 Welcome back everybody, here's the giveaway today. Maps PowerLift, you know this program has actually become one of the most popular ones. It's a Maps workout program specifically designed to help you become a better PowerLifter or to put differently, get a better squat, deadlift and bench press. And it's free to when you lucky viewers, here's what you gotta do. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode, subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. Do all those things, if we like your comment, we pick your comment, we'll notify you when we get free access to that incredible program. Also, we're running a sale right now in two of our popular Maps workout programs. Maps Performance, this is an athletic minded training program so you train like an athlete, perform like an athlete, look like an athlete, unconventional exercises, it's a lot of fun, great for mobility, again, for performance. That program is 50% off. And then Maps Aesthetic, this is the bodybuilder style Maps programs about sculpting and shaping and building your body to look the way you want, like a bodybuilder would. That program is 50% off. So here's what you gotta do if you want the discount. For Maps Performance, go to mapsgreen.com. For Maps Aesthetic, go to mapsblack.com. And the discount code for both of them is FEB50. So that code, FEB50, we'll give you 50% off, one or both programs. All right, here comes the show. Hey guys, I wanna talk about a very unlikely thing that leads to gains. Actually we know that this helps lead to gains, but I think a lot of people don't think of stretching as something that you can do that will improve your ability to build muscle and sculpt your body. Yeah, you don't typically think of that as a performance enhancement in terms of like building muscle. It's more of an injury prevention and that's usually what most coaches promote. Why aren't all the yoga guys jacked then? Yeah, well, it's not by itself. But you know what though, you know what's interesting though, stretching on its own does elicit some hypertrophy. It's a small effect, but it does contribute to some muscle growth. Nothing in comparison to obviously to strength training. But as something to support strength training, it's definitely something if used properly, this is the important thing here by the way, if used properly, it can really amplify your ability to build muscle and sculpt and shape your body for sure. Now you mentioned the first one, which is injury prevention. That's a big one because, you don't think about this when you're young, but if you think of the biggest roadblocks to your ability to develop the physique you want, to perform the way you want, besides inconsistency, it's injury. Like nothing will stop you in your tracks, like hurting yourself, right? Well, inevitably you start cranking the intensity up and you start loading more weight. It's gonna put more stress around the joints or wherever else, like you might not be stabilizing quite as effectively and just over time. I personally experienced this even on my shoulder. I would get to a certain point where I get really strong and then it would give way and I would have to rebuild myself back up again to achieve that kind of performance when in fact I could have just put these practices in place to keep and maintain the health of my joints and move forward. Well, what exactly is it about stretching that helps prevent injury and also, is it a specific type of stretching that does that versus just kind of general, like explain that a little bit more because I don't think it's as simple as somebody who stretches all the time is preventing potential injury. I think there's more to it. No, that's a good question. So the traditional form of stretching, I think that most people, the average person would, if I said stretching what they would visualize is static stretching, right? Static stretching is the kind that you did when you were in school. You go to touch your toes, you hold that stretch for a long time. 30 seconds, a minute or so. You sit in the butterfly position, you hold that position for a long for 30 seconds. Static stretching is that. And then there's like a dynamic type of stretching, which is, so let's say if I'm gonna stretch my hamstring statically, I may sit on the floor with my leg out and just reach for my toes and hold that position for 30 seconds. A dynamic hamstring stretch would be walking but kicking my leg up straight. So as it comes up, the hamstring stretches, but then I bring it back down. That's more of a dynamic stretch. The dynamic form of stretching is the one that shows injury prevention, not static. In fact, static stretching can actually increase risk of injury if you do it right before you. Well, I would say active falls under that too, right? There's three main categories, dynamic active and then static. And pretty much everything could fall under one of those three categories and active and dynamic both have the preventative side to it, but the static, not so much. No, now priming, which is what we really emphasize is similar to the active type of stretching, but the difference really is you're really concentrated and focused on activating muscles that allow you to control. Actually contracting the muscles. Yeah, new ranges of motion, right? And that's really the best thing you could possibly do when it comes to injury prevention. Well, isn't that what really differentiates from active and dynamic, right? Dynamic, you're using a ballistic movement, like your example of the swinging the leg up, like it's this... The lower momentum base. Yeah, right? And then active is just you are, you're actively moving into the stretch and connecting to it. To all the muscles that are involved. Yeah, and then moving out of it and it's typically holds no longer than five to 10 seconds. You don't hold it longer than that and then you move out of it. You move back in it. That would constitute an active stretch or like what we say is priming before you get into your workout. Dynamic would be something like when you do this with your arm before, that's more dynamic or the kicking the leg up, walking like you're marching or whatever, like those are more dynamic. Now, where would you classify like foam rolling, for instance, like in terms of what type of a stretch? Static, yeah. Probably similar, but not really, right? It doesn't turn muscles off like static stretching does, right? Static stretching, you're telling the CNS to chill out. Which is why you can increase risk of injury because you don't want that necessarily. Unless you do it, by the way, I wanna say this because if you do a static stretch but it's targeted in a way to get certain muscles out of the way before you train, then it can be a good, useful tool, but it has to be done very specifically. For example, if I'm doing a row with a client and their tight shoulders and pecs prevent them from really squeezing the shoulders back, in that particular case, a static stretch might be okay. It's not gonna increase the risk of injury. It's just gonna help me connect to those mid-back muscles a little bit better by getting the chest kind of out of the way. But the active type, what we would say priming, that's the best way to prevent injury because you get the deeper range of the motion but you don't lose connection. If anything, you gain connection through those deeper ranges of motion. Well, like what you're talking about is more of a corrective approach. So to be able to set you back up so you're in optimal posture so your joints can track properly and you can actually perform the movements, how they're supposed to be performed. This is where static or like those types of techniques will help kind of get you in that place. Well, I think the real point of this conversation, even though we're gonna, I mean, we're gonna titling it like stretching to improve your gains or whatever, but it's really learning to stretch with purpose because they all have a place. Yeah, program them properly. Yeah, they all have a place. They all have tremendous value when applied correctly. And I have to be honest, as an early trainer, I didn't understand them. In fact, it was, I believe, a movement specialist that talked to me in my early 20s and was like, basically correcting me on how I was using stretching. It was just like, you need to learn to stretch with purpose and I'm just stretching in general, isn't necessarily good. People think that though, like there's this idea that, oh, all stretching is good. So therefore, if I stretch before I work out, it's good. Well, it can be, but to your point, it could also be detrimental to your workout, right? So if you stretch and relax for a static stretch, holding a stretch for 30 seconds, a minute or longer, you're going to relax that muscle. And if you then are going to go into a workout where you call upon that muscle, you actually are increasing your risk of injury versus helping prevent injury. Some muscles you want to be in that short and tense position. It's optimal for performance. Right, well, oftentimes tight muscles just means that there's instability there. So the body's trying to create stability by making things tight. But like static stretching before bed is great. Right. That would be great to have my muscles kind of chill out and relax. It's helping the CNS turn off a little bit. It's going to make me sleep better. The next thing that stretching does proper is increase range of motion. Now, why is this important for gains? Greater ranges of motion and exercise tend to lead to better muscle gains. If you study like a full bicep curl to a partial one or a full squat to a partial squat or whatever, you'll see more gains in the longer ranges of motion. But there's more to that too. That stretch position, especially with resistance, is a great way to kind of send even louder muscle building signal. So the way I like to approach this when it comes to range of motion with gains is when I'm doing an exercise in the gym that involves stretching the target muscle, I really focus on the stretch part. Right. So like if I'm doing like a pull-up, right, and I'm using more of a narrow grip, if I go down to the very bottom and hang for a second and let the lat stretch and then do the pull-up. Now, of course, I'm not going to do as many reps. It's much more challenging. But I start to get deeper and deeper ranges of motion. I get way better pumps. Same thing with like a fly or like an incline curl for the biceps or if you're doing like a sissy squat for the quads or a Romanian deadlift for the hamstrings. As long as it's within control, if you move in those deeper ranges of motion, increase the range of motion, you have to go lighter. You have to be smart. But you'll see that you'll get better gains. If you have more access to strength within those different angles, obviously performance, that's going to be an enhancement. So now you have access when you're more of an extended position versus that shortened position. And you're going to be able to perform and lift more potential load from different positions or by, which then you're going to build and develop more muscle to accommodate that. What is the actual mechanism that's causing this? Is it because you are recruiting more muscle fibers because you're bringing it through a full range of motion? Therefore I'm going to build more muscle fibers. No doubt, one of the, personally, because I knew of this and understood it, but where I really noticed it applied in my own life was working on my squat depth. It really blew my mind how little of weight I have to use to develop my legs. That's by the way, that's probably why you didn't go into it earlier, same for me, it was you had to go lighter. So I forget it, why would I do that? But you noticed with lighter weight? Yes, I noticed that I could, I developed my quads, my legs in general, as much or more when I was moving through a full range of motion in comparison to a shortened range of motion with significantly more weight. So that was what kind of blew my mind was, so I got the chance to see that in my own life. Is that what it is though, is it because I'm moving through a greater range of motion, therefore I'm recruiting more muscle fibers in order to do it, and that's what ends up building up? That's a good question, there's a lot of theories that's one of them, and they do see that there seems to be more muscle fiber recruitment, but there's like the waist, you know, building up waist signal that can tell you to build muscle, and there's lots of other stuff that's happening, there's lots of studies that are going in to try to really find this out. So they're not quite sure, but what they do know is that when they compare appropriate, I say appropriate because just having a full range of motion, if you lack stability and your form is off, then you're just getting a higher risk of injury. So we're comparing apples to apples here. Excellent form, technique and control and stability, deep range of motion versus good control, stability, connection, and a shorter range of motion, which one builds more muscle? With the intensity being the same. Now I said intensity the same, not weight, because you are gonna be able to go heavier with the shorter range of motion. So the intensity is the same, meaning this guy over here does 10 reps with a high intensity, this guy over here does 10 reps with a high intensity, probably heavier weight because it's a shorter range of motion, but the longer range of motion builds more muscle. And you know what I remember saying this was with bench press, with myself and with clients, because we initially learned with the first certifications to stop at 90 degrees. So the range of motion was much shorter. And I remember when I figured out going all the way down, I just saw, even though the weight went down, the gains really started happening. Same thing with flies, with that deep stretch. And then I started to seek out, and so when you program your workouts, one thing you can do that I think is really smart is to, if you're doing multiple exercises for a body part, make one of the exercises one, and this doesn't work for every body part, but for many it does, make one of those exercises one where the resistance is hard at the stretch. I love that advice. Yeah, so like, did you do that too? Yeah, no, or just, or picking an exercise where you're intentionally going to take it through its fullest range of motion. Go lightweight and controlled and just, you know, do at least an exercise, every routine that is geared towards that versus, you know, a lot of times, especially being a guy who wants to build muscle, yeah, you know, that's kind of what we're speaking to. You go to the gym and you're always looking at, like the thing that you can load the most, you know, what exercise can you load the most? And so it's hard to kind of get out of your own way sometimes because you're so focused like that. And it wasn't until I started to piece this together later, I started to incorporate at least one exercise in there, it was more about gaining a fuller range of motion in whatever muscle I was developing. Well, it just seems like you're not really tapping into the muscles full potential when you're just focusing on like a limited range. Like you're just, this is, you know, sort of the peak of your focus, because it is, you can load substantially more, but you know, in terms of the overall function of the muscle, we're not stressing it in its length and position, and therefore we're not maximizing its full potential, which you could build, you know, more muscle fibers. Well, this also circles back to the first point too, right? If you get, you gain strength and control in this full range of motion, you're also talking about injury prevention, right? Yes. I mean, now, cause that's normally when you- Yeah, injuries happen when you lack the stability to control what you're doing. Almost always. I mean, rarely ever did I, I mean, occasionally I got a client who had like a acute injury or something radical happened playing a sport, but more often than not, it was a normal client just moving in a, you know, weird direction where they didn't have strength and control because they never trained in that range of motion and they tweaked their back or they hurt their shoulder. And so that, you know, not only does training in this full range of motion also promote more muscle growth, but it also sets you up as for injury prevention for the real world when you move out of that normal range of motion. I remember when I started to kind of first see this was when I watched Pumping Iron. There's a scene, and this is just, I've seen this movie documentary a million times, but there's a scene, obviously Arnold is the star of the documentary and he's the, you know, Mr. Olympia winning all the time and he's doing flies. And there's a couple clips in that video of other people doing flies. And I remember what stood out was his range of motion. When Arnold does the flies, he is really stretching all the way down. Really, really in really good form, really controlled, whereas the other guys were much shorter. And of course, Arnold was really known for this crazy chest, right? Then the second piece hit him when I read his Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding. So I have the original one where it's got like the old school bodybuilders in there demonstrating exercises like that's the one up there. It's all taped up. Franco Colombo is in there and, you know, Tom Plats is in there and Frank Zane. Anyway, Tom Plats is in there and he's in the legs section. He's known for, by the way, still to this day, his legs will go, he'll go on a pro bodybuilding stage today and he'll blow people away. And that never happens. Bodybuilders have changed so much over the decades because of the advancements and performance enhancing drugs and training and all that stuff. But one thing that blew me away in that was Tom Plats. Yes, they demonstrated squats and demonstrated all these great exercises, but he was so flexible, like so flexible, which I was under the impression as a kid that bodybuilders weren't very flexible. The whole muscle bound idea. No, like he's doing the splits. He's doing, like he's sitting on his heels, laying all the way back. He's in these crazy hurdler positions. And in that book, he talks about how flexibility really helps him build muscle, which, you know, again, I found this to be true with my clients and even myself. This next part I think is probably the most, one of the most important, which is proper application of stretching will help you bring up lagging body parts. It'll help you connect and to bring up lagging body parts. Oftentimes, the reason why you have a lagging body part is you're just not firing it as effectively or as fully as you could. And priming, for example, allows you to connect to these smaller muscle, because you can do a lot of exercises that are designed to target the lagging body part that you have, but oftentimes the most effective exercises are compound lifts. There's lots of other muscles involved. So you wanna do a squat for your glutes and you end up developing your quads like crazy. Or you wanna do an overhead press for your delts, but your shoulder, your triceps develop more or your chest and the same thing, you know, with your triceps and shoulders. Proper priming or proper stretching either allows muscles to get out of the way or connect to these lagging body parts so that when you do the lift, you feel it and they activate much more. This, for me, is what's like the biggest. Right, and I've seen this a few times with the protracted shoulder and trying to get their chest more developed and not gaining that access to that because you're just not in good anatomical position to really open and connect and get your central nervous system to respond and communicate. So being able to get your body to really open up and find that range of motion and set your body up to be able to focus on that and gain that connection again, it's a vital process. So another interesting thing that I've found as a side effect from working on my squat depth was my calf development. This tripped me out. Now, I didn't get huge gains from it, but I saw- You didn't expect your calves to grow. Right, it wasn't something I was, it wasn't even on the radar for what I was, like I'm trying to work on my squat depth. I'm not thinking about, oh, I hope this develops my calves a little bit, but it makes total sense, right? Because I lacked that ability for the knee to travel over the toes. Your ankle mobility. Yeah, I had poor ankle mobility, right? And so once I worked on that and then I was able to get in this deep squat, well, when I'm in my deepest part of my squat, my knees are all the way forward and my calves are stretched. So in that stretched position and the part of that first movement of coming out of the hole, they actually have to kind of activate a little bit to get out of it. An area that I was never training before. I was never stretching my calves to their fullest point like that and then having to activate. Now, even though they play a small part of the squat, just the fact of taking it to its fullest range of motion right there, them getting activated and then coming out of the squat, I actually saw it develop in my calves, it blew my mind. Yeah, it also allows you, you talk about lagging body parts, it also allows you to access lots of different exercises that maybe you couldn't do before. So to give you an example, a great but often inaccessible or inaccessible, I should say exercise for shoulders is the behind the neck press. Many people lack the stability, mobility, flexibility to do a behind the neck press. They do it, hurts the rotator cuff, hurts their shoulder, they just don't have what it takes to be able to do it without the risk of injury being too high. However, if you can do it, if you do have the stability and you can do it right, man, there's almost no overhead pressing movement that will give me a better pump than the behind the neck press. To give you an example of how I combined different stretching methods to get myself to be able to do this because I, as a kid, I couldn't do them, but I kept, in the 90s, they were super popular. All the bodybuilders did behind the neck press, that was what they did. And so I wanted to do them, but every time I tried them, they would hurt. And so later on, when I became a trainer, I started learning a few things and I said, let me see what happens if I really stretch my pecs, static stretch before I go into this behind the neck press and then let me do some rows to activate my, and I was priming without knowing that I was priming. This is before I understood priming. So what I did is I stretched my chest, got that out of the way so my shoulders could come back, activated my mid-back so that, because when you're in a behind the neck press position, you need to have the nice, your scapiness to come together nicely, right? Low and behold, and I had to start with lightweight, but low and behold, I was able to do this really full range of motion behind the neck press and I was able to develop my shoulders, which had always been kind of a lagging body part, which now I don't consider them lagging anymore. So that's just one example, right? You could do this with many body parts. So if you have an area that just seems to be slow compared to the other areas, like for whatever reason, your lats don't develop like the rest of your back or it's your chest or whatever, stretching, the proper application of stretching will allow you to access new ranges of motion, access better connection and even get a hold of exercises you couldn't do before. Now you got this great exercise that you can go through those newbie gains because you couldn't get into it before, but now you can and you're gonna get great results. One of my favorite things about this application. Now the next one is to maximize the pump. Oh, this is a good one. I'm curious because this kind of is connected to the second one that we talked about with the greater range of motion. Is it, is the reason why the pump is being maximized here is because obviously we're moving it over four range of motion. That means we're gonna get more time under tension. So therefore more fluid is being sent to the muscle. And so then therefore I get a bigger pump. That's part of it, but it goes even further. And this is a very specific bodybuilding technique. So it's not correctional. It's not necessarily activate more. This is a hypertrophy application of stretching. Bodybuilders have used it for a long time. Ben Pacolski talked about it when we went to go see him and he's one of the smartest bodybuilders that you'll find. There's methods of hypertrophy training that actually incorporate what I'm about to talk about. And they're all based off of these animal studies where they would take an animal like a bird and they would put one of the wings in a weighted stretch. Okay, weighted stretch and left it there. And they saw significant hypertrophy in the stretched muscle. And so, and what bodybuilders have been practicing for a while and have talked about for a while is when you're working out a body part, is to finish your workout after the muscles pumped. You're pumped, you're done with your chest workout to do a gnarly, deep static stretch. There's a name for this technique, right? What's the name? I don't know. There is, there's a name for, well, there's also the intra-stretching also, right? So where you're like- What you can do in between sets. Right, same philosophy. Similar, right? And you get this crazy pump. Have you messed with this before? Yeah, no, absolutely. That's why I was asking you what it is attributed to. Like my thought is that I'm in this deep stretched position and I'm holding it, so in a sense, I'm holding a contraction in isometric contraction. And so I'm sending more fluid that way, which is now causing it to pump up. You know what, so I've heard that. I've also heard the explanation that when you have blood already in there, there's already this intra, I don't know what you want to call it, intramuscular, intra-cellular pressure because the muscles pumped. So then you go and you stretch it. It disperses it. Well, you're really stretching the fascia and you're stretching the muscle and with all this fluid in there and that sends a growth signal as well. There's a cell swelling signal. For example, with creatine, there's a lot of different ways it builds muscle. One of them is by increasing the intra-cellular pressure, which also sends this kind of muscle building signal. That's the theory at least. So now this is more of an advanced technique because you need to have good form and good technique and know you're using the right weight. Don't go too heavy with this. But if you do like what you were saying, Adam, you would do for example is while you're working your legs out, once you start to get a pump in between sets, you get into a deep, like aggressive static stretch for like 60 seconds. So like I would like sit on my heels and lean back and allow the resistance of my body to really stretch my quads. Hold it for a minute. By the way, this is like crazy. It's the most gnarly thing you've ever done. If you've never done that. It's terrible. And you got to go light because obviously you're going to lose some connection with the CNS or whatever. But the pump you get is so brutal and incredible. Like for lats, you would hang and stretch lats in between sets. Or maybe I like to just do it at the end of the workout. Chest, same thing. You get some light dumbbells. I actually had Doug do this the other day and you let it sit in a fly and just sit there after the chest has already pumped. And it's gnarly. And it is a hypertrophy technique. It's more of an advanced one. But if you find yourself kind of plateaued a little bit, just try it out. Yeah, is it cause you've already kind of sent a hypertrophy signal, right? And so you went through the workout with that. Now you're in this isometric static hold, but it's still reinforcing that same signal that you already presented it with. You know, that's a good point because it's less passive than you think, right? Because it's weighted. So there's an isometric component to it because you're not just like... No, you're not just intrinsically kind of pulling. It's forcing you in that. You're also technically adding volume too, right? I mean, you're even though it's... With less damage, right? Not too much damage. Right. You know, we actually did, I don't know if you guys remember Pekolski did a video with Melissa Woof on our YouTube channel. Did he do this? Yeah, I'm almost positive, right? Doug, he did it. Yeah, right? Yeah, I'm quite sure he did. Yeah, we'll have Andrew link it so people can see or I'll be in the show notes, right? Show notes, yeah. We can say show notes more. It's not an advanced technique, but it's legit. Yeah, and I've messed with it many times. I have too. I like it. The pump, nothing gives me a better pump than doing that hold stretch at the end of the workout. And if you're following one of our programs, and correct me if I'm wrong, where I would implement this or play with this, when you're going through one of our hypertrophy phases. Yes. It makes the most sense. Not a good idea to do this when you're going super heavy. Yeah, when you're going super heavy and you're following the strength part, which is phase one of a lot of our work, or a lot of our programs. Not such a great idea, but when you get into a hypertrophy phase, which is normally the third phase of most of the programs, this is a great tool that we actually didn't program into the programs that you could kind of play with if you've never tried it before. Yeah, now this next one, I actually kind of discovered later on as a kid, which was to speed up recovery. You know, I remember, I obviously have talked about this before, but as a kid, I thought the best way to grow was after your workout to do nothing. I literally did this. Like God forbid I waste this calorie, you know, that could go to recovery and building. Like I was such a jerk about this. So when I first moved to the Bay Area, and I first started as a trainer, 24 hour fitness that I worked at was literally, I lived in the apartments across the street. So I would like, even when I worked, like I would do my workout and I always tried to have at least an hour or two and I would come home and I'd just lay there. Yeah, build. And I would. Don't bother me on building right now. Praying, right? Laying there sleeping and praying and trying not to move. Yeah, no, so you know when this happened to me, so I was 15 or 16, so I'd already been working out for maybe a year, year and a half. I told you just a long time out of the story. I read this article that talked about how Arnold, in order to add an inch to his legs, went to the woods with a barbell and some weights and a gallon of milk. This is literally what I read. And he squatted all day and then his quads. I don't know if it's a true story, but I read it. And as a kid, I'm like, this sounds like a great idea, right? Cause when you're a kid, stupid idea sound great. So I took a barbell and walked to the, there was an elementary school that was a quarter mile away from my house. And I brought literally two gallons of milk and I went over into the lawn of the grass area and I said to myself, I'm going to do squats all day. Now I lasted probably a couple of hours because that's ridiculous, right? So I would do a bunch of squats, then I'd take a break and sit in the shade, drink the milk, right? Gotta feed the muscle, go back, do some more squats. Well, anyway, I got to the point where I had to hold on to something to do any more squats with no weight, right? And I was so screwed that I could barely walk home. I was dragging the barbell. I had to pause every 10 steps because my legs were just not working. Finally my dad comes looking for me, finds me, throws the barbell in the back of the truck and then takes me home. Well, anyway, I couldn't go to school the day after. I was so sore. You couldn't walk, I guarantee you. So my mom's like, fine, because I was like in bed, like, oh my God, it's so bad. So she's like, fine. She's like, you're going to school tomorrow though. Well, anyway, the second day was even worse. Yeah, I was gonna say, day two is always worse, dude. So my mom's like, you're gonna get out of bed and stretch and I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, no. That's for yogis. But she's like, it's going back and forth with my mom, old school Italian mom. So I'm like, either I lay in bed and get the wooden spoon or I cook to this. So I got up and I remember doing some really light stretches and then all of a sudden like, man, the soreness is really dissipating quite a bit. And that was the first clue that stretching could help with recovery. Today it's one of my favorite ways, right? Active recovery is good. Moving is really good. But if a muscle is really sore, stretching it throughout the day, it was a really, really good way to get the recovery to happen a little faster. So that's what I would always recommend to clients. I mean, I remember it just from actually feeling it the first time. Like if you've never done that, if you've never been so sore, a lot of times people do this, right? You get, you feel so sore like that and you don't want to touch it, you leave it alone. But yes, it's a little painful to work through the stretch, but you guarantee you feel a difference, right afterwards. I mean, you feel way, way better. I mean, you can move again. And it just makes logical sense that, me to stretch that allows me to move again would help me build more muscle later on. It took me a while for that light bulb to go off, but it's kind of obvious once you go through it. Once you've been that sore, been the kid who doesn't move and just waits till you recover, versus okay, I'm actually gonna get out there and move. I'm gonna do some mobility or stretch. See how I feel. Oh wow, I feel so much better. I'm more likely to go do my next workout, which is then again, is obviously gonna promote more muscle building. So it's kind of obvious once you go through it. It's just funny how we were stuck in our own head thinking that you wanna train as hard as you can and then not move until you've recovered. No, it makes a difference. And that takes us to the last one, which is just pain relief. It's one of the most effective, immediate ways to relieve pain. Now it doesn't necessarily mean you're fixing the root cause of pain. We've talked about this on many past episodes, that you wanna find the root cause, you wanna do correctional exercise. It takes a little longer because oftentimes chronic pain, even though you may feel in an area, it's because movement patterns are wrong and things aren't connected. But in terms of immediate pain relief, like if your hip hurts or if your knee is sore under your patella or your shoulder hurts or ooh, my traps are a little sore or whatever, just holding a stretch, just holding a stretch on the target area, you'll notice almost always pain relief right away, right away. Yeah, it's interesting, even going through a lot of old studies that they've shown this analgesic effect for even an isometric contraction of squeeze, like a really intensive squeeze. And what it's doing is providing feedback that it's stabilized, it's secure. And so that pain signal starts to dampen down and you get a lot of relief from that. And now you apply that in with mobility or priming or whatever we talk about in terms of like another approach to stretching and it has like a massive beneficial effect in terms of pain relief. Does it have anything to do with like inflammation too? Does it's like the fact of this, the CNS calming down also will bring down inflammation, which then also gives you the relief also. Yeah, you'll get that a little later on, right? Because when something's tight, intense. So what happens is muscles will be tight because the- It's protective. Yeah, there's instability somewhere. So your body's creating instability in a less than ideal way by getting the muscles to be tight around it. Oftentimes we'll see this in the neck, right? The traps neck area, people are like, oh, my neck is tight. It's probably because you have some instability issues in your shoulder and in your upper back or your mid back, I should say. And so what you would do is like, I would stretch the traps or I'd press on the traps, which would cause immediate pain relief, but then I would go and I would strengthen the other muscles so that that didn't have to happen, keep happening, right? But the immediate pain relief is there. Like my dad, he gets a lot of low back pain and I wish he would do the preventative stuff. So that part was a different discussion because he didn't do it. But oftentimes when I go over there for dinner, he'll say, hey, Sal, my back hurts. Can you take me through some stretches? Because it right away, it fixes the pain. It doesn't fix the root cause, but you get that pain relief right away. And what I'll do with him is I'll stretch his hamstrings and his hips because I know they're so tight to make up for his core stability and that's what's pulling his back into that position. Once I stretch him, he's like, oh my God, I feel so much better. It makes that big of a difference. Now what you would do is you would follow it up with correctional exercise to prevent that from happening again. But yeah, if you're trying to maximize your gains and you're not incorporating targeted, appropriate and specifically program stretching, you're missing out on a big portion of your gains. And I think that's the main point that we're trying to make here. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our guides. We have all kinds of guides that can help you with many fitness and health goals. You can also find us all on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. I got kicked off Instagram, but you can find me on Twitter, at sal underscore to Stefano.