they don't even realize that I could keep their weight exactly the same and completely alter their way their body looks. So understanding that is even key. Right. So I want to look leaner. Right. I want to be leaner. Is it really about the scale or is it you want to look a certain way that you don't look right now and you want to achieve that? Because understanding that's important. Right. Understanding that maybe you're 140 pounds right now and you're a 5'5 female and you're like, man, you know, I think I look way better when I was 115 when I was in high school or whatever. Well, you know, that was your high school weight when you were a kid still. I could take your 140 and you can have an incredible physique. And that seems crazy to you right now because you think, oh my God, I feel so sloppy or I don't like the way I look. That's because you have a high body fat percentage. A majority of your weight is right now is more body fat than it is lean tissue. And if we actually build a lot of lean mass on you while we also lose body fat, you may stay about the same on the scale. Right. Well, you'll look way different. Right. Yeah. What people don't realize is like, specificity is key when it comes to training your body. The more specific you can be about those types of adaptations or things that skills or losing very specific amount of weight or body fat percentage or whatever it is, the more specific you can hone in on that, the quicker you're going to get there. The more general you get, the more your general training is going to look, it's going to take a lot longer for you to produce a result. Right. So another good question would be, what is your current level of fitness? This is a very important part to be honest here with yourself. How fit am I right now? Now, if you're not doing anything, then you have a very low fitness level. Now, why is this important? It's important because again, you want to apply the right amount of exercise. So if I'm going from no activity at all or barely any activity at all, then I don't want to jump into a, you know, four or five day a week workout program. It's just inappropriate. It's not going to produce better results. If anything, it'll produce worse results. So you want to be very, very honest with your current fitness level because in order to get your body to change, you just got to do a little bit more than that. And that step ladder approach is what will keep your body continuously progressing. It also helps you avoid plateaus. And plateaus are one of the number one reasons why people stop working out. Besides injury, people stop when they get their initial, you know, burst of results and then nothing else happens. Now I'm busting my butt. It's insanely frustrating. Super frustrating. But now I've got nothing to show for it. And I've been doing the first two months. We're great. You know, the last six months, I've stayed the same. Like I can't work out more than I've been doing. So if you want to avoid that, you want to apply the appropriate level of intensity and exercise. And that's based on your current honest fitness level. And I think what goes with fitness level really well too is also your current commitment level to how much you can train right now. That's a, you got to be real honest with yourself. Yeah. And normally I tell people, whatever you honestly believe you should commit to, you should start with a little less than that even at the beginning to again to your point so we don't hit a plateau. Last thing you want to do is someone say like, okay, I can commit to four days a week of training. I mean, if I get the sitter on this day and I do this, like I could, I could make this happen. It'll be tough, but I can make this happen. Like I don't want to start that person at four days a week. I'm going two or three. Right. You don't want to stretch too far out. You want to do something that you you literally can do right now. You want to, and add to that. So when you say to yourself, how many days a week can I commit to exercise? Add the following to that sentence forever. Okay. So how many days a week can I commit to exercise forever? That changes it quite a bit. I used to love doing that. Like I would ask somebody, how many days a week do you think you commit to exercise? Oh, you know, and they're walking in motivated, you know, they're just signed up at the gym or whatever. Oh, I could do four days a week. No, no, no. How much do you think you could do for the rest of your life? Oh, what do you mean? Well, something realistic that you know, you can always do no matter what the number the number always changes. Oh, I don't know. Two days a week. Well, guess what we're going to design your routine around? Two days a week. I want to design a routine around what you think you can be consistent with for the rest of your life because a consistent program done two days a week for years and years and years is going to be far more effective than an inconsistent program that you do five days a week because you were super motivated at one point and then afterwards life hit you in the face. And to that point, it's also important to understand any sort of aches or pains or other things that you have going on because when you build a routine that's around a generic goal like I just want to build muscle, there's the order of exercise and okay, these are the best compound lifts to build muscle. But then as soon as someone throws in a new variable like, oh, I have bursitis in my hips or I have frozen shoulder or I have low back pain even though they still have the same goal as the person who said I want to build muscle they're programming now changes. That same person, those two same people, we both want to build 15 pounds of muscle but this person was more specific with their goals and well I also have low back pain and I want to take care of that. It just got a lot more complicated. It did. And not only to get more complicated it also changed how I'm going to prescribe exercises because I can still build that person muscle but along the way I'm also going to address why they have chronic pain in their low back. Now it's important when you talk about what areas of your body hurt and that you, because sometimes people don't count the areas that hurt that have hurt for years. Right, right. I would get this all the time. Because they're used to it. Yeah, and so this is how you want to do it. So this is how I'd have to, I learned this through years I'd have to change the way I'd ask questions. So in my early days of personal training I would say do you have any areas of pain in your body and they'd say no. They'd say cool, I'm going to go to the next question. But then as I train they'd be like oh, no, no, I can't. That hurts my shoulder. I got a bad shoulder. I remember thinking like why don't you tell me when I first asked you. So I started to change it. So this is what I would say. I'd say okay, do you have any areas of pain? They'd say no. I'd say does your neck ever bother you? Does your shoulders ever bother you? What about when you reach behind your back? Does that ever bother you? Okay, do your elbows, and I would go joint by joint by joint. With examples, you literally do have to provide those examples because it is, it's not one of those things that you immediately think about unless you're doing the movement currently. Yeah, so someone would say my lower back doesn't hurt me. And then you'd say, well, what if you sit a long time on a plane? Oh yeah, my back gets really stiff. But that's just when I sit down for a long time. Like okay, but that's important to know. That is an area of pain. So that's how you want to identify the areas of hurt on your body. It's not just the obvious ones. It's also the chronic ones where yeah, my knees hurt when I sit down for too long. Or my shoulder does hurt if I'm washing dishes for a little bit. Those are all things you want to pay attention to because that will dictate your workout. That's the real value in the personal trainer. Right? The real value is in that. Anybody can Google and look up good exercises for strength building or fat loss. The real value in the personal trainer is their ability to assess your body like that and address all these nagging chronic pain that you've probably been dealing with for many years. And how many times do you guys have this too where a client tells you that it's because they're getting old? I mean, I was literally on the phone with my uncle yesterday who, by the way, works for the company. And it's crazy how this... It reminds me of how much we have to keep repeating this message that I've got somebody who works for the company, understands everything that we're doing, yet will say things to me like he did on the phone yesterday about his hips. And he's just like, yeah, you know, my hips are just, they're shot, they're done, and they don't... I'm getting old. You know, it's part of getting... You'll see when you get older. It's like, you know how many times I've heard that? I've been hearing that since I was 20 years old. You're calling in. I'm getting old. You'll see, yeah, when you get older, you'll see. Let me tell you, I know when I got older, when I got into my 30s, you're right. My hips got bursitis, I had low back pain, but it wasn't because I got old. It was because in my early 20s, when I thought I was invincible, I wasn't addressing any of my poor movement patterns. I wasn't going joint by joint and looking at if I had any dysfunction, if I had limited range of motion, and I wasn't addressing it. Therefore, I started to get these aches and pains in my 30s, but luckily, I'm wise enough to know that it isn't because I'm 30 or 35 or 40 that I feel that it's because I didn't address something in my 20s, because I didn't feel it then and now I feel it. And it's not because you're old. It's because you're not addressing something that you want to address first before you even think about it. And you may think of those examples right now personally of certain types of movements and things that may stick out right away, like, oh my God, wait a minute, no, that's going to... I'm going to feel that in my wrist. Oh, no, I'm going to feel that in my shoulder. So you start just naturally avoiding certain types of movements, and then what that does over time is that your body just deprioritizes those types of movements, and now I can't do those movements. No, that's a great point. So it's not so much that you're going to identify areas of your body that hurt so you can avoid certain exercises, although that's a part of it at first. The idea is to identify those areas of pain and get them to not hurt anymore so that you can do lots of exercises. So, again, talking about the back, like, oh, my back gets a little tight when I sit for a long time. Okay, so initially we're going to avoid certain exercises, but we're going to address why that happens in the first place. Let's create better movement patterns so that your back doesn't bother anymore so that you can do all these other exercises. Most pain that people have comes from poor movement patterns. A small percentage of people's pain actually comes from acute injury. So unless, if your knee hurts because you literally smashed it yesterday or hurt your knee, that's different. But if your knee hurts and it's just been hurting and sometimes it bothers me when I do certain things, well, that's chronic pain and that's usually the result of poor movement patterns. So imagine this for a second. You've got poor movement patterns that kind of cause knee pain every once in a while when you do certain things. What do you think's going to happen to your knee if you just go into a workout and you're experiencing that? It's going to get much worse. And then what ends up happening? You have to stop your workout. You can't do what you were doing before because you've exacerbated a problem because you never corrected it in the first place. And that's where most of the value comes from an assessment is identifying these parts of your body, getting yourself ready. By the way, while you're doing this, you're still working out. You're repping your body so that as you start to move forward, things accelerate and you get really, really good results. Well, we should simplify too. Why is it that we get chronic pain as we get older? Why is it that we all, when I used to sit down as a kid at school all day long, my low back didn't bother me, but now when I sit down in a car, what is it though? We need to understand why is it that my knee all of a sudden hurts all the time or why do my hips bother me all the time is the entire body is supposed to work and communicate together. And when we're young and spry and playing and moving in all different planes all the time, we do a really good job of staying very well connected and utilizing the joints through its full range of motion. And as time goes on, like Justin was alluding to earlier, and so when you stop utilizing a joint and moving it through its full range of motion, it says, okay, we don't need to do that anymore. But then you still got to go through your normal daily activity. So what ends up happening is the body starts to figure out how to overcompensate to keep you still doing the things that you have to do, but because you're not training the body and strengthening it to work and speak together, it starts to overcompensate in certain areas. That overcompensation is what we call active muscles or tight muscles. And that tightness or overactiveness ends up pulling and stressing the joints and ligaments and that's where the chronic pain comes from. Well, so when you look at joints and how they move there's an ideal way that they can move and then there's a less than ideal way that they can move. And you can get away with less than ideal for a while but over time it starts to overcome your body's ability to heal from the poor movement of those problems. This is why if you start moving poorly now and you're in your 20s it might take 5 or 6 years of just basic walking and moving but eventually you'll start to develop problems. By the way, usually it happens a little sooner than that but over time you start to cause problems. So if you think of like a sliding glass door and it fits on a track and it slides on the track, if it's off the track just a little bit it'll still open and close but over time starts to chew up and the track starts to cause problems. And then what do you do? You replace the door without ever fixing the fact that it doesn't track properly. You're going to cause that track to get chewed up again. So this is what happens to the body. The body does this over time. So if you don't correct problems and set yourself up well before you get into your workouts and you just get into your workouts the odds that you're going to have to modify, modify, modify and then eventually eliminate exercises that you may even have to stop working out are significantly higher. Even if you don't ever have to do all that we know that good movement produces better results than poor movement, even if there's no pain. So a good squat even if there's, you know, a great squat is going to give you better leg gains, better strength gains better muscle development, your quads, hamstrings and glutes than a bad squat even if both of them don't produce any pain. So if you want to recruit more muscle fibers I mean in that talk about maximizing your time and efficiency that's what we all want out of these workouts. We want to do things as specific as possible in order to get a result that we want and not just waste our time. Nobody wants to be in there wasting their time and adding more problems to what you already had pre-existing. So this is such an important thing to consider change your body the correct way. Well not only do I think that this is one of the most valuable things that a trainer can provide for you this was also one of my favorite things that brought the three of us together. To this day I think all of us equally for sure I am most proud of the MAPS Prime program because of this because we all value this part the assessment portion training more than anything else that we've ever created or we've ever talked about on the podcast and the idea of okay how do we take our years of experience and what I can give to somebody in person when I have a person for hours on hours day after day and see the way they move and then change my programming based off of that and address that to help that person how do I take that in a digital form to help the masses and then how did the three of us all collaborate on that and that really was the birth of MAPS Prime which is truly an assessment it's an assessment that everybody should go through before they get into any sort of routine and the way that we simplified it for the masses not just for trainers and coaches to utilize but for the average Jane or Joe and help themselves out was we agreed what we thought were three of the most important movements that we would need to see to really be able to start to point that person in the right direction in basic and this is very basic if you can do these movements perfectly without lots of struggle without pain you can you know complete them well then you're good if you can't then we'll give you a list of exercises that you can practice so that you can do those tests and generally speaking of course it gets much more individualized when you work on an individual basis but generally speaking if you could do the following three things really well then you're probably for the most part going to be okay when you go into your workouts the first test that we did that we put in there is called the wall test by the way if you want really detailed explanation of how to do some of the stuff we're going to talk about you can go on our youtube channel search for these things or if you go on our mind pump media website in the show notes for the podcast there should all be links in the show notes after this yeah you'll be able to click on it and actually watch us kind of break down how to do it but we'll explain it right now on the podcast a wall test really is looking at mostly the upper body okay we're looking at the upper body although there's a little bit of the lumbar spine in there but they know the lower back but we're looking at the upper body and we're looking at your ability to move through, move your shoulders through a full range of motion and if you're able to hold yourself and stabilize yourself in really good posture yeah this is mostly cervical spine thoracic spine so mid back neck and shoulders and your ability to move properly in those areas so basically the upper from the chest above are all the areas that we're looking at and the reason why the wall slide the wall test the wall test wall slide was chosen by the three of us was because it really points out the most common offenders like when we look at all the clients that we've trained I would say at least 80% of those people suffer from some level of cross syndrome this is desk jobs this is like just something you see everyday in the workforce do you see in schools it's just we have sort of set everything up so we're always sort of hunched forward and we're riding in front of us and we're looking in front of us and we're leaning forward constantly and so just the patterns of that alone creates these types of compensations that we're trying to address with this specific test we literally mold itself to what you do all day long you guys ever look at pictures ever see those old pictures from Japan when they used to do foot binding and then they would take the foot binding off to see what the foot looked like have you ever seen that? was it China or Japan? China so they showed these if you can look these up online but if you're a little queasy I would suggest you don't use girls feet when they were really young to keep them really small and then there's pictures of what the foot would look like when they take the binding off and the whole foot was folded underneath with the toes underneath because the body starts to shape itself through these outside forces and so if you sit down a lot well first off you're normal if you live in modern society you probably sit down a lot you probably have a desk job you're on your phone or computer and so your body kind of molds itself that way your head starts to jut forward you get what's called forward head so you lose that tall neck posture your shoulders start to round this is where the shoulders kind of come forward that's a part of your body molding itself to the way you're working and sitting all the time now that can cause problems when you go to work out when I go to do certain exercises the risk of shoulder pain or neck tightness tight neck now it's going to get way worse if you don't correct this problem when you go do your work out if it's forward and you're straining the pain will be almost immediate well let's just talk about the big five the big five movements that we always talk about that are so important and when you look at overhead press and bench press which staples in almost every muscle building fat loss program and if you have excessive forward shoulder and forward head you're looking for a potential it's a big problem or at the bare minimum aches and pains that are going to come from that if you don't address this right right and you know by the way neck tension and tightness is a nice easy signal to know that this may be a problem and the reason why you get that tightness is there's muscles in the neck area that start to compensate to try to stabilize this poor posture so if you get tension in your neck and like why am I get so tight you know you don't even work out you just sit down in front of a desk and you get this tightness you probably have some of these what we call posture deviations okay so let's talk about the wall test and how to perform this again we have the video linked in the show notes but we'll try to explain it on the podcast the best that we can so a wall you want to use a wall because that's feedback you want a nice straight wall that you could lean up against you want to place your body up against stand up against the wall you want your butt to touch the wall you want your shoulders to touch the wall you want your back to be relatively flat you don't have a huge arch in your low back you should be able to probably press against your hand if you were to slide it under your low back so you don't want to have this super strong you know butt sticking out type of arch and then here's the important part to start with you want the back of your head there's a small at the base of your skull you'll feel if you feel it around right now under your hair there's a small nodule that you'll feel I can't remember the name of it but we all have it that's the part you want to be touching the wall while your butt and upper back and shoulders are touching the wall in order to produce that you do have to look pretty silly I mean you have to like pull your chin in so you're basically performing the double chin I guess every time I smile yeah fat face yeah you're gonna have fat if you're doing this right you'll have fat face right that's it most people are gonna have everybody and this is what's the why this is so important is that almost everybody has this yeah but yeah I don't feel bad by the way yeah those people will fail this you're gonna feel it because I haven't even given you the test part yet I know the position which I would say probably a good 30% of you can't even do that I bet you about 30% listening right now can't even get the nodule of their head up against the wall without overarching their back or taking another common one to just to get the shoulders to touch a lot of times you really have to excessively arch the lower back and so a lot of times and this is why we do try to then press our lower back into the wall by drawing in you know your stomach and squeezing your core so you actually lose that connectivity in your core which is vital especially if you're pressing anything overhead we want to make sure that we're our spine is supported so if you start to arch excessively you have this rib flare which your ribs start to kind of come up and it's very visible that's something that we need to correct if you start to feel shearing in your low back like I'm arching too hard and you're failing the movement you're not able to produce this movement or even what Justin says like our test in prime we actually take a stick and you actually hold the stick there so you have to maintain core stability and the pressing of the low back while also tucking the chin and you're right probably 30% of the people listening right now can't even do that can't even keep their back flat and like Sal said don't beat yourself up you can't do it a lot of people won't be able to do this but that's your that right there is a flag that you want to address this and we'll give you exercises that'll be good that you should focus on if you can't do this test well that's one right there in itself chin tucks oh just just the chin tuck if you're somebody right now who that is challenging like you we can't even we haven't got to the wall test part that Sal is going to keep going on and it's already hard for you to flatten the back and tuck your chin against the wall that's an exercise just practice that that's an exercise I would I would take the clients that I had that were in this case I would have them press their back flat against the wall and then we would tuck their chin and they would press hard with their chin tucked for five seconds hold breathe then release do it again for five seconds hold release and I do that for about five to ten times and you can regress us a little bit by kind of taking a towel or a little yoga block or something then to kind of smash into the wall and then slowly kind of reduce the size of what that object is until now I have the ability to bring my head over by the way this gets so bad in middle aged individuals that when I would train a client who was in their late 30s up to mid 40s or older and I'd have them lay flat on the floor head came to the ground there I would have to put towels under their head because otherwise they would let's like they were looking behind them because they lay flat and then their head was so far off the floor that in order for them to put their head back they'd have to look way back and it was super uncomfortable so I mean if that's you you've got really bad forward head but it can get corrected you can have and what you have to understand why this is so important is that if you if you can't do simple movements like this you're still going about your day your body is then overcompensating to do things so then like you know you saw me the comment of you looking so if you go to turn to look to the right or turn to look to the left your body now has to kind of tweak itself to do that to still be able to get that to rotate your shoulders with you right because you've now lost that mobility in your cervical spine to be able to do that that's why this is so important and even if it's not causing tension headaches right now or causing neck pain or shoulder pain now it eventually will and it won't be because you're old it's because you didn't address well you know it's funny is a lot of people don't even realize how bad they feel until they correct it right you know they're like oh my I didn't realize just how it's liberating heavy my head felt until I was able to fix you know this posture okay so back to the wall test so you're up against the wall the nodule of your of your skull up against the wall shoulders up against the wall your butt is up against the wall you're not overarching so that's nice and tight you're not flaring your ribs now what you do is you're gonna take your arms and you're gonna bend your elbows and place them up against the wall like you're putting your hands up okay like it like like a police officer tells you to put your hands up but your elbows are bent okay about 90 degrees now you want your whole arm touching the wall you want your elbows to touch the wall and you want the full back of your wrist and hand to touch the wall now a lot of you here aren't even to be able to do that you're gonna get in this position and you're gonna have to like bend your wrist back just to touch the fingers can touch but yeah your wrists are no one you want everything flat up against the wall while holding the original position that we talked about before and very common in this so this is really common this is a challenge for me and what you'll see a lot of times is one side worse than the other so sometimes somebody will be able to get their hand flat against the wall on one side but not the other side so that tells us that they are their their shoulders are more rounded on the other side this is common with somebody like like my teachers a lot of times if you're a teacher and you write on a whiteboard all the time or you're in construction and you're using your right arm for or like a hairstylist you're using one side more and it's constantly protracted in and forward forward in front of you again like Sal was saying earlier you start to shape the body that way so then when I ask you to be able to retract the shoulders and pull back in that position that side that is used to being so forward all the time struggles even more to get back there which again is gonna start to cause all kinds of other issues when you go to do a movement like a shoulder press or a bench press now when you do that you gotta understand that one side is gonna be firing different than the other side because you have this imbalance because of whatever it is that you do all day long right so we so now we're in that position right arms up against the wall elbows bent your the back of your hand is flat up against the wall wrist is flat up against the wall the nodule is still in contact with the wall your your butt is still in contact with wall you're not overarching you're keeping everything tight now what you're gonna do while maintaining all those points of contact is you're gonna slide your hands all the way up like you're gonna extend your arms up above your head everything's staying in contact and then bring them back down now if you're like most people you're gonna lose some points of contact 90% almost gonna come off like all kinds of things are gonna happen if you're like most people you're not gonna be able to do this perfectly some things gonna come off the wall or in order to keep everything in contact with the wall you're like straining and struggling like crazy okay those are both considered fail just means that you need to work on a few things so we're gonna give you some of our favorite exercises that help fix a lot of these issues now one of my favorite exercise very basic is a row a seated row is better for correctional purposes than other types of rows like a bent over barbell row it's just harder to get somebody to pull their shoulders back and have good posture when doing a bent over barbell row versus a seated row I love bands for this correctional exercise rather than using a cable or using a weight grab a resistance band attach it around a secure object maybe put it in your door jam or whatever or even put it around your feet you could even do it just around your feet sit up nice and tall brace your core create that posture that you did with the wall test where your head was tall you don't have to have your back up against the wall but create that posture then do the row pulling your shoulders back and down hold that position squeeze let it come forward I'm so glad that you said that because the idea of all these tests to and the and the wall test is the wall is just there for feedback so you can understand where you're supposed to get like if once you've practiced and always would tell clients that like this this is yes an exercise and a test I'm doing with you but I also want you to to pay attention to how your body feels when you're tucking your chin you're pulling your shoulder blades back and to think about that now when we get out on the weight room floor now when I take you into exercises and I say get into that posture you know tuck your chin or sit your chest up high or pull your shoulder blades back you're trying to remember what it felt like when you were pressing against the wall you want to think about that like it's not just and this is why exercises performed correctly are far more valuable than just flat out exercising it's how you do the movement oh it's like it's two different universes yeah doing exercises wrong is just training your body to move wrong that's what you do just practicing teaching your body this is the wrong way to move we're going to keep getting the stronger and stronger you actually create strength in the bad movement pattern and I know we have a very wide a variety of listeners out there that you know some people might not even be able to get anywhere close to doing these things on the wall and so an option that you can use is to do this on the ground and so to lay down flat on your back and go through the same type of movements and do a slide using your arms in the position Sal was describing with your elbows bent and your wrist touching the ground and then reach behind you and just start with that really start to connect to that and try and squeeze and feel your muscles through that process and the reason why that's a regression or a good place to start if you really struggle with the walls we're just using gravity yeah we're now using gravity to help us right gravity is pushing down on us so all those things that are deviated it's pushing against them to assist you where when you're standing upright you have to actively be able to intrinsically think about all those things that you know that which can be a little bit challenging if you've never done it before so that's a great it's a great tip here's another good one I think I can explain through the podcast these are called wall circles they're really really good for shoulder mobility and essentially here's what you do you stand up against with your shoulder up against the wall so now you're kind of standing sideways to the wall so place your shoulder up against the wall take your hand the back of your hand place it up against the wall now rotate your hand or keep your arms straight create like a like you're creating a big circle with your arm with the back of your hand up on the wall until you can't go any further then turn your hand so that your palm is on the wall and go all the way around and make a complete circle it's harder it's harder done than said it's a lot easier said than done you want to raise your arm nice and slow all the way up till you get to about your ear or so right and try not to lean away from the wall either which is going to be something you're going to want to naturally do so you try and you know really concentrate on staying in one place and really connecting to that and then right when you get past your ear about so start rotating your wrist and then you're going to get your palm down and then kind of continue the circle like so yes so my favorite and we're addressing similar things by doing this but my favorite move to teach for shoulder mobility like this where you're taking it through its full range of motion like the wall circles is handcuff with rotation we have a great video on YouTube that'll be in the show notes handcuff with rotation same concept that's what we're trying to do is work on taking the shoulder through its fullest range of motion and all the planes handcuff with rotation does that I find it a little bit easier to teach than the wall circles most people that I would teach wall circles with I feel like they have a hard time unless you're advanced you have a hard time understanding the concept of what you need how you need to keep your body and not deviate because they move away right yeah anybody can stand by a wall and just draw circles on the wall but what would you find with the clients is they they they lean away from the wall and then they they cheat they roll they rotate their their upper body to turn and the idea is that you are staying in a very fixed position and we're working on just the shoulder point where it's a little I think harder to coach to I think handcuff with rotation is easier for me to coach to it and accomplishes the same concept that's going to watch watch the video we really break it down prone cobra another great exercise great great movement on YouTube as well really really good at strengthening the mid back drawing the shoulders down you could do it on the floor you could do on a physio ball you could do it on a bench great great exercise alright let's move to the next test that we you know that we think is really good this is a it's called a windmill a little bit more difficult to explain on the podcast but essentially you're standing with your feet maybe shoulder width or slightly wider than shoulder width apart and you want one foot slightly forward so let's pick your left for example left foot a little bit further forward than your right foot and now what you want to do essentially is you want to reach down with your right arm totally straight so you're touching the floor and then reach up with your right arm straight up into the sky so left arm is touching the floor right arm is pointed up in the sky and you want to create a perfect line so yes you are not only bent over but you're also twisted so that your arms create a perfect line while keeping your feet planted way harder than it sounds right so as you have the staggered stance so one way I like to look at it is I have my toes and my right foot if my left foot slightly forward my toes line up with my left ankle and so now I'm going to staggered stance I'm upright I'm going to raise my arm up to my ear and my palm is going to be facing you know inside towards my ear and then I'm going to look up at my hand and so once I look up at my hand now I'm going to start to slide my hips back and rotate my hand and that's going to create that rotation in my back that we're looking for and meanwhile my other arm my left arm is going to be straight the whole time and it's not going to come forward past my leg it's going to stay right alongside my leg and I'm going to naturally kind of slide it down as my hips produce depth so my hips slide back which creates the opportunity for my hand to then get further down. Now what is this looking for? Yeah I was going to say what's more important to me than I think describing the movement because Justin's got a great video on that we have videos on all the things that we're talking about is why we do this and I love the windmill because what we're looking for is the ability for you to hinge at the hips like you would need to do if you were to squat down or deadlift or deadlift or pick anything up or sit on a toilet these are functional movements the ability to hinge and then also have rotational control of the spine because yeah when you do a squat you're in a fixed position or when you deadlift you're in a fixed position but in real life and you pick up a bag of dog you pick up a bag of dog food or something that's an odd object and you bend over you hinge over and you grab it the ability to control your spine rotationally or anti-rotationally in that position is extremely important for longevity and health and that's why this movement this was a this is Justin's baby that he added to this that I remember when I remember when he said that I think this is important needs to be in here and Sal and I are both like oh 100% I don't know why I didn't even think of that right away why this should be in here because that is a this is another very common area that people break down and can't do and this is where man you want to talk about low back pain and issues in anywhere up and down your back a lot of times it's caused because people just don't have the ability to rotate at the spine because they lose that because we just don't we don't train that anymore or we don't use it very much as we get older and then when we finally do we're weak in that area and then we get hurt doing and it's always how many times you guys heard this like I never had clients get hurt because they were deadlifting 200 pounds they were always hurt picking up the shampoo bottle or they were hurt gardening you know pulling you know reaching back in the car because reaching back for the kids in the car it's always this weird it's not heavy it's just they're doing something either quick and fast and they think that their body is capable of doing it and they haven't trained in that range of motion it becomes unfamiliar because it's just not a part of your daily habits anymore and so this is why it's so important to then teach the body again like this is something that we need to be able to do and to be able to do it correctly requires this type of training so now I have to like literally teach my body I need to be able to rotate like this I need to be able to look up with my head and my neck needs to rotate this way my upper back needs to be able to rotate as well while keeping my hips going a specific direction and all these things have to happen without any pain yeah and again the areas you're looking at with this are in the middle lower part of the body but you are getting a little bit of shoulder you are looking at a little bit of shoulder mobility so let's say you try by the way all these tests that we're giving you themselves can practice over and over again as well those are exercises by themselves so if you can't do the wall test if you can't do the windmill test well one of the easiest ways to correct issues that are resulting because of your inability to do it it's just to practice these movements but besides the windmill here's some good exercises and movements that will help you work on the areas or work on why you can't maybe do it one of my favorites is lizard with rotation one of the best I love lizard with rotation we have a great video on this as well but it does work on that lumbar ability to rotate it does work a little bit on the hip hinging really easy to do what I love about it also requires no equipment you just do it at home you could do it on your own in fact it's a staple for me as part of my priming or warming up anytime I warm up for a workout or whatever lizards always in there now lizard with rotation I think is a common movement that trainers use but I also see it done incorrectly a lot now likely made the point in the last part of the assessment of remembering the windmill test and when you were hinging and rotating to try and get your hand to the floor and reach up where it felt limiting for you you're trying to challenge that when you're doing a movement like the lizard with rotation so what I mean by when I see a lot of people do this incorrectly is they get into this lizard with rotation exercise which you get down almost like in a plank position or a runner's position and you're pulling your shoulder through and then you're rotating your spine and looking up and you see people just kind of like whip through this and that's like they're warm up the idea is that you do it slow and controlled and then when you get to the end ranges of motion you kind of pause there and you challenge it right you intense give it some isometric squeeze yes you intensify it by getting the isometric squeeze and challenging the range of motion not through dynamic whipping it's not supposed to be fast and going back and forth the new class right dynamic whipping I mean how often though do you see that right when I see when I see a lizard with rotation done in the gym I see people just they saw a video probably of it and they're just mimicking it when you do it the intent of how you do it is the most important part otherwise you're not really working on where the dysfunction in the breakdown is the dysfunction the breakdown normally with the windmill is the inability for you to rotate the thoracic and lumbar spine and rotate around like that so then when I'm doing the lizard with rotation I'm challenging the end ranges of motion and intensifying like Justin said and then coming back through and then challenging it again each time so another thing I had like issues with being able to access like my thoracic spine and be able to flex extend and do these things and manipulate it a certain way and so cat cow was it was a drill that I would do constantly to really try to I love that yeah to to gain control of that again I think that a lot of people don't realize like and that's again it's just addresses a lot of other issues as well whether like you have if your shoulders are too protruded forward you know that this is all going to be compensations that we're addressing to that affect your upper back and in your thoracic area that now you don't have access and movement that you should yeah one of the reasons why I like cat cow so much is almost anybody can do it it's like one of the easiest ways you can work on some of this mobility with I could do this with old people who have bad mobility I'd have them on their hands and knees on a soft surface and have them practice rounding their back and then have them practice letting it sink in an arch and they would just go back and forth it's something most people can do and it's really all we're doing is we're trying to regain control of your spine and and each and when you're doing something like cat cow you're like actually doing it at each vertebrae right you're trying to articulate that in and out or up and down in this case which is why too I like things like bird dog right bird dog is another one of those movements similar to cat cow seems really basic when you see somebody doing all about the intent though right that and that and that's I think the the takeaway from this conversation today is like and I'm guilty of this as a trainer I remember as a trainer when I first learned all this stuff like I think I had a surface level understanding of oh these are important movements I should have clients do and I teach them and just kind of let them do it and there there's they're so simple that if you don't move slowly and work on the intent of it and make them challenging you're not really doing much work if that makes sense right if you just get under and you do cat cow or bird dog and you just kind of whipping through it or lizard with rotation and you're just kind of whipping through the movement like 10% of the benefits right you get a very very minimal amount of sure though it'll help you stay at least that mobile to where you can continue to do that so it's not bad that you're doing that but the max benefits are going to come from like really paying attention to the detail of the movement and really trying to articulate the spine and staying control and challenge the in ranges of motion not let things rotate be able to really like keep bracing and holding things in place that need to stay in place so all those things matter and so if you slow down and focus in on all those little cues and things that your body just naturally kind of falls into you stop that momentum of just letting your body control you that's it two more exercises you could look up on our channel thread the needle and supine scorpions I believe they're both on there I know thread the needle is for sure yeah those are both those are also great that you can work on if doing a windmill you find difficult or you just can't do it perfectly the last one this is a staple in any assessment I've ever almost almost any assessment I've ever seen because when you look at you know assessments that trainers and coaches do there tends to be some variety in different versions and you know they can do that because they're watching the client in person but one always pops up because this tells you a lot about your your body's mobility and that's a squat this is a squat test now you there's a couple ways you do this the real basic way to do it is just to try to go down in a squat and look for you different thing a few different things but if you really want to have a little bit more detail here's what I recommend get a broomstick place it on your low back with by holding it with your arm and you want it to be touching your tailbone you want it to be touching the mid back and you want it to be touching the back of your head and hopefully it's the edge of the back of your skull the video that I have on my Instagram right now which will be the last video like I won't post anything between now and this video being live is that okay I don't know if you've seen that or not it's actually a picture of me holding the stick on those three points of contact on my Instagram page so you want to see what you're talking about good and now when you're holding that stick there now you want to get your feet a little wider than shoulder with and you want to do a full squat go down as low as you can comfortably and look for a few different things points of contact come off the stick did your heels come off the floor did your knees cave in these are all real common issues that people tend to see shift to one side or the other are you leaning to one side or the other these are things that people tend to see or issues that they tend to see when they do a squat test and if you see any of these issues then you definitely want to work on fixing those problems now one of the most common issues that you see with this is someone can't squat without their heels coming off the floor or their feet will turn out really really far and their ankles will cave in it's kind of a similar problem it's because you have really really tight calves you have poor ankle mobility well one of my favorite movements to address this is called the combat stretch again we have a video of that on our YouTube channel and it's just exceptional at fixing ankle mobility issues what about when your knees cave in my knees like to cave in all the time well one of the best ways to fix that if you don't want to use any equipment or anything is to squat slowly while pushing your knees out if you need some feedback you can tie something around your legs like a rubber band or something like that push your knees out as you do your slow squats that helps with that as well and then floor bridges I love floor bridges for strengthening the hips some people when they squat one of the reasons why their heels come off the floor is they're not able to sit back properly they can't activate the glutes floor bridges really helps to activate that anything I missed well yeah when you when you when you talk also to about the knees collapsing the rubber band is one thing this is also where a lot of times when the knees collapse like that is just your inability to internally and externally rotate the hips really well and this is very very common this is also connected to a lot of times when people have bursitis in their hips so because I lack the ability to internally externally rotate the hip to its fullest capacity and then I still were I still was squatting all sudden I get this like sharp like feels like pain like someone's sticking a knife in my hip those are that's the bursitis sacs that I'm feeling that hurts like that and the reason why I'm getting that is because I'm still performing exercises but I'm not addressing my inability to rotate my hips like I should and a lot of times you see that expressed in the knees collapsing too so one of the best things that you can do and for sure been game changer life changer for myself has been 90 90 variations and when you're doing and we have lots of good videos on the 90 90 and the variations around them and when you when you get good at being able to internally externally rotate the hips it just it it opens up that whole hip complex allows you to get down into the deep squat without overcompensating and we'll leave a lot of times this is also what's connected to low back pain a lot of times people think low back pain is like oh I have my low back hurt so something's wrong in the low back area specifically a lot of times it's related to the whole hip complex because it's all connected and because the hip complex is so tight it's pulling on the low back area and that tightness is coming from the inability to rotate the hips very well and also being able to stabilize your spine properly throughout this entire process too and the 90 90s it will expose that almost immediately just sitting in that position because now it's just about your torso standing as upright as possible and as vertical as possible while your hips are in that position internal and external rotational position and so to be able to then brace properly and then keep your your upper body from falling to one side or the other you're going to be able to really expose that and work on that right so remember you when you do a good assessment of yourself you ask yourself the right questions you do some of these movements and you can identify some of the problems now your workout becomes correcting those issues that's how you start your workout you work on and by the way it's a workout you're still strengthening your body you're still building a little bit of muscle you're still burning some calories and then once you go through the process of doing this and you find that over time wow I can do the wall test now and I feel relatively comfortable wow I can do the windmill test and I'm starting to feel comfortable wow I can do a squalor now you can start to progress your body into heavier and harder movements but for for the time being a lot of your exercise should be focused on correcting a lot of these issues now if you want something more specific if you want more coaching because I know this can be a little bit complex although we have a lot of free videos on YouTube and I think if you practice these tests even just practice these tests on their own you'll benefit greatly you could try one of our programs MAPS Prime and MAPS Prime Pro a lot of people ask what's the difference between the two MAPS Prime has the general assessments that we talked about and it really teaches you how to get your body primed and warmed up for your workout so what does that mean that means let's say you fail the windmill test let's say the windmill test is the most difficult thing for you well MAPS Prime will show you what you need to do because that's what you failed before you get into your regular workout following a MAPS anywhere then you would do the specific MAPS Prime movements for you to get your body ready for your MAPS Anywhere workouts that's just an example it can be any workout that you do now MAPS Prime Pro it breaks down every single joints much more specific much more correctional you can look at the ankles you can look at the hips you can look at your wrists you can look at your spine from the lumbar all the way up to your neck all that stuff all very very correctional and here's the cool thing about correctional exercise requires almost or no equipment in fact most of the best correctional exercise movements involve no equipment whatsoever and here's the other key correctional exercises are best done very frequently you're better off practicing them throughout the day so rather than doing like two one hour correctional exercise workouts a week every other hour spend five minutes picking one movement and practicing it that will give you better faster results because what you're trying to do with correctional exercise is create new recruitment bat patterns and to correct the old bad recruitment patterns now here's the best part both MAPS Prime and Prime Pro are 50% off so we put them both half off so if you're interested now is a great time to enroll you can go to mapsfitnessproducts.com so MAPS fitnessproducts.com use the code prime50 for the 50% off discount both programs prime50 is P-R-I-M-E 50 the number 50 no space and input that for the discount