 Intentionally, a little bit further. Keep your butt tucked. Keep that glutes on, right? Glutes are on. What's going on guys? John's about to kill me here. So these are the Nordic curls. It's the end of the exercise. I'm dead. And enjoy for my pleasure. My pain for your pleasure. What is good? Today is all about the Nordic curls and how you can do them correctly and what I learned. So let's go! You happen to have just landed on a goldmine of information. John coaches me through the Nordic curl and the things he's telling me as I'm doing it will help you so much. And we also do RDLs. But just Nordic curls and just RDLs today fired my hamstrings, my glutes. I have so much work to do. And I really hope you guys take a look at this video and really learn from it. Because there's so much knowledge here and I hope to bring you these videos every single week. So I'm going to commit to every single week bringing you insight to my journey, my rehab so I can get back to dunking. And you guys can learn from me so you don't make the same mistakes. But you can also make the next level progress we're all trying to make. So let's go! My goal of this year is to just get healthy and then to go higher than ever at 43 inches max vertical. I have a ton of videos on my channel. Check my dunk tips and tutorials playlist. If you want help on your technique, your footwork and anything jump related, I probably have a video on it. But either way, leave a comment. Let me know what you want to see. If you have any questions, I'd love to help you guys out. That's what it's all about, baby. And lastly, stick around to the end. I'm going to give you my insights, what I learned from today and the things I think are going to be keys going forward. So just today I had my session with John Binford. I've been working with him for the past couple of weeks. He's really helped me so much and I'm really excited to break it down. He coaches me through this exercise. He shows me how to do it correctly and teaches me. It's really tough to get it correctly. Let's get into it now. No more. Because I have this yoga block in between my knees and I'm squeezing it tight with my adductors, I'm going to be able to find and utilize more of my hamstrings because of that activation of your adductors. So from there, we've seen that your hamstring at a more lengthened position is weak. We've suffered a partial tear at some point and we're recovering and building strength back from that. And you're at a point where it's at a performance grade where you can perform but not optimally, not at your best level. So we're going to try to find that injury of the hamstring or that length of the hamstring where it's nasty and weak and we're going to train the shit out of it with isometrics first, then eccentric, then eccentric and concentric and explosive type exercises. But we're building foundational strength with isometric holding like a plank. If you want to build core strength, what do you have to do? Practice your planks really initially. So I've got my block, squeezing my block. From there, I'm going to work to pull up on the pad. I'm pulling on that pad the whole time in this isometric exercise. I'm trying to engage everything in my hamstring and I'm testing a shortened hamstring right now. Lengthened is what bothers you. When your hamstrings are lengthened and they try to contract, they're weak. So we're going to find a halfway lengthened hamstring and hold and squeeze. 90 degrees, I'm trying to keep my butt tucked in, glutes are tight, adductors are squeezing and I'm just holding. Pulling that thing off the rack. Pull, pull, pull, pull, ten second hold. Five, four, three, two, one and release. At that length, then we're going to see how that feels, test, make a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, make a conclusion, okay, how that feel and then we'll test it again. A little bit lower, a little bit lower, a little bit lower until we find that hamstring where it feels like we're getting stronger and getting better. But if we do any more, we could possibly get injured. You're trying to find that, you know, yeah. So we get into the hamstrings by bending the knees and now we're shortened because the knees are inflection. So you're crushing the block, well adductor, right? So that's telling you again, groin, got to address the groin. So keeping our glutes tight and we're coming down a little further, right there, good. And we're just past 90 degrees of knee flexion, right? And now we're thinking about pulling on the pad, light hands, glutes are tight, right? Ribs are tucked in and glutes are in, right? Hold and pull. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Relax. Good. Come on out. Any couple RDL's in between? Come on out. Just some light reaches. Don't strain the hamstring because of the length, right? Because we've saw that lengthening is strenuous or just trying to kind of reset right now. So not even to the point where you start to feel that ham, just give them some length. Give them some love. Think about what we're doing with the RDL, right? We're bending, finding length in the ham, and then hip extension, right? Now you're hip extension and you're adding knee flexion. So now you're brutalizing the hamstring and then you can come up to a deadlift and say, well, I'm going to reset my hamstring a little bit because I'm stretching it out from that last exercise. And I'll hit about 5 to 10 RDL's and then I'll come back in. All right? So let's do that. Let's grab a kettlebell. We're going to hinge, hinge, hinge, maintain the shelf, push the butt back. Good. And back up. All right. So last time, our knee flexion was about 100 degrees of knee flexion, right? Which is like an obtuse angle. Right now you're at a right angle. So we want to create an obtuse lengthened angle. Go ahead and start to walk out. And you're pulling on your pad as you're walking out. You're crushing your block as you're walking out. All right? And we're going to go just a little bit further. Intentionally a little bit further. Keep your butt tucked. Keep that glutes on, right? Glutes are on. Glutes are on. Abs are on. And pull as hard as you can, ramping it up about 50%, 75%, 100%. Hold. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Down. Great job. Awesome. Come back out. Hit one more set of the RDL. Woo! Cramping muscles are deconditioned muscles. Not necessarily weak, but they're weak with that amount of load and work on them, right? Let's go. Chest out. And that's coming from where? Lats. Lats. Lats. Keep those lats locked in. Push your butt back. There. Good. Keep pushing your butt back. Come back up. Good. Starting to bend through the spine. Keep bending through your hips. Keep pushing your butt back. Good. Now just one breath. All right? Airing at the top. Go down. Stand back up. Keep this closer to you. I want this going down like back here. Try to push it back between your legs. Keep more lats on. Chest out. Go back again. Now you're trying to push the kettlebell between your legs. Good. Back up. That's better. Good job. Keep thinking about pushing the kettlebell back to your heels. Two more. Chest up. Up. Good. One more. Push your butt back. Keep the lats on. There you go. Yeah, keep pulling the lats in. Up. Good job. I'm down. All right. So that was just one exercise of today's workout. So I'm going to show you more of the workouts as these videos go on. But I just wanted to get that Nordic curl out there because it's so important. What I learned is just how tough it is for me to keep my glutes tucked. Just to keep my hips and my body and my spine in the right position so tough. And just, I love the way he had me find that end range of what my injured hamstring can do. I can talk about my hamstring more if you want to know how I injured and things like that. Let me know if that's what you want to hear. It's hurt. I pulled it. I over-trained it. And just trying to get stronger in the range that I have is so fascinating to me. And such a great way to approach it. I really think it's just a fantastic way to rehab, get stronger in the range that you have, isolating that muscle. And I think that's the way we all should train, understanding our bodies to the finest detail and only doing what we can handle. Not trying to, not breaking down form and just trying to get into these ranges. Going the range you can. Hammer that home. Get stronger. That's what it's all about. All right, guys. I'll see you next week. Let's go dunk life, baby.