Resistance Training as the Exit Plan From Injury Rehab

Hey guys, it's Sebastian. Before we start, I want to do a real quick announcement again and announce that I'm having my very own workshop that is available for DCs and PTs and it's in California. So hopefully you guys are in California and Huntington Beach. You want to come hang out in June. That's June 8th and 9th in Huntington Beach in my very own clinic. And afterwards, we're actually going to cook some tomahawk steaks. We're going to do a slow, indirect reverse sear process. We're going to do it in my garage. We're going to have some beers or whatever else you want to drink and eat and we're going to have a good time. So if you're on board with me and if you've listened to these podcasts, you'll know that I've opened Pandora's box by interviewing people and learning from other people. And I'm hoping that I can relay some of the stuff that I've learned to you guys. So allow me to open Pandora's box for you. And I think this workshop, I know this workshop will blow your mind if you have not seen and met me at a seminar. It's probably because you're not going to the same ones. We've gone to different ones. So allow me to expose you to some of that stuff. So you guys can be on your way and start to learn even more and feel like every case that comes in, you have a major handle on it. You know what you're doing.

So, and I don't mean that in an arrogant way. I just know that I know some things that I think you guys will benefit from. So email me for details. That is info at p2sportscare.com. There's only a few spots available because this clinic is not a huge one and we want to make sure there's enough room for people to move around. So email me. Let's get to the podcast. So when I resistance train, I used to do it to, you know, get big and buff in the gym. And we did Arnold style where we did just hammer curls followed by like reverse curls followed by bicep curls, you know, cause you want to gas it out and run the rack and you want to get big because you want muscles. And that was an old school style. And so what most people tend to have an understanding of weight training is they think about the old school Arnold style. Um, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's a different thing. It's a different sport. It's a different purpose.

And so when I work with weight training with people as rehab and just as a way to look good, feel good and perform well, it's more about, I want them to just do enough reps and weight to produce a productive stimulus. You're listening to the restoring human movement podcast where movement experts discuss the latest evidence-based practices to help you and your clients move with mastery. And now your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Hey guys, it's your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales with the restoring human movement podcast. Thanks for joining the movement movement. This is your first time on the show, listening to the show. Thank you so much for spending some time with me. Um, I, the intention of the show is to blend the line between clinician lingo and patients, uh, wanting to understand and clarifying that is again, if you are, if patients don't tend to understand basic language that we use, even like small stuff like joint and load and weight and so on, then they might not understand the principles of what we're talking about just because it's different language. So I'm trying to blend that line there for everybody.

Today's episode is going to be very patient friendly. Okay. And honest to God, this one's to scratch my own itch because I probably three times last week had this exact conversation that it tends to go on and on and on. And, um, because the questions keep going or keep coming because when you start opening Pandora's box, you start to unravel things and all of a sudden there's more questions which are needed. And so I totally understand that. And this is based upon loading. Um, and it's based upon the loading and workout style and resistance training that I would like people to do my patients to do as they start to integrate out of my care. And I'm very clear with them when I tell them that, look, your, your actual problem here has a different little solution that we will address in the beginning here of your care. And someone else's problem might have a little bit of thing that kind of has a different intervention in the beginning of their care. And most of the time I try to blend you into the same type of exit program. And that is that you should do some really good resistance training with or without a strength coach and with or without direction. And I think people can do their own work, um, without coaching if they know what they're doing. And I've really been a benefit from, um, having a strength coach along Brennan Gasemia. Thank you so much. Um, shout out. I've had him on a couple of times and, uh, it's helpful to know what we're working towards. And so when I have this conversation with people, I thought, you know what, it'd be really cool just to record it. And I attempted to have someone on to ask their own questions with this and I might in the future as well. Um, but for the most part, uh, I thought I would use this podcast today. It might not be a super long one, but it's enough where I want to make sure that we're getting into the nuts and bolts of what we're looking to accomplish. So then we can start on that process. So if you're a patient of mine and you're hearing this, I've made this exactly for you. And in the office, I try to make sure that I'm spending enough time to get you to the thing that you need to do at that time. And so all the other questions that you've been asking or that you want, I don't want to seem like I'm dismissive about it. It's just not appropriate yet. You don't need to worry about it yet. I'm giving you what you need to do now.

And over the next couple of weeks, and you might not get to do the other things yet. Okay. But they are going to be important over time. If you're another clinician and you like what I'm saying on this podcast and you think, yeah, my patients really need to hear that, then, um, use it, use it. Okay. Um, I, I'll start right into it. Uh, after we get into the story, this is your first time, by the way, listening to this podcast. Uh, typically I, I tell a little personal story about myself because I want you to understand, um, a little bit more about me and, and understand, um, get to know me really. And then I tend to think people like to understand and know their host. And I, I don't watch Conan O'Brien or Jay Leno or Letterman, but of the ones that I watched, I like Conan better. Um, just cause the other ones, I didn't really know anything about them and they just didn't resonate well with me. So hopefully if you get to know me a little bit better than you'll carry along. And by the way, if you haven't been subscribed to this podcast already, do it. Okay. Um, so let's get on that story and we'll get right into some application of resistance training. So I was thinking recently, I was talking to a patient about, um, kind of nostalgic type of things. And we were talking about mixed tapes. And so I was like, we're just thinking about them. Like, you remember, like, what is the first, like, what did you, like, did you ever make mixed tapes, like literal mixed tapes where you would make them for somebody or like you would record all your favorite songs off the radio and put them on a cassette tape? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would do that. Right. And I'm like, how hard was it that, that you would, you'd wait that hour or cause they'd play similar songs every hour or so. And you're like, oh, I'm going to wait for STP plush. Right. And I'm going to get that. But in the beginning, you're like, oh, I know plush is coming and you hit record. So you get the beginning and all of a sudden the DJ jumps in again and says, enjoy it. By the way, you're on K rock. Right. And it's like, ah, so you got to wait again. And I still remember some of those ones that I recorded that I've listened to those mixtapes so many times over the years that I can remember even like, it's almost like the DJ became part of the song. You know, it's just like expected all the words that they said. Um, so anyways, mixtapes, if you're younger than 30, you probably don't have no idea what a mixtape really is. And, and if you've heard the reference, you have no idea probably what it's like to even make one, but it was painful. So if you have not, if you've already made missed mixtapes and you're older than 40, what came before that, by the way? I don't, I don't know. How did you share songs with other people? Cause could you record on a record or a eight tracker? I have no idea. So anyways, think about that.

Let's get onto the content. Okay. So usually when I get into the conversation of loading with people again, so I'm explaining that over the course of time, their rehab should look very much like resistance training. And some people have a little brushback on that. And they're like, well, I don't, I don't care about lifting weights. I like to do X, Y, and Z. And I, or maybe, uh, some people will say, I don't want to get big. And those are, those are merited, like those are merited concerns. And what I'm asking is that we're using the rehab in a productive way that is also going to improve other parts about you. And so the weights, it's not important about how really how heavy beyond a certain capacity, like if it's too light, it's not going to have a stimulus. If it's too heavy, then there, then we tip past the productive point of what you're asking for. But if you're asking to go run again, then I might use weights as an implement to improve the, your ability to run. And so I I've talked to a couple of people about this before is that when, so when I resistance train, I used to do it to, you know, get big and buff in the gym. And we did Arnold style where we did just hammer curls followed by like reverse curls followed by bicep curls, you know, cause you want to gas it out and run the rack and you want to get big because you want muscles. And that was an old school style.

And so what most people tend to have an understanding of weight training is they think about the old school Arnold style. Um, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's a different thing. It's a different sport. It's a different purpose. And so when I work with weight training with people as rehab and just as a way to look good, feel good and perform well, it's more about, I want them to just do enough reps and weight to produce a productive stimulus. And I'm not looking to build a muscle larger. And a lot of times their muscles won't even get larger because the effort is not and the frequency is not there. And so in regards to maybe volume of how many times you got to do it, I, I typically only weight train twice a week. And so runners say there was a great study they did, uh, that I can reference that I think it was about, God, I was like, it was a, it was long. It was like 30 weeks of, um, resistance training, uh, one time a week on season, two times a week off season with distance runners. It was 5k and above. And it was interesting to see they didn't get bigger.

They got stronger. Their VO two max got better. Their running efficiency got better. And overall, there were better athletes. They had less effort to produce the same, or they had less, um, they had to produce, they had to use less energy to do the same performance. And so they're just more efficient. And so using the weight training in a way to stimulate that will improve not just your running, but also your movements that you explore throughout life. And so if someone were to, someone came in the other day with some back pain, they said, look, when I'm reaching over to grab my purse out of the side seat of my car, my back hurts. And I said, yeah, it sounds like it would.

And so your purse is probably heavy. And also to your arm is extended and you pick it straight up vertically and you pull it right to your body. And so that's a long moment arm, um, for torque on tilting the spine to the side and envision that if you, if you can't, I want you to sit there and actually grab something far away from you, which let's just say make a five pounds and pick it up straight up. Don't even, don't even bend the elbow. And so straight up and now bring it close to your body and then put it right by your armpit. And I can guarantee the one by your armpit is lighter relatively, but it's the same way. And so what we can do for that person is that we can teach their body to tolerate the forces of that bending moment. Okay. Well, the force that that purse has on her body is enough to trigger response in pain. Okay. And it's not like that for everybody, but in this case, we can use that in a resistance training setting and use a weight as an implement to improve her tolerance of that. Okay. And so my suggestion to her was grab the way or grab the purse, pull it across, like leave it on the chair, but pull it across all the way across the center console, bring close to your body and hug it. And when she does that, I bet it's going to feel better.

And when you think about it, we can carry this over to like an actual exercise. Imagine just leaving a weight on the ground and just dragging it to your body. Okay. So that is, uh, it's in the weight or the implement and the strategy through the exercise is to simulate and improve your ability to do something in life, whether that's running, whether it's, whether it's, uh, daily stuff like picking up and moving chairs, whether it's moving fold up tables that are randomly packed in the side of your garage, whether a neighbor, which that happened to me the, uh, the other week is someone said, Hey, you know what? Can you help me pick up this futon? You know? And so that's a deadlifting thing. And I didn't, uh, if I was vulnerable to that and I haven't exposed myself to it, then I would have a higher risk. And so when people tend to go back to this, well, uh, I do my exercises. You probably asked this to a lot, you asked this to a lot of people say for your exercise, what do you do? Like, Oh, they, they're like, Oh, I do some arms, you know, and they'll simulate a bicep curl.

And it's like the stereotype of a weight training session to a lot of people is single joint bicep curls again, single joint, meaning only one joint, really. Okay. Actually that's technically two, um, maybe a little bit two and a half, but for the most part, it's not a large movement. And usually you don't do that movement much throughout the day, unless you're throwing salt over your shoulder cause you spilled it. And so it's not really one that we use a lot in, in the analogy of the girl grabbing the purse and pulling it over. That's something she's going to probably do about 10 times a day. Um, and now say she gets that purse on her shoulder. Now she's walking along. Wouldn't it be nice if we can train her so that purse doesn't create a, create a triggering response as well. And so that I can just put a weight in her hand and have her walk with a single weight in her hand, what we call a loaded carry, but it's not a bicep curl. And so when people go back to this idea of thinking about, well, weight training is not for me, you might ask yourself, what was weight training to you? And so if you think of big bodybuilding type of people, you're probably thinking a different thing than what I'm asking for. And so for a rehab thing, I typically don't give that type of thing. I give something which will improve your body's resiliency against a, uh, uh, I don't want to say damaging movement, but some type of movement. It's going to create pain. Some people have pain bending forward with their spine, some people backwards, some people lifting a weight over your head, some people, um, simply running their knee hurts, right? And so we can build a tolerance to that and it's not really that hard. And so the conversation I've had with a couple people is that they say, well, I don't like weight training. I don't like the idea of it. It's not fun. And I say, I understand. I get it. I hear you. Okay. But I like to weight train twice a week and I don't do any bicep curls unless I got friends in with a bro session. That's just something I don't want to think much about. And they pick typically. And so I weight train purely to improve my ability to, to play baseball or sorry, to play baseball safely and, uh, into the, to the level that I want so I can enjoy it. And also so I can feel good and look good.

Okay. So I have a secondary level reason. And so for those of you who out, out there who are thinking, I don't know, weight training, it's not, it's not good. Think about why you would do it in the first place. Okay. And it shouldn't be about building a six pack. Okay. And it probably shouldn't be about looking good to be honest with you. I don't even care if people are in shape. I want them to be relatively, I can, I can take a dad bod. That's fine. You know, I don't need them to be rippling. It's, it's a false perception of what I'm asking for. I think so. Um, some people I say, we know, what do you like to do? And they say, well, I really enjoyed tennis, but I can't do that anymore. And so, yeah, you probably can. But why don't we use the weights as a way to improve your ability to play tennis? So you can actually enjoy playing tennis again. All right. Someone else like, well, I really enjoy running on the beach. Well, you can't run on the beach, but you can run on concrete now. Right? Like, it's okay.

Okay. Okay. So why don't we use the weights to improve your ability to get back to run on the sand, which is what you like and so on. And so we're using as, as a stepping stool to get to the next thing. And I strongly suggest that you, you think about doing that. Cause if you don't, all of a sudden, the weight training is for the weight training. And you're going to drop off real quick and it should be a lifestyle thing where you're improving your ability to do the things you actually want to do. And I know there's people who are, who like weight training. That's cool. That's fine. Some people like crossfitting. That's cool. That's fine. But most people have a second reason.

They have a real reason they're doing it, which is what I'm trying to drive home the point to. Okay. So it's important to understand that you're, you need to create a secondary goal. If you don't create that secondary goal, this thing is going to fall apart really quick. And whatever I typically ask for is not going to stick. Now, when we get into the idea of just the overall categorizations of movements that I want, notice that I'm talking about movements, not muscles. What muscles does this work? Well, what do you feel? Well, I feel this and this and that and that and so on and so on. Good. Works all those. Great. I don't want you to focus on what muscles working. I want you to focus on what movement this simulates. And cause you'll, you'll better understand the reason why it's going to happen. And a lot of the conversations I have with people with this, I like them to understand.

Again, this is not something I've created. I use it in a unique way, but these are what I would classify as Dan John principles. And on, on past podcasts, we've been talking about loading and resistance training. We've talked about Dan John. And he's got some very simple principles, which other people have blended into other things. But for the most part, there's five movements, a push, a pull, a carry, a squat, and a hinge. Okay. And so I strongly suggest people who want to actually go the next level and understand fully what a program would basically look like. And the reason why all these random exercises are picked for you, maybe in office, they might seem random. Or maybe like a, if you're a non-patient of mine, and people are picking random exercises for you, and you wonder why, they're like, this is random junk. It's typically not. And so it's a scaled approach into getting you to do certain levels of certain movements in a, in a, in a unilateral way.

And so the Dan John video that I would suggest that actually that I bought so that I can train new office staff, as well as interns coming in that work with me from the chiropractic schools, I want them to understand what's happening. Is because a lot of my recommendations for people is I, I attempt to apply load when I can. And when you can't apply load, then maybe I scale them back to more of a, a hands-on treatment or some type of pain modifying type of approach. Or maybe we do nerve openers, or maybe we do nerve sliders or whatever the heck we're doing. But the actual goal is to get you to some type of load because life is where there is load.

And just to clarify what load is, load is a resistance somehow, some way, okay? And it doesn't even have to be really a weight in your hand because your body is the weight and gravity is supplying the relative load, okay? A pencil is a load. A barbell is a load. And then there's loads of different handle types. So there's a barbell, which is different than picking up a big old, uh, let's say you're picking up a tire, right? They're different handle points. So the grip is unique on each. And I think it's important to realize that they're all the stuff that I have in my office. I have kettlebells, barbells, dumbbells, um, sandbags. I have, um, medicine balls.

And then we have the ground, which we supply as loads sometimes or the earth. And, uh, these are all implements. And so people have asked me before, they're like, should I buy this kettlebell? A kettlebell, not from you, but can I buy a kettlebell? I'm like, you can, but don't. And they say, well, why not? How am I supposed to do this at home? I'm like, look around. You have a bunch of shit you probably don't use, okay? And so I, for instance, have probably about four or five Jansport backpacks because those things have a lifetime warranty. And whenever the zipper breaks, you return it and you got a brand new backpack, which, uh, or at least one that functions and holds stuff.

And then you have all these other backpacks because I had them growing up through school and most people have those things. And so I, uh, I feel I would fill them up with junk, right? Tools that you don't use. Um, uh, a friend who's a plumber came into the office or to my house the other day to help me out with something. His bag full of tools was literally like 40 pounds and he was carrying them down a stairwell. And so that is a prime example of a more useful weight. All right. And it's more, uh, it's more of an application of what you're going to actually encounter through life. So the weights, the kettlebells have perfectly round handles, the dumbbells, the weight, the, the dumbbells and barbells have perfectly round handles. Change it up.

So I would use different parts of a bag to simulate the weight and, um, kettlebells are probably about a hundred or $1 and 70 cents a pound. If you find them on a good week, maybe 150 a pound. So if you want to buy, you know, a 60 pound kettlebell, go, go ahead, spend a hundred and a hundred dollars getting it, you know, but it's not worth the time and it shouldn't be a hindrance or it's not worth the money. And it's not worth the hindrance of making one more barricade because you have all the stuff you need at home. Now, again, going back to the Dan John principles is I, I, I got the Dan John intervention, uh, DVD and there is a book by the way.

And I don't get any money for suggesting that it's this, it's just a really simple. Uh, Dan John is a well-known strength coach. He's a podium speaker. Um, he's got very simple ways of breaking things down, but he can make it really complicated. And so, um, and if you've already experienced me in the office with queuing you, uh, I try to make things silly and memorable and break a quarter between your butt cheeks into five nickels in your, your human slot machine. And I say these things on purpose because I want you to remember them. I can get very techie with you, but there's no need to. And Dan John is very similar in that way that he, he breaks things down in a simple way. And, um, just to be clear on this as well, is that when I talk about resistance training, I'm not asking you to do what you see other people doing on Instagram. I'm not asking for you to lift barbells overhead. I'm not asking you to deadlift until it looks like your back's sitting about, I'm not asking you to do any of that stuff. And I think what it takes to be a normal functioning human that just wants to play golf, you might have to deadlift. Say you, say you weigh 150 pounds or let's say 180 pounds, probably a little bit more regular weight there.

If you can deadlift a hundred pounds, you know, five, six times, I'd be pretty damn happy. And it's, it's enough to make you into a fully functional, um, golfer, a recreational golfer. I'm not trying to make you into a power lifter or a professional CrossFit athlete. I'm not even trying to make you into a professional golfer. Okay. Cause those are different things that we typically don't all have time for. And I'm included in that. So we have to realize what we're trying to make yourself into. And for squatting with that, I'm not going to have you squat a ton of weight. All right. Uh, just enough to make yourself stable enough to tolerate golf, rotate the rotational forces found in golf in the sitting you do maybe throughout the day and the walking you do throughout the day. Um, uh, we're just building enough support to make that occur. And so they're not the same standards. All right. And as Dan John goes through in his, his analogy in that, in that, uh, interventions thing is that some people let's, let's just say we have a, um, baseball player, baseball players trying to deadlift, um, you know, 800 pounds and it's, it's say he does it. It's pretty remarkable, but it's really not that great for another type of athlete. Okay. And so the standards are going to change a little bit and my numbers might be a little skewed there, but for the most part, let's say that the reference points is okay. And say deadlifting a thousand pounds is, I mean, that's 200 pounds off, right? For the baseball player. So it's, it's, it's not really that impressive when you take it into a different forum, but as a baseball player, it's a shit ton of weight and it's probably more than what's needed in my, in my opinion. And so, um, I would probably keep a little people a little bit lower. So when I talk about loading and resistance training as rehab, I'm not talking about all those things. And so I'm talking about this in the beginning here, cause I want to make sure that you don't think that that's what I'm asking for. Cause that's a really scary thing to some people. If you've hurt your back before, um, squatting, this is scary for you to do. Okay. And I've, I've asked, um, there was a dancer that came in recently that I was asking her to do a hip hinge movement, which was happened to be a deadlift, by the way, hip hinges and, uh, deadlifts are not technically the same thing. There's different variations of a hinge, but the hinge of the movement, uh, I was asking her to hip hinge and she was a little resistant to doing it. And, uh, she kind of said that through dance, we don't do this. And I said, I'm, I'm aware of that, but you hurt yourself doing something else.

So this movement is intended to build your ability to tolerate the forces found in that other activity that you did as well as dance. It doesn't mean I'm teaching you to dance, but you should be able to control yourself and be able to lift a certain amount of weight, um, within, within a normal setting, um, with competency. And I'm pretty sure that so dance being a sport and you're asking yourself, you're asking your body to do a bunch of, um, different things that most people do and don't do throughout life. I'm sure that, and I know there's a guy on Instagram who does this is dancers doing normal things in dancer ways and you don't see that. And so if this person were to then, uh, pick up that futon, like I did, if she did it like a dancer, she'd probably get hurt. But if she did it like a lifter, then she'd probably be fine. And so what I'm asking for is not to change what you're at, what you're attempting to do. We're just building support so we can improve what you're attempting to do. So back onto the idea of those five fundamental concepts. There's a push, a pull, a carry, a hinge, and a squat. Okay. And so as I break these things down, let's break them down into normal human movements first. So you see there as application. The carry is the simplest. Okay.

Carrying grocery bags, simple, right? Squatting, sitting into a chair, hinging, picking up, um, I'd say picking up a kid. I'd probably do that. Or, um, like bending down to pick up a golf ball. A golf ball pickup is a single leg variety of a hinge. Um, pushing, uh, car pushing, helping someone jumpstart a car or, uh, opening a doorway. Let's talk about opening the doorway the other way now. Now you get a pull. And so these are all, um, the things again that you're going to experience. And you notice that the most of the things aside from carrying, uh, aside from sitting down, most of them are single sided. Um, so you open the door with one hand, not two, and you probably have one foot in front of the other. And with carrying things, you might not get two bags of groceries, you get one, right? And so there's variation in these movements based upon what we're trying to accomplish. And we're trying to get you to, um, have competency per side.

And so this is where people tend to get a little bit muddy with this. They think, well, I, I don't get it. Like you're asking me to do all these different things, but you asked me to also do five things. And so let's just down, let's go down to five again, push, pull, carry hinge and squat and not in that order. And so maybe we do the fundamental movement of both, uh, of symmetrical sides first, just to pattern the movement. And maybe you, uh, build some competency with the depth of a squat and then a standing out of a squat. And then the holding of a pushup, um, which is the top of it, say a plank right before you actually do the moving. So this builds your ability to find the end points of that movement safely and without symptoms. Number one, second is you should be able to hold these positions. And so in Dan John's program, it's, um, it's plank as, uh, plank as a program basically. And the, the planking is the building block for movement. Okay. You have to be able to hold the position before you can move and you should be able to move well slowly before you move quickly. And a lot of times people through, um, exercise, they tend to move things quickly without even being able to really do it, uh, and hold the position yet. And you see this all the time when people doing pushups and they're like, Oh, my neck and shoulder always hurts. It's like, no, no kidding. You look like a cow drinking out of, out of a very low pond, you know, like your neck is moving, your back is swaying. Like it just looks, it looks painful. And so for those people, maybe you start them out with the plank, right? And so that's the important takeaway from this so far. If you're wondering how, how would I apply something like this? If I wasn't going to buy the, the Dan John thing, by the way, by the Dan John thing, it's going to help you. And it's probably the best money you've ever spent in your entire life in regards to fitness. Because if one thing happens is hopefully we get you away from the bodybuilding style, unless you're trying to be a bodybuilder and we're going to improve your ability to build your own program. And then honestly, a lot of people that I train in this way here, um, after they've developed their symptoms and then, and then they tend to, uh, improve. I mean, they, they prove most of the time is a lot of times when you get in the resistance training and they say they're 90% better, holy shit, the last 10% goes away with resistance training.

And if we train them this way and mix it up a little bit, so it doesn't become stagnant, they feel good for a long time. Right. And unless they're very lacking on one of the movements, um, we tend to add all five. And so I'll hit that in one second here, but first remember that the position is important. And then you have to pattern the movement without weight. And then you can add some weight and go really slow. And then maybe you do one arm, one leg type of thing, or blend it in the middle there a little bit. Then you go quicker. Okay. But all the stuff that you're wondering, well, I've been doing burpees. Why does this hurt? Well, it's because you probably couldn't plank first. Number one, you couldn't jump and, and squat, which are all precursors to that entire complex movement that you're doing quickly. Okay. And I, I personally never recommend burpees to people in office here. I'm not saying burpees of the devil, but for the most part, burpees are, are highly advanced for a lot of people. And if we're talking about power generation movements and doing things quickly, I think the rough estimation is that you have about five reps before you start going downhill very quickly. Okay. You don't see baseball players taking five swings really quickly and going up to the plate and trying to hit really powerful for the sixth is they groove the pattern a little bit. Um, and then they go hit. And so, and they take little breaks between swings cause you have to re up and, and, uh, get your power back.

And I think of it like that NBA jam game, if you don't, haven't played that game. Um, but it was an arcade one when I was a kid. And so it was a basketball game. And so we'd, you'd run around, you'd have a power button. And if you held that power button down for like five seconds, you're out of juice and you can no longer move quickly. But the power button made it so you can dunk like crazy, like you can run faster than everybody else, but they all had power buttons too. So you have to know when to use your power button. Now, um, before I get into some examples, um, people tend to ask, well, what is a warmup? And I said, that's a great question. So let's go back to that baseball analogy here. And so when we go through baseball, um, think about what we're going to do with the plate right there. Well, we're going to, we're going to hit the ball. We're going to swing. What do people do in the batter's box? Well, they practice their swing. They work on their timing. They drill in the pattern. They improve the pattern, uh, or they, they grease the groove as Brian Carroll would say. And so I think these are all very important in the warmup is because you're going to start doing a little bit of weight with that movement. Familiarize yourself with that movement again, because sometimes it's hard. Like I've, I've played baseball for years and if I don't hit during the week, I suck in the game. And so it takes multiple times a week to really start building that relationship with that movement, or it just, it tends to forget a little bit. And when you load it, it becomes a risk factor. Now, when we get into this, uh, or I'll reiterate, okay, resistance training is intended to improve your ability to do the thing that you want to do.

It's not intended to make you into a bodybuilder or a CrossFit person or a power lifter. Okay. At least not in my realm here, not in a rehab area. Second is that if you have some type of, uh, guarding, mental guarding right now to the idea, ask yourself why, what has occurred in your past or what belief system do you have that makes you feel like this is incorrect for you? If that is a problem and it's a hindrance point, a stopping point for you, come, come talk to me. Okay. Uh, and, uh, maybe it's another podcast we make. That'd be, that'd be amazing. And because people do have these, uh, very valid reasons, but also to their, their blocking points for them to getting that last 10% of improvement. Um, uh, where was I at here? Oh, warmups, drill the pattern in. And I like to have people usually do a little bit of core work, uh, and just also get the blood moving. So precursors, um, or, uh, needs for a warmup, warm yourself up, literally get the blood moving, get yourself sweating a little bit. Okay. Grease the pattern that you're going to do that day dominantly and, uh, maybe a little bit of core work. Um, just because usually in my experience, there's just people who have responded well to core work throughout their early rehab. And so adding it in the beginning is a nice addition. So, um, now will the muscles get bigger sometimes, but it takes, I think the, the noticeable microscopic difference will take six weeks. Okay. The strength improvement and improving function, the way you feel will come after about one to two. And that's based upon a neurological improvement of a firing pattern or a, uh, think of it as a software versus a hardware for your computer.

And so the software is working better. So the, the computer works better and then the keys work better, but we're not, and we're not replacing the keys on this thing over time. Yeah. You will develop some lean muscle, which is not a bad thing. And going through the Dan John intervention video, he'll talk all about this, about where you should realistically be. He calls it the quadrants and I won't go too deep into this because I don't want to take away from his, um, the stuff that he's created. But for the most part, a lot of people think that they need to be doing different things than they actually should be doing for their age and their goal. And if you're looking to just feel good, look good, which is most of us, I'd say if we're not getting paid to play sport, you really, you really just need, uh, lean, lean muscle and mobility. Okay. And you can get that a lot of that done without doing all the crazy stuff that you see on Instagram. And so, um, but a lot of times people will, um, they'll really attempt to be what he calls a quadrant four, which he calls the specialist. And these are the people who are really good at one thing, but they, uh, and they excel in it, right? A hundred yard sprinter or a hundred meter sprinter. So these people are going to be really, really good at that one thing, but they're going to suck at a bunch of other things and that they get paid for this kind of thing. And, and they spend a lot of time doing it. Um, we're not that most of us who are listening to this or me included, we're not that we just want to feel good, look good.

Um, and it's, it's, it's a different skillset. And the, the proposition that I'm making today with this, um, programming is, is mainly based upon, um, me and what you're wanting the specialists and all those other people, like they can, uh, they don't really need it quite as much. So let me give me some examples of how I tend to use this in your care, um, or in other people's care. And so I'll give you some examples of people this has worked well with. And there's fear is a real, it's a real, real thing. I get it. And so when people come in and they tend to like, let's say this one gentleman, uh, he came in and he just loved to do shoulder workouts, you know, and his shoulder hurt. And so I said, I like to really break down things in the beginning and try to get to the bottom of maybe what's lacking in their, in their resistance training. And in this case, this guy liked to work out.

So I didn't need to convince him of it. I just needed to change things a little bit or well round things and look for the overall we'd call elephant in the room. Okay. Guy comes in, he's got shoulder problems with doing a bench press. And so I said, great, cool. So what is your program like? He's like, Oh, I just do normal stuff in the gym. And so I said, can you describe that to me? And so he very, very resistant of telling things and maybe he didn't think it was important, but finally I said, look, I'm looking for what you're doing in the gym because I'm looking for holes in your program. And once we fill those holes, it'll actually improve your ability to do what you want to do, which is your bench press. So he finally reveals it all. So on a typical day, a couple days a week, he goes in and he does bench press, multiple reps, multiple sets. He does incline press, decline press, lat raises, or sorry, uh, delt raises, uh, dips. And, and then he'll do a couple, a bunch of other, uh, little random stuff, but that was the dominant part of his workout.

And we, we find this with a lot of guys who at least grew up around the era that I did buy and try chest and back, you know, um, uh, push and pull, which is a little bit better. Um, but you really don't hear a lot of, uh, other things like carries hinges and squats, um, because a lot of them had a bad, a bad experience with it. And so I just told this guy, I said, look, I I'm not going to take your bench away completely, but is it fair to say that it's triggering your symptom? He said, yeah. And I said, cool. Great. So what, here's what we're going to do. And I'm going to see if you can, if you can hold the position of a plank, which if you think about it, it's a flipped 180 degree version of a, of a, of a bench press. Okay. So we're still keeping the pressing in.

So we have those five categories, right? And so I'm still keeping the pressing in, but I'm, but I'm scaling it back. And so I'm having to hold a plank here. I said, do you have pain with this? And he says, well, I got a little bit here. And so I improved his ground contact and stay, but helped him stabilize his shoulder through the movement. I said, Hey, how does that, or through the position? And I said, how does that feel? And he said, great, cool. I said, good. Remember this. I don't want you to do any pressing movements. We're taking pressing out. I want you to do the, I want you to hold this pressing position, but I don't want you to move. And I want you to hold it for bursts of time and feel really good with locking your hand in the floor and making sure your shoulder feels good in this pushing movement. And he said, cool, great. What do I do at the gym then? I said, that's a great question.

So notice the things that were lacking here. And so I could have chose a lot of things. He didn't squat. He didn't hinge or deadlift as you guys might know it. By the way, deadlifting, again, deadlifting is various different weights. It's not heavy just as everyone shows and does it. No one typically shows their light deadlifting as a pattern and they don't show their hip hinging. And I do mean hip hinging that we're trying to improve because typically when people come in with groin pain, adductor problems, problems around the hips or IT band area, they typically have what we call a spinal hinge. And that's where the spine moves as the primary hinge or percentages of the primary hinge. And the hips no longer do the hinging. And the hips are intended to do the hinging because they're really good at it. The spine is crappy at it. And what happens is, is all the little nerves that come out, they tend to become sensitive and they send pain and sensitivity and sometimes numbness down your legs and into your groin. It's going to feel like a sports hernia or a groin pull or an adductor strain or medial knee pain or IT band or, or plantar fasciitis. So a lot, this is very common. And so unless you drill in that hip hinge, um, and this takes a certain cueing technique, then a lot of times, um, people will continue with their, with their maladapted movement. But let's go back on this guy. So this guy, he, he loved to press. And so I said, look, um, since he's, he's, he's open to pressing, how about doing a pull? Um, and so I thought he would understand that really well, where it's instead of doing, why don't we build the other side of the shoulder? And so he was accommodating that. And I think if I were to recommend it squatting or hinging, like he, he might've not taken it. And so we did some pulling movements. Uh, I picked a horizontal single arm pull, which, um, you might guys might recognize as a single arm deadlift or sorry, a single arm dumbbell row, but there's various different types here. And so we picked that and, and then he wanted another thing to do. And so I gave him a simple carry. I just put two 35 pound weights in his hand and told him to walk on the line. And I said, just do this for a couple, uh, may, uh, some distances that feel tolerable. You shouldn't feel gas out at the end. Uh, and then go back into the pulling thing again and just do whatever else you're doing and come back in a week. And so this guy came back a week later and he said, Hey, this is great. I'm 75% better, right through daily function. Um, and so all we did was we built in the spot that was missing.

And so he had, and even if we equate this to shoulder issues here, we can say that, well, maybe the tech, the pec was tightening and the upper trap was tightening and these other muscles on the shoulder girdle, we're not really working that well and blah, blah, blah. And then cool. Great. That's fine. But now we're back on the muscle idea. Don't think too much of that. Just think about what was missing the movements, the push, the pull, the carry, the squat, the hinge. Okay. In this case, building the, the pulling or rowing and carrying improved how he felt with his pushing. Two weeks later, he was able to do bench press. No problem. So that's just one example. Another example is a guy came in with some knee pain. And so he came in and, um, I've worked with him a couple of times before and the knee pain was not uncommon. It was just, um, it had just flared up. So he wanted to talk about it a bit and we only had about 30 minutes or so. And so I, he showed me the squatting and he's like, Oh, but it hurts right here. And so on. And so I, I, I listened to his concern and then I had enough information to really, uh, guide him. So I said, look, I know, I understand the squats hurting right now and just sitting into a chair is hurting. I get it. Cool.

I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll, we'll come back to this, but let's do the other things that you need to do. Um, and so I programmed in a hinge. We did a single leg hinge. I had him carry, I'm do a plank hold, which is a pressing. And I had him do, uh, uh, I had him hang from a pull-up bar, um, which is a form of pulling. And so we did one round of that. And I said, good, go squat again or sit back in that chair. And, uh, he said, Oh, it doesn't hurt anymore. And so I found this happens through a lot, through a lot of people's things is you find the missing holes in their program and you fill them. And say in this case, um, you guys might wonder why the heck that works is here's my belief is that completely, if those five movements are the end alls, I know people will say probably twist and lunge or another one, but let's, uh, let's stay out of the weeds there for a second. Um, let's just say that those movements well round the human. Okay. And say the muscles that are missed in the hinge are built in the squat and vice versa, the same thing. And say pressing, it builds the peck, but not the shoulder and the back. And then, so they will round each other. Right. And so typically when someone is having a problem with one, I leave it out, build the rest of the system and bring it back and just see. And because a lot of times you get just overall general physical preparedness or just, um, loading the person a little bit in a safe way tends to reduce their symptoms and it reduces the need for care. And all of a sudden the patient's in power and they're like, Whoa, what the heck do I do now? How do I do this at home? And I say, great question.

This is what this podcast is all about, because as you can see, this is going on and on. And I really didn't even tell you what to do yet. Okay. But I have told you one thing and I've said, I said, I don't know how many times I say Dan John's name throughout the entire week, but go by Dan John intervention. It will, uh, there is some more technical stuff in there, but for the most part, it really lays out a good foundation of what you need to know if you're going to be loading and loading for rehab. Okay. This is not a video based upon, um, you becoming a power lifter. Let me reiterate that. It's not that. Okay. And sure. You, we can say there, we can get into performance there, but I don't even care about that as much. I care about making people feel good. And so I use it in that realm. And so, um, let's go with, uh, another example is I can use myself actually. And so recently I had some shoulder blade pain. Um, it was right between the shoulder blades on both sides. And it actually happened when I was doing pull-ups and I think I lost tension during the pull-ups and I was only about three, four reps in and it started hurting for, uh, probably about three weeks there. And it fluctuated and I was pulling patient mode and I was just very confused and not knowing what to do. And so I still wanted to lift a couple of days a week because it makes me feel good for playing baseball and so on. And I know the overall long-term improvement of lifting is that I will feel better as I age, which is important if you guys don't know that now that, um, one of the, probably one of the biggest precursors to put you in a retirement home is if you can't take care of yourself and probably getting in and out of the shower, on and off the toilet, slipping and falling and getting back up. Um, these are scary things to people. And so if you expose yourself early in life to it, you will do it frequently. Um, and not even with weight, you just start to get good at it. And all of a sudden you live, um, on your own for longer.

So anyways, I couldn't do pushing or pulling, um, or carries because it flared up. And so I did this for probably a couple of good weeks then. And I was like, what the hell? I'm like, am I maybe doing this poorly? And so I tinkered with it and I just couldn't figure it out. And so finally I was like, you know, I've been tinkered with this so much. I'd just been forgetting to do squats and hinges. And so one day I just loaded up a barbell, went about 200 pounds on a deadlift. And I, I went about five reps of about five, um, sets and so on. Nothing big, just kind of taking my time, um, taking coffee breaks in between them for the next five days. I felt so good, you know, and you might wonder why the heck that works. Well, what's holding the weight on my hand and my hand is attached to my shoulder. My shoulder is attached to my shoulder girdle and all the muscles that attach a shoulder girdle to the body are then in they're engaged, but in an isometric non-movement way. Okay. So the lower body stuff is not actually just for lower bodies for other things too. Okay. Mind blowing. I know. So, but it's important to realize that because if you don't realize that you tend to get married to these ones that you're thinking about, maybe I just need to do these for this one problem and no, do them all. And if you need, if you have questions about how to do them and how to do them safely, hire somebody. I hired somebody and I know that, that people say, well, I don't know. I can do it on my own. And like, I, and I mean this in the nicest way in the most sincere, non-boasting type of way. I probably know more about it than you do. Okay. I know how to cue it more than you do as just for most people. I would say most people. Okay. Because I, I teach this every day, every day and I practice it every day. But when I got injured and I needed some guidance and improving my tension, I hired somebody and Cody D-Mac helped me with that. And Brennan Gassamia did too. And I, and Brennan came two times a week for, I wouldn't say about three months. And after that we saw him sparingly. Okay. And now I load on my own again, but sometimes you need a little tinkering. All right. And so I understand if you feel like you have a, you've mastered the control of it, but I can almost guarantee that you can always get better. Okay. Get better every single day. And if a symptom is triggering on you and you can't figure it out, it's probably because you haven't figured it out yet. Let someone figure it out for you. And so the last example is a girl came with a groin pain, uh, with squatting. Okay. And this is really common for people that have that pinch point, uh, area in the front of their hip and they think it's their hip flexor and they search it out and never goes away. And all of a sudden, uh, this thing is a longstanding thing, uh, which eventually, um, becomes a problem with, uh, um, uh, degeneration, the hip, by the way, if I had to guess, but typically it's an impingement syndrome. And so I had a, I had a person come in the other day squatting triggered it. Um, so we built the hinge, hinging improved it, but not completely.

And so I'd about a 50% improvement after the hinge. And the last thing we did is we had her Tucker rib cage back or forceful exhale. And to hold that, hold that intention right there. She went through the squat, no pain anymore. I'm not even joking. And so in this case, it's like, do we need to do any more remedy work with hands on or stretching or so on? She can clearly do the movement without generating a symptom. Just her tension is poor. And also too, she hasn't been hinging to build the squat and she probably hasn't been carrying to build the squat and she probably hasn't been pushing and pulling to build the squat. And so again, it's a well-rounded program and they don't have to be a lot of weight, just enough weight to build a stimulus. Now I'm going to come back to this weight idea here right now is that sometimes the weight is light enough to where you disrespect the weight. Okay. And I'm okay with people using lightweight, but typically what I do at the office, if you've experienced this already, you know what I'm talking about. So if I'm teaching you to do a hinge, then I will put down a weight that's like challenging, but safe. And she do the hinge. And so I walk into the other room and I grab another weight and I come back out and I say, I'm gonna make it harder. And I put a weight down. It's about half that weight. And I say, I want you to make this weight feel harder than the other one by turning into the floor and generating your own tension. And so you can do it. People do it. And it's mind boggling because now all of a sudden the weight is irrelevant and the tension is the attention and how they're grounding themselves and how they're grabbing the object. And so after that, I go up and wait. And I say, great, let's do that again. They're like, oh, it feels so much easier now. And it's not painful. And so generating tension, just like that person with the rib cage there, and also to, well, person with the rib cage there, is that they've lost tension and they're putting pressure on structures which are aching to not be pressured again. It's like beating a bruise day after day. It hurts, right? And so I think it's important takeaway on that is that you should be able to generate your own tension and say with a pull-up, if you're generating a pull-up or if you're doing a pull-up and no point should you sling back down into like a, like a dead chicken hanging from a, um, um, uh, a conveyor belt type of thing.

Like you shouldn't be limp. And I know people do that, but you should be able to pause at any point in time. And, uh, just a simple analogy with that. And we'll probably clean that up lastly through here. And this will be the last section. Is it this is, I've been, um, clinician, you might like this one. Um, this works really well with people who have pain with different points of a movement. And so we, we start to build back that movement. And by the way, in the beginning, when I said that the guy had problems with pressing in benching, we didn't take the bench away a hundred percent forever. We just took it away for a period of time while we're, while we're, um, giving the area a little bit more TLC. What was the problem in this case? I can guess, but we, we supported the area which offloaded the structure. Offloading the structure is key. And so when I have people squat, say, and, uh, and I did this with a couple of people in these examples is that, so I've been trying to give the analogy of redlining a car and say you have a sports car. And I know they've made sports cars recently where they're like, you know what, let's not put a stick in here. Let's put paddle shifters and make people feel like they're actually shifting this darn car. And when I grew up, my mom had an Audi and she, uh, had a Tiptronic, they call it. And so you can shift it up and it would shift and shift down and it would shift. And then, but if you really hit the gas and you didn't do that in that Tiptronic or manual position, it would shift itself. It has had a self-protective mechanism that we call redlining. Don't redline the car. It'll shift itself.

So really what's the point of shifting at all? Well, it's changing the movement when you want to change the movement. And so I'll put people into a squat and I'll say, look, I am going to snap my fingers and it's not to some people, by the way, some people don't like snapping fingers. For some reason it seems demeaning to them, which, um, I, I tease it out a little bit first, but I choose to snap because it's easier than slapping the leg and it's quicker than saying, stop and turn around. Okay. So I can, so snap is the turnaround point. And I tell people that like, so there was a, there was a game you had as a kid where you drop a ruler and as soon as it dropped, you try to, you try to grab it as soon as you can. And you'd measure how much lag time there was.

And so I don't want any lag time in your movement. And so they'll tend to go down to the squat and I'll snap and bring them up. And I say, does that hurt? And they said, no, it doesn't hurt. And I'm typically stopping them at a higher range than it looks like they're losing their tension at or their, or their, uh, their redlining, you know? And so they'll go down again and I'll snap and go up. And eventually I take them deeper and deeper and I snap and they say, yeah, that one hurt. I say, why do you think it hurt? And they say, I don't know. I said, well, and I could tell them to give a redline story. And I said, look, I'm shifting you when I'm snapping. Okay. If you do not, if you do not hear me shift you, you shift yourself to protect you. And by going down slower, you'll have less lag and quicker turnaround. Okay. And so I'm like, I don't want to snap and see you turn around two seconds later or one second later. I want it immediate. Okay. You're keeping tension to the drive train of your car. So make that happen right when I snap. And if you don't hear me shift yourself, shift yourself. And so we go through that and they get better and better at it.

And surprisingly, when they go into the deeper ranges and they shift their self, when you ask them, does that hurt? They'll typically say no. And so I say, do it again without thinking about a thing and they do it and it hurts again. And so generating the tension to protect the area, that's getting bashed on and becoming a painful structure is an important thing. And so I expand this now. I say redlining is your thing. Okay. It's going to protect you and you will get strong from it and it'll help you get to your next level goal of running or tennis or golf or baseball or whatever it is. But I need you to keep tension in all these movements and not redline yourself to an engine explosion. Single arm dumbbell pulls. Does it hurt your back? Well, yeah, a little bit.

Well, when the weight goes down, it does not have to hit the ground. You can elevate it. You're in control of your surroundings. If you lose tension and your back turns, you will probably hurt yourself because that's when you're triggering symptoms. Okay. Pushups, pushing up or going, sorry, going all the way down. Don't hurt to the depth. Well, turn it around. Don't redline. And you do that enough and you have them generate the tension through the hands by setting their shoulder blades into a more opportunistic driving position. And it helps. And there's a lot of other contributing factors to tension. I won't go into those today. But if you're listening to this and you're a patient, you've already been through this experience, this is a long-term goal. Okay. Weight training, it will make you feel better. But if you want to feel good for a long time, just make a habit out of it and make it so you start to love it for the purpose of getting you to your next level goal.

And surprisingly, all the things that people say that they want, they want to look thin, they want to feel good, they don't want to have a joint pain and all this stuff. It's surprised if I had to guess, I guess I can't say for sure, but my observation is you have less of it. Okay. You're more resilient and you're less, you're less probable of becoming broken and damaged and degenerated and pinched nerves and back issues and knee pain and plantar fasciitis. Like all this stuff, it tends to become less prevalent in my opinion anyways. So I don't have any science to validate that, but I'm sure there's some out there. If you clinicians are listening, go ahead and support me on this. I'd love to collect a bunch of data on that. So this is all I have for this today. If you guys like this, please thumbs up it and share it with your patients. I plan on making more of these throughout the course of time of making it. So these are very simple things and interactions I have with patients because I believe that hearing things multiple times is useful. I can probably recite Wayne's World by the, with the, um, I could, I could probably recite the entire movie, watch the damn thing so many times. So the same thing with these types of things, the more you practice them, the better you're going to be. You're going to be resilient. And most people after they sustain the problem, they come back out feeling better. They come back out feeling stronger, more confident than they did. And if you build this type of program, you will probably get there too. But all you, if all of you, all you do is band-aids and medication and rest, you're not going to become resilient and you're not going to expose your body to the things that it needs to succeed over time.

So thank you so much. Subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already and, um, leave people better than how you found them. And if you're dating, date an Eagle Scout review the podcast, subscribe, talk to you soon.