Jeff Cavaliere: Optimize Your Exercise Program with Science-Based Tools | Huberman Lab Podcast #79

- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

where we discuss science,

and science based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman,

and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today, my guest is Jeff Cavaliere.

Jeff Cavaliere holds a Master of Science in Physical Therapy

and is a certified strength and conditioning specialist.

He did his training at the University of Connecticut Storrs,

one of the top five programs in the world

in physical therapy and sports medicine.

I discovered Jeff Cavaliere over 10 years ago

from his online content.

His online content includes information about

how to train for strength, how to train for hypertrophy,

which is muscle growth, how to train for endurance,

as well as how to rehabilitate injuries

to avoid muscular imbalances, nutrition and supplementation.

I've always found his content

to be incredibly science based, incredibly clear,

sometimes surprising, and always incredibly actionable.

It is therefore not surprising

that he has one of the largest online platforms

for fitness, nutrition, supplementation,

and injury rehabilitation.

Jeff has also worked with an enormous number

of professional athletes

and has served as head physical therapist

and assistant strength coach for the New York Mets.

Again, the content that Jeff Cavaliere has posted online

has been so immensely useful to me over the years,

that I was absolutely thrilled

to get the chance to sit down with him

and ask him about everything from how to train

in terms of how to split up the body parts

that you train across the week,

how to integrate strength training and endurance training,

when to stretch, how to stretch.

Indeed, we talked about nutrition,

we talk a bit about supplementation.

We talk about how to really avoid creating imbalances

in muscle and in neural control over muscle.

This is one thing that's really wonderful about Jeff is

he really has an understanding of not just how

muscles and bones, and tendons and ligaments work together,

but how the nervous system interfaces with those.

We talked about the mental side of training,

including when to bring specific concentration

to the muscles that you're training,

and when to think more about

how to move weights through space

and think more about the movements overall.

I'm certain that you'll find the conversation that we held

to be immensely useful and informative

for your fitness practices

and also for how you mentally approach fitness in general,

and how to set up a lifelong fitness practice,

one that will give you the strength that you desire,

one that will give you the aesthetic results

that you desire.

One that will set you up for endurance

and cardiovascular health,

basically an overall fitness program.

I really feel this is where Jeff Cavaliere shines

above and beyond so many of the other PTs

and fitness so-called influencers that are out there.

Again, everything is grounded in science,

everything is clear, and everything is actionable.

And while we do cover an enormous amount of information

during today's episode,

if you want to dive even deeper into that information,

you can go to athleanx.com,

where you'll find some of Jeff's programs.

You can also find him at Athlean-X on YouTube.

There you'll find videos for instance,

like the, how to repair or heal from lower back pain.

Something that I actually followed directly

long before I ever met Jeff, has over 32 million views,

and that is not by accident, it's because

the protocols there again are surprising and actionable.

They relieved my back pain very quickly without surgery.

So I'm immensely grateful for that content.

And it extends into everything from again,

hypertrophy, endurance and strength training and so on.

Again, it's athleanx.com as the website,

Athlean-X on YouTube, and also @athleanx on Instagram.

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Before we begin,

I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate

from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is however, part of my desire and effort

to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

and science related tools to the general public.

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And now for my discussion with Jeff Cavaliere.

Jeff, such a pleasure for me to have you here.

- I'm glad to be here, it's amazing.

- I'm a longtime consumer of your content.

I've learned a tremendous amount about fitness,

both in the weight room and cardio,

nutrition things that I've applied for over a decade.

So for me, this is particularly meaningful.

And my goal here is really to ask a bunch of questions

to which I'm interested in the answers,

but also for which I know

the audience is really curious about.

So one of your mantras is,

"If you want to look like an athlete, train like an athlete"

and I think that's something really special that sets aside

what you do from what a lot of other

very well qualified people do.

And in terms of the use of weights and resistance,

whether or not it's body weight or weights in the gym,

or pulleys versus cardio,

in terms of overall health aesthetics and athleticism,

is there a way that you could point to

the idea that maybe people should be doing

50% resistance training and 50% cardio,

maybe it's 70/30, maybe it's 30/70.

And here I'm talking about the typical person

who would like to maintain, or maybe even

add some muscle mass,

probably in particular areas for most people,

as opposed to just overall mass.

Although we'll talk about that later,

and people who want to maintain

a relatively low body fat percentage

and be in good cardiovascular health.

What's the sort of contour of a basic program

that anybody could think about as a starting place?

- I think it's like a 60/40 split,

which would be leaning towards weight training, strength

and then the conditioning aspect be about 40%.

So if you look at it over a course of a training week,

I mean, five days in a gym would be a great task.

And obviously not in the gym, it could be done at home.

But three days strength training, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Conditioning, Tuesday, Thursday, you know, two days.

It's a pretty easy roundabout way to split that up,

of course, depending upon training goals.

And as you said, the aesthetic goals like that

will shift dramatically.

But if you want to see the benefits of both,

that's probably the effect of dose for strength training

and the effect of dose for conditioning

at the bare minimum level.

Again, being a much better performer conditioning wise,

you're going to want to do more than that.

- And in terms of the duration of those workouts,

what's your suggestion?

I've been weight training for about 30 years,

running for about 30 years, and mainly for health.

And have found that if I work hard in the gym

or at resistance training for more than 60 minutes or so,

it's very hard for me to recover, I start getting cold,

I start getting weaker from workout to workout,

but amazingly, at least to me,

if I keep those workouts to about 10 minutes of warmup

and 55 minutes or so of really hard work

for resistance training,

and I keep the cardiovascular work

to about 30 or 45 minutes, I feel great.

And I seem to make some progress,

at least someplace in the workout from workout to workout.

- Yeah, I mean, those are good numbers,

'cause those are kind of numbers that we usually preach.

We try to keep our workouts to an hour or less if possible.

Now, depending upon the split that you're following,

if you're on a total body split,

there's just going to be more that has to be done

in a given amount of time.

And again if you're training primarily for strength,

that could prolong the workout,

'cause of the longer rest time is in between sets.

But in general, when you're not focused on that one aspect,

but the overall health picture,

then you can get the job done in under an hour.

And again, I always say, on top of

"If you want to look like an athlete train, like an athlete,"

is, "You could either train longer or you could train hard,

but you can't do both."

And I really believe that the focus for me,

I have a busy life,

I have a lot of other things that I do believe it or not.

And it's like, I want to go hard and I want to go get out.

And I find that my body also responds to that,

and I think a lot of guys' body respond to that.

And particularly as you start to get older,

I think it's the length of the workout

that actually causes more problems

than the intensity of what you're doing.

Particularly if you're warmed up properly like you said.

I've found personally that my warmup

has had to become more of an integral part of my workout

than it ever has before.

I could get in the gym when I was 20,

and I'm going right over, I'm doing the one set, two sets,

I'm ready to go.

You know, and I never do another workout warmup set

for any of the other exercise I do the rest of the day.

That's not true anymore.

And I found that as long as I'm willing

to sort of give myself a little bit of a warmup,

the intensity is not what bothers me.

I'm very much in control of the weights that I use

and it doesn't bother me.

But if I start to go pretty long,

I start to feel achy or I start to have problems.

So again, depending upon age,

that also plays a factor in the length.

But again, I think everybody can achieve,

on a standard program,

can achieve the results that they want within an hour.

- In terms of splits, you mentioned splits.

And so for those who aren't familiar with this term splits,

it's really which body parts are you training on?

Which days?

Seems like almost everybody follows a weekly

workout schedule.

Although the body of course doesn't care about the week.

There's no reason thing that once every seven days

or twice every seven days makes sense physiologically,

it's just the body doesn't work that.

But, that's the way life is structured.

I've seen you discuss three days a week,

whole body workouts.

I've heard of splits like a pushing one day,

pulling another day, legs another day, a day off, repeat.

I mean, there's so many variations on this.

What are some general themes that we can throw out there?

And in order to avoid the huge matrix of possibilities,

you have some wonderful content that points those.

And we will cap-

In our caption show notes, we'll link out to some of those

that different ways to design splits.

But in terms of giving people a logic

of how to think about splitting up body parts,

what's governing the split?

What are the rules and the logic that dictate a split?

- For me, the first rule is will you stick to it?

Like if you, 'cause there are split,

I don't particularly like full body splits.

And I was actually talking to Jesse

about that the other day like,

I don't necessarily like to have to train everything.

Now of course the volumes will come down per muscle group.

But if you don't like to do that,

and you actually don't look forward to your workout

because you're dreading having to do everything

and feeling maybe too fatigued

by the time your workout's over,

or the fact that those generally do take a little bit longer

and don't fit into your schedule.

I don't care how effective the split is,

a split not done is not effective.

So you need to find one that fits.

So maybe you go into an alternative option,

like a push-pull-legs, like you mentioned.

And that could be done either one cycle through the week,

on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday split,

or it could be twice in a week.

So you're actually training six times,

where you repeat it, pull-push-legs, pull-push-legs,

or however you want to do it

with either a day off in between the three days,

or at the end of the six days.

And again, that actually impacts your schedule.

I've broken that down before where it's,

if you put it in between the three days,

it's good because you're giving yourself an extra rest day

in between, but it starts to shift that day off

every week as we wrap around.

So for those guys that we're choosing

that seven day schedule out of convenience in our heads,

it starts to mess with that off day.

So others like to just keep it predictably,

let's say on a Sunday, and train six days in a row.

But that's a better way to maybe group similar

muscle actions together, which I think,

I definitely prefer that,

because if I'm going to be training pulling movements,

at least there there's a synergy between them.

And I feel like I'm looking to achieve one goal that day.

And then, I mean, quite honestly,

you can go back to the bro-split days,

and those still work effectively.

There's a reason why they worked in the past.

I think that science shows that there's smarter ways

to do them these days.

Like you can come back and hit a related muscle,

so you could do, let's say biceps on one day

and then come back two days later and do back,

realizing again, synergy between the exercises there,

your biceps are going to get re-stimulated again.

So you could figure out ways to make that work,

but the thing that I think is effective there,

is that tends to be one of the ones

that people like the most.

Because they can go in, they get their pump, they feel good.

It's pretty solely focused on one muscle group.

- Is that the definition of a bro-split?

One... - One muscle group a day?

- Yeah, I see, so it's very much geared towards

strength and aesthetics really maximizing...

- Probably more aesthetics than strength, yeah.

You're just... - Hence the bro, the bro name.

- But again, like, you know, in here I am a science guy

and I could appreciate the benefits of a bro-split.

Especially 'cause again, like to what end?

Who's goal are we trying to achieve here?

Those are ours.

Like if I'm applying my standards and my goals

or even like athletic ideals,

but they just want to get in shape,

then it's perfectly fine to do a bro split in that instance,

if you're sticking to it again

and you're seeing the results that you want to see from it.

But they're able to really keep their focus on one muscle,

they get to focus on.

Look, a lot of times people struggle with

the way of an exercise feels

until their second or third set.

Like they don't have that proper percept of ability

to kind of lock in on an exercise.

So spending a few, not only sets in the same exercise,

but then doing another exercise for the same muscle group

helps them to dial in a little bit better

and get more out of their training.

- Yeah, that raised a really interesting,

I think important question.

Early on when I started resistance training,

which was when I was 16 in high school,

I got in touch with and I was learning from Mike Menzer.

- Me too, that's crazy.

- And Mike was very helpful.

Very, very helpful.

We got to be friendly...

- So, I just read his book,

I didn't get a chance to be him, so I'm jealous, right?

- Well, back then no internet,

I paid by Western Union type thing to send him some money

- From the back of the magazine.

- And then he got on the phone with me

and my mother at the time was like,

why is this grown man calling the house?

And he gave me a very straightforward split,

which was shoulders, arms one day,

he had me taking two days off and then training legs

and then two days off and then chest and back, et cetera.

- And that's a variation of a bro-split too.

Where you're sort of breaking them down that way,

chest them back or chest them bis, you know?

- And it worked very well for me,

I probably would've, because of my age I think,

and because I was untrained, I think, largely untrained,

I think it would've grown on many different programs,

but it worked very well for me.

I eventually just made that in every other day thing.

Shoulders and arms day off, legs day or two off,

'cause if you hit legs right, at least for me,

I'm not training the next day.

And then I'm not doing much of anything athletic

the next day, and chest, back and repeat and so on.

And the reason I found that helpful

is I almost always recovered between workouts.

The six day a week program of push-pull-legs,

push-pull-legs, to me seems excruciating

from two standpoints.

One is, at least with my recovery abilities,

or lack of recovery abilities,

I can't imagine coming back feeling fresh.

And the other one is,

if I'm in the gym more than four days a week,

I really start to fatigue it

about the whole psychological experience of it.

Whereas if I'm in there three or four days a week.

In other words, if I put a day off in between each workout,

I really want to be there.

And I get in there with a lot of fire.

And I'm also doing other things on the off days.

So I think that, I love that you mentioned

the split that you'll stick to.

And that you can bring the intensity to,

because I think that that's really important.

I sometimes hear about two a day training.

I've done two a day training twice in my lifetime,

both times I got sick two days later.

That's correlation, not causation.

But is there ever an instance where two a day

weight training makes sense

for the non-drug assisted, typical recovery ability person?

- Actually, I think it makes sense in some scenarios,

but it doesn't make sense practically

for a lot of people's schedules.

So like if you could break down,

let's say you were going to do even

some version of a total body session,

or maybe like you're going to do an upper lower split, right?

You could do an upper workout and do the anterior chain

or the pushing portion of that in one session

and then come back and do the pulling session later on

at night, if you had the opportunity to.

The thing that you benefit from there

is the freshness of focus.

Again, like something in my head is sacrificed

by the time you get towards the latter half

of whatever workout you're in.

To the same point you made before like,

when you start to approach that 50 minutes an hour mark,

you are either losing focus, you're losing energy,

you're losing contract viability, you're losing something.

And if you're relegating whatever it is,

the pulling portion of that to the end of that workout,

something suffers so that,

and if they realize that's happening,

then maybe you switch them up

the next time you do the workout

where the pulling portion of the upper workout goes first,

and then the pushing goes later,

so you're at least not just continuing that cycle,

but at the same time,

if you were able to kind of split them up,

you get a chance to kind of take a break,

you could have that freshness of focus again,

and you could actually get a better effort in,

'cause again, I think effort drives the results.

So if the effort is not compromised,

then you should be able to do that.

But systemically is that a problem?

And I think that it is a problem for a lot of people.

It's just hard to,

it's hard to rev the engine up a lot of times in the day.

You warm that thing up once,

it's like that car in the winter, you get it going once,

you're lucky, okay,

now you got to drive it the rest of the day.

But you put it in the garage

and try to start it the next day, it's a problem.

So, you know, young people can get away with it

a lot more than older people could.

- Well, I've never had a strong recovery quotient,

but if I stick to this one day off in between,

every once in a while, two days in a row training,

maybe because I have to travel

and I want to make sure I get all the workouts

and kind of thing, I seem to be okay.

I like your example of warming up the car,

spoken like a true east coaster,

or those of us are on the west coast,

I took a moment there,

but we folks from the East Coast and the Midwest, get it,

and certainly from Europe.

In terms of the mixing up of cardiovascular training

and resistance training, same day, different day,

which one should come first, which one should come second?

If one main goals, again,

everyone listening has different goals are,

most people would like to either maintain

or gain some muscle.

I don't know many people that want to lose muscle.

To maintain or gains some muscle,

usually in specific locations on their body,

most people would like to be a bit leaner or a lot leaner.

There are a few people out there that are

either naturally lean or don't want,

or actually just want to gain weight.

But assuming that people want to get leaner,

put on some muscle, maintain muscle,

and want to have a healthy heart and a healthy brain,

which basically requires a healthy cardiovascular system,

how would you incorporate cardiovascular work

into the overall weekly regimen?

- So again, I think that the bare minimum

is probably twice a week in terms of cardiovascular.

If you want to have some semblance

of cardiovascular conditioning.

But I think most people who actually need it more

or want to pursue it more than that

are going to need more time to do that.

So at some point it can't just be relegated to a day off,

or a day off from the weight training workouts.

So at some point it has to occur on the same day.

And in that case, I just like to put it,

if that is, you're not your primary goal,

but you're looking more for the, just the overall picture,

the aesthetics you mentioned,

putting muscle on in certain areas,

then I would put it at the end of the workout.

'Cause you don't want it in any way compromise

the weight training work out.

And as we've sort of referenced a couple times already,

the intensity of those workouts is important.

And we know there's a strength component

to those workouts also that is going to

be a helpful stimulus for growth.

So the conditioning, the cardio,

that stuff done prior to any training,

strength training, workout,

is likely going to impair your ability

to perform at your best.

So unless it's just done for a quick little warmup

in the beginning,

but then it's not sustained long enough really to be

a benefit for cardiovascular conditioning.

So I just like to put that at the end,

realizing that even if my effort level is lower,

my output is lower,

if it's still placing a demand on my cardiac output

to get that conditioning effect because I'm fatigued,

it still has a demand on my cardiac output,

so it's still achieving its goal,

but it didn't interfere with my main goal

of being able to increase my performance in the gym.

- Got it.

And in terms of the form of cardiovascular training,

I've seen you do a number of, I have to say very impressive

high intensity interval type work.

So burpee type work,

or pushups with crunches mixed into them,

anyway, people can see your videos,

I didn't describe those in the best way,

but rather than on the treadmill

or out jogging for 30-45 minutes,

is that because you prefer higher intensity,

higher heart rate type training,

or is it because you live in cold Connecticut,

and you don't want to be out jogging on the roads

in the middle of the winter?

- I think all the above,

I mean, those are factors from a personal level,

but I think that if you are-

If we could blend function across these realms

and not have such a delineation between,

this is my way training, and this is my conditioning,

but figure out a way to blend them together,

I always think that you've got a better opportunity to get

that more well rounded result.

And I like to kind of mix up that straight conditioning work

and also some of the footwork drills.

We have some high expectations for guys

that come into our programs,

like to just do some footwork drills.

- Like ladders. - Like ladders,

or line drills or something.

And you know what happens?

People become intrigued and interested.

Like I never, I haven't tried this since high school.

And they become interested in just the challenge of it,

and then as we become almost distracted by the challenge,

we're now like finding ourselves conditioning.

And I always think that's an important part,

that sometimes you got to draw people in

to show them what they might be interested in.

And from the output or the effect of it,

I just think that when you're able to blend some,

still maintain some of that strength training

into the exercise, as you mentioned,

let's say I'm doing some kind of a push up or a burpee,

there is an anaerobic component to that

that is going to be helpful,

that then rather than just walking or just jogging.

Not to say that that isn't an effective means

for strict cardiac conditioning,

it's one of the ways that we've had for centuries,

how to do it.

But I just think that if we can blend it,

then it becomes maybe a little bit more interesting

and you get some of those crossover benefits,

and it doesn't become so segmented

in terms of what we're trying to do.

- I love the idea of bringing some mental challenge

and some desire to improve a skill while conditioning.

That's not something that I've thought of before,

and it's simply 'cause I've overlooked it,

but it makes sense because, my sister who's reasonably fit,

although I'm always trying to get her to do a bit more,

she always asks me, what should I take?

And I'm a, I don't believe her in supplements

are for certain people in certain instances,

but I keep telling her, you know, it's,

the behaviors are going to end,

nutrition are going to have the greatest outsize

positive effect.

And she loves things like dance classes and things,

or kickboxing, these kinds of things which,

so it makes sense that if you can hook somebody

on the conditioning aspect or the skill aspect

and kind of trick them into doing more cardio,

so to speak that's terrific.

Also the neuroscientist in me just has to say,

forgive me, that anytime you're engaging

the two sets of motor neurons, the ones in your brain,

the upper motor neurons and the ones in your spinal cord,

anytime you're engaging those upper motor neurons,

which are for deliberate well controlled action,

you're doing a great thing for your brain

in terms of brain longevity.

So, now I need to incorporate some actual skills

into my training.

Going back to weight training a bit,

one of the most important things I learned from you,

so over the years was that,

when training to increase muscle size, to really think,

not so much about moving weights,

but more about challenging muscles.

- Yeah.

- I also heard this from my friend, Ben Pakulski,

who's a very well accomplished,

He was a bodybuilder,

now he's into other aspects of fitness, teaches fitness,

but don't move weights challenge muscles,

unless you're trying to power lift

or something of that sort, which I'm not, immensely helpful.

But the other thing that I learned from you that,

combined with that was this idea that

certain muscles will grow better and get stronger

much more easily, maybe even will recover better

because of our ability to contract them really hard.

And this what I call the Cavaliere test,

which is at least if I could paraphrase,

so for instance, if I can, it's always the bicep, isn't it?

Let's use the calf or the bicep.

If you can flex your bicep to the point where

it hurts a little bit,

like it almost feels like a cramp or a cramp,

where you can flex your calf to the point where

it really cramps up a little bit,

almost feels like it's nodding up,

that's a pretty good indication

that you're going to be able to

stimulate that muscle well under load

if you're doing the movement properly.

And that's the feeling to actually aim for each repetition,

maybe even throughout the repetition.

For me, this completely transformed my results.

And this was, I think maybe five/six years ago

that I first heard this from you,

body parts that for me, lagged behind,

that I thought maybe genetically weren't going to work for me,

immediately just started growing, right?

And I was getting stronger and stronger,

and I thought this is really something so much so

that I've dedicated a portion of my research

along with, in collaboration with another group

to try and understand

what's happening in these upper motor neurons in the brain

that can engage the muscles even more.

And that it's not just about progressive overload

or putting a pump into the muscle.

That it's really this mind muscle connection

is a real thing when it comes to predicting results

and that you can get better at it.

So forgive me if we're paraphrasing

your incredible content around this,

it made a tremendous difference for me

and a number of other people that have passed that along to.

But what can you, first of all, how did you arrive at that?

Because we hear about the mind-muscle connection,

but I really heard it first from you.

How did you arrive at this kind of cramp test,

the Cavaliere test as I'll call it?

It's always weird when people name things

after themselves in science,

but other scientists can name things.

So there is now officially the Cavaliere test,

is whether or not you can cramp the muscle

in the absence of load, just flexing it

to the point where it hurts a little bit.

That would be a good indication

that you could grow that muscle well.

How did you come up with this?

- I mean, honestly, it's something that made sense to me,

because during my workouts, even as a young kid

just starting out, I always wanted to know

what is it working?

A lot of people ask that question more so than you think,

like, what is this supposed to work?

And a lot, I don't know if you've ever noticed,

but like when people ask that question,

if they're being trained by a trainer,

and the trainer's saying, well, just do this,

do this exercise and they'll show you how to do it.

But then they'll say, but what is it supposed to work?

Where am I supposed to feel this, right?

People, did they just inherently ask that question?

A lot of people will.

I was one of those that did that, and I asked that question.

Not because I knew what I was doing,

but just because I don't know,

I wanted to know what was supposed to be doing the work.

Once you do that, and you start to seek that out,

and say, okay, well,

the bicep is what's supposed to be doing the work,

then I want to make sure the bicep's doing the work.

So then I would just sort of really like tweak the movement

to make it do more work or feel more uncomfortable,

or get it stronger contraction,

knowing if that's supposed to do the job,

it wasn't until PT school that I'm learning,

oh, well, the flexion of the elbow

is the brachial and the bias

and the bias' responsible for supination.

You started to, I learned other components of it,

but all I wanted to know was to bring my arm up in a curl,

what is supposed to do the job?

So I would seek out ways to make that happen better.

And when I was able to do that,

I could feel the stronger contraction.

And I just, I don't know what it, I just,

I was no visionary, I just felt like

I knew that that was going to be better for me

if the muscle I was trying to grow

was being stressed more effectively.

So when I was attempting to do this

across different exercises, I would notice that

what I could do potentially on a curl where my arm is up,

where you asking me to flex my bicep that position,

I couldn't do if I was doing a concentration curl,

or I couldn't carry over to a cable curl,

and that shouldn't really change,

'cause the function is still largely the same,

there's still elbow flexion, there's still supination,

why am I not able to do it there?

And that's when it sort of clued into me that like,

your mind-muscle connection on

not just your mind with one muscle,

but on every exercise matters,

and it varies from exercise to exercise.

And even if you don't gain muscle size from doing that,

although I think it's very hard not to,

especially if you're not used to doing that,

there's a term I like to call muscularity,

which is a difference, right?

It's the level of sort of resting tone in the muscle.

That improves dramatically.

If you can learn how to just start to

engage that muscle better,

the muscularity, the resting tone of that muscle

is harder, it's more at attention, it's more alive.

And it's all driven from being able to connect better

neurologically with the muscle that you're trying to train.

I've talked about a lot in efficiency

is really what you're trying to seek in movements

when you're trying to create hypertrophy.

When strength is your goal,

efficiency of the movement is what you're looking for.

You're looking to have muscles tied together

and work well efficiently,

the chest, the shoulders, the triceps,

to get a bar off of your chest or in a bench press.

You're not looking to make it a very inefficient

leverages for your chest,

to try to grow your chest in a bench press,

you're trying to let the whole package come together

for a greater output.

But when you're trying to go and create muscle hypertrophy

or even this muscularity that I talk about,

you need to seek ways to make it feel more uncomfortable.

If you don't feel the discomfort,

then you're doing something wrong.

And I struggle to this day on certain muscle groups

to still do that, even knowing what I'm trying to work

and knowing what the goal of everything I'm preaching here.

It's very difficult for some muscles

and for certain people to do this on certain muscles.

But as you mentioned, practice does help.

And the more you become consistent

and deliberate with what you're trying to do,

the more of a result you actually get.

- It's couple of really couple of points I'd like

to delve into further.

First of all, my hunch was always that

the muscle groups that grew most easily

and that I could contract hardest without any-

The first time I did the Cavaliere test, got 10 out 10.

If we give it a 10 out of 10 scale.

It could just like cinch, isolate those muscles,

cinch them, grow them easily.

I mean, there's certain body parts,

I don't want to say which ones,

'cause it doesn't really matter, that I always felt like

if I just did pushups, they would grow,

and these muscles are far away from any of the muscles

that are supposed to be involved in pushups,

even though I like to think I'm doing pushups correctly.

You'll tell me if I'm not.

But some of that I think is genetic,

and some of that has to do with the sports that I played

when I was younger.

So I swam, I played soccer, I skateboard.

And then later I boxed.

And so the muscles involved in those sports

were always very easy to engage

later when I went into the gym.

So I guess perhaps a call to parents,

having kids do a lot of dynamic activity,

seems like it might be a good idea.

The other thing is this issue of muscularity.

I am so glad you brought that up.

There are, I have to imagine a large number of listeners

who don't want to get bigger.

They don't want to take up a larger clothing size.

They don't want to take up more space.

In fact, some of them would like to take up less space,

but they want that quality that you're describing,

which is that, oftentimes you hear it more in the,

here I'm stereotyping a bit, but with kindness.

You hear from women who haven't weight trained,

they say, I don't want to get big, often.

Sometimes they do,

but most women that I've helped weight train

or talked to about weight train say,

I don't want to get big, I want to get toned.

And I think what they're referring to

is this quality of muscularity.

- A hundred percent, - This idea that at resting

or at close to rest, or anytime someone reaches out

and grabs a glass,

that the muscles almost look like they're kind of twitching

underneath the skin.

And yet it's Saran wrap skin anatomy chart type skin.

So this thing of muscularity, or resting tone,

has a physiological basis,

I think it's how readily the nerves

are communicating with the muscles.

And you're saying that by learning to engage the muscles

more actively, the resting tone or muscularity can improve.

Have you seen that both in men and women?

- Yeah, oh yeah.

- And do you think this is something that takes upkeep,

maintenance, or that once you develop that in a muscle,

you can just kind of let it coast.

- I think like everything at key, it requires upkeep,

you know, user lose it, I do believe firmly,

but like I think that the development of the connections

is going to be harder than the maintenance of the connection.

As I said, I still struggle to this day for myself with

unnamed muscle groups, they also,-

But there's just certain areas

that are harder for your brain for whatever reason

to just develop that connection at that type of level

to create that extra strong contraction.

But I think that with proper dedication and focus,

and then I'll go right out and say,

calves is one of the areas that

I don't necessarily have a great connection with,

and I also obviously must not care so much

'cause I don't put in the time and effort

to create that connection as I could.

So I think what might happen is,

you know yeah, there could be a struggle there,

but then with struggle comes disinterest,

'cause you're like, well screw it, I'm a calf knot

and I'm not going to do anything about it.

So I think if you put the required effort in,

and the time and repetitions that you will develop that,

and once you do develop it, it's going to stick around

a lot longer than it would

had you not invested any time into it at all,

not requiring as much of that.

But I mean, I don't know, like you mentioned,

now when you train, it's like,

you're just, this is just part of how you train now,

like you're going hard,

you're trying to really forcefully contract.

You're not just moving the weight,

I say from point A to point B,

but you're like trying to contract the weight

through that range.

That is a mindset that I try to put into

what everything I'm doing,

unless of course I'm focused on a strength exercise

where I'm just trying to lift a greater amount

and use all the muscles together.

But when the goal is inefficiency for hypertrophy,

I am really trying to create that contraction,

and it's just part of my training.

So I guess that for consistency's sake,

as long as I'm training is happening.

If I get away from training that it's not happening at all,

but you know, even there,

I probably another embarrassing admission probably,

will mindfully do it throughout the day,

even with no weight in my hand, in certain muscle groups,

whether it be my abs or my arm or my shoulders or something,

I'm doing something just to sort of engage the muscles.

And I do think that some of that sort of inane practice

actually helps by the time you go back into the gym.

You just kind of keep that connection going.

- Well, it certainly obeys all the rules of neuroplasticity.

You know the fire together wired together mantra,

which is the words of my colleague, Carla Shatz,

hold true for all aspects of neural function,

including nerve to muscle.

So these flexing throughout the day

or the deliberate isolation of contracting a muscle

throughout the day is without question

engaging neuroplasticity.

And if you were to do fewer those repetitions,

you're going to get less engagement

of the nerve to muscle connection.

I can say this with a smile and with confidence because,

one of the first things all neuroscience students learn

is about the neuromuscular junction,

'cause it's a really simple example of where

the more times the nerve fires

and gets the muscle to contract,

the stronger that connection get,

receptors are brought there, et cetera, et cetera,

there's a whole bunch of mechanisms for a topic

of another podcast.

But basically that practice throughout the day

makes total sense and works.

- Yeah, and there's no, believe me,

there's no science behind that

in terms of the application of it.

You do it when,

you catch yourself doing it from time to time.

But it is definitely something that's easily done

discreetly and you wind up doing.

I actually, I think in a recent video when I did talk about

growing your arms by just improving the connection.

Not that that connection itself is applying any load

or resistance that's significant

to create overload for growth,

but it's the development of that connection

that I then take back with me into the gym

at a more effective level

that takes every exercise I do there

and makes it more effective.

- That's like sharpening the blade, so to speak.

Yeah, certainly obeys the laws

of nerve to muscle physiology.

Wanted to just touch on a couple of things.

If the goal is to challenge muscles,

and one is dividing their body into, let's say,

a three or four day a week split or so, or maybe up to six,

how do you know when a muscle is ready

to be challenged again?

Again, I've heard, okay, every 48 hours is

protein synthesis increases and then we'll get into this

and then it drops off.

But frankly, if I train my legs hard,

I can get stronger from workout to workout,

or at least better in some way, workout to workout,

leg workout to leg workout,

training them once every five to eight days.

If I train them more often, I get worse.

So whatever that 48 hour to 72 hour thing is,

somehow my legs don't obey that,

or maybe something else is wrong with me,

but I'm sure there are many things else wrong with me,

but how do you assess recovery at the local level,

meaning at the level of the muscles,

so we'll talk about soreness,

and getting better, stronger, more repetitions, et cetera?

And then at the systemic level,

the level of the nervous system.

And I'd love for you to tell us about the tool that,

again, I learned from you,

which is actually using a physical scale,

because it turns out that,

will let you tell what the tool is,

but that tool is also actively being used

for assessing cognitive decline, and cognitive maintenance,

and cognitive function

in people with Alzheimer's and dementia.

- That makes total sense.

Makes total sense.

So regarding the first part of the question,

how would you kind of dictate when a muscle's recovered?

So I do think that what you're experiencing is totally real,

that different muscles recover at different rates.

And I've always been so fascinated by this concept.

I've talked about internally with my team, but like,

I feel like what we really need the holy grail to training,

is going to be when we're able to crack the code

on an individual basis, when a muscle is recovered,

and that is going to dictate its training schedule.

And the fact that you might have a bicep

that could be trained via a pulling workout,

a regular bicep dedicated workout,

forget to split at the moment.

You may have a bicep that's able to be trained,

that can be trained again the next day.

And then the next day,

and then maybe you need a day off after that.

But like, that can vary from person to person for sure,

and it can vary from muscle to muscle in that person

over the course of time as you mentioned,

'cause the systemic recovery is going to impact

all those muscles anyway,

but let's say you're systemically recovering,

every muscle itself is going to have a recovery rate.

And I think what's fascinating is that,

when you talked about before we like to train in this week,

or we have, like the way our mind looks at training,

well, if that was the case with the biceps,

that bicep is a slave to the rest of your training split.

Where it's like, well, why does it have to be also

at the end of every eighth day or whatever,

when it might respond better to something

much more frequently?

And your legs are also being thrown into that mix.

There's a Mike Menzer concept where he's like,

train one set and be done for 14 days.

I mean, there's such variability between muscle groups

and you're linking them all together.

I think that coming back and using muscle soreness

as a guideline for that, is one of the only tools we have

in terms of the local level.

You know we don't really have, being able to measure,

let's say CPK levels inside of a muscle would be amazing,

at a local level to see how recovered that muscle is,

but that becomes fairly invasive, at least to my knowledge,

it becomes fairly invasive.

So what are our tools?

I mean, I think that at the basic level,

that's the one that most people can relate to

and easily identify, and then use that as a guideline.

And if you're training when you're really sore,

it's probably not a great idea.

And it's probably a good indication

that that muscle's not recovered,

but at least hearing what you and I are saying here

might be a comfort to the person to say,

yeah, it is possible that it's not recovered.

Just because 48 hours is the recommendation.

And just because research points to muscle protein synthesis

needing a restimulation, well, maybe not,

maybe you're not necessarily there yet.

For that muscle that you're not there yet.

So it's all really interesting stuff,

but as far as the systemic recovery,

I think there's a lot of ways people talk about

resting heart rate measured in the morning,

all different kinds of core temperature

and things like that that might become altered

in a state of non recovery.

But grip strength is very much tied to performance

and recovery.

And when I was at the Mets,

we used to actually take grip strength measurements

as a baseline in spring training all the time.

Now, obviously as a baseball player,

you're gripping a bat, you're pitcher,

you're gripping a ball like-

Having good grip strength is important,

so if you've noticed somebody had a very weak grip,

it's just a good focal point

of a specialized training component for the...

- Would you use this every day with those guys?

- No, we would do, in spring training,

we do sort of a baseline entry level measurement.

And then we would measure it throughout the season,

maybe once every two weeks or three weeks.

And the idea there was to manage the recover,

measure the recovery.

But I just gave it away, to determine overall recovery,

your grip strength is pretty highly correlated.

So we have found that with one of those scales,

those old fashioned bathroom scales

at like the bathroom and beyond, or whatever you can get,

which by the way, almost impossible,

I believe Jesse and I were searching for the last scale

to put in that video.

And we almost couldn't find one,

'cause everything is like digital and everything.

I'm looking at the old fashioned dial controls.

- It's like old Macintosh computers.

There's a huge market for them and old phones.

Kids keep your phones now.

In 30 years, the lame phone now

will be worth a lot of money. - It'll be worth a lot.

So, I wound up finding one, and it's a great tool

for just squeezing the scale with your hands

and seeing what type of output you could get.

And I think we all can relate to this

when you just visualize,

imagine the last time you were sick, or that when you,

or just try this, the next time you wake up in the morning,

when you first wake up in the morning, you're still groggy.

Try to squeeze your hand,

try to make a fist as hard as you can.

You're going to sit there angry at your fist

because it won't contract as hard as you know it can.

You don't have the ability to just create the output.

And that is because in that state, you're still sleepy,

you're still fatigued, you're not even awake

the whole level at this point.

Well, that is still an actual phenomenon that happens that,

a lack of recovery, or lack of wakefulness,

or whatever you want to say

is going to lead to a decreased output there.

So when you start to measure that on a daily basis,

you can get a pretty good sense of where you're at.

And I think when people start to see a drop off

of 10% or so, or even greater of their grip output,

you really should skip the gym that day.

Because I don't think there's much you're going to do there

that's going to be that beneficial,

even if it is the day to train legs or whatever day it is.

- I love this tool, it's simple, it's low cost,

if you can find such a scale.

I guess you could also find one of those grippers that,

and you could do this in a very non quantitative way,

but better would be a scale where you could actually measure

how hard you can squeeze this thing at a given time of day.

It draws to mind, just a little neuroscience factor,

in the world of circadian neurobiology,

one of the consistent findings is that

in the middle of your nighttime,

they'll wake people up and they'll say, do this test.

In the laboratory they use a different apparatus,

but it's essentially the same thing.

And in the middle of the night

grip strength is very, very low.

And mid-morning, grip strength is high,

and as the body temperature goes up into the afternoon,

grip strength goes higher and higher and higher,

and then it drops off.

There's this circadian rhythm and grip temperature.

So you probably want to do this

at more or less the same time each day

if you're going to use it.

But it I think it's brilliant in its simplicity

and it's directness to these upper motor neurons,

'cause that's really what it's assessing your ability.

Again, it's about the ability to contract the muscles hard.

If you can't do that,

you're not going to get an effective workout.

- Yeah, and they also, I mean,

there certainly are more sophisticated tools too.

As PT, we have hand grip dynamometers,

we can measure one side at a time too.

I'm not really, I'm getting a little bit blinded

by the fact that both hands are squeezing into that scale

and I don't get really a left right comparison.

But even at that level,

that could give you a little bit more detail,

but that comes with a cost,

those are pretty expensive devices.

But if it's, listen, if you were an athlete,

the $200, $300 it cost to have one of those

would be well worth the added investment.

- And I'm sure some of our listeners will want one too,

'cause there are a lot of tech geeks out there,

not tech industry geeks, but people who like tech gear.

What's it called again?

- It's a hand grip dynamometer.

- Hand grip dynamometer. - Dynamometer.

Said by Jeff with a great East Coast accent,

and by me in a terrible botched at West Coast version.

Thank you, well, I'll put that in the show notes also.

Now I think recovery is key, we always hear about sleep.

You grow when you sleep and incidentally your brain,

you stimulate learning when you're awake obviously,

but the reordering of neural connections happens in sleep.

This is why sleep is the way to get smarter,

provided you're also doing the learning part.

The sleep's the way to get stronger

provided you're also doing the training part.

You've had some really,

you've put out interesting content over the years

in terms of even sleep position.

One of the major changes that I made to my sleep behavior

is to not have the sheets tucked in at the end of the bed.

And I'll tell you,

this had a profound impact on several things.

First of all,

my feet have always been the bane of my existence,

broke them a bunch skateboarding.

And I noticed when I'd run, I'd get shin splints.

And then I started to notice that my feet sort of,

you're the PT, they were kind of floppy,

as if I was pointing my toes slightly all the time at rest.

And I realized that based on listening to you previously,

that my sheets were wrapped tight, not hotel tight.

- Right.

- What their thing in the hotels.

And I started releasing the sheets at the end of the bed,

and I also started doing some tibialis work.

Front of Shin's work essentially, changed everything.

My back pain from running my shin splints disappeared,

my posture improved,

although my audience will tell me

that it still needs improvement.

They're always five or 10 people that-

I've actually had chairs sent to our mailing address.

Very nice chairs, right?

So I'm trying there.

But this is fascinating, right?

The position that one sleeps in,

I fortunately have never had any shoulder issues

knock on wood, but maybe you could just

talk to us a little bit about sleep and sleep position

for sake of waking position and movement.

'Cause this, I think is a very unique

and very powerful way to think about sleep.

This podcast has done a lot of episodes about

keeping the room cool,

getting sunlight in your eyes, et cetera,

how to get into sleep.

But you've talked about physically,

what positions might be better to sleep in.

So please, please enrich us.

- I mean, first of all,

some people's opinions of that type of content is that,

you sleep in the position that's most comfortable

so you ensure that you're sleeping.

Oh great, I understand that we all want to sleep,

that's the goal when we put our head on the pillow,

is to actually fall asleep and wake up in the morning

and not know what the hell happened, unless you had a dream.

But you know beyond that,

there are certainly physical components to sleep.

That is why a lot of times people will wake up and say like

that you can incur pretty serious injuries in sleep.

People will wake up and have like a shoulder

that did not bother them at all,

be humming the next day or even for weeks after,

because of the one sleep position they put themselves in,

in a prolonged way.

And they happened to have a deep sleep,

even through the discomfort.

That can do actually some damage.

So it's understandable that the body can incur

some strain and stress if you're sleeping in the wrong way.

One of the things I say right off the bat is,

sleeping on your stomach

just doesn't really have many benefits.

You're putting yourself into a position that is,

depending upon the orientation of your mattress

or how many pillows you're using,

but you're basically putting yourselves into

excessive extension of the lumbar spine,

which for most people, isn't very good,

if you're a disc patient, I guess that might be helpful,

for relocating the disc.

But I mean, for the most part,

your hands are then usually not at your sides,

but they're up under your arms,

so you've got them into sort of internal rotation up

over elevation in your head.

It's just not a great position.

You also have to crank your neck for one side or the other

in order to breathe, or you're going to your face down,

straight into the pillow.

So I would skip that one.

And there's some people that are total belly sleepers.

And I would just say, listen,

I don't think that is the most helpful,

long term way for you to sleep.

Try to adopt a different position.

Sleeping on your side oftentimes is,

is also brought along with that,

the legs knees coming up towards the chest,

prolonged hip flexion.

Listen, we're doing enough of that during the day.

- What we're doing right now.

- We don't need to do another 10 hours

or eight hours or something at night like that.

And it just is reinforcing, and as we said too,

let's say you trained that day,

you're just reinforcing muscle shortening overnight.

Where the body is healing and trying to create

some changes in your body.

One of the reasons why I recommend stretching

or static stretching prior to going to bed,

a lot of people don't really want to do it at that point,

'cause it could take 10 minutes, 5-10 minutes,

depending upon how many muscles you have to stretch.

But it's good to sort of try to establish

just longer length temporarily

prior to going into a state where you're going to be not moving

and recovering and creating new changes in the muscle.

So, that kind of, I don't say it doesn't rule out

the side sleeper.

The side sleeper could be very, very helpful

for somebody that has apnea or other conditions.

So again, it's not an all or nothing approach,

but it's something that you need to pay attention to.

When you are on your back,

like you were talking about

and your feet are wedged underneath a tight sheets

at the end of the bed.

And most of us, unless we consciously are pulling them up,

don't prefer our beds to have really loose sheets

at the end of the bed.

- It's hard to make the bed in the morning.

- So it's like you you're going to want to have them tight.

Well, I'm saying as you experienced,

you're going to have these prolonged plant reflection,

that's going to likely lead to shorter calves over time

because you're lacking all that length

for that long period of time that you could have

if you just loosened up the sheets

and allowed your feet to just hang out where they are.

Now, the resting position of the ankle

is not endorse reflection,

it's going to be still in some plain reflection,

but not being driven down

and pulled down into that position.

And I think what happens actually is people who get

uncomfortable that way, even in their sleep

will shift away from that

by turning either onto their side of their stomach.

So there's definitely an impact of the body position

and sleep in figuring out the best way

that you can still sleep of course, and get your rest,

but have a mindful eye towards what it's doing to your body

and choose the one that's least abrasive to your body

is the way you should go.

- That's terrific, and again, it's really helped me and

I'm a big believer based on good science

out of Stanford and elsewhere that

as much as we can be nasal breathers in sleep,

we probably should be.

I don't know if you've done any content yet about

taping the mouth shut with some medical tape,

but you know the benefits of nasal breathing in sleep

are pretty tremendous,

but it takes a little bit of training for people to do,

and the training is very simple.

It's a little piece of medical tape.

So again, a topic for another time.

I'm glad you mentioned stretching,

I was going to ask about stretching a little bit later,

but let's talk about stretching.

When's the best time to stretch

for particular types of results?

And maybe you could define

some of the different types of stretching.

So you just mentioned a little bit of,

what you call it, light stretching or?

I'm completely naive here on stretching.

So let me just say, I can think of stretching

where I hold the stretch and really try and "lengthen"

in air quotes folks, I don't want the PTs jumping all over.

I don't know what it is,

but nutrition and the PTs online are really,

they've got pitchforks in both hands.

Academics...

- That's a recent evolution, I think.

And not the nutrition as much,

but the PTs have become a little bit angry these days.

- I see, well, I always say with feelings of powerlessness

comes aggression.

Remember that folks.

So in any case, they're stretching where I'm

trying to consciously "lengthen," again in air quotes,

the muscle I'm not yanking on the limb

or bobbing up and down.

Maybe you could define the different types of stretching

for people, maybe give us some rough guidelines

about what or not to do if cold or warm,

before training, after training, et cetera.

- So, yeah, there's obviously

there's a lot of different types of stretching

that could get even to P and F stretching

and things that are a little bit more niche.

But in general, the two basic forms of stretching

are active stretching and passive stretching,

and your dynamic work.

And your passive stretching is done

with the goal of trying to create an increase

in the flexibility of the muscle.

So whether you're actually increasing the length

of that muscle, more so what you're doing is

increasing the- or decreasing the resistance of that muscle

to want to stay at a certain level of flexibility.

So when we can sort of take the breaks off

and allow that muscle to allow us more range of motion,

we're inherently increasing flexibility

without necessarily having to increase the length

of that muscle.

That is usually done at a time far away from your workout,

because they have shown where

this type of stretching done prior to an activity,

and it could be like a structured activity like lifting,

or it could be a little bit less structured,

like competing in a sport in a spontaneous type way,

that there is a period of recalibration that is needed

after doing this,

because you're disrupting the length tension relationship

of the muscle that causes you to not necessarily

be able to rely on these, I've talked about before,

stored motor engrams in your mind in terms of,

this is the pattern for how I swing a golf club, say.

And now introducing a little bit of flexibility,

or added flexibility, or range,

because of the stretching I did before,

it takes maybe a whole or two or three to match up again.

Oh, this is what he's trying to do,

that golf swinging thing that I remembered again,

like it's not remembering that every component,

like I have to bend my right wrist back 10 degrees,

and then I have to bend my elbow and I have to break,

like your body stores these patterns for motor efficiency.

And when I have to start matching up that stored pattern

with what's feeling new because of the increased range,

I can impair performance.

And again, it could happen even in a gym workout

where you're talking about your first,

second set, third set,

where maybe the repercussions aren't as big,

'cause I'll just do a few extra sets.

But in performance, if you screw up your first three rounds,

you're playing on a PJ tour and you shoot

your six over after three, you're done.

So I think it matters there.

As far as the dynamic, so we relegate that as I mentioned,

sort of towards the end of the day

when it's not going to impact performance,

but even maybe have the additional benefit of creating

the feeling of length or the increase or decrease

in resistance to this length

at a time when I know my body is going to try

to tend to heal and heal shorter,

never longer, but heal shorter.

So if I can introduce a little bit of that extra length

or decreased resistance to that length,

it's a better time to do it.

So I think it promotes a better recovery.

If I want to...

- Sorry to interrupt, but so stretching later in the day,

because I'm intrigued by this concept of heal shorter.

So part of the healing and recovery process

means the shortening of the muscles.

This is the tensing up in sleep.

- Yes, yeah. - Could you elaborate

just a bit on that and then sorry to break your flow,

but then to continue...

- No, just basically, what's been shown is that,

when the repair process, muscular repair from,

let's say strength training during the day,

the repair process usually results in a muscle

that is slightly shorter rather than increased in length.

It's just, muscles prefer to sort of

ratchet their way down into that contraction,

and then maintain that more comfortable

length tension relationship.

So when you're sleeping,

it tends to air on the side of shorter

rather than longer, when ideally we don't really want that.

We want to maintain as much of that length

because with more length, we actually have more leverage.

That muscle has more leverage to contract.

If it was all the way contracted,

you really can't obviously we know generate much force

in a muscle that's already maximally contracted.

So I think we want to do something that we, whatever we can,

whatever little weapons we have in our arsenal

that could allow us to do this prior to sleep.

And again, it's just making it a conscious choice

to do it at a time of the day

that makes a little bit more sense.

Dynamic stretching is really not done for that purpose

of trying to create any type of feeling of act

or increasing the potential length

as you said of the muscle,

but more so the readiness of the muscle to perform.

And increasing exploring the ends of that range of motion

in a more dynamic way so you're not hanging out there

in disrupting that length tension relationship

but just sort of touching the ends of those barriers

so that when you feel movement again, it feels looser,

it feels more ready.

And obviously at the same time warming up blood flow,

all the benefits we get from just warming up in general.

So like that's the series

you've probably seen a bunch of times but like

leg swings and butt kicks and lunge, walking lunges

and all types of- - Toe touches.

- Toe touches, all those kind of drills,

those active stretching drills

or lunging with rotations for the upper body

to try to get some of the thoracic spine involved too.

Those are the drills that people will do prior to training

that are both excitatory

in terms of just the nervous system

but also helpful for just the general warm up the body

'cause the blood flow.

But from a muscle readiness standpoint

not impairing the performance

while at the same time exploring the increased ranges

'cause as you know the first toe touch you do

is not as high as the last toe touch you do.

- For me it doesn't even include the toe.

- The shin touch. - The touch attempt.

- So like those are going to improve

with each subsequent rep

and I think that's what people actually,

when you can see those,

those actual changes from rep one to rep seven,

you just feel ready,

you feel more alert and ready to go in your workout.

So the dynamic type of stretching and I mentioned earlier on

what I've had to do to sort of increase my warm up focus.

I think that's more of what I try to do these days.

I try to be a little bit more alert to the fact that,

my body's not ready.

When I was working with Antonio Brown I remember like

he would spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes on all dynamic work.

And I've never seen anybody spend that long

on their dynamic work.

But like he said, he just didn't feel right and ready

to go unless he did a lot of that.

And I mean his dynamic stretching routine

would be a workout for most everybody.

And it's crazy how much he did.

- These pro athletes are amazing.

And you've had the great fortune of working with

and improving their abilities.

But I can only imagine

'cause I also imagine he is pretty strong in the gym also.

- I mean, it always amazes me

the guys that make it to that level

no matter what sport they do.

They're so gifted in everything.

Like David Wright used to make me laugh all the time

with the Mets because no matter what I,

Ping pong, like anything

because of his hand-eye coordination.

Like anything great at.

Jump rope.

I remember he hadn't done a lot of jump rope

and I think jump rope's one of the best things

you could do from a conditioning standpoint.

It's actually fairly interesting, it's not just,

it's not too harsh on the joints

even though it's a ballistic move and he wasn't-

I have to admit, if he listens to this,

he's going to want to kill me,

but I was better at him at jump roping.

One of the only things I could do.

And then I gave him about five days

and he completely blew me out of the water

to the point where I could never keep up with him anymore.

He made it look effortless.

It's like that's where the athlete in someone comes out.

No matter what they pick up, they're good at it.

And I think that when you see guys like this in the gym

like their strength levels tend to be pretty damn good

and their abilities, their coordination, their everything

just tends to sort of be good at that level.

And it sort of amazes me.

Why those guys can go pick up a golf club and go shoot 72

and having never really played.

They're just naturally good at whatever they do.

- Yeah, I have a couple,

I'm smiling 'cause I have a couple really close friends

who did a number of years

some several decades in the SEAL teams.

And I don't know that their skill level at everything

is so high as you're describing for athletes

but their level of competitiveness is beyond.

I ocean swam with one,

there's no chance that I'm going to right out swim Pat

ever, ever.

He actually goes back and forth sometimes

just to check up on me, which I appreciate.

Thank you Pat.

I haven't drowned yet.

But in addition to that, we could play horseshoes

and it's like this switch that just flips on,

like he's going to murder me.

Of course he's a very nice guy, right?

In general, they tend to be very nice.

But the level of competitiveness is kind of unreal.

They're selected for it.

- They're trying to beat themselves

they're not even trying to beat you.

- That's right, I'm not even in the competition.

- You're not even there. - Yeah, exactly.

Thank you.

Now I won't feel so bad or worse.

It's true, it's a remarkable thing.

I'm glad you mentioned jump roping.

I used to skip rope for warmup for boxing,

like three minute rounds or something like that.

But I'm glad you brought it up because

skipping rope is something that

obviously has a cardiovascular component,

there's the conditioning component, there's timing

and it is kind of interesting, right?

It's frustrating when you don't get it

especially when it whips you on the air

if you're using a proper rope.

I'm just curious if you could just give us a quick

skipping rope 101.

Do you like to see people jumping with both feet and toes?

We'll link to a video if there was one and I missed it.

Do you like to see people doing high knees?

Do you like people basically like shuffling?

You want to see people doing double Dutch?

What do you want to see people doing over time?

- All of the above maybe not the double Dutch,

but all of the above.

I mean, I think that's the cool thing about it, right?

Like once we sort of master the skill 'cause for all of us,

that first jump with the two feet going together

is a challenge.

'Cause you just got to time that rope,

you got to time your jump

and then we get bored as we often do as humans,

we get bored with what we can do

and we want to take on new challenges

so then it becomes one leg at a time

or then it becomes side to side hops, right?

All of those things are beneficial I believe

neurologically to enhancing the ability

to do the skill as a whole but also just because

I'm such a believer in training in all three planes.

So like just doing straight up and down

versus now I can do frontal plane side to side motion

and then I can even do small little twists

or core screws you call them.

It requires a different,

you would know more better than I do

that it requires different neurological patterns

to be able to coordinate that because you're changing

the orientation of your body in space.

So it's not just them changing the exercise

but I'm changing how my body interprets that exercise

because what's happening to my body in space.

So I love whatever people wind up doing,

but I am amazed there are people,

I just started following this young woman on Instagram

who is like, I'll give her a plug out,

I think it's like @anna.skips or something

and she is ridiculous.

Like I watch her and I'm like mesmerized

at what she can do with the rope.

It's like is an extremely athletic endeavor

believe when it gets to be at that level

and the speed and the precision and the-

I think one of the goals that you want to be able to have is

to where you're feeling as if you're almost

effortlessly dancing without a rope.

Like where you're just bouncing off of the ball

of your foot.

And it's an important skill to learn too

whether you go back to run or even even jog, right?

Just like more casual running,

learning how to land is so important.

One of the drills that people should try is like,

try to jump on your heels.

So just stand up, pull your toes off the ground, right?

And just jump from your heels and land on your heels.

You'll feel it in your jaw.

You'll literally feel your jaw rattle

when you land on your heels.

There is no shock absorption capabilities

through your heels.

Meantime, a lot of people land on their heels a lot

when they run and you're just,

your body's not built to absorb the forces

like the ball of your foot could.

It's really built as a spring.

And the foot is a, to me as a physical therapist,

the foot has always been one of the most amazing,

you talk about having bad feet I have flat feet

it looks like I got flippers if I took my shoes off.

Like I'm wearing scuba fins.

There is no-

There is no adaptability of that foot to the surface.

When it's completely caved and flattened like that,

the job of the foot is to be a adaptable.

Well, maybe there is some adaptability

because it's so floppy, but at the same time at some point

that critical junction when you're going to then step through

and you need to be able to push off

the foot has to actually changes in the midfoot itself

to become a rigid lever is what they call it.

You're going from a mobile adapter to a rigid lever.

That rigid lever literally locks up the metatarsal joint

to become solid

so that you can push off of it with leverage.

If you lack that capability,

all those stresses that are supposed to be born by the foot,

go up into the ankle, into the knee, into the hip,

into the low back.

So learning how to land and start to train your body

to experience ground reaction forces the right way

is so critical to all other function

and all other disability of the kinetic chain

and jumping rope is like one of the best ways

to learn how to do that.

- Great.

I own a jump rope I love doing it in the morning

while I get sunlight in my eyes.

It's actually a protocol I picked up from Tim Ferris

who mentioned 'cause listeners in my podcast know

I'm like a broken record with get sunlight in your eyes

even through cloud cover it's just sets your sleep rhythms

and your waking rhythms of yada yada on and on.

But sometimes it'd be kind of boring for people

and I want to get them off their phone.

So jumping rope is also just a great way to wake up.

So jumping rope can be the cardio workout,

the 15, 30 minutes. - Definitely.

And there's sort of that hybrid

that we were talking about before of like,

you're not necessarily dropping down to the ground

and doing burpees,

but I just look at it as a more athletic endeavor

because of the coordination involved

than just simply walking or jogging.

- Yeah, and it's not much of equipment requirement.

Very minimal cost.

You could even use a rope or something if you...

- We even instruct people they could use no rope

and just pretend and just move the arms, right?

- Truly zero cost.

- You're never going to hit the rope which is good

but at the same time,

So you're never going to know if you're doing it wrong,

but at least you can move through that

and get the same benefits through the feet.

- I love it, I love it.

I told myself before sitting down with you today

that I wasn't going to focus on specific exercises

because there's such a wealth of incredible content

that you put out there

that people could just put into YouTube or elsewhere

and arrive at the proper way to do a chin or a dip,

for whatever purpose.

But there's one exercise and one particular motion

that I'd like to discuss for a moment

because I believe that

learning about this cautionary note from you

is one of the reasons

that I've maintained steady training for 30 years

with no major injury knock on wood

and that's the upright row.

One thing that whether you weight train or not.

- Do we censor this podcast?

I mean censoring, do we beep this out or not?

- I do.

Do you get beef about this? - No.

You know what, we always get beef

in any social media platform where we're put out.

But like, no, I guess some, I get some from it,

but I'm fully prepared to defend myself.

- But here's the reason for asking about this.

I never really cared much for upright rows

it's not an exercise I tend to do.

But one thing that's apparent in all my colleagues,

in every child I see, in every adult I see is that

almost everybody is in inward rotation now.

So folks think if you stay,

I think I learned this from you also,

if you stand up straight

and then you just point your thumbs out,

like a thumbs up but your hands are down

you're pointing your thumbs straight out,

ideally they would go straight out.

Most people the thumbs

are going to be pointing toward one another

because most people are starting to look somewhere between

a non human primate and a melted candle.

Bent at the hips, et cetera, from too much sitting,

we're all sitting, we're in an inward rotation,

but I learned from you that the upright row

compromises some important aspects of our shoulder mechanics

and could be actually sort of a dangerous movement

in some ways.

I'm sure there's a safe way for people to do it.

But so I've always made it a point now

on the basis of this advice to A, not do upright rows,

but I wasn't doing them before

but to really strive for external rotation

on things like bench dips, on a number of different things.

Whenever I can I try and go into external rotation

provided that without looking like an idiot walking around

with my palms facing outward.

Please tell us about internal external rotation.

The upright row is one aspect of that,

but why this is so important not just for weight training,

but as in terms of posture and mechanics

and not looking like a melted candle

or partially melted candle.

- I actually love it.

I'm happy to talk about it cause I love the shoulder

as a joint.

I think PTs tend to fall in love with certain areas

and the shoulder is one of the cool areas for me,

it's like the foot is but like,

the shoulder has the most mobility in the body of any joint,

but it's also got the least stability, right?

There's always that trade off of mobility and stability.

So your stability comes from certain muscle groups

and 101 is that the only muscle group

that actually externally rotates the shoulder

is going to be the rotator cuff, okay.

And unless you are devoted to training

through external rotation and exercises that

are going to externally rotate the shoulder,

you're not training that function.

And it's so easy for us in everyday life

especially those that aren't training

to not ever really undergo any of those stresses

that could be beneficial to counteracting

what happens freely and naturally,

which is internal rotation.

So when you think about the imbalance created

just by nature and how we live our lives,

internal rotation far, far, far outweighs external rotation.

So you need to address it.

And the reason why you need to address it is because

you need to normalize those biomechanics to the shoulder

if you want their long term health.

And one of the functions of the shoulder

is to raise our arm up over our head.

And if we do that from an internally rotated position,

we're going to have a higher likelihood

of creating stress inside that joint.

Funny thing is I talked about before my PT brethren

who can be somewhat angry these days,

I don't know what happened, but fairly angry.

They want to discredit the existence of something like

shoulder impingement, which I don't know how,

I mean, certain studies, look, we both all read studies

and studies will say one thing one day

and potentially conflict entirely in a different direction.

Some studies will point to the non-existence

of a shoulder impingement.

Meanwhile, we have thankfully digital motion x-rays

that will literally show the impingement occur in real time,

in real function.

And that's one of the limitations I'm off on a tangent here,

but like those types of x-rays

or that type of fluoroscopy that we have nowadays,

like gives us such insight that we never had before

'cause we're taking static x-rays

of someone laying down on a table.

Well, I want to see what happens

when you actually raise my arm up over my head in function

and the tools now exist to do that.

We see the problems occurring because

in order to get normal mechanics

and free up the joint maximally inside

you need to externally rotate as you raise the arm up.

So if your muscles aren't firing

and they're not necessarily as strong

as the internal rotation bias that pulls them in,

you're asking for trouble every time you do that.

Well, this exercise is literally putting you in elevation

and internal rotation.

And if you were to walk into a PT office and someone said,

"I think he's got impingement, will you diagnose him?"

There's a test called a Hawkins Kennedy Test.

And I would put you in the position

I know we're not visible at this point through the podcast,

but I'll put you in this position here

where I have your arm elevated

and your hand pretty much under your chin

pushing downward on that

to create that internal shoulder rotation.

Pretty much the exact position that we're in

when we're holding a bar in an upright row.

Some will say, well, just don't go so high

going up to the level of the chest,

but you're still in this internally rotated position.

The thing that I think frustrates me the most

about the exercise is that I have an alternative

and the alternative does the same thing

in terms of helping the muscles grow

by simply fixing the biomechanics of the exercise

by just allowing the hands to go higher than the elbows.

So instead of the elbows being higher than the hand

which drives you into internal rotation,

if the elbow is lower than the hand,

the hand being higher here, I'm in external rotation.

And I could do something called a high pull

and still get the same abduction of the arm

and still get the same benefits of the shoulders,

the delts and the traps

without having to undergo any of the stresses

that would come from

the somewhat awkward movement of an upright row.

- And for those listening,

we'll put a link to a short clip of what this looks like.

But basically what Jeff is doing

and tell me if I'm describing this incorrectly or correctly.

Jeff is taking your two thumbs and pointing behind you,

so elbows up kind of near the chin

and pointing behind you like, oh, headed that way.

Like somebody directing the airplane, like come back,

come back and back.

I forget what they call that.

I think it's called semaphorin,

is the action of like where they direct the planes

or something the flags or whatever.

Someone will, of course tell me I'm wrong about that too,

which is why I say these things

because I like being told what the correct answer is.

In any case, so this replaces the upright row

and probably does a number

of other important things as well.

- Well, again, listen, without naming names or programs

or anything like that.

When I got involved in, when I got involved in Athlean-X,

when I first my online presence,

there was a very, very, very popular program

that was out there that I just for fun I wanted a as a PT,

is the nerdy things we do,

but I wanted to evaluate the workout structure.

And I went and I looked at every rep

over the course of a week.

And there was something like 890 repetitions

or something done

and zero of them were dedicated external rotation

in the shoulder.

So if you think about it, I mean,

again, it was a very popular program

that was done by a lot of people.

There was no focus at all,

no dedicated focus towards creating

a balance to an action that is so predominant.

And remember, it's not just because we sit with bad posture,

but the fact that our chest can internally rotate,

our latch can internally rotate,

there's like muscle, other big muscles that participate

in things that we do every day

that will further internally rotate the shoulder.

The only weapons we have for external rotation

are those little rotator cuff muscles

and three of them actually three of the four.

And the job is to sort of

actively and consciously train them

through really the boring exercises, right?

Like you've seen them with the band,

you anchor a band to a pole,

you stand with the band in the opposite hand.

So if it's anchored to the pole on my left side

I've got the band on my right side

and you see people where they kind of rotate their hand

towards the back.

Again, kind of what you were saying

but at a lower elevation taking the back of my hand

and trying to point it to somebody behind me.

Well, that is one of the ways to train the muscle.

It's just a one function of the shoulder,

external rotation of the shoulder and you need to do it.

And again, it's not that

if somebody was doing more external rotation work

could they absorb the upright row better?

Probably, because as they elevated the arm,

they probably have a little bit more of a contribution

from the rotator cuff to what one of the functions is

to centralize the head of the humorous inside

of the glenoid, the capsule.

So as it rises up, it stays central

as opposed to migrating up

because the deltoid likes to pull up.

So if the rotator cuff has some ability to counteract

the upward pull of a del

then it can maintain a more healthy relationship

with overhead movement.

So just realizing that that function

is only gained through doing these exercises,

we would probably dedicate more time there,

the upright row might be better absorbed by that person

'cause they have a little bit more strength.

But again, why?

Because if you have an exercise that does the same thing

for what you're trying to do muscularly,

to build the muscles that it affects,

why wouldn't you just do it where you can still see

actually pick up more repetitions of external rotation?

So you're getting none of the harm all of the benefits.

I see zero reason to ever do the upright row

and people will argue, this is the way they argue that,

I've done this for 30 years and I've never hurt myself.

And I always say yet, yet.

Like, listen, the goal is to not hurt yourself ever.

So even if you, it's sort of like the championship game.

You might play the game of your life,

but if you lose you lost.

And when you get into the end of the record books,

you still lost.

So even if you had the game in your life you lost,

I don't care if you do it for 30 years, no pain,

you're still doing it and there's no pain

I'm giving you an option

that's going to give you the same results

in the exercise that you're seeking.

That's why you're doing the exercise

without the possibility of having the the bad outcome

come from it.

So I get a little bit defensive of the move,

but I feel like it's like, why would you do that?

- No, it makes me say,

being able to train for a long period of time and feel good.

I'm proud to say and I don't have

the kind of genetics where like we don't have a lot of

impressive athletes in our family tree or anything.

It's some fit individuals some less fit individuals,

but I really believe

it's about putting in the work consistently over time.

And the more often you can wake up not in pain the better.

And so I think that being in external rotation

as often as possible is good.

This is actually a good friend who's a yoga teacher told me

this is also a problem with the yogis,

all the downward dog stuff.

For those listening,

you can think of inward rotation as like thumbs down.

Just think thumbs down and rotation isn't bad

but less thumbs down more thumbs up is external rotation.

So for those just listening, maybe that gives a visual.

The more exercise you can do in external rotation

the better it seems on average.

I'd love to chat with you just a little bit more about

biomechanics, and this is a personal thing that again,

your content really helped solve for me.

One is I thought I had lower back pain,

that I had sciatica so badly that on a few trips

Work trips years ago

when I was doing a lot more international travel.

I mean, it was hard to stand up sometimes.

I mean like excruciating pain.

I didn't want to take medication,

I didn't want to do back surgery.

In the end, turns out it wasn't a back injury at all.

And one of the things that helped fix it was this

just learning about this thing called the medial glute.

And you had a video that said fixed back pain

and then you quite accurately say that

some back pain isn't really about the back at all.

And had me do an exercise or allowed me to try an exercise

where I lay on my side and essentially pointing my toe down

the top toe down, almost like pointing a toe down

and then would slowly lift the leg up

while pointing the toe down.

Maybe I got it... - No, you got it good.

- And then holding that,

and there's a muscle that sort of sits

at the top of the glute

it kind of peaks out every once in a while.

You can feel it there with your thumb,

which is I think you had push back on it.

A bit creating that mind muscle link again

and there with proprioception,

the actual feeling of a muscle literally with a limb,

we know based on the neural circuits for movement,

that that enhances the contractibility of a muscle.

So like if you touch your bicep,

you literally can contract it more more strongly.

And this makes total sense based on

neuromuscular physiology.

So had me do that repeatedly.

And I started doing that in my hotel room

and the pain started to disappear.

And then it came back again the afternoon

so I did it again in the afternoon.

So this is something I did for three or four days

and lo and behold a back pain's gone.

I handed this off to my father

because he like me has a slightly lower right shoulder.

I think that our gate is probably thrown off by this.

It's probably a genetic thing, who knows.

He handed off to somebody.

It turns out that we don't suffer from back pain

and in fact, now I don't suffer from any pain

because I was doing this exercise

which I think is helping my medial glute.

Two reasons why I raised this.

One, I know a lot of guys who have this right side sciatica

'cause people keep the wallet there is one idea

or left side sciatica.

There are a lot of people male and female

who think they have back pain

when they don't actually have back pain.

And the other thing is that

is a general question about biomechanics

or statement about biomechanics.

I had of a feeling

that a lot of what people think is back pain or knee pain

or neck pain or headache or shoulder pain

is actually the consequence of something that's happening

above or below that site of pain.

And this is a whole landscape of stuff related to PT

and recovery and pain management.

But maybe if you could just educate us a bit on this

and why this works, what is the medial glute?

Why did it make my so-called back pain disappear?

And how should people think about pain?

And I'd like to use this as a segue

to get into a little bit deeper discussion

about pain and recovery.

- Sure.

So this is definitely like a big cornucopia PT stuff here,

but like and this is what I love.

So first of all, that video,

it's my proudest video that I have.

And the reason being is that it's helped so many people.

Like we get comments on that video every day.

I don't even know how many views it's got now,

30 some what million.

- We will link to it. - There's a lot of views.

And quite honestly,

it was a little bit of an afterthought video

in terms of it's origin.

I think that that day maybe Jesse was having some problems

or something like that, a little bit of low back pain

and I showed him and it helped right away and he was like,

well, we can make a video on it

'cause this will help people.

Not everybody, if you have a real disc problem,

it's not going to help

because you're not changing the structural problem

that's there.

But as you said, a lot of people don't

and even disc issues a lot of them are non-operative.

So you'd want to try these things first.

As far as what you're sort of experienced

sometimes as that glute medias really tightens down

and that's again, from poor biomechanics

up and down the kinetic chain,

it can actually press on the sciatic nerve

and give you what they call a pseudo sciatica.

Where it's not like you're making it up,

it's not like you're not feeling that pain

over that same sciatic distribution,

but it's not caused from a disc,

it's not caused from something mechanical there,

it's caused by the fact that this gluteus

has posturely become a problem for you or weak

because you don't train it and you need to address it.

So, unlike any other muscle in the body,

there are common trigger points in common areas where

the muscle will become tightened or painful or spasmed

and you can basically apply pressure to these areas

and then sort of thread that muscle through the pressure

by pushing down through there and then

contracting the muscle which is why

you go through that action of,

I think we call it toast stabber,

but like stabbing down and lifting up

and stabbing down and lifting up.

Taking that glute medias through its function.

So it's basically kind of working

underneath the downward pressure of the finger

and that tends to help you to almost need out

what might be that trigger point.

And that's why people can see immediate relief there

because once the trigger point lets go, it feels like,

and that's what the comments are in that video.

Like my God, I literally, I couldn't walk,

I've been on my hotel floor, I did this and I'm fixed.

And meanwhile then it could come back

because your body is like,

well, I like being more like this.

This is how I've been ingrained to be.

So it might come back

but then when you do another round of it

and another round of it and then finally it starts to say,

all right, I'm not going to do that anymore.

It kind of eases up and you can relieve yourself

of those trigger points.

You could do that up and down the back.

There's other people that get that

and that sort of inside their shoulder blade,

that same type of cramping in another area.

But once that takes place,

well, then the job that I think people have

is like become educated that

the glute medias is different than the glute maximus.

Like their functions are different.

You have to work on not just extending the hip

but also abduction of the hip.

External rotation of the hip, same thing as in the shoulder.

And this actually segues nicely into what,

into the whole concept you were talking about.

Like the body is like a mirror image.

The hip is like the shoulder, right?

The ankle is the wrist.

The foot is the hand.

The knee is the elbow, they're two hinge joints,

they function that way.

Well, with the shoulder, you've got that

mobility that comes from having all that freedom of motion

but the stability is lacking.

Well, the same thing with the hip, like you've got mobility,

but if you don't fully stabilize it

by training all the muscles of the hip

and if you don't strengthen the external rotation

of the hip, then you're going to have issues.

Like it's not biomechanically going to work the same way.

If you think of the body as a series of bands

pulling in different directions

at different levels of tension,

you're being pulled into one direction or the other

just by the balance of tension

from one weak area to one dominantly tight area.

And you need to make sure that

you can sort of balance this out

in order to eliminate some of the adaptations

and compensations that happen.

So what I say, when we look at sort of the body as a whole,

most often wherever you're feeling the pain

is absolutely not to blame.

There's not to blame.

It is somewhere above or below as you hint to that.

You're talking about, the knee is my favorite example of it.

Whenever you have knee pain, patella tendonitis

which I have forever.

I've had bad, bad cases of tendonitis where

squatting is very difficult for me.

It's not the knee, the knee is literally a hinge joint that

there's minor rotation capabilities in the knee

but it's a hinge joint.

And it's being impacted by the hip and the ankle

and the foot, as I said before, how critical the foot is.

If you thought of the knee being

like the middle of a train track,

where the femur down your thigh

and your shin down below your knee, where the train track,

well, what would happen if the foot collapses at the bottom?

All of a sudden that train track on the bottom

gets torqued just a little bit.

Well, who's going to feel that the most,

the area where it's torquing, which is at the knee.

So the stresses are going to be felt there

meanwhile the problem is the foot

or the problem is the ankle.

People that are chronic ankle sprainers

are almost always going to wind up having back pain

because the ankle sprain causes weakness

in mal adaptations in the ankle

that then gets connected through the chain.

Because now once I distort the ankle and the shin,

now the knee is trying to maintain

its ability to hinge smoothly.

So it toques on the femur to do that.

Well, the femur is now inside the hip joint

pulling on the pelvis and the pelvis is out of whack.

It's really is fascinating.

Like it's one of my favorite things about

how the body works is like how interconnected it is

and how one little thing somewhere

causes repercussion somewhere else.

And the easiest way to find out what your problem is,

is to say, okay, I know where my symptom is,

but I got to find someone who can help me

find the source somewhere else,

because it is going to be usually either above or below.

Mostly, usually below

'cause it usually translates up the kinetic chain.

But usually it's going to be below where the real source is.

So people with low back pain usually have hip issues

weaknesses, tightnesses, flexibility issues,

it's almost always below.

When you get into really high performance athletics though,

it almost works the other way.

Like where we have pitchers, who can't,

I'm always fascinated by guys that have Tommy John issues

in their elbow, right?

Pitchers.

Like if you can't externally rotate the shoulder

that we talked about, again,

the ability to get your shoulder back

into external rotation.

Well, your arm has to get to a certain position

for release of the baseball.

And if it can't get there,

if you can't externally rotate the shoulder to get there

then the elbow has to sort of torque more

in order to allow the arm to get back further.

And it will try to take some of that motion

from a joint that's not really,

again, it is the hinge joint, really capable of doing that.

So it starts to stress that media level ligament

to get a little bit further back

because the shoulder's not working

and that just ultimately places strain on the elbow.

So when you see a guy that has pain

that floats around, a pitcher that floats around their arm,

all that is is sort of this balance of compensation.

Once his elbow starts hurting,

then he can't get the range from the elbow,

so he tries to dig a little bit further back

into external rotation

and then the rotator cuff gets inflamed

and then he feels that's inflamed,

and by the way, during that time period,

it takes some of the strain off the elbow

so the elbow feels better.

Then he decides, okay, now I got the extra rotation,

but I'm getting too much of that

so now he starts straining the elbow again

and then keeps going through this cycle.

So your body is very smart

and it's going to compensate every single time.

It's going to find the compensation

but there's no guarantee that that compensation

doesn't leave you with a whole host of other issues.

- Yeah, it's fascinating.

In another lifetime, I would've gone and been a PT

although it sounds like the community among PTs online...

- I don't know what they,

listen, we're good people but it's like...

- Yeah, scientists and neuroscientists

can get into pretty intense battles.

Coming from the academic community,

the etiquette is so different online because I would say,

I think in person

people would probably behave a bit differently.

- They shake your hand and say, hello.

- Yeah, they shake your hand and say, hello.

And there's also, look, I'll just be very direct about this.

There are a lot of people online for whom

their only content is pointing out the misunderstandings

or alleged flaws of other people.

It's like the bulk of their identity.

Which to me is sort of a sad existence

but there's always more to gain by thinking about

what's possible, and what's new and what's good.

But teach their own demise or win.

- I mean questioning what's out there is healthy,

it's normal, is great, it actually sparks conversation.

But as you said, some people's existence

is solely to find things to nag about

and not actually with the goal being to advance anything,

but rather just to.

- Yeah, in the world of science

being skeptical but not cynical is encouraged.

But I always say that

the longer that somebody's in a career path

that's certainly in science or medicine

and they realize how hard it is to do various studies.

Once they publish a few studies,

generally they sort of get a better understanding of

how the various things are done.

In any case, along the lines of pain and pain relief

and misunderstandings about the origins of pain in the body,

one of the great tools that I picked up from your content

which is benefit I know a huge number of people is

I think I used to hold weights

sometimes in the tips of my fingers

as opposed to in the meat or the palm of my hands.

And I had elbow pain.

And I always thought that,

I felt it most on tricep exercises and pushing exercise

and I thought I was doing those exercises wrong.

Turns out toward the end of my pull ups or my bicep work,

I was letting the weight or the bar

drift into my fingertips.

And the mere shift

to making sure that my knuckles were well over the bar

or that the weight was really in the meat of my palms

has completely ameliorated that

for reasons that you point out

and maybe you could just share with us why that is

you have this kind of finger pull exercise.

Usually when someone says, pull my finger,

it's like a bad middle school or elementary school joke...

- Yeah, we would say push your finger.

- [Andrew] Right, right.

- You know this is fascinating.

This is because it just shows again

how intricate the body is

and how responsive or over responsive it can be

to something so little.

And what you're talking about is that when you grip a bar

whether it be through a curl or whether it be through-

And this is mostly pulling exercises because

the tendency for the bar is going to be to

fall out of your hand not like with a pushing exercise

where it's kind of you're pushing your hand into the bar.

So on a bench press say.

That bar can drift just by gravity doing its thing

or fatigue of the hand grip strength.

Can start to drift further away towards the distal digits.

Through those last couple knuckles

that we have on our hands.

And though our hand can still hold it there,

the muscles are not equipped to handle those types of loads.

And that can start at a very, I'm not going to say light,

but like it could start at dumbbell weight.

40 pounds, 30 pounds, even 25 pounds or something

depending upon their overall strength levels.

But then when you start to apply it to something like

your body weight with a chin up, right?

'Cause that's natural for the bar to somewhat kind of

float down towards your fingertips.

And it actually is a little bit easier

to perform the exercise with that sort of like false script

little hook grip at the end

because you're not going to engage the forearms

into the exercise, you're not going to start pulling down.

But at the same time while it could help you to perform them

better by getting the back more activated,

if you have weakness in these muscles.

'Cause it's not a thing that happens to every,

it's not one of those upright road type things

where I think this is happening to everybody.

This is happening to people

that have these inherent weaknesses in these muscles.

You or haven't done enough of the gripping

in the meat of the hand for long enough

but it starts to put that stress on these muscles

that are ill-equipped to do this and to handle this

and it starts to it's particularly on that fourth finger,

which is part of the muscle we call the FDS,

a flexor digitorum that is just too much for it to handle.

And that comes all the way down

and meets right at the media level.

Right on that spot that you can say

feels like someone's knifing you right in the middle

in that medial level.

And medial epicondylitis or they call it golfers elbow

is something that a lot of us deal with in the gym.

It's one of the most common inflammatory conditions

people get from the gym

and it all comes from this positioning of the dumbbell

or barbell or hand on a pull-up bar over time.

So the easiest thing to do is just grip deeper

so that what you're doing is you're using

more leverage from the palm to encapsulate the bar

or the dumbbell or whatever

and you're not putting that pressure really distally

right on that last digit

because that's where that FDS muscle is most strained.

So you just almost eliminating that from the equation.

And it's one of those exercises that

the load can exceed its capacity pretty quickly.

So that like, maybe it's only capable of handling 30 pounds

and then when you're doing a chin up

and it goes and it drifts so far

that it's now you say you're a 200 pound guy

you've got let's say 100 pounds through one arm

and 100 pounds, this is simplified math

that obviously is offset by other muscles,

but 100 pounds to one arm 100 pounds to the arm,

100 pounds off of a muscle that can handle 30

is not going to take many repetitions to strain it

and you're going to feel that maybe

by the time that a set's over

or certainly by the time that workout's over or the next day

you wake up and you've got that notable stabbing pain.

Whenever someone feels that

the best thing would be to determine,

okay, what exercises would I do that were pulling

and where the bar could have drifted deeper

or further from the meat of my palm into my fingers

and figure out a way to deepen that grip.

When that happens though, the best thing to do

with most of these inflammatory conditions

is not do any of that stuff for a little while.

Not ever, just for a little while.

There's always things that you can do around it.

I'm not saying ever do I say, like, don't go to the gym

or don't find something you can do,

but I'm saying that particular exercise

that you feel the pain on while you're doing it,

never a smart idea to do that exercise when it's inflamed.

If you are doing exercise and it hurts,

you probably shouldn't do the exercise

because another reason

for the variability of exercise is

there's so many other options that you can do

that will train similar muscles or even the same motion

and not cause that stress.

So, I mean, a cable curl would be much easier to do that on

than let's say a chin up

where you don't have the control over the weight

like you do by moving a pin on a stack.

So I think that is a common thing that people find

and the best thing to do is just figure out

how deep you gripping in that bar.

You're going to find that, oh my God, I didn't realize that

because it was just.

Even though you might start a set in a good position

and then it drifts away as you go.

- I think that's what was happening to me

and I'm very conscious of this now.

Again, for me, I haven't had this elbow pain at all.

- [Jeff] That's great. - Very fortunate.

So again, a debt of gratitude to your never-

I thought there was some wrong in my elbow, basically.

And I thought maybe it was tennis elbow

I don't even play tennis.

There you go.

Other aspects of recovery and variables for recovery.

I think you and I both put out content about

the use of cold and I think we can summarize it by saying,

yeah, it does seem like cold water immersion

immediately after hypertrophy restrains workouts

might be a problem,

but a cold shower is probably not a problem.

What about heat?

Do you personally use heat and cold saunas,

hot baths, hot compresses.

And by you, I mean you personally and athletes

that you coach or people that you coach,

what are your thoughts on the use of heat and or cold?

- Well, I think it might just be an inherited practice

from the days of trainers of since babe Ruth.

But we in baseball

we used a lot of cold following performance.

Just because the idea would be

there is some especially pitchers,

there is some inflammation that is abnormal.

The arm is not really designed to do what they do

especially at the speed that they move it

and everything else.

So we would use ice as a pretty standard practice

after that.

But not a lot of heat and use a lot of heat

and of course from the recovery or the healing aspect

that actually becomes rather personal preference

they've found now after let's say the first 12 to 24 hours

where you're really trying to control inflammation

of what might be an injury.

But then it can kind of shift the personal preference

because the heat can bring blood to the area also

and then the cold has its sort of antiinflammatory effects.

So like there's a balance between

which one's working better for you.

So there's really no standard anymore

for heat or cold in that way.

But from a standpoint of like post-workout healthy status,

I haven't used much heat or cold in terms of what we do.

We cover the topic of the cold showers

and to try to dispel the myth of the,