 Oh boy, we have the biggest giveaway we've done in our YouTube channels history now Here's why before I tell you what we're gonna give you. Here's what happened. We recorded this amazing podcast Okay, today's podcast is great controversial. It's about full range of motion It's a debate should you full do full squats should you have squats our bodybuilders right our athletic coaches right? We dive deep into this conversation Great podcast the cameras went off so in other words today's podcast is audio only There's no video so we feel real bad about this Which is why we're gonna do the biggest giveaway we've ever done ever first off Here's how you can win the following prize. The prize is a super bundle This is the biggest program bundle that we offer it includes maps and a ballack maps performance Maps aesthetic maps anywhere maps prime kettlebell for aesthetics. You have the build your butt Mod that's available in there and the sexy athlete mod all of those are in this bundle You'll get all of those for free, but you got to do the following Listen to the whole podcast Okay, so from beginning to end in the comments in the first 24 hours Tell us your thoughts Do you agree with us or do you agree with people who say you didn't you don't need to do full range of motion training? Start a nice conversation in the comments. Okay, it's got to happen the first 24 hours We'll go through the comments We'll pick the best one and if you win you get the super bundle also subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications By the way, we are also running a sale. So we have maps and a ball that's 50% off We also have our shredded summer bundle. That's 50% off You can find those at maps fitness products calm and use the code April special alright Enjoy this podcast. So you know our friend Ben Pollock, right? Power lifter turn bodybuilder love Ben. Yeah smart guy And he's built an incredible physique the guys getting crazy amounts of muscle lately But anyway, he screen-shotted a comment. Oh, you're gonna go here. Yeah and put it up And then it started this whole like Back and forth between people so this screenshot came from and you got you know who this page is Yeah, I got a lift run bang. Yeah, great name. Yeah from bang. Yeah, this by the way I guess super sensitive. So be careful if you comment and say the wrong thing. You'll whatever loses mine, but anyway his comment that that Ben screenshot it says a Large range of motion for the sake of more range of motion is disadvantageous for hypertrophy Because all muscles have a limited active range of motion in a movement Once the range of motion exceeds that then something else has to compensate for that extra range of motion Just so many bad comments and interpretations about hypertrophy in here By the way, the guy sounds smart. No, he's a smart guy. And here's the thing The statement in itself is not incorrect. Do you have my comment back? Well, I'm gonna read both So I read mine. I'll read yours right because what he's saying is It's I guess the way he's saying it might be true But so here's my what I said underneath it I said so long as the range of motion is under control with good stability and connection Okay, so that's the context Okay, then a greater range of motion generally leads to more muscle growth and a larger range of strength Spanning over a greater range of motion in other words deep squats So long as the person doing them has good mobility connection and stability We'll build more overall muscle and broader strength Then shallow squats by the way all the evid all the data Proves what I'm saying. But remember I'm saying generally more muscle more connection all stuff Adam caught me that of course irritated the sensitive guy So he had to come back but then Adam came and he says I guess the question I have here is who are we trying to help? We seem to have attracted several fitness intellects that want to debate all the nuances of biomechanics for the sake of being more right Meanwhile losing the majority in the weeds or worse justifying why we should not address our shit mobility So long as our pursuit is to build more muscle when I see posts like this I'm always curious to what the desired outcome is I mean, I agree 100% with what you're saying. Of course. I agree with what I'm saying Yeah, so the the debate is over range of motion. It's still a debate and Usually the side that argues against range of motion are Comes from the bodybuilding space where they'll say that too much range of motion Takes tension off the target muscle results in less muscle Is that the main thing that they just feel like they're losing a bit of tension once they exceed a certain range of motion? And so therefore in terms of hypertrophy, it seems like it's no no because they have shit mobility And they can't get you know and here's how I can and why I like to speak to this one in this one I'm I feel passionate about Because I was this guy like literally I Love to attach myself to someone like this that was preaching some of this because I had poor mobility I couldn't squat past 90 degrees or well, and it made me feel good about it. Like oh, yeah I don't need to I don't need to and you had all the accolades to back you up You were a pro IFBB physique competitor. So you had developed this incredible physique So why would you want to listen to right and and and and they're right you don't necessarily have to to build that But I tell you what when I began to work on my ankle and hip mobility and in my my squat depth So many other positive things besides just building muscle So by the way, the first thing I think is untrue and what your statement I do believe is true once I got to the place where I had good stability and control in a deeper range of motion And it could do a full astagrass squat I was able to build more muscle in my legs with less effort Mm-hmm by doing that I noticed that right away and then I also noticed all the other benefits like my back pain going away Right like the ability to sit down comfortably and play with my son and do things that I couldn't do before because I wasn't addressing mobility So that's why I came out with a statement saying that I just don't understand the desired outcome when you say some of this because a 20-year-old me reads that looks at this guy who looks impressive and I go. Oh, man. Yeah, okay Yeah, fuck that. I don't need to go any deeper like I because all I care about is looking good and building muscle And so I neglect working on my mobility in pursuit of wanting this great physique But then I get caught up with all this other bullshit 100% and again Here's the deal is because he's saying past a certain range of motion You if you lose connection to the target muscle. Well, yeah Don't train in a range of motion that you don't have connection to and that you don't own right? That's what mobility is right? So if you squat to 90 degrees and if you go below 90 degrees and all of a sudden you lose Connection and stability that great range of motion is not going to be better for you It's gonna be worse for you, right? So what we're saying is not greater range of motion at all costs What we're saying is a greater range of motion that you're connected to is better for overall muscle growth Oh, by the way overall strength to because here's a deal the strength that you gain when you when you do exercise Most of it goes to the range of motion that you train So in other words if I squat to 90 degrees and I add a hundred pounds to my squat Most of that strength is in that range of motion that I train There's some carryover outside of 90 degrees, but the further I move away from that The more the less of that strength that I get in other words if you can squat 300 pounds and 90 degrees You're not gonna be able to squat 300 pounds astagrass. You'll be likely to squat 220 pounds astagrass, especially if your mobility is poor. So being connected is the That's where you have to be and if you're connected and you own the movement greater ranges of motion are superior And again, the data is clear on this. It's very very clear But again, I think sometimes we get these like really small groups of nuanced individuals and I think we should talk about Cases where shorter ranges of motion Maybe beneficial or where larger ranges of motion aren't necessarily Beneficial to some, you know, right? So if you're talking about like sports specific instances like so everybody's familiar with a little brawn James squat like the quarter squat and it was getting like just Fire blazed because of that and if you think about it Like where are you gonna generate the most amount of power when you're on the court and when you're about to jump and when you're gonna be the Most explosive so, you know really training that specific range of motion to generate the most amount of force makes sense in that specific type of Direction absolutely and in a note about athletes if you watch good athletes train with good coaches They are not training for optimal health Optimal mobility optimal, you know overall like, you know real-life strength what they're training for is sports specific Performance, which is not usually not the healthiest best way for most people to train It's almost always not right. We had a great discussion with our buddy Dr. Justin Brink a long time ago. Do you remember this when we talked about him training? Professional athletes and we were like, what do you do? What do you do when you get like this fighter? And he's got all this forward shoulder. Yeah, he's got this discrepancy between right and right start all over and do all new recruitment patterns Right, his feet are pronating bad He's got all this dysfunction and breakdown stuff that he's helped me out with like what do you do when you see that with this? UFC fighter like and he's like, you know in a case like that you have to be very careful because Yeah, you want to help him out with some things that you know that you see that are glaring that are obvious Issues that he's got or he's going to cause issues down the road But it's at the same token. You got to you got to have this fine dance of I also don't want to Reduce his performance when he gets into the ring that he's been moving He or she that athlete has been moving that way for so long. They're really good at it And you don't want to reach you don't want to completely change their movement patterns because because they'll lose performance and Athletes that it's all about performance, especially at the professional level a Braun James Right could give a shit about building maximum mass on his legs What he wants to do is be a better Basketball player obviously that makes sense So you're gonna train a very very specific way in which case training in specific ranges of motion makes perfect sense Okay, all that said the lift-run bang guy I mean was he really trying to voice this out to competitive bodybuilders or is he saying this is a statement well So and that was that goes back to my statement of like what you know my thing that I out when I read something like that I Go okay. What's the desired outcome of this post right? Is it I'm only speaking to very high level competitive bodybuilders Which I put in the same category as like athletes right pro athletes, right? And that's and all you are and we are getting that crazy and splitting-hair difference on that that information Okay, I understand that but I mean the dude's got Well over a hundred thousand I believe followers, right? Was he that big? Yeah? He's got a decent amount of falling. I know he writes for T nation too So he has he has a very large audience, okay? Bodybuilders the 1% you know I'm saying 1% you can't you can't tell me and let's just say he's geared his Conversation around that 99% of the time. So he's attracted more bodybuilders that person. I don't care There's you still don't have 80% of your followers are Professional bodybuilders most of these people that are following were probably kids just like me in their 20s That are aspiring to look like this guy and he's talking real smart So he sounds like he knows a lot of him from it and he does he writes for T nation the dudes a smart guy He knows what he's talking about and I don't disagree necessarily with the statement that he's saying It's just that I'm you got to understand how this is what this is a difference between being a personal trainer and a Coach when you've communicated message it the same message right a thousand times over to clients You start to realize like what are the behaviors that follow this? That's right And how does it how does the client receive that information like it? You I mean you don't use the jargon that you learn in school or reading your national certifications to a client because you know that They'll never receive it correctly and apply it right. Yeah, so I have to use layman's terms to get a get a very complex piece of information Delivered to them so they can disseminate it and then apply it to their life and when you when you talk on social media and you post something like this when Tens of thousands potentially millions of people are listening and watching to think that you're not losing 90% of those people in the weeds because they don't understand biomechanics at that level and all it really does is tell that young kid that goes Oh, yeah, see I don't need to squat past 90 degrees because I really care mostly about looking bigger and more and more But and meanwhile they don't They're not able to build as much muscle They're not able to look as good as they could it had they worked on that mobility because here's the other argument They're say, oh, well, you know, yeah, you might be talking to bodybuilders But a lot of the people just want to build a lot of muscle so that information must apply to them, too No, no, it doesn't you take a hundred people who really want to build a lot of muscle average people Okay, who really want to build a lot of muscle out of that hundred people You might be lucky enough to find one probably not even one But you might be lucky enough to find one who you could fall in that category of pro bodybuilder Genetics and all that stuff the vast majority are gonna do better with the same stuff that you would apply towards the average person full range of motion control Mobility comp, you know compound movements over isolation movements They're still gonna do the best with that kind of stuff that information applies to such a small percentage of people But even even the way he was communicating even the you know, if the muscle loses tension. Well, yeah You range of motion is nothing work on that. It's not it's nothing without connection. That's not mobility. That's just going deeper Well, and this is to the problem. I know we all had this We went through a lot of different certifications that limited that limited to 90 degrees like a limited So you couldn't bring any weight behind your your neck and you know There was a lots of things where range of motion was considered like this is gonna hurt and harm your clients And so we're gonna we're not gonna pursue anything, you know past 90 degrees and you know the the further I got along my career You know that started to make less and less sense the more back pain the more knee pain all these different things that were You know happening based off of a lack of strength and now, you know Like really pursuing mobility and seeing how you can increase strength Gradually through range of motion like what that did in terms of pain alleviation Overall strength building muscle. It was it was totally in in start contrast to what we learned Yeah, there's these national certification. I remember taking them and I remember my first one I'm in the class and the instructor goes When you bench press you only need to come down to where your arm the back you arms are Parallel to the floor So you want to come down here You don't want to go all the way down and then he would have like a yet like a Mannequin or whatever like a skeleton and he goes look what happens to the shoulder joint when you go all the way down And all these problems can happen. I remember listening to him going. Oh shit, okay And also thinking my head like I can bench way more now because I don't have to go all the way down like this is actually really cool Now, here's why the certifications taught that these are huge organizations. I mean any SM Hundreds of thousands of people They're represented in some of the biggest gym chains in the world And what they're trying to do is they're trying to weigh risk versus reward now the risk of Teaching trainers to train their clients with greater range of motion is are these new trainers going to know enough To be able to get their clients to get better ranges of motion with good control and good stability that requires another level of education understanding or is the risk too high because There are a lot of them are new trainers and if we tell these trainers that going all the way down with a bench press is good And they don't know the difference and they're just gonna force their clients to go all the way down That's getting increased risk of injury. We may be liable. Maybe 24 fitness will stop accepting us as a certification So it's better to err on the side of safety And it's better to tell these trainers do this because it's better than nothing a client doing 90 degree squats is better than not Doing squats at all and it makes you know makes more sense from that standpoint, but the truth is You want better results you want to move better? You your goal should be to increase your range of motion in an appropriate way because that's the way that your body moves Here's one of the problems with training with limited ranges of motion Let's say you only ever squat to 90 degrees or shoulder press to 90 degrees or whatever That's all you ever do Most of the strength that you gain through the years of training is within that range of motion What ends up happening is when you go outside of that range of motion Yeah, you lose strength and you lose stability So now this actually increases your risk of injury in the real world because let's say I don't know Let's say Justin's moving and he's I hate how can you come help me move some stuff? I got you know I got some heavy boxes. I got a bed, you know frame and I'm lifting the bed frame We're trying to get it up on top of something and I just so happened to go below 90 degree now I'm strong enough to hold it up here But for a second I go below 90 and next thing, you know, boom I hurt my shoulder or I I'm down playing with my kids and I get to get up quickly because my kids gonna fall or something But I'm below 90 degrees. I got all the strength outside of it But I have those bad stability blow boom. I hurt my back This is why you get a lot of these gym rats that injure themselves outside of the gym I can't tell you how many times I've heard stories of people who in the gym are just you know Incredible with their strength and whatever and then they hurt their bands. I had you hurt your shoulder I was throwing a Frisbee or my dog pulled me this way and I had to twist and I popped my soul We just lose focus for one second in the gym and they go just you know that that little bit lower than they normally would and They're just in unstable Area now where they don't have the strength to pull themselves out and Inevitably either you dump the weight or you get hurt That's why I wish posts like this would come with like a warning right or because here's the thing Again going back to me being a 20 year old kid that would have read something like this and jumped all over and be like Yeah, I'm not going deeper than 90 degrees is if you asked me Adam, you know, you could build as much or more muscle just by squaring down to 90 degrees. That's the way to go But you may risk Having chronic back pain when you get close to 30 and in mobile hips And you may not be able to squat down in a deep squat and play with your son when you're 35 40 years Yeah, would you if that that may happen if we don't address these things right now? And we just keep pursuing just building maximal muscle and we just will shorten the range of motion up Do you still want to do that? I think I I would have had the foresight to be like, okay I don't want to sacrifice all that can I still build a lot of muscle? That's the question Yeah, am I sacrificing muscle for getting a more mobility and a more connected larger range about that No, you're not say sacrificing muscle You actually will build more muscle and again the studies completely support this. So when people say, oh if you go below 90 like here's a good example We use the shoulder press because this is this one I hear all the time You'll see, you know bodybuilders do this kind of like go down to 90 degrees come up They don't even fully extend so they're doing this and they'll say, you know Oh, it's to maintain tension right in my shoulder feeling that constant squeeze the reason why People say they feel more tension doing that is because they have poor connection at the bottom and they have poor connection at the top The truth is at the top I can and you as a bodybuilder if you're a bodybuilder So your job literally this is your job when you train your job should be to know how to connect to your muscle at any given Moment that's what bodybuilders do best right if you're fully extended up here It's your job to connect to the shoulder like right now. I'm connect to my shoulder If you're at the bottom don't let the weight just sit on your arm connect and activate the shoulder The shoulder can be you can have tension on the shoulder through the entire range of motion The goal is not to lock out allow your joints to support the weight. Nobody ever says that right you can maintain tension Can I keep tension on my quads at the bottom of a squat? I can can I take tension off my quads at the bottom of squat? Well, if I sit on my my calves and I'm relaxing right but you should never do that with an exercise There's never a case with an exercise unless the weight is on the floor and even then I say maintain tension You should never in any range of motion of any exercise lose tension to it never relax in any position Whether it's full extension fully extended or or not That's discipline That's a way of training and you know to eliminate that from the conversation is ridiculous So it again like to Adams or I don't know whoever's point But it was like, you know to me it just it speaks of kind of a lazy approach like okay So we're just gonna eliminate the fact that you can do all these things and not have to like apply aids I'm not gonna have to have things that are supporting me in certain ranges of motion because I haven't put the work in to actually control And own that part. Well, really it's just trying to be a contrarian I mean it's really knowing that it's clickbaity to say something like that because there's gonna be a massive amount of trainers that know better That are gonna speak out and then there's gonna be a group of people that are gonna want to jump on that Bandwagon that sounds good. And again, this is one of these things that really annoys me about our space is that that Conversation is such a high-level conversation for most people. It's so above everybody the average gym goer It's above their pay grade like sure that you don't I would never have that Conversation with somebody in the first three years of training them like there's no reason to even go there Like we have so much stuff. We need to learn and work on so when you pose things out like that You just it's irresponsible in my opinion It's and it's not that much different than the other debate that we get into which is the people that like to debate that, you know Squatting barbell back squatting is not necessary and you don't need to do it And in fact, there's other exercises like hack squats that will build your quads more. I just think it's a bad message Can you argue that? Yeah, you can make the argument for it. Do I think it's true? No I don't think it's true and I think it's a more importantly I think it's a bad message because there's so many health benefits and longevity benefits to learning how to squat properly It's such a functional movement. I mean you off air when we were originally talking about this episode You know Doug talked because Doug's been working a lot the last like two years. I don't know if it was Watching my mobility increase or whatever like that that inspired him or whatever but I know he started to really pursue his range of motion on a squat depth and The the thing that he's reported back is the exact same thing that I noticed I had chronic back pain for most of my 30s like I'm squatting deeper made it go away Squatting deeper made it go away, but of course properly right right and what that was was the pursuit of getting to that this way It wasn't actually just dropping down into a full squat. That's how you hurt yourself exactly that didn't get rid of my low back pain It was every day working on my hip mobility every day working on my ankle mobility Then that allowed me get into a deep range of motion squat that I could control They'll support it and now what's beautiful is I don't do all that mobility stuff anymore Now all I have to do is do good deep squats and it addresses my hip mobility and it dresses my ankle mobility And that the bed and then and then guess what as a sidebar I've built as much or more muscle in my legs with less effort than what I was doing in the shorter range of motion I'm glad you said that too because You have that this is very important It's not for just the sake of range of range of motion. It's you have to do it with good control Good stability and good mobility and if your range of if you're trying to increase that range of motion It means you need to work on those things once those things are there Now you have a greater range of motion Not just going deeper not just having a larger range of motion because if you don't own it you're going to hurt yourself But you know back to the argument of the shorter range versus the longer range what builds more muscle look as a trainer I would get clients all the time people who are deconditioned who I mean They couldn't even do a half squat without feeling pain, right? So they they couldn't even go down to parallel and they would do pain now. Did I say to them? That's okay. We'll just do five inches and we'll just continue to load that because that's your range of motion Of course not now nobody would say that That's not going to give them great results at all if anything that'll make things much worse So my goal was to continue to increase the range of motion But for some reason all of a sudden 90 degrees becomes the that's oh no no It's good to go deeper But 90 degrees is where we want to stop and you ever wonder why Where 90 degrees came from where where's that where's that number come from they made that shit up You know the truth is the truth is a squat is a Fundamental human movement and the truth is there's full squats and that's it Everything other than that is is is less than a full squat, but the 90 degrees I think it's because for most people who train Once they hit 90 degrees going beyond that requires a little bit more work a little bit more effort And more focus on mobility when you sit in a chair and you sit on a toilet. Is that always 90 degrees? Yeah, I mean there's there's chairs and where you're less than right or or greater than I guess the range of motion But yeah, it's just to me It's just so silly to to to focus on that is the the degree of of of like anything past that isn't safe In life in general, we're going beyond that already right and so it's like it's like this argument when people say These exercises are dangerous and these exercises are safe So don't do this exercise Because it's dangerous the truth is the thing that makes an exercise safe or dangerous is you It's your body Any movement? I don't care what the movement is by the way any movement that you have complete control over and mobility In stability with any movement that you have those prerequisites with is safe for you Any movement where those things are not there for you is now dangerous A bar a dumbbell curl the most basic simple exercise that probably exists If you lack the stability the mobility the connection to do a full dumbbell curl That full dumbbell curl is dangerous for you now. I'll go with one of the more dangerous exercises Jefferson curl like you look this one up right this looks like everything you're not supposed to do With the barbell you literally round your back on the way down. This is an old Gymnastics less than one percent of people can do it right right look at that exercise Look super dangerous and for most people probably don't do it But for people who can do it with good control good stability good strength good connection that exercise is very safe Well, the truth is if you ever want to use that Range of motion at one point in your life should probably train it You should train in it and that to me that was what was never communicated to me as a young kid And that would have been the game that would have been it for me If you would just sit that said if someone would have told me at 25 say hey adam If you don't Work on getting to a place where you can squat down with a little bit even just a little bit of weight On your back with good control and stability you're going to lose that And can you picture yourself even at 20 or you think way ahead? I'm gonna think all the way to 40 because you don't have a kid till then When you're 40, are you going to want to be able to squat down and play play legos with your son without having to like Hold yourself to the side because your back hurts so bad and switching from hip to hip because you're so uncomfortable And do you want to be able to do that? Like of course if someone would have asked me that question I'd say no, but no one's talking about that You know and and you see these pages where we're just we're just talking about building muscle We're just talking about building muscle. It's like, okay Don't get me wrong I get that there is a community of people that that speaks to that they are in the sport of bodybuilding And you know, you could ask a a pro bodybuilder and he may say I don't give a shit if I can't If I I just want to win and whatever's going to get me there faster and we'll take whatever stuff they can't To enhance it and truth be told okay Working on the mobility working on the the range of motion It takes time it's going to take it's going to prolong the results right It may it may take a little longer to get to a place where your legs are as big right So for a guy or girl who is in competition Now and the reason for that is because you just can't load when you're working in that new range of motion Right yet yet right so it took time, you know, I took a good solid I don't know year and a half two-year hiatus from really lifting really heavy working on on mobility and getting that good control But now I can I can load the bar as heavy at a 90 degree squat as I can all the way down astagrass And I'm in the thing is back to the the the original point I'm trying to make that I think is so important is The majority of people that I know that I have that I trained even the ones that said all I really care about is building muscle If I would tell them okay If if we sacrifice this though, are you still okay with that or would you like to have both because we can have both? We can actually get to a place Where I can take you into a deeper range of motion And then I can also make sure that you don't lose this movement that you may want to have at one point in your life You know, it's funny in the 90s There was a book and I can't remember the name of this book, but it was a book that came out that talked all about Partial repetitions and on the cover it of it was uh, paul de mayo is a deceased bodybuilder now But he was a bodybuilder from the east coast. They called him quadzilla big legs short reps will kill you and and That's a new book. No, something else. I'm sure had to do with all the drug and stuff trainees. Yeah But anyway in this book and I can't remember the name of it All they talked about was how it's all about load and tension Range of motion is not important. So in other words, let's say you could do a full squat with 200 pounds You're going to get better results squatting half squats with 400 pounds because the load is so much higher So this entire book was based off of this partial range of motion Philosophy well, it went nowhere it went nowhere because it didn't work the the literature completely didn't support it Um Range of motion is connected to muscle growth along with intensity and volume But look it's it's as simple as this a half curl is not going to build muscle as did my bicep like a full curl As the fibers move and stretch and move past each other each point that they move past there's connections That start to cause damage when there's load if you're not fully extended You're not getting the full capacity of that muscle. So full range of motion that are connected again Remember the prerequisite that said you got to be connected stable Mobile you got to have all those things Are part of the formula if that's there that greater range of motion You are sending more of a muscle building signal. In fact Lighter weight with a greater range of motion Is going to create is going to build more muscle than heavier weight with a shorter range of motion Is so long as the intensity is equal if they're both equally as hard It's the larger range of motion that tend to build more muscle and this is just an absolute fact and it's funny You know, I again I learned this later on as a kid training and I remember I When I managed trainers, I loved managing trainers for a lot of different reasons But one reason was I would see all these different trainers from different walks of life And it was really cool to learn from different fitness professionals And you know, I've talked about the gymnast that worked for me For a long time and he was the guy that you know showed me that you know Curl grip, you know curls is better for biceps than barbell curls and all that stuff And I remember him doing all these like crazy range of motion exercises like behind the neck presses back back in the 90s When I was first a trainer as a personal trainer, I was a huge no no Yeah, everybody's like don't do anything behind the neck. No pull downs behind the neck No shoulder presses behind the neck totally bad for you. It's bad for the shoulder and I remember destroy your shoulder In fact, I had an instructor at one of my certifications and he this was his visual He took a towel He had like this this bath towel and he twisted the bath towel and he goes This is what happens when you do behind the neck presses and he goes like this with this twisted and I remember like, oh, Shit, that's gonna be terrible. That happens. But anyway, it's got this gymnast had incredible Deltoids and would do this exercise and I'm like, doesn't that hurt and it goes no Why would it hurt because I own the movement? I remember thinking like, yeah Oh, yeah, I've never done those before and I probably should go real light and see if I can get myself to be able to Do them and I did I started with literally just the bar because I'd never really trained that way before And gradually over time was able to add weight and I saw incredible results on my shoulders From working through this new range of motion. Even with the lightweight. Here's the beauty of by the way Training in new ranges of motion as you start to own that novel again. It's novel. It's like a new exercise It is it's like, okay When you first start squatting in your in your brand new and beginner It's not unheard of to add five or ten pounds every single week to your lift initially, right? Those newbie gains, right? After you train for a while, it really starts to plateau. Obviously you can't keep progressing that way Otherwise I'd be squatting 10,000 pounds by now, right? It doesn't work that way. So it's like, how do I tap into Those newbie novel gains one way to do it is to improve your mobility and connection and train in new ranges of motion Because here's what happens Let's say all you ever do is squat to 90 degrees and let's say you squat with 300 pounds. That's what you're You're kind of stuck at that's what you work with but now you're working on mobility So now you gotta back way the fuck down now you're down to 135 pounds and you're you know Three inches below parallel and you're slowly working on mobility Here's what ends up happening as that starts to work for you You start to gain 10 pounds on your squat every single week again And what correlates with that is new muscle growth that starts to happen You start to see new things happening. So and again the studies are quite clear on this They've actually done studies on this in compared short ranges of motion to long ranges of motion And the larger range of motion are just superior and not just for the target muscle But for all the muscle around one thing I hate that bodybuilder saves the noise of shit out of me As I said, yeah, but I just want to target the quads as if A deeper squat is going to take muscle away from the quads No at the very least you'll build the same amount of quad growth Yeah, but you'll get some hamstring you'll get some cav and you'll get some glutes to go Yeah, you're gonna get more muscle in other parts of your body. Is that like a bad thing? Yeah, well, I always I don't know. I guess I was trying to think of an analogy for this But like in terms of reinforcing like the weakest points of your body Like I just I don't feel like that's a conversation a lot of muscle building enthusiasts have like You can build so much more muscle when you actually address a lot of the stabilizing muscles that contribute to You know keeping your joints in the most optimal position And it's amazing what happens the amount of force that you can output once everything feels like it's not going anywhere It's super sturdy You know, like if you think of this with any other machines out there What do you do to them to be able to increase their load capacity you reinforce them? Yeah, absolutely And you're you're right because especially as you become more advanced The number one of the number one limiting factors is lack of stability In your joints in your body your body will actually prevent you from getting stronger Because it knows you'll hurt yourself or worst-case scenario. You injure yourself doing, you know, your your your routine Exercises in which case now. Oh, I ate a peck strain. Oh, I got shoulder, you know rotators. I can't bench press anymore I can't squat anymore. I can't exercise. We have to talk a little bit more too in depth like about like Doug and I's experience with our low back because I didn't really Fully grasp this until I went all the way through this and and then and now have a much better understanding Because I think this point is the most important point is When you start to limit the range of motion in joints that should have a greater range of motion Then when you call upon that in real life, then what ends up happening is other muscles Overcompensate for that the overcompensation of other muscles ends up Creating these deviations in your posture and you get these imbalances which then Cause chronic pain. So if you limit your ability to get full extension in your shoulders Then what will end up happening is parts of your traps and your upper back will start to Overcompensate and then it'll start to notice that I get Stiffness in my neck or my shoulders starts clicking and hurting all the time And it's related from you limiting that range of motion in your shoulder and the body starting to overcompensate The same thing happens in the hips and causes the low back pain So even though you want to build all this optimal muscle and I want to focus specifically on the quads Do you in order to sacrifice those things or those not important to you? Do you want not want to deal with that 10 15 years down the road? Because if someone would have communicated that really well to me when I was in 20 when I was 20 I'd say yeah, I really do want to get buff I really do want to build just my quads in this workout today But I also don't want to be in that situation in 10 years because I didn't address it Now picture you sitting in that squat and like like playing with your son with Legos and you've only done 90 degrees And now you're trying to figure out now how to reach out in front of you And now your back is compensating, you know, and it's rounding a bit and all these things And you're starting to really feel that sharp pain in your back or just sitting all the way down You have you own that position. You're in control. You can be in an upright position even and you know Use your hands in front of you totally different. You can't even do it. No, you can't even do it You can't I mean I and I remember because I was there I was I remember when I first started working on this It uh, and I think uh, I think kelly starrett does this Did this like challenge like can you sit in a squat for five or 10 minutes or something like that? Like you'd be amazed how many people just can't get down there Yeah, they're their heels will rise off the ground their shins will be on fire like crazy Their low back will be on on fire their knees will be stressed And they'll pop out of it in about a minute at most and that's just because that's how long they could tolerate the pain for Yeah, because they're not comfortably there So that's most people and a lot of that is because of information like this because we're we're telling people that Are training in the gym that are trying to improve their body that they don't need to do this It's like Okay, no, this is not a good message for anybody and even like you your point sows that Even if you are the competitive bodybuilder, you can still learn to get a greater range of motion And still build optimal muscle or more muscle that way But even I mean I I think that everybody should consider that because you want an advantage. Anyway, you look at right right And by the way, you know, I I even talk about this a little bit in the the book I wrote the resistance training revolution where I talk about the stigma That surrounds resistance training in the sense that it makes you tighter, right this whole myth That lifting weights will make you muscle bound That was the term that they used to use back in the day made you muscle bound or made you tight Now that came from people observing Hardcore bodybuilders move in everyday life and you'd see these guys and girls walking around. He'd be like, oh They're tight. Look how they he can't even scratch his own ass or look how he turns and look how he's moving or whatever Like I don't want to move like that Well, the reason why they move like that they built a ton of muscle They built all this armor around these kind of limited ranges of motion And so that's the way that their body now moves when people train properly with resistance training you get better Movement you get better Flexibility if you do it wrong. Well, yeah, you're gonna start to cause a lot of problems I think we should start to give people some tips though It's because I'm sure now that we've made the case and people listening are like, okay I want to increase My range of motion. What are some steps that I can take to do that? Now first off I want to start calling this a functional range of motion. Okay So range of motion is how far you can do something Functional range of motion is how far can you do something with control? Tensions stability and good mobility. Okay, so identify that for yourself first and foremost So like you might be able to sit in a squat But can you sit in a squat with all those prerequisites? If not then find Where your real functional range of motion is? That's the starting point Now the goal is going to be can we increase that functional range of motion? That's the important thing inch by inch Right. Well is very gradual progression And you know, I would I would start with thing. I think that uh, kelly starrett with supple leper did an incredible job here. I think uh Can't think of his doctor or whatever. Dr. Andrew. Thank you who did uh, ken stretch Um, the these are things that these changed my life So though that that book that certification absolutely changed my life As far as like what type of movements and exercises should I be doing in the gym or in your home in this case? To complement what we're talking about right now because it isn't as simple as oh This is where my range of motion is trying to challenge it by going a little deeper or pushing it further You there's there's a there's a neurological disconnect going on here. I am not I'm not Neurologically connected to that new range of motion. So I need to train the brain first I need to train the brain. It's all brain training. How do I intrinsically create that tension when I need it? That's right And that sounds really complex for somebody who has no idea what this is what we're talking about and seems foreign And this is also why we did the webinars, right? So we have two free webinars Uh, the maps prime pro one probably a little more specific to what we're talking about today Um, where I take you through I think I took you through five or so. It's maps prime pro webinar dot com That's what maps prime pro webinar dot com dog prime pro webinar dot com prime pro webinar Sorry, don't even know our webinar webinar. That's all right. Yeah, go to that What follow that it's free and and go through that because and what's important when you do these these exercises This is what I think the the thing that I learned right and then this I should also credit Dr. Justin Brink too so because brink was the first person to take me through ken stretch and some of these movements And he was very clear to me that listen adam we're training A neurological connection here. So you can't just Look at me in this position and then try your best to get in that position and and sit there and relax like a yoga stretch Or a static stretch He goes what you need to do is we you need to intensify The the you have to turn the muscles on yeah, and and it should be you should be working like an exercise the entire You're contracting the muscle, but uh, that's something that you have to actively do while you're getting into the Yeah, yeah, and here's why right so when you stretch a muscle passively like the old school stretches Right, so let's say i'm just like stretching my hamstring. So i'm gonna i'm gonna You know bend down touch my toes relax In little by little i'll start to get deeper and deeper and deeper as my hamstrings start to relax to stretch out What's happening is My central nervous system is getting this signal That it's stretching and it first it's tight because it's protecting But then once it realizes things are safe Is it reduces the signal to my hamstrings and my hamstrings start to slowly relax and open up So the muscle itself is not becoming longer necessarily It's just relaxing because the cns signal is telling it to relax Now there's some benefit to that and we can get to that in just a second But what that's not doing is that's not increasing my functional range of motion All that's doing is increasing my range of motion because my central nervous system is disconnecting in essence Now i know it doesn't really do this but just for the sake of this Of this conversation it's disconnecting and allowing me to get a great great range of motion What i want is functional range of motion. So the difference would be I'm doing that hamstring stretch then when i get a little bit more range of motion I flex my hamstrings and turn them on so now i'm telling my central nervous system We have a great range of motion connect to this new range of motion now earlier adam you were talking about how You don't even know how to connect to certain muscles. You're training your brain. Here's a great example of that Okay If you've ever worked with anybody who just had a baby and if you're watching or listening and you've and you've had a baby You know how weird it is to try to connect to your core muscles after the baby's born Like try to draw in your midsection or try to do A slow sit-up actually don't do that because you might actually cause problems Those muscles were so turned off in order to create space for the baby They had to stretch all the way out that when you go to reconnect to them, it's like a foreign muscle It's like you love it's almost like you unplugged the wire to the speaker and you're trying to get the speaker to make some noise It's not going to happen because there's no connection So the first thing you can do or you need to do before you go train it Is get that connection to happen again and that's what things like kin stretch are all about and that's what proper Mobility training well another example that for people that have never had a baby But maybe have broken something all right and been casted up for a while and you've been casted up You know, let's say you broke your forearm or your leg or something and you've been casted up for months on months And we know one atrophy has happened right it looks like you lost everything But then like you take the memory remember the first time that cast came off and you you're like looking at your fingers They're trying to tell it to move right trying to tell them to move and it's like they barely do And it takes a while before you can start to get a weak signal It's like barely even that's right and the reason why is because what has happened because you you've been casted up The brain realizes that and goes like oh, we're not we're not we're not using this anymore So we don't need it and it prunes it off and it says i'm going to reprioritize neurons other places in the body That we're using a lot of and stop sending it over to this area that we're not using That's what happens when you don't deep squat you don't deep squat and the brain goes. Oh, we don't need that anymore He doesn't want to do that anymore. So i'm going to reprioritize it other places If i understood that like i know now i would have never shortened my i would have never done these little quarter squats I would have always been pursuing a great arrangement, especially in a movement as fundamental as getting down in a squatted position Right and it's because you know and we all thought this that strength at all everything to do with muscles It's the muscles that are strong. It's the and that's that's not entirely true Uh a lot of your strength comes from this signal comes from the central nervous system the command center That's telling the muscles what to do and that builds Just like muscles do in fact that builds before muscles ever build when you first start doing an exercise The first thing that starts to adapt Is your central nervous system is your brain? Or the is the connection that that's why it's one of the reasons why your strength gains can be so fast Initially without any accompanying muscle gains at first because you're learning a new movement You're learning a new exercise So if this is you and you're trying to increase your range of your functional range of motion Identify your limiting factors Oftentimes the limiting factors have to do with joints that you might not think are The problem in other words, right if i'm doing a squat And i can't go all the way down and i feel it and it's like oh i can't i go all the way down It feels tight in my my hips feel tight The hips might be a part of it, but it also might be coming from your ankles and your feet And the reason why your hips feel tight is because your ankles and feet Don't have the functional range of motion to support a deeper squat. So what do you do? Do you practice deeper squats? Part of it that's part of it, but really the bigger part of it is targeting those areas So I would go down and do you know a combat stretch for my ankles. I would work on my foot connection I would work on my hip internal and external rotation ability. So i'm doing things like 90 90. I'm also Lightning the load weight or doing no load at all and going a little deeper than I normally do and slow going slow Focusing on connecting to that new range of motion. By the way, here's a great way to make that happen to you even faster When you get down to a new range of motion that you're not entirely familiar with But you're starting to get connected to don't put any weight on your back or whatever Go there and hold that position hold it and squeeze. Yes really squeeze as hard as you can like max effort squeeze Like we're really trying to train the body to identify We need all the troops. We need to get more muscle fibers involved We need to activate and so that's a very valid method to then you know build a lot of strength support in that specific angle It is and whatever your this new functional range of motion is is now treat this like a brand new exercise What I mean by that is when you approach an exercise for the first time There's a level of respect that you have like okay new exercise gotta go slow Focus on my form focus on my technique make sure you're cautious Just because it's still a squat doesn't mean it's the same squat, right? It's a different exercise now So the goal is to not push it and here's the problem and this is especially for the fitness fanatics And I run into this all the time you get a new range of motion You start to feel good. The first thing you want to do is push the weight That's when you hurt yourself. So you want to go very very slow Take your time allow this new range of motion to become very connected And then watch your body start to progress and again focus on those sticking points But I love that tension position get in that position the new position Hold tense get your form in technique perfect Activate everything teach your body to Fire properly and then slowly add weight and then watch what happens. Look if you like our content You'll love mind pump free calm head over there and download our guides We have a lot of free guides that help you burn body fat build muscle Even become a better personal trainer. You can also find all of us on instagram So you can find justin at mind pump justin me at mind pump sal and adam at mind pump adam Imagine if the goal was to be the best Soccer player on the field or the best baseball player on the field or the best basketball player on the court You would not go and practice your techniques with full intensity all the time That wouldn't make you the best you would practice that technique and then occasionally you'd go hard you play a game