 Our next question is from Sam from California. Hey Sam, how can we help you? Hey guys, awesome to talk to you guys. You guys are awesome. Hey, thanks dude. Yeah, so my question is, so I'm a collegiate catcher at Cal State Monterey Bay in my senior year right now. And I've had two knee surgeries, meniscus tears. I tore them about three years to go back to back years. Only about 10% of the meniscus was torn and that just scoped it out. So they just took out the torn part. I was only on crutches for about a day for both the surgeries. I was able to come back physically from the surgeries really quick. Mentally was kind of a different story, trusting my body, trusting my knees. I've been able to avoid serious injury in the last kind of two years and my knees have been fairly healthy but I think because of the meniscus tears my knees get really inflamed really easily. They swell up, the back of the knee gets really tight, the front of the knee gets really tight. And I found that stretching my quads is the best way to kind of mitigate any kind of tightness or swelling. But I was just curious if there's any ways I could kind of change my, I don't know, nutrition plan. If there's any more inflammatory things I can throw in or any stretches or exercises that could really help knee tightness and swelling. Is a great question, Sam. So as a catcher, you're sitting in that bottom position for long periods of time. How did you tear your meniscus? Was it when you were playing or was it another time? I'm so surprised you knew that. Of course I know. Yeah, I didn't even know you knew what a catcher does. I do know that. Wow. The first one was sliding into second base. I stole a bag surprisingly for a catcher but I stole a bag and my left knee kind of just like a cordy and on the base it kind of got stuck and kind of compressed. Okay. And then honestly the second one, I don't even know why. Like I don't even know how I did it. It would just started hurting one day and then I tried to play through it and I finally got an MRI. So yeah, the second one I don't really know how. Okay. So when you're in that seated position, this is a sport now, so we're talking performance. Although you're active, you're also somewhat relaxed. Like you're not holding the bottom of a squat. If you would, you would die by the time, you know, you get 10 minutes later, you die in that position. There's somewhat relaxing that's going on the bottom. And if you have any muscle in your hamstrings or calves, there's a little bit of separation happening at the knee joint at that bottom relaxed position. Also you want to consider the knee really only flexes and extends. It doesn't rotate. It doesn't bend laterally. That all comes from your ankles and your hips. So the best advice I can give you to prevent any future tears, besides the occasional random thing, like you're sliding into second base and then your leg gets caught somewhere, would be continue to work on, if you're not already, hip, ankle and foot mobility. Because whatever they can't do, the ligaments in the knee, the connective tissue in the knee, your meniscus, for example, is going to have to support, right? So if you're, if your external rotation of your hips or your lateral stability is off, for example, in your hips or your ankles, those things in your knee are going to have to kind of hold steady. And when you're sitting in that bottom position for a long period of time, and you're also active, you're catching balls, you're having to move and jump out of that position, it's going to put a lot of strain on this. So that would be the number one thing. You asked about diet and stuff, and I'm going to be quite honest with you. What you do with your diet is going to pale in comparison to the mobility work that I'm recommending for your hips and your ankles. How often do you do like hip mobility or ankle mobility drills? Honestly, not too often. I would, you know, say I'm a little bit more of like a meat head in the weight room and mobility is a little bit tougher for me. Listening to you guys podcast, I've really tried to wean off of having a bunch of resistance days. I found that I was doing like four to five resistance days. And when I started listening to you guys, I really only keep it to about two or three now of lift and heavy weights and then try to focus more on mobility, but I definitely could be better in that aspect. You want to live in that 90, 90 position. And especially, you know, getting that internal, external rotation out of the hips is going to be crucial. I know from being in a catcher's position then having to react right away, but priming that ahead of time, you know, so your body responds appropriately is going to be game changer for you, just for stability and for performance, but also, you know, to really help build and fortify around your knees, as well as these ankle mobility drills as well, toe squats. I know. So when you're in that position, your heels are pretty much raised the whole time. Correct? Yeah, I would say it's, I mean, except for if I'm in like for my secondary position, like runner on base, I kind of try to keep my heels on the ground because honestly, when I, when I push my knees forward and get more on my toes, that's when I feel like I feel I'm putting more pressure on the knees. So recently I've tried to gain kind of more ground contact with my heels and try to, you know, feel like I'm gaining more power from my glutes and hamstrings. But, you know, you always kind of have to be in that front position and especially for blocking a ball, you're always coming, you know, on your toes and, you know, that's such a, you know, position you're in. Combaster is a great one for that. Ankle mobility, bro. That's, I mean, I'm going to just jump on the bandwagon of talking about ankle mobility. That's where, especially with the catcher and what you just said right now is like what will relieve some of that when you're up on your toes is better range of motion in your ankles. So you should live in that combat stretch two, three times a day when you're watching TV. Every chance you can get is getting down there and working on that. The other thing I think I'd like to see is probably less volume in training, weight training, two, three times a week max. The other two days is heavy mobility with like catcher drills. I would get down, I would do my mobility work, I would do my hip, I do my hip stuff, my ankle stuff, and then I would do my catcher drills and be driving that home and then only strength training, maybe two, three times max a week. And then actually nutrition, there are some things that, you know, Sal's right, it will pale in comparison to what you will do mobility. But, you know, I would play with some things like maybe on days when I'm not playing a game and stuff like that, I might run like a lower carb and then, you know, load up when I'm getting ready for a game. So I have more energy and I'm like less worried about, you know, I don't need to be running at 100% in my training. So I can do like a little bit lower carbohydrate intake and me managing my calories. If you're eating a surplus of calories all the time and a lot of carbohydrates that could be, you know, causing more inflammation going on. And then also tools like, you know, I don't know if you, if you mess with things like the infrared, doing things like that. I don't know if you mess with cryotherapy and icing and doing so with that. Even though I know icing isn't ideal for, you know, the average person in recovery, it is for somebody who's getting back to the next day and having to play a game. Well, something Sal actually helped to suggest for one of my clients who had like chronic inflammation and also swelling issues around the knee was bromelain, I believe. And it was just a natural supplement that actually really worked well for my client when she'd have those days where it would just like blow up on her. Yeah. And a key with bromelain is to take it on an empty stomach. And you could take it a couple of times a day. But again, if you are constantly pushing back the inflammation and not addressing what's causing the inflammation, you're not going to help yourself, maybe in the short term, but not in the long term. Do you have MAPS Prime Pro, Sam? No, I don't. Okay. So we're going to give that to you. And I, I want, and you need to do hip ankle and foot mobility regularly. In fact, I would even, even if every single day, multiple times a day. Yes. And I wouldn't do tons, believe it or not. I would not do tons and tons of lower body strengthening exercises like squats and lunges. It's okay to do those, you know, once a week or so, but don't go crazy with them until you get this under control. Because here's what happens. The more muscle you build in your, especially your hamstrings and calves, the more you're going to get that knee separating effect from sitting at the bottom of a squat. So if you imagine when your knee is really, really bent, right? There's a, and there's a lot of muscle in your calf and hamstrings. As you're pressing on those, it almost wants to separate the knee a little bit. Just pulling a little bit more. Right. So you get the mobility under control before you go into trying to build up your legs. Otherwise you can cause yourself more problems. And the days that you do decide a strength train, this is where somebody I would foam roll and stretch and do mobility afterwards. So after, let's say you do squat, lunges, you do some of these traditional leg exercises, don't just walk out the gym after you get this massive pump on them, then you should spend the time right then doing some foam rolling, then doing some mobility work to stretch it back out again. That'll help out. Yeah, that is awesome. I've really never, you know, truly dove into focused on the ankle mobility. I know you guys talking about that so much. So that's definitely something I'm going to be focusing on because, you know, 2022 season, that's our next season because we got canceled because of COVID and our 2021 season got canceled. So I got a little bit of time. So hopefully some time to make some good changes. Awesome. Awesome to you, man. Yeah, thank you. And, you know, just really quick, you guys have been, you know, awesome. I listen to you guys every morning. Such a great inspiration. Actually kind of inspired me to create my own channel too. It's called the Good Dogs, DAWGZ, just trying to promote some positivity. So if you guys get a chance, check it out. I don't know if it's allowed to promote on here, but you guys have just inspired me. You're the first one, dude. I appreciate you trying, but we'll cut it out. Thanks for coming. I assumed you guys would. No, we wouldn't. He's just fucking with you, Sam. We would cut it out right there. Yeah. I wish I could see you guys' beautiful faces. You guys are some sexy guys. He's really trying. Yeah. We know. You're looking out, Sam. Good talking to you, brother. Thanks, guys. You too. Thanks so much. Yeah, those compressive forces at the bottom, especially when you're relaxed, although he's mostly active, right? Because he's playing, that can cause problems when you've got some stability issues in your hips and ankles. That is one of the toughest positions in sports to be able to sit in that continually for nine innings, for extended innings. It's just brutal on the joints. And you talk about people that really, I mean, he's a person who hip mobility and ankle mobility will do wonders for game change. That's all performance for him. It's going to improve his performance tremendously. And I'm excited that he says he hasn't focused on that at all because that will make a big difference. Tremendous. I mean, it helps, you know, majority of our clients, most people need work in that area, but you have somebody who is, you know, working at the elite level, down in that position, ankle and hip mobility. Totally. I tell you, if you want to see, if you want to look at high level athletes with tremendous, especially hip mobility and even ankle mobility, and when I say mobility, I mean, of course, range of motion, but strength and control and these ranges of motion, look at catchers and look at goalies for hockey. It's mind blowing what they can do with their hips and their ankles, especially with the catchers, with the ankles. And you got to look at them because they're the ones that are able to do it long into their career. If you don't have those things and then you play high school college, you get tons of problems and it usually hits you in the knees.