 All right guys welcome to day four the 21 convention 2010 This is it and it's gonna go by faster that you can ever imagine and we'll be out of here and I'll see you in the year So I think you guys are coming appreciate a big time Our first speaker today is Bill de Simone. I got it, right? Yes always screws name up Very very important speaker that I'm very honored to have here everything that Mark Doug and Drew have talked about is gonna be further intensified and amplified by bill in a very interesting way and the Bill is basically I think in my opinion the world's leader in biomechanics as it relates to exercise What he's gonna talk to you about today? No one else is talking about hence Doug really have to sky up with good reason You're at a book also called no time exercise excellent book That I highly recommend. I have a copy myself. It's my backpack. I need to get assigned awesome book And he has a new one coming out that will also be really really good So here from New Jersey bill to Simone. Thank you for coming. Thank you, man. I Will thank you Anthony Just to be clear though. I have no academic background in biomechanics So I'm not a surgeon not a physical therapist not an exercise physiologist. I'm a trainer I've been training myself since 1970 I've been training clients since 1983 I've been certified by NSCA and ace a few times But around 1998 I ruptured my own biceps and triceps training and that led me to biomechanics books So for the last dozen years or so, I've been working on Taking the biomechanics material and relating it to what we do in a workout So This is what I hope we get out of today Basically, why the biomechanics matter as opposed to just whaling way on yourself in the course of a workout First though, let me let me just show you some of the stuff I learned from before the biomechanics All right, this is Muscular Development magazine 1973 First magazine I bought off the newsstand first article. I read in it Talked about a Pennsylvania man Found dead in his basement on his bench press He obviously missed the lift hit his chest the ball rolled onto his throat choked in the death. All right. Well, welcome to weight training So later on when I talk about rare catastrophic injuries, that's the type of thing I'm talking about This was a trade one of the first trade paperbacks on exercise and if you note the Groovy mustache and the exquisite form displayed in the squat exercise So that's a kind of the caliber of instruction that was out there Then of course Please tell me you know who this is Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I did this at an nsca conference once and people had no idea who this was This was you know, the begin what muscle and fitness came from muscle builder power and As you can tell from the picture on the right Mind-blowing calves the calves are certainly the first thing that jumped out at you in that picture, right? All right, and then one of his contemporaries Please tell me you know who this is Okay, thank you Again, I did this at an nsca conference once it was guy It was you know chiropractors and therapists and they said oh what happened to his skin and I'm like this night It's you know the the Eric Banner Hulk movie had just come out. I said are you serious? So that was Lou Ferrigno at 25 years apart and he still looks pretty close aside from the green He still looks like you're not kind of shaped today the other thing we had you had the magazines on the newsstand and Then you had the the courses that they would sell in the back of the magazines so this was like a comic book and we had a staple in it and was just folded over and You know, that's not the printing. That's not font That's typewriting because if you ran your finger across it it would smudge So this was Frank Zane Another guy in pretty good shape still today and near and dear to hit guys. This is Mike Menser From 76 and a little bit later in the the area of exercise He had he had his own niche at the end But his real his real role was to kind of bridge the bodybuilders with Arthur Jones So Jones wasn't really bodybuilding minded, but he developed nautilus and medx machines The on the right is the original nautilus machine from DeLand, Florida, and then this was some of the mainstream stuff that came out education of a bodybuilder and three more reps and If you notice in the top, this is this is from a George Butler book on Arnold And if you notice above his head in the reflections as Menser is coming because at the time Even though even though Arnold obviously went on to much bigger things and Menser didn't At the time Arnold thought Menser was his top competition not only in the sport But in terms of his appeal to the general public, that's why the Menser is coming sign up on top of the mirror Now one thing about this material the bodybuilder the bodybuilding material at the time There was absolutely no biomechanics in it whatsoever. I mean it wasn't even wrong. It was so far off It might have reflected what they actually did so it wasn't quite fiction But the rationale behind it was somewhere between wishful thinking and magic But it was it is very it was very inspiring at the time So this is the best shape I could get in around 1996 Notice the intact biceps and triceps This was after rupturing the biceps notice the divot Well but subtly indicated by the fluorescent green circle and The left triceps is intact the right side. There's no medial head So the the head of the tricep closest to my body is pretty much gone at this point So So in between those two pictures I had ruptured my own biceps and triceps and When I looked into the injury What came out of the the not the muscle material, but the medical material is That that was a very common injury for people who are 60 years old for males around 60 years old But I was 40 at the time So my conclusion was the only thing I had done to accelerate the wear and tear on my shoulders Was weight training in general, but specifically using a really extreme range of motion so When they healed and I went back to working out I noticed that in some exercises. I lost no strength whatsoever. I could bench press I could chin up I could do a standing curl with the same weight same intensity as before Some exercises I couldn't even get into position I would try to do a concentration curl I would try to do a one-arm triceps and I couldn't even my arm would be shaking all over the place I had no control over it So I put all the exercise books aside and Rob the physical therapist friend of mine's biomechanics textbooks. So these are the the academic Definitions of biomechanics For for me I look at it as Looking at how the bones and muscles of the spine handle load How the shapes and connections at your joints Effect movement and how the muscles apply and resist force through the limbs But in the context of working out over a lifetime You know in fairness to the bodybuilding material if you take it at face value The point of that stuff was to train for a photo shoot or for a contest It was never intended to be something you did for 20 30 40 50 years So 35 years or so ago as the mainstream Population became more interested in exercise The bodybuilders were the ones who knew the way around a weight room So everyone tried to train like a bodybuilder And now obviously if you're an executive or a homemaker or a student athlete That level of time and effort and discomfort is completely inappropriate so You know we call the personal training, but the idea came up of tailoring the exercise program to the person Or what the person need the exercise program for nowadays they call that functional training So even though functional training as a whole has kind of gone off the rails a little bit as has personal training the idea of Training for a purpose not just not just spending hours in the gym Did it took took took you know took hold So this leads to our first our first question Just a quick show of hands here Who thinks a barbell squat is more functional than a leg press who would a barbell squat fans? I said what do we got here? So about half. So I guess everybody else thinks the leg press is more functional On the side get out of here quick quick quick a quick snap judgment, which is more functional squad of bench press leg press Good Well, that's a good question, which is a better exercise. That's okay. It's okay because that's I'm not going to answer that We're just going to explore it. Okay so What does functional mean that's a good question and that right now in the exercise arena The finding functional training is an issue because it's used so broadly. It's used so broadly it covers bodyweight exercises apparatus vibration machines cable machines that kettlebells That's your right. It's become almost almost meaningless, but but In what terms function is relating to its purpose relating to its design Really quickly I played rugby back in college and for us functional was what was going to help us play our sport better and be better at it And for us the big two were always Squats clean and jerks like we preach those and I mean we're probably wrong I'm guessing but I'm looking forward to the exploration of it, but that's what functional meant for our purposes. Okay Fair enough So here we go. All right, so We're gonna look at the the bones and muscles involved here. Okay, so we're gonna start We're gonna start the midsection with the pelvis and work our way down So Pelvis is obviously fairly solid and thick, right? One immovable joint, but it's a solid block of bone on top of femurs Strongest bones in the body right thick strong beams Which are on top of more beams the tibia and the fibula, okay? Which form with with the feet form a tripod, okay? So you have basically below the knee you have a tripod you have the two shin bones plus the foot Above the knee you have the long beam of the femur resting on top of a solid block of bone the pelvis And when we look at the muscles Involved in moving those bones you've got the glutes connecting the pelvis to the femur, right? Obviously a big muscle We've got three three hamstrings a decent sized muscle can connecting the pelvis to the lower leg and Then another big set of muscles the quads connecting pelvis and the femur to the lower leg So below the waist we've got big bones big muscles Few relatively few attachments Pulling in few directions basically straighten the hip and straighten the knee, right now. We're going to look above the waist So we have three sections of vertebrae you have the lumbar thoracic and cervical Five lumbar vertebrae, okay? These are the biggest thickest vertebrae at the bottom of your spine and They interlock so they don't rotate or bend to the side well and the function of that stability and of that size Is to support all the weight above it Sitting on top of the the lumbar or the thoracic And if you look carefully you can see that the low the most The lower most bones of the thoracic the ones just on top of the lumbar are bigger and as you move towards the head the bones gets get smaller All right That's because as you move towards the head it's supporting less and less of a load also Notice the the processes sticking out the back of the thoracic The the this literally the spines They're sticking out because the thoracic Isn't as locked together as lumbar the thoracic is designed to rotate and those spines basically stop the rotation after about five degrees each or so the Now not not shown here is the cervical vertebrae, okay? But as you might guess there they're smaller than the thoracic and have less restrictions on rotation because again They're only supporting the weight of the head So if we're just looking at the bones Bigger bones on the bottom a descending load at the top you're looking at a pyramid You're looking at a structure that's designed to support less weight as you move towards the top. All right, so Now starting from the bones we're going to work our way out muscle-wise the deepest level layer Connecting the spine or the rotator is which connect each vertebrae to the next horizontally and Each one is very short as is the The next layer above that the multifidus which connects each vertebrae diagonally to the one above it So but so this is the shortest the multifidus is slightly longer, but the short length suggests Their function is to hold together hold statically not to twist the spine which would which would go with The thoracic you do need to be able to twist because the ribs are attached to the thoracic So you do need more general mobility up around the ribs, but the lumbar has to support the weight of your upper body The next layer is up semi-spinalis and rectus spiny they're a little bit longer more superficial semi-spinalis connects the thoracic to the points above it Direct the spine a connects the lumbar and lower thoracic with the points above that So now the the most superficial muscles which are longer Do account for more of the range of motion around the spine? All right, so let's get back to the original question here below the waist Big bones big muscles few attachments few directions Above the waist many bones in a pyramid structure Many small muscles Okay, so you have you have basically a mobile pyramid What happens when you put a barbell on top of your shoulders? What happens that pyramid structure? Nobody nobody would design a tabletop with a pyramid base and put the tabletop on top of the pyramid If your structure is designed to support less load towards the top You wouldn't do that and then be shocked when it when the tabletop when it didn't work Okay The leg press on the other hand Has you move? Big weight with the big bones and big muscles of your body Also with the squat now to a degree your back muscles will get stronger as If you train with the barbell on your back, all right But don't forget there's also discs in between the vertebrae and there are nerves coming through there So you're by adding as your leg hips and as your hips and legs get stronger And you're adding more weight to that bar. You're loading the spine and a bunch of different ways not just musculately With me so far Do you see do you see where I'm going with this? Somehow barbell squats in the in the muscle media are considered more functional than a leg press But the question is functional for what? If you're if you're a power lifter and you have to squat if that's your your competition Yes, you have to squat you have to use a barbell squat because it's very specific But if you're an athlete and you're trying to train the muscles of your lower body The the the bar on the shoulders completely inverts the function of the spine Questions complaints. Yes, sir. What if you're training for a vertical jump? Is this is still more functional to use a leg press? Whether you're training for a vertical jump rugby MMA your spine is your spine right, so You know a vertical jump your Think about what's happening here the muscle of your spine are just supporting Descent you know descending weight as it moves up so Matching a barbell squat with that particular sport Again, you've inverted the demands you've inverted what the body has to do I Realized what I'm saying goes completely counter to sports conduct sports coaching muscle media. What have you? Okay, but your spine is your spine. I mean regardless of your sport So As far as a barbell squat goes, okay, some of the negatives would be The strain on the back muscles and the discs of the of the actual spine a regular squat getting getting to what you getting to the point you make though is Without the barbell The squatting motion does is more functional Your spine muscles can support the lighter. We're loaded the top of the head The Let me get here mechanically The bar the sticking point of a barbell squat happens at about the joint angle for peak torque for your glutes and your quads So I'll explain more about peak torque peak torque in a minute, but it does vary the resistance appropriately a regular freehand squat So the issue becomes how do you make it more challenging with a freehand squat? Now some some other joint issues with the squat We'll go into the squat a little bit more if you notice if you squat down too low You're you're you look the curve in your lower back flattens out even though the spine is curved overall With the normal spine curves the discs in between are the pressure is flat on them If you flatten the curve or you over bend it or you twist the spine Now one side of the disc gets pinched and pinched the other side herniates or like blows out You know you can get away with that, you know once twice ten years twenty years But in time that pinching and blowing out causes problems with your back so When you squat you should if you're going to use the squat as an exercise You should only go so low as you can maintain the curves in your back so you should hold the curves in your back steady and As you descend then if someone's watching you or if you can tell when your back curve flattens, that's the bottom If you if you want to preserve it over time The health of your back the other the other joint to be concerned about is the knee Now the the patella in your knee you can live without a patella, okay You know patella's get crushed they get injured All that means is your quads aren't as strong as with the patella Because what the patella does is it keeps the line it gives you an internal lever It keeps the line of force from the quads away from the axis of the knee So what happens is basically the patella deflects the force from the quads and the counter force from the shin The lower you go in the squat though the more pressure is on that patella So think of it in terms of like a bow and arrow When the when the string is straight. There's not much pressure on your fingers The further out you pull it You're feeling more attention on it and that's what's happening at the patella if you go deeper into the squat This picture yet again Now it's no longer a bow and arrow now. It's a crowbar So now what's happening is if you're familiar with a crowbar You have a long long end and a short business end and you slip the short business end under the load And you crank as far away on the handle as you can When you get too deep in the squat the femur is the crowbar Where your calf hits the hamstring is the axis and the business end is your knee So if you drop this low, you're you're in effect trying to crowbar your knee apart Now leg press you can still run through the same problems This is a 45 degree angle leg press. That's a horizontal leg press in the older days Leg presses were built on a vertical rack. So you'd be lying on your back on the floor and pushing the weights straight up That made it very difficult to maintain this the curves in your lower back So if you're lying on your back and your feet are pushing back at you the curve in your lower back flattened out So at the feet of the purpose of using a leg press if the purpose was to relieve some of the pressure on your back Well now you're putting your back to putting pressure on your back again It's a little bit easier with the 45 degree leg press And some of them today for instance the nitrile leg press has the curves built into the the seat pad Now with the leg press most of them you can adjust the seat back okay, so Maybe not clear, but in this in this case the seat back is pushed up to 90 degrees So at the bottom the person's knees are jammed into their armpits and in the second one the seat back is as reclined as the machine allows now here's what happens the the Peak torque for the glutes the joint angle where the glutes are biomechanically strongest is at about 70 degrees of flexion It's right about right about here if you crank the seat back of the leg press as high as it can go Well your quads basically your femurs reach about 90 degrees of flexion and the exercise is over because you can lock out So even though you feel it a lot in your group and in the back side You're really not coming near challenging the strength of the glutes because where the glutes are strongest There's no more exercise you've locked out If you recline the seat back as far as you can so that your finished position looks more like a standing up squat Now you're going to challenge the glutes and your quads. It won't just be it won't just be a quad exercise All right, let's go before you move on to full range of motion any question any discussion comment on leg press in the squats. Yes, sir So Glassman CrossFit he talked a lot about how the reasons the leg press isn't as functional Whatever that may mean jargon terms Has to do with the way that the spine isn't mobilized property properly And I wonder if if what he's talking about is the way the positioning in a seated position That's not really a natural form for the spine to be bearing loads. Anyway, or was this mark mark talking Mark says I'm talking about no Greg Glassman and founder of CrossFit Okay well Well There might be something to that Okay, it might be that The most functional way of training Your lower body might be with a form of body weight squat Okay, because now you are mobilizing everything Issue becomes how do you make it harder? Obviously the cross-fin answer is more and more reps faster and faster, but that's got complications also I if a no if a nitro leg presses and available I'll lean towards one-legged type movements If anyone wants to demonstrate I'll put somebody through a quick leg leg exercises But for instance a split squat with one leg in front of the other or a quote reverse lunge I know Mark Cissan's a big fan of walking lunges with weights in his hands So all of those arguably if you want to argue which is more functional might be More so than a squat or the barbell squat or the leg press if the question is though I want to train my legs to get as big or as strong as possible Then any body weight exercise is just it's just it's it's not going to line up You know what do you have to do a hundred body weight squats to to and if you do a hundred body weight squats Yes, 101 might be impossible, but now you're working on endurance Okay, you're not really lifting heavy for fast twitch fibers or to Challenge the strength the force capability of the muscle So the question really is why is the person training? You know truly functional training frankly is to do a sport forget the weight room forget artificial light forget the classes if You if you're a dancer if you're a martial artist if you're an athlete practice your sport You can't get much more Specific than that, but it's an inefficient way of getting stronger bigger muscles Answer your question. Oh, I mean I guess what I see you're saying is that leg press is probably safer Then a heavy body weight squat Well, I would say leg press is definitely Leg press definitely safer safer than a barbell squat Okay If you are good, let me try put this in context if you are going to a barbell squat There are things you can do to make it less dangerous If you if you're not married to the barbell squat then a leg press and you still want to train heavy for your lower body a leg press is probably good with some tweaks is going to be next safest It's gonna be safer and If you're more concerned with the body working as a unit then some kind of body weight squat or body weight Lunge is probably the most relevant, but you're not going to get as strong doing body weight squats and lunges as you are with any kind of weight So if I was selling body weight only classes, I would I would have that position also It depends again. It depends with the question. It depends. It depends why the person's training really But it almost sounds to me like there's no perfect answer and it comes down to what your goals are what you want to do Right. Is that like what you're saying? Right and a lot of times these arguments what's better hit versus bodybuilding versus functional training It misses that first question. Why is why is the person exercising in the first place? Again, if you want to train heavy putting a barbell on your back or doing some kind of body weight leg exercise It's not it's not the answer. You just you just can't You know, it's so much easier when people say well, I just want to bodybuilding Okay, fine, but if so as far as you know whether For instance, my daughter dances dance for 15 years Okay, wouldn't know a leg press if it if it if she tripped over it But but functionally she's certainly not weak doing leaps and landing on one foot and Doing all that's required of her of her activity. So it ultimately boils down to Why is the person training? Okay, so now this the phrase full range of motion. It's gotten less prominent recently but For until functional training became the current buzzword. This was all over the place This was on instruction cards every exercise article said use a full range of motion Every trainer felt obligated to say use a full range of motion Nautilus machines medics machines every Manufacturer that put an instruction card on a machine said use a full range of motion So the question is was that real biomechanics or is it just a buzzword? So Look at two aspects of this one is muscle and one is joints. This is a standard Graph of muscle force available in every biomechanics kinesiology exercise physiology textbook and what it shows is now length length means To the right is a stretch and as you come Towards the left you're moving towards a shorter length And what it says is when you're moving your muscle from stretched to fully contracted The force your muscle generates increases up to a point and then decreases And when you go the other way When you're being pulled into a stretch Something else kicks in The passive tension refers to the non-contracting elements of muscle fiber So the actual structure of the muscle fiber Which is sort of like a defense like you know if you if you miss a step or if you if you have If you have to block something like a punch or if you catch something as thrown to you suddenly and your muscles twitch back You know especially if you're surprised you're not voluntarily contracting right so the passive tension kicks in to protect the muscle This is also where plyometrics comes in so as you you you jump and you go into the landing You're lengthening the muscle Involuntarily and so that rebound adds to your your conscious contraction Now the issue of plyometrics of course would be you don't know what the top where that top limit is You know if you go to lift the weight if it's too heavy, you know right away If you are dropping the weight out of the bottom It could be a weight you can handle it could not be a weight you can handle You have no way of knowing where that top limit is But this is how muscle fiber muscles Muscles intact muscle fibers. This is how they act There's a there's a there's favorable length for force Somewhere between fully stretched and fully contracted Now the thing with this curve though is this is literally an academic curve Sorry about that this is literally an academic curve If you detach a muscle from a rabbit a frog a human and you stretch it or you stimulate to contract Those are the curves you get When muscles are intact on your body you have to look at torque curves These are some of the technical terms from the graphs just in case there's any ringers out here Want to test me if I really know what I'm talking about Resting length favorable length active insufficiency is when the muscle is is positioned away from favorable length passive is when it's either stretched or when the opposing muscle is taught and interferes with the the active muscle and Ten odysis is when the muscle is so taught it shifts one of the joints to accommodate Stuff like that. We you know if you look at specific exercises It's more you can demonstrate it more Now one thing about The the basic curve is The textbooks all say that the at the extremes of motion The body tends to avoid those those positions in daily life. So you're not going to run against them except that Daily life is you know working out with weights is not daily life So machine designs will put you into active insufficiency Exotic, you know isolation exercises from the bodybuilding magazines put you into active insufficiency So as a for instance actually, let me let me just demonstrate active insufficiency for the quads kind of a kind of a subject here Anybody come on So I want to have a seat here facing out And now put but just put your hands behind you like you're on a leg ascension machine All right, and just straighten out your knee straighten your knees out sit sit back a little bit. Okay, so just straighten your lean back okay, so With the back of his angle you can lock out his knee. Okay now when I put your legs down lean forward as far as you can Try to lock out your legs. Okay? Notice you can't lock his knees out keep trying keep trying and keep trying keep trying and as you come back the knees lock out All right, so You go into a gym guys got a brand new leg ascension machine He puts you on you can't lock your knee out. He says something like oh look your closet strong You really got to work out by personal training sessions It might just be that the back angle on the machine is wrong if the back angle on the leg extension is at 90 degrees what happens is The the quads where they attach at the hip and they attach at the knee It's too short, and it puts you into active insufficiency Thanks So In daily like in walking for instance your rectus is stretched over your hip and Shortened over the knee so you don't run into it But in something like a knee extension if the back angle is wrong you run right into it and that applies to a lot of exercise It applies to all pullover machines. It applies to dumbbell side raises. This is active insufficiency for the deltoids rowing if you think you're doing it for your lats this is Peak torque for the lats is up here back here is that it's the lats are too short to function So Since our movements and a lot of times the movements on machines or bodybuilding type movements aren't really real-life movements This does come into play What's more important though when we're talking about intact muscle is muscle torque curves so Moving left to right you're going from a stretched bicep to a contracted and With these curves show is for different speeds this being no speed isometric this being the fastest speed For different speeds your biceps get stronger peaks and then the strength drops if you notice at Any speed the peak is between 70 and 90 degrees which means at about a right angle at your elbows where your biceps is strongest Which happens to be where a conventional standing curl is hardest. That's where the sticking point is this is This is the torque curve for shoulder flexion Comparable to reverse like a bench press or reverse grip bench press Okay Inflection your body is strongest with your elbows by your side and as your elbows come up that gets weaker That kind of a bench press is harder the sticking point is when the elbows by your side and as you lock out It's less difficult. This is an example of a complete mismatch Where an exercise of mechanically hardest where your body is weakest so for shoulder extension Meaning Say the bottom of a chin up. So you're starting here and Your arms approaching you a Dumbbell pullover is exactly the opposite Okay Dumbbell pullover your latch as strong as in the top position, which is where you're locked out as The weight go moves overhead your lats are getting weaker, but the exercise is getting harder That exercise is particularly dangerous We had a guy in a gym in New York once Takes a dumbbell off the rack lies back on a bench says he's lying back is dumbbells too light Brings it back gets a heavier dumbbell Nope, still too light brings it back comes back with the heavy dumbbells. Okay. This is right. This is heavy and As he comes back with it now he can't stop it because the lever arm got bigger dislocated both shoulders Now I told that story to Ellington Darden and he said why they take the dumbbell off the floor Well, that's a pretty simple answer. You're right if you take the dumbbell off the floor You're starting where the exercise is hardest. So if it's too heavy for you know right away and just don't do it this guy started where the exercise was the easiest and It was a mess So that's a complete mismatch This one the straight arm pulled down with cables matches it better again When you stand in front of a cable here's where the exercise is hardest It's also where your lats are about strongest and an as your arms come towards you the exercise gets easier And that's where your lats are getting weaker. So it matches well and one last one. This is a row rows Again rows are hard rows are hardest when your elbows are close to your body But that's where your lats are weakest. So it's another mismatch So the put now the point doesn't ideally the exercise matches. Oh, so so ideally An exercise is mechanically hardest where your muscles are biomechanically strongest Absent the ideal situation You don't worry as much about training the full range of motion as training What I'll call the effective range of motion or the strongest range of motion Because if you do an exercise for instance, that's too heavy for you here where you're weakest Your muscles might burn and you might be breathing heavier You might feel fatigue, but you haven't really challenged the force Producing capability of the muscle, which is theoretically what weight training is supposed to be about if you do pick an exercise for instance, let's say in Knee extension, which is this one over here If you pick an exercise and you only train the shortened position You only do say quarter reps at the top All you're doing is reducing the amount of weight you're working out with Because the curve never inverts You'll never take a basic strength curve and turn it into a u-shape by training the ends It's just not how muscle science works So this would have some implications for things like Any of the various partial training techniques partial rep training techniques where you're What they use to call them burns and bodybuilding where you're only doing a fraction of the motion If you want to train for the sake of the muscle burning, okay Fine, but in terms of getting stronger at challenging what the muscle can do You've got to be in the strong ranges of the movements Any questions about the muscles in full range of motion how the muscles act? So if you were to do a partial rep at the strongest part of the motion, is that a good thing? Is that accomplishing a lot for about Very strength training. Well, it's probably closer than was definitely closer than doing in the weakest part of the motion So for instance If you were to If it does beg the question why use any range of motion at all, right? Why not just train at the one point where you're strongest and that's a good that's a good question Right. I think the practical practically the real answer is You don't you don't really you don't really calibrate most of the equipment people train on isn't calibrated for speed So you don't really know if we're going 50 degrees You know 50 degrees a second. We don't really know the speed. We're moving at and since we don't know the speed We don't really know where that peak joint joint angle is We're gonna know where it's about so if you use some range of motion, you're probably going to cover it Years ago isokinetic Machines were popular or were around and you would set the speed well in that case you could you could match it But with regular conventional weights of machines, you don't exactly know how fast you're going So you don't exactly know where that peak joint angle is But you're right It would lead you to believe only train at that one joint angle anything else for move on to the joints in full range of motion Okay Again one of those things I put up to see if you know if any ringers in the audience If you train on machines The extension machine peck deck you'll see the instruction line up the joint with the axis of the machine Okay, so single joint machines imply that All of your joints act like hinges If you do kettlebell type classes or other kind of free weight, you know TRX that type of stuff and They have you move you have you loading your joints in a lot of different directions That implies that your joints are all all swivels like they're all ball and socket In biomechanics the joints are Blends of these six basic types They're not pure hinges and they're not they're not pure ball and socket So for instance with the knee You really can't line up the axis of the knee with with the machine axis Because the knee if the knee was a hinge If the knee was a pure hinge it would rotate this way and That would line up with the machine axis If the machine was a rolling joint when you moved your shin it would roll off and If it was a sliding joint it would slide this way What happens with the knee is it's a rolling and sliding joint So it rolls and slides in place the the axis and That far right corner the axis changes depending on how far bent your knee is so technically You can't line up the axis of your knee with the machine because that axis is always moving there's a So now if we If we're looking at full range of motion with a knee extension for instance And you're really working at locking your knee out as far as it can go The issue with that is there's a there's a mechanism the screw-hole mechanism terminal rotation So for for the middle of the knee range of motion it does function like a hinge at the end The bones of the shin and the quad rotate on each other to lock So the the shin will rotate externally or the femur will rotate internally and locks together The point of that is so when you're standing up straight or you're walking you're not using any muscular effort Okay, there's a passive lock at the knee So if you're at the on the leg extension machine, and you're really diligently trying to lock your knee out against resistance What's happening is you're taking this passive bony bony lock You're loading an external weight on it, and you're applying great internal force to jam this bony lock into position That's designed to be a passive lock with your body weight standing upright So your quads will burn as you're trying to lock the knee out, okay? But you're really just bringing it on a lot of unnecessary joint stress for the sake of feeling the exercise Practically what you do is you watch someone on a knee extension and at the end of the motion you'll see What happened again, excuse me what happens if your knees are free to move when you lock your knee out The shin will rotate externally or your femur will rotate internally When you strapped it on a leg extension machine, and you're trying to lock out That movement still has to happen, so you'll see some shifting going on in the seat The thing to do would be to watch and as soon as the shifting starts that's the end of the repetition Because past that point you're just trying to force that bony lock Again, that's designed to be a passive lock at the back end that was for locking the knee out as You're bending the knee as you pull your knee more and more into flexion Again, the way the bones are shaped in the femur and the shin your foot is going to move towards the center line So if you squat normally people's knees will go out if you Follow some of the old-time bodybuilding instruction where you're going to force your your quads parallel or force them apart You're just preventing or you're fighting this natural movement of the knee so For all the muscles, but in particular for the knee extension. There's a muscular there's a muscular Component to try to use a full range of motion and there's a joint component Can I have a now for before we move on questions about the knee or in full range of motion? Go ahead. I didn't get to hear everything about the knee. I was at cyber second But with what you know about my knee and dislocating it Almost half a dozen times throughout the past eight years of my life and the problems of that recently The best way to work out my knee before getting an MRI and probably surgery on it. You think just keep doing a leg press Perhaps I've never I've not like a big fan of extensions, but what are you telling me? I'd like to stay away from them It sounds like it again not not knowing what's going on the extension by definition is just going to put a lot of pressure on your knee So of course when I was getting rehabbed at the clinic when I heard it back in the day That's exactly what they had me do. Yeah, well, yeah Well, no rehab isn't isn't immune to different fads and bogues in terms of training But you definitely wouldn't want the machine to push you into a stretch and And to and to really overemphasize that finished position again because you're just fighting against your own bones Cool. Thank you. All right, so for overhead motion, let me have a kind of another another subject To demonstrate Any volunteer Come on. Thanks. All right, so my seat Everyone just quickly without thinking raise your hand over head. Just lift your arm up. Okay Fortunately, fortunately, you all did the right thing. Come on down notice. Nobody Nobody obviously Led directly to the side Okay, and nobody Forced to hand all the way in here and tried to come up this way All right, so the first side the first thing Turn your head turn your elbow out so your elbows pointing out Lead with the pinky try to lift up as far as you can go Now obviously at about halfway up either your body shifts But you stall All right, and if you externally rotate You can continue without without any any obstruction, but you're not doing it though because you're hitching your shoulder You're hitching you know you're hitching your shoulder. I'm what I'm talking what I'm trying to demonstrate here is at this point There's a bony obstruction So either you have to hitch the shoulder But definitely if you externally rotate that obstruction passes you can go up clean. Okay This comes into play on an upright row it comes into play on Some some side-rays machines where they where they position you here and then have you try to lift up Now Go to the front put put both of them in front really you really palms up right now from from here up It's pretty clean Right about here. You start to slow down you hit a little bit of an obstruction So now rotate it in internal rotation that you can come up clean What happens what happens in the shoulder is when you're inflection and External rotation you hit a point of ligament binding the ligaments in your shoulders twist and that's what's that's what's impeding your product your movement Not a fault of your muscle or a fault of your exercises the ligaments in the shoulder When you internally rotate you unbind them and you can come up again Okay, so think about this means exercise wise it means if you're doing a chin up With your elbows almost touching or a pull-down when the weight pulls you up If you're forcing a full range of motion your elbows have to flare out Okay You can try to go up higher, but the difficulty you're feeling is not is not you're not improving the muscle You're just straining those joints think about a machine press if the machine press is too close together You're lifting you're lifting it's getting harder it's getting harder You're gonna push through it, but you're pushing through the ligaments in your shoulder. Oh Now almost everyone When you did lift his shoulder up Everyone kind of cut between the two planes. They didn't go into pure flexion. They didn't go into pure adduction just left shoulder up again Just you know just lifted forget forget everything. I said just left your shoulder up. That's it Everyone split the planes in half Everyone thinks thank you bud Everyone went between pure flexion and pure and pure adduction Because this is where the shoulder socket opens up Okay, the the bonnet the ball and socket of your shoulder joint It doesn't open up purely this way doesn't open up purely this way. It's open somewhere in here So somewhere in here you have the least amount of obstruction to moving your arm Again I think about what this means for exercises They used to be pressed behind the neck with a barbell used to be a standard exercise. So you put your arms all the way back here Well, when you fully abduct like that you're impinging You're impinging right at this point point of the ball and socket Same with a pull down behind the neck. All right when you're forcing your arms as far back as you can It's not just muscle involved. You're pinching off the joint Think in terms of triceps exercises Just recently flipping through the Metrex catalogue they send around they show a freeway workout They show a guy doing dumbbell triceps extensions and in the instruction and this is a month ago It says hold your elbows by your ears to isolate your triceps This is irrelevant to the triceps the triceps are straight in your elbow out But what happens is when you do this exercise sure enough you move your elbows through your ears You start to feel more tension here You're not feeling your triceps working better. You're feeling the strain in your shoulders Moving moving overhead is all related to scapula humeral rhythm Part of part of part of this plane That's not flexion not abduction is that this is the angle at the serratus is strongest at and That comes into play because when you move your arm overhead up to about 90 degrees is pure shoulder flexion Okay, your deltoids contract your arm moves up Over 90 degrees though Your deltoids are an active insufficiency. They can't get shorter so what happens is The trapezius pulls the top of your scapula and The serratus pulls the bottom of the scapula to have the effect of turning the entire ball and socket upward So the ball and socket opens up cleanly up to here Opens up cleanly up to here and then to move up further overhead the whole system has to shift So that's another reason for that that three-quarter plane That's also why for instance There there's very little true overhead they might see the movie will be pumping iron All right, there's a senior Lou Ferrigno and he's pressing and he's staying right in this the short little motion right here Okay Well, especially especially with this amount of muscle he had that's because true overhead doesn't really exist That's why in the Olympic weightlifting They get rid of the press because they come up to about here and then it was unavoidable that they turned it into a bench press because you really can't With the mother your serratus really isn't strong enough to tilt everything so you can go completely overhead Also, look at machine designs a lot of overhead press designs. They're built at a high incline They're not built so that you're sitting straight up and pushing straight back behind you Okay, look at a Norlis press and any of the machine design presses. You're at a very steep incline 70 80 degrees Before we move on questions about joints and range of motion Okay, so let the last rhetorical question is whether The human machine is designed for speed or for strength With all the media about how to lift weights the question might be should we be lifting weights? Okay, this comes from Everett Harmon don't wrote the biomechanics chapter in one of the early nsca textbooks and Right here this explains why by ultimately why biomechanics are important if you have 10 pounds of weight in your hand the internal forces are dramatically higher Because the 10 pounds of weight is acting through a very long lever your muscles are acting at very short levers an old-time the old-time leverage diagram and A newer leverage diagram Rather than tell you about first second third-class levers moment arms everything you need to know about leverage is in a nutcracker so Conventional nutcracker right you have an axis First of all here Can you crush that with one hand? No, no one hand one hand. Can you just crush it with one hand? I hope not if you can Don't shake my hand. All right, so what you do is you break out a tool, okay? So you have an axis and You put the resistance close to the axis and you hold the business end far away and With a very see and with a very small amount of effort you apply a lot of force Okay So this kind of lever applies force Little bit of force at the ends a lot of force near the axis You would never Reverse it you would never put the the resistance at the end and try to apply force at the axis It just doesn't work. You can't generate any force this kind of lever Doesn't leverage force, but what it does It leverages distance a Little bit of motion at the axis gets a lot of motion at the business at the ends a little bit of motion at the axis gets a lot of distance at the ends Human levers at least for the muscles we're talking about Leverage distance. They don't leverage force much more force goes into the motion and comes out But much less distance goes into the motion a Little bit of motion at the hip a lot of motion at the foot So human leverage leverage distance not force okay and since you leverage distance and Since we leverage distance and Speed is distance divided by time It takes the same amount of time for this little motion to create this big motion So you human skeletons are built to leverage speed a little bit a little bit of distance over here a lot of distance here In the same time Technical stuff pertains the laws of the lever. Everything you need to know is with a nutcracker again Resistance close to the axis leverages effort resistance far away from the accents leverages distance Okay, so this is and now this is a graph of of human muscle power taken from a book called Prime mover by Steven Vogel, which is a great text on the history of muscle and how muscles used and what this shows is is basically that in spite of Humans being leveraged for distance There's a sweet spot of speed and force where you get the most power so at Zero speed You can exert the most force which is consistent with the muscle media that says you can hold more than you can lift All right, you have you have greater static strength than you have positive strength at a maximum speed moving as fast as you can You can't exert much force at all which is consistent with those muscle torque curves that showed higher torque curves at faster speeds But what happens is somewhere in the middle you'll hit a peak because power is Hold on a second Power is work divided by time Work is force times distance So power is force Times distance divided by time in other words power is force times speed So there's a sweet spot of speed where you can get the most power That's where if you're an athlete martial artist where technique training comes in instead of going as fast as you can using brute force or brute speed There's an optimum speed or optimum amount of force where you get the most power out of your movements so even though that that Previous quote about the high internal forces are in play That doesn't mean don't strength train it means strength train carefully because force which comes from strength training is part of this equation so here's ultimately to take home points from from the presentation thus far Lift with your legs not your back. It's an old cliche from manual labor, but The structure of the spine suggests it Use an effective range of motion as opposed to a full range of motion and Practically in terms of your workout You have to balance you have to somehow balance a concern for your long-term muscle and joint health with The intensity of the set with the overall workout You mentioned some other classes before Actually, let me give you a perfect example guy comes into my training studio to have his body fat checked And he is shredded what he's hunched over So I say what happened He said well, I was doing a certain class that'll remain nameless crossfit and I threw my back out. I Said um I said gee man. Why did you do that? I said the exercise selection can be kind of dubious And then you get caught up in the competition you form terms to crap and that's how you get hurt He says well, thanks for telling me now after I get hurt So I say well after your back heals train with me I'll train you as hard as you worked out there and I guarantee you won't get hurt And he says well, thanks, man, but I really like the class. He says thanks, man, but I really like the class look how well it worked So now here's a guy who knew exactly when he got hurt knew what he was doing when he got hurt You know knew what to do not to get hurt and he didn't care Now for me as a trainer, that's not my call to make for the clients I can't really tell the client okay do this exercise even though I know what might hurt you in the future That's really not my decision and for myself at 52 years old I do nothing in my workouts that isn't congruent with biomechanics and outside of my workouts whether it's It's skating or jujitsu or shoveling snow. I'm very aware of how I move as For you guys, you know, well, you know, you've been warned 20 years from now. You ruptured bicep. Don't come running to me I warned you now so All right, so any questions on the material in general or the videos or the manual? Yes, sir. What's your name? Hi, David. So This is all very interesting Concepts very contrary to obviously a lot of popular belief So what you're getting at biomechanically as far as the back goes and squatting and such The back is not designed to bear heavy weight Like from the upper part of the torso, you know, again Not just because I say so if you look at any Anatomy diagram of the back if you look at the layers of muscles you look at the organization of the bones It's pretty clearly a pyramid big blocks on the bottom smaller blocks towards the top If you look at the muscle organization a lot of small muscles Layered on top of each other Many different joints compared to below the waist where you have big blocks of bone and big muscles so You know not to not to issue a blanket statement But I think yeah, I think when you look at the bone when you look at the bones and the muscles involved with the spine Loading a weight up on your neck doesn't doesn't seem to match that too well Just one more quick question So how would you? What would you say about the deadlift? Following that similar type of logic. Well, I think the deadlift is is probably Let's let's assume perfect form Just to minimize the amount of variables. All right, if you assume perfect form the deadlift is probably closer Because the weight isn't you're not you're not taking a pyramid trying to ask it to sort of top-heavy structure Assuming perfect form and by perfect form. I mean you're strong enough to maintain the lumbar curves through the deadlift You know, you're not hitching. You're not Releasing your scapula, you know if you assume perfect form Deadlift trap bar deadlifts Hip belt squats There's a lot of ways of loading your legs without inverting the pyramid What's the name? I'm just a little bit uncertain about Like you when you say do limited range of motion Like can you give us a demonstration of like a bicep curl or something just to see how limited or what do you mean by that? Yeah, okay By the way, I'm not saying limited. I'm just I'm just suggesting not to use an excessive range of motion so If you if you're if you're standing as a matter of fact, there's a video on this There's a video in this on YouTube moment our exercise biceps which goes into much more But what you would want to do is just don't don't instead of going from the weight hanging straight down where you have zero You have no muscular no lever created by the weight Okay, instead of going from here to here. We are moving from No, no resistance lever again to no resistance lever so you go from no work a lot of work no work You would stay somewhere Just short of locking out Through the sinking point and again keep your elbows by your side so that you still have some lever created here as opposed to letting the elbows come forward To make it zero work You know in general with exercises if you're used to doing an extreme range of motion if you just tighten it up a little bit You'll notice that the weight you handle goes up Which should be kind of a clue In specific you really have to look at every muscle and joint which is the reason for the reason for the videos and for this manual and for the Next manual I'm working on which is specifically safe for this joint trained this way Yes, sir. I should have two quick questions. The first one is for my discipline I do a lot of explosive movements and what are your thoughts on making that more safe? well What's your martial art? No, I do parkour so a lot of Popping up and well, you know it in general if you're doing a sport Or an activity you accept the risks that go with it. So while you're doing that you're accepting the risk I Don't I think you don't add to your exposure by then walking into the weight room and popping up with weights You know, I think I think what you do is I think you train your muscles appropriately in a weight room And then when you go to your sport you accept the risks of the sport and you do what's appropriate there obviously if You just trained isometrically for that when you actually went on the parkour course it would be a little Whether the transfer is over or not would be kind of questionable But again, you know any athlete you step on the field you accept the risks of what's there my my contention just is Don't add to that also in the weight room Next question. Yeah. Yeah, and my second question is I know a lot of trainers and people talk about doing like compound heavy exercises such as a barbell squat or like a bench press and If I think what you're talking about is more of like isolating the muscles. So what where are your feelings on? heavy compound exercises You know what my feelings are is that it's really not as simple as saying just do compound exercises just to isolation exercises I mean Moment arm exercise most of the exercise demonstrated in there are compound exercises because the compound exercise It's how you do more more is how you do is more important than what the exercise is and the compound exercise with with a couple of tweaks Can match the difficulty of the exercise with the the twerk of the muscles and Again, if you tweak the ends of the range of motion, you may not jeopardize the joints So it's really not as simple as saying free weights or machines single joint versus compound You know, they're all they're all fair game. What really matters is what's happening with your body while you're doing them Okay, you go next Just wanted to ask about Using your own body weight doing push-ups pull-ups any kind of non machine workouts Yep, are there any big obstacles or pitfalls as far as you know using your muscles in the wrong way on those type exercises Yes Because again, it's not the exercise is what you do for instance a couple of weeks ago. I put up a video on the chin ups Okay, when you're doing a chin up that that that overhead position this is More detail on the video, but the overhead position is I suggest people stay away from it. Keep your shoulders away from your ears Okay, and You're on the bar Keep your shoulders away from your ears and lean back to start and then go into the chin up Because when you bounce out of the bottom or you let your shoulders come up on your ear It's just a lot of stress on your rotator cuff Some explanations are better in video or in print But that the short story would be to watch bouncing out of the bottom on a chin up Because you're not doing anything positive for the muscles. You're just bouncing off If you have a close grip for instance, you're just bouncing off that ligament binding As far as push-ups go You know push-up push-ups are generally safe until you try to make them harder And then people put them between benches and try to get extra range of motion to make them harder or or Or do them explosively to make them harder Not not to sell anything but with push-ups there's There's a device that puts a elastic cables across your back and That allows you to make the push-up harder While staying within a safe range of motion But but again, it's not it's not a question of body weight versus Machines versus dumbbells and barbells. It's it's what you're doing with the body that that matters How before you go how have you been making those exercises harder? I've done some push-ups like where you do your feet on a bench so you come on a decline. Yeah, okay, and and Just that's about it. Yeah, you run out of ways of making push-ups harder The the I'm not a big I'm not a tremendous fan of elastic resistance because it only gets harder and As we saw at the muscle torque curves. That's not necessarily how muscle functions But in the case of the push-up it is a way of making push-ups more challenging without you know going up on blocks or You don't want to make you know, you don't want to make any exercise more challenging because it's Straining your joint you want to make it more challenging for the muscle Thanks You got a run bud My question is is it better for muscle and joint health to use ranges of motion that are more linear for example a Smith machine rather than Just a barbell. Well, that's a good question the Smith machine I'll tell people use a Smith machine mainly for the bottom stops Couple a number of years ago early early 2000s club industry reported on a Guy squatting in the Smith machine no bottom stops Loads up the bar breaks the lock in his knees. I got it. I got it. I don't got it. I don't got it Bar literally crushed the spine ended up quadriplegic Okay, big part a big part of the case had to do with why the machine didn't have bottom stops and the Defending people defending the manufacturer in the health club said well we looked around health clubs no one uses the bottom stops and The you know a hard stop like 20 inches off the floor is sufficient and The plane plaintiff's attorney guy was injured's attorney said no our research says 24 inches off the floor is a minimum Either one is ridiculous. You know, you're not getting out of 24 inches off the floor so The Smith machine might be a little unnatural as far as finding the grooves But if you use the bottom stops and don't rely on the little hook It's far safer. So you got you got to make that call, you know Again for me personally at 52 years old dealing with clients. I'm not going to risk You know missing a spot on a barbell squat or missing a squat on a bench press for the sake of Inth degree of improvement to the exercise You know, unfortunately, you know, but unfortunately barbells Last year Stefan Johnson college football player being spotted in a weight college weight room Misses the lift barcrest on his jaw and throat You know almost dies hours of surgery to repair The year before that Football player our trail woods doing barbell step ups twists and ankle bar obviously falls damages his spine The club industry case the guy I mentioned in the beginning, you know getting choked by the barbell You know, I know I know there are a lot of very pro barbell guys out there will attribute all sorts of magic to use in the barbell but The perspective of the magic benefit versus safety, especially with stuff like that with your spine and your jaw on your face you know Yeah, other people will disagree with me and they want a completely natural motion and that's fine Obviously, it's fine as long as you're going to avoid the catastrophic injury So the next thing I'm working on to make this material a little more accessible is Emanuel cold and and videos called congruent exercise So in it we thought I talked about Much of what I talked about today Just with more specific context So Speaking of avoiding tragic accidents That's first thing we talk about is biomechanics involved in squatting and barbell bench pressing Then we talk about full range of motion length and cursion which is length tension which we did Functional training some of the comments I made today about the leg press and the squat along with other things The idea of muscle shaping which is probably more of a bodybuilding concern or fitness magazine concern than an athlete's concern but a Lot of times and I break this down the sensation you're getting during the exercise Isn't some magic benefit you're given to the muscle. You're just feeling joint strain such as in the shoulder and then The speed versus strength discussion and then of course people want to know okay. What does that mean in the real world? So These are pretty much Pretty much Exercises that you can do either home or in a gym. I have some machine exercises here some gym exercises and some Some that that work well at home It answers the question is what does this look like I go to the gym now? What do I do? So these are these leg exercises some chest and back more back I'm sorry back and shoulders and then arms and midsection Getting back to earlier some asked question about spine exercises these bottom four are You know technically core exercises and And Absence somebody training for a competition like a like a powerlifting competition where you have to lift weights for your back You're just interested in spine and joint health. Those seem to be the safest things to do that are also effective and for more information that's The manual I'm talking about which will be available by the end of the summer moment arm exercises Something I wrote a number of years ago and then currently on YouTube There's a series of videos demonstrating a lot of what we're talking about today Anybody else for any questions and there's a few minutes later, so if you have any specific you want to ask me, please feel free Good Not to put you on the spot But do you have any comments on the safety effectiveness and efficiency of the fitness craze known as P90x? Well, yeah, let's lump. Let's lump that in with CrossFit and other classes you know Getting getting going going back a few slides Things like P90x CrossFit any kind of fitness class They're living right here Okay, they're living with at the end of the workout the person's a puddle of sweat the tons hanging out. They're exhausted How they get there seems to be a lot less of a concern Because I know with the particular one you mentioned for instance There's a number of dubious exercises in there whether it's upright rows or behind the neck stuff plyometrics You know plyometrics might be appropriate for athletes, but this is clearly not at the market two athletes So While I appreciate the sense of physical accomplishment that goes into doing that class and getting through it You would like to not have it bite you in the ass 20 years from now So that's why I mean for someone who likes that kind of that kind of challenge I would moderate those exercises and tweak and tweak them so that they're not just beating up on the joints Again for me personally for the clients I train This is the order I go in first I make sure they're doing They're doing appropriate exercises that are safe and they're doing them the right way without any twitches without any squirming Once they get that down then we make each set progressively harder and And then if it's appropriate then I'll cut the rest down in between their sets or You know if they if they simply prefer not to train that way We'll do something else for the overall metabolic challenge so you know if somebody wants to lift weights with long rests in between and then Hike run bike skate row swim whatever there, you know parkour Whatever their preference is It's okay to do separate things You know, you don't have you don't have to do it all in the same DVD series All right anybody else and if you want to come up to me one-to-one that's fine, too All right. Thank you, Bill