 Our next caller is Zach from New Jersey. Hey, what's up, Zach? How can we help you? Hey, guys. Um, wow. This is amazing. I can't believe I'm talking to you. Uh... But, um, I'm calling today because I unfortunately suffered an injury about a month ago, and I'm gonna walk you through exactly what happened on the day of my injury. But before that, I feel like I should explain what I do for a living. I am a professional musician, and the instrument that I play is the bassoon. Cool. Um, and the bassoon I brought it here with me, it's a woodwind instrument, and it's in the low family of the woodwinds, mostly orchestral. And playing it involves taking a big breath of air, holding it in, bracing my core, and then moving wind through a small opening. Um, and the opening creates resistance through a reed. Now, so that's what I do constantly. Um, on the day of my injury, though, I'll rewind it a bit. Um, I was at the gym, and I was deadlifting heavy. Now, I probably was deadlifting a little too much, but I had lifted heavier prior to this, and everything fell fine. I was lifting 305, and I weigh 170 pounds, so I don't know if that makes a difference. And everything fell fine. I felt no pain, no discomfort. My form was good, but I did that, and I might have deadlifted. I went down and weight after that. Then I did some barbell rows. Again, lighter weight, really focusing on form. And after that, I did some kettlebell swings to end the workout. And I felt fine, didn't feel any discomfort. Then I went home, and I started practicing my bassoon. And after about an hour of practicing, I felt pain down in my abdominals, like in my lower ab, and a little bit near possibly my inner thigh. And so my first thought was that, oh no, I have a hernia. And I freaked out. So for about a week, I was depressed. I was like, no, I have a hernia. So I went to the doctor. The doctor checked me. He said, you don't have a hernia, which is a relief, but I strained my abs, which was kind of surprising to me. I didn't even know that I would be able to do something like that. And I'm basically asking you, do you have experience with abdominal strains? And is it, I have not lifted weights for about four weeks. I haven't touched a weight, which is sad. But I'm trying to heal. But also, could I be bracing incorrectly? What do you think? This is actually more common than you think. It's actually, okay. So first off, two questions. Hold on. I want to find out what you call yourself if you play bassoon. Are you basuner or bassoonist? I accept both. Bassoonist? I accept both for short. Cool instrument, by the way. Yeah. It's just, yeah, random. Very, very cool instrument. Okay. So here's a question, two questions. One, who said it was an ab injury? Was it your primary care physician? Yes. Okay. It's probably, I mean, he may be right. He or she may be right. It's probably a deeper core muscle because you pulled it while bracing and blowing. And so a lot of people might not know, but you're playing an instrument like the bassoon. You have to create a tremendous amount of pressure in your diaphragm and the pelvic floor muscles. Which is all part of your core. They all have to stabilize to push this air through. It's highly unlikely that you pulled your abs. It's much more likely that you pulled a deeper core muscle. Okay. So that makes a difference in terms of, you know, kind of how we'll handle this. Here's the second question. Did you buy any chance, do you wear a weight belt when you lift deadlift and row and do exercises in the gym? I do not. Okay. Good. Okay. So weight belt would be terrible for someone like you because it teaches the muscle recruitment pattern of you pushing out against the belt, which is the opposite of what you do when you play the bassoon where you brace your core. It's probably a deep core muscle. And, you know, I hate to tell you this, but the best possible thing you can do right now, and it's a good thing it's not a hernia. Just rest it, recover. Yeah, it's just to rest it. And I would do light bracing exercises, light twisting and stretching exercises just to keep movement going on. But oftentimes when those deep core muscles get strained, they can take a little while to heal, but it's not super uncommon. I mean, it's not uncommon, actually. And it actually sounds like you just really fucking overdid it that day. I mean, that was a lot of stuff that... Yeah, it involves those muscles. Yeah, that involves those muscles and you just overdid it. You strained it. And the best thing that we can do right now is to let it completely recover and heal. And then when you get back into training, I would actually incorporate some like very specific core training exercises, like drawn maneuvers and stomach vacuums and exercises. Quadruped. Yeah, specific to that. And then knowing that this is your profession and you require so much of this core strength is kind of being aware of that, hey, if this is a day where I'm going to be practicing for an hour on the bassoon, it's probably not a good day to also be doing my kettlebell swings, my 350-pound deadlift and really getting after it. And especially when this is your profession, and I know you have obviously fitness goals, too, but if I was your coach, I would say, you know, hey, Zach, you know, today we got, you know, a show for an hour. You're going to be playing the bassoon. Let's not do 300 pounds of deadlifting today and your kettlebell swings. Let's do stuff to prepare you for your show tonight and make sure that you're strong and healthy. So I think you just overdid it. Also, I can tell you didn't follow any of our programs because rarely will we put deadlifts, rows, and kettlebell swings in the same workout. That's a lot of lumbar stabilization required in one workout. If I'm in a deadlift, I almost, depending on the client, but for most people, I don't also do lots of swings in that same workout. So pick one or the other. Rows can sometimes be okay after deadlifts, but even then I often do a supported row. Well, explain what he's saying. I think it's more layman's turn. You have a heavy loaded hip hinge movement, so you're going to fatigue that, and then you go to an explosive. You're asking for a potential injury right there. That would be like doing really heavy squats and then following it up with some ice skaters or explosive jump boxes. Well, anytime you do anything explosive under fatigue, if you've already pre-fatigued, that muscle group, it exposes a potential for straining or some type of further injury to occur. Here's a couple of movements that I think might be okay for you to try. You can try pelvic tilts on the floor just to start to engage the pelvis and start to get some movement. That's a very easy exercise. You lay flat on your back, your knees bent. You'll have a natural curve in the low back. Then just tilt your pelvis so that your back, your low back flattens against the floor and then let it arch and then flatten and then let it arch. Another exercise would be quadruped where you're on your hands and knees. You extend your left arm out and your right leg back. We have YouTube videos on all these, by the way, so we'll make sure we link these in the show. So quadruped would be another good exercise. And then lastly, and again, test all these out before you go and work them. The ones I'm recommending, they still might not be appropriate for you if they don't feel right, but the other exercise I would try with you is the rotation exercise. So you can get a resistance band, anchor it to something, stand up tall, hold the band close to your body. And then just bring it out in front of you so it's a little bit more... You're not twisting or anything, you're just resisting a little bit of the rotation. I think Justin and I did a video on that. Let's put them on a program. I think when you're feeling better and healthy, mass performance sounds like with the direction of the movements you guys are training him in, Zach, have you followed any of our programs before? You know, I have maps aesthetic, but I purchased it before I really knew about the right order of things. So I haven't followed it completely yet. Okay. All right. Mass performance would be actually, Adam, that was a great recommendation. So once you're able to get back into training, I would go on more maps performance and be very careful with exercise order. I mean, if you follow our program, you'll be okay for the most part, but always be very careful. I know sometimes people, they don't understand the nuances of exercise programming. Like I said, I almost never would have someone do a kettlebell swing and a deadlift in the same workout. There are exceptions to that, but almost never would I do that with the average person. Well, then he went on to go play the bassoon all night long, too. So I mean, you literally, I mean, I don't know too many people that would have done all that and not actually strain and hurt themselves. I mean, the fact that you train the bassoon and you probably train core more than the average person, you probably handled it better than most people would have. It could have been really bad for somebody who... Dude, can we just get like a little taste? Oh, absolutely. I want something. I want to hear you play. Don't get hurt though, huh? Yeah, yeah. I hope the audio is okay with this, but... Can you play something like Metallica or something? No, Metallica. Adam has a bong I do. Except Adam's bong is bigger to be honest. Yeah, we've all hit it. Let's see. This is what it sounds like. All right, let's hear it. All right. That's great, man. That sounds good. I like that tone. Is that the instrument that's played a lot for that kind of ominous music in like movies and scary movies and stuff like that? Is that what do you think they use? Definitely. Yeah, right? It sounds like... Jaws. That's awesome, Zach. Thanks, man. We're going to send you overmaps performance, okay? Thank you so much, guys. No problem, man. Yeah, I will say this. Justin probably knows certain instruments, especially some of the classical instruments, they actually require a tremendous amount of muscle control and... A lot of breath work. It's pretty demanding. Well, isn't that pretty in all, like, what would read instruments, right? I mean, I tried to play the saxophone when I was a kid and I remember how much, you know, strength you have to have in your cheeks and you'd be able to hold your core. Like, yeah, Ethan plays trumpet and yeah, it requires just a whole lot of pressure. Oh, yeah, I played the trumpet and I remember that, but you know what? It's almost all instruments. Even the guitar. Like, if you've ever... I literally practiced the guitar for like a week and I remember my fingers were ruined from it. You got to build calluses, yeah. It's totally its own skill. Yeah, I mean, great... I mean, I think it was you, Sal, who pointed it out. I mean, that actually didn't... that trigger didn't even go off for me but holy shit, you heavy-ass deadlifts. Rose and then kettlebell swings. Yeah, talk about fatiguing the shit out of the core and then going and doing an explosive swing. And then it could have been okay but then he pressed it even further with the bassooning all night long. This is just highlights that... The importance of exercise order. Exercise order and programming. I know some people are like, what's the difference and it's all the same exercise. No, it makes a huge difference. This is the difference between an effective work out and one that is not effective. Oftentimes they have the same exercises in them and you look at them and you go, well, this one has squats. This one has squats. They must be the same. No, they're not. The programming makes a huge difference. You know, this is actually kind of cool that we got such a unique question like this because we always get questions about, could you guys explain how you write your programs? And this is why it's so difficult to explain because it's not like we go, oh, there might be a bassoon guy It's just that there's some general rules You wouldn't want to put those things back to back. It doesn't mean you couldn't. It doesn't mean that it's wrong necessarily but this is where the experience thing comes in as you think about stuff where, man, I don't know if I want to fatigue this muscle and then do this and then go follow that. So we take into consideration all that stuff when we put the exercises in the programming. So there's little nuance things like that that are hard to explain when you're talking in general but when you get a very specific question it's such a great point. It's exactly how you know right away. You didn't follow our programs because that wouldn't happen. I would never write one like that.