Why the squat is a movement before it is an exercise

If you can master movement quality first, if you can learn how to squat well first, then your potential to perform just grows. It's like when you're building a pyramid, you're not going to build the base really tiny and then try to make it really, really wide and then all the way up. A pyramid can only be as tall as it is wide. 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 everyone, it's Dr. Sebastian Gonzales again on the mic for the Restoring Human Movement podcast.

I'm going to be your host and I want to thank you so much for spending some time today to listen to my show and hopefully learn some good tips that you can take back to the clinic or if you're a lay public, just to apply to your workouts. Now, that was a real quick clip of the guest I have on today who you might recognize on Instagram as mainly his handle. His handle is Squat University. His name is Dr. Aaron, that's double A, Aaron Horschig, who is a, he's a physical therapist in Kansas City, Missouri at this time. So, he's going to share a lot, a lot, a lot of good stuff. And I started following him, I'd say about a year or so ago. And I love his posts. They're amazing. He gives away so much great free content. And if you go to his website, there's so much free stuff on there that he literally should be charging for half this stuff. I dare to say that he has one of the best free access sites out there, Squat University. He actually has a paid product as well called the Squat Bible, which you should pick up because it's pretty cheap for the amount of information you're going to get. Now, if you're a clinician, here's a couple things you're going to get from this. Is number one, we're obviously going to go into some of the mechanics of squatting, external flare, proper foot position, and so on. And what is the right squat for different types of people? We're going to go into ephemeral acetabular impingement. But here's some interesting things is what I feel like when I have on people who are, I don't want to say insta-famous. I think it's kind of degrading anyways, but insta-famous people that we get to hear about some behind the scenes stuff and how they grew their audience. Because realistically, you can have the best content out there and no one's going to find it if you don't know how to promote it and relate to people.

So he's going to share a little bit about some of his experiences with communicating with people on Instagram and how he grew his Instagram following, as well as some publication tips, should you use a publisher for your books, and so on. Now, if you're a lay public or an athlete or a weekend warrior, a barbell athlete, especially crossfitter, Olympic lifter, or someone who just likes to pick up stuff heavy from the ground, then this is still going to be a lot of great information for you. There's going to be a lot of good tips on how to improve your squat mechanics, as well as some central concepts around if something's hurting, maybe we should figure out the reasons why it's hurting and not just stick to passive therapies. We do talk a little bit about ultrasound in here.

So before we go into that, I'm going to lead you a little bit into who I am in my life, and I'll tell a real quick story. We'll go straight into the interview after that. Now, I don't think I've already spoken about this yet, but one thing that really grinds my gears is Home Depot. I don't think Lowe's does this. Home Depot does this mainly. So you go into a Home Depot, and I don't know how it is where you guys are, but Home Depot is where I'm at. It's like, I mean, there's two doors, and it seems like any spot you park is never by the spot where you actually want to go in and get the thing in that aisle. Like, it's always everywhere. It's like a cluster. It's like, you're destined to be in Home Depot probably for 15 minutes every single time, even if you knew exactly what you're going to get. So the biggest grief I have with Home Depot is the fact that you roll in there, and there's probably, probably, and I'm not estimating, about five, six handicap spots. And they're right in front. They're right in the spot where actually you think, hmm, this is the only spot where I think it would make sense to park. And you're like, okay, well, I can respect that. Five, six handicap spots? Yeah. But a lot of them are not even full.

Like, no, like, it seems like no one ever uses handicap spots, which is my grief. Second is that you look around, you're like, oh, here's a spot right there. And it has a little post-it sign next to it. And then there's probably about five, six more of these. And it says veteran parking. And I'm down with the veterans, by the way. So veterans, thank you for your service. But at the same time, it's like, do you guys go to Home Depot that much where you need all your spots? Like there's already 12 spots here that you, we cannot park in. So that's, that's the first part. And the third part, this one really started killing me. All of a sudden there's electric car parking. There's like two or three spots of that. It's like, dude, there's 15 spots that you cannot park in, in a place where there's not any good parking spots, really. What the hell? I think, I think at some point we should probably start doing vegan parking too. You know, like if we consider the electric cars as the ones that are saving the environment, I thought it was that vegans, uh, because the decreased cow, uh, eating of cows and the transport of stuff to feed the cows and in grain production to feed the cows and the water to produce the grain to feed the cows. I thought they would be more useful for the, for the environmental protection than electric cars. So let's just start making vegan parking.

So that's my thing with Home Depot. I love Home Depot. I love Lowe's. I love going, I love walking around, but at the same time, sometimes I'm in a rush. I'm like, damn it. I got to park a hundred yards away because there's about 15 spots that aren't really being used, but I agree with the people being, using them. Don't think I'm not bashing new people, but let's spread these things out a little bit. You know, let's spread them out just a little bit. Uh, everyone welcome on Aaron, Dr. Aaron Horschig. Shig. You got it. How's it going? Yeah. Uh, pretty good, man. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Yeah. Well, I, I am, I like to look at around the back surroundings of people on the other end. And I, I do like this vintage Budweiser, but heavy t-shirt you have on. Yes. Well, I'm from St. Louis. So, uh, Anheuser Busch. Uh, you know what? I, I probably shouldn't be wearing this too much anymore though, because of, uh, Anheuser sold out to InBev a couple of years ago. So there's still a very, uh, hard relationship with people from St. Louis with Anheuser now, cause it's not locally owned technically anymore. Oh really? Like they don't consider it like an all American beer anymore? Not really. There's a lot of people. I mean, obviously people still drink a lot of Bud Light and Budweiser, but there's a lot, there's a lot of people that really, uh, were really upset with, with the way Anheuser Busch handled that whole, uh, that whole deal.

There's, there's a place down here. It's, um, Ballast Point. Yeah. They've got some good beers. They got sold out too, but they were like a local brewery in San Diego and all of a sudden they exploded and sold for, I think, I think it was like a hundred million or a billion or something ridiculous, but they aren't, I don't consider that local anymore, honestly. Yeah. Well we've got here in Kansas city, we've got Boulevard, which they even also sold out recently as well. So there's, uh, not many like locally, I guess, American owned craft beer. Uh, I mean, obviously there's a ton, but not as far as the really, really big ones they're starting to sell out as well.

I think you just found in this market, like forget this whole squat Bible thing. Hey, I, that is, that's another, I guess an untapped potential passion. I don't really talk about beer too much, uh, on social media, but that's another thing I, I love, uh, sitting around and having a good beer and talking with people. Yeah, me too. I really think, I think I've learned more clinically over beers than I have with anything that I've really paid for. So, uh, can you tell everyone about yourself, how you got into PT strength and conditioning and why you're obsessed with squatting? Yeah. So I've always been very, um, into the strength and conditioning side of things. When I was going through high school, I was always one of those people that I didn't always have the most talent for the different sports I was in. I mean, I excelled. I started in football and baseball when I was in high school, but I never really was that great of a talent to where I knew, yes, I'm definitely going to college to play sports. But when it came to the off season, I was like, oh man, this is, this is my favorite time. You get done with school, you go to the weight room, you spend three hours there before the weightlifting coach kicks you out. Like I love just being in the weight room and understanding, you know, just lifting all the time. So then when I went to college, it actually was probably a sign. I tried it out for the baseball team at Truman state university, which is a small D two school, but I ended up hurting my elbow in tryouts to the point where I could barely make the throw from like right field to second base. How do you do it in tryouts?

What's that? How'd you hurt your elbow in tryouts? Exactly. I have no idea. I'm guessing it was one of those things because I played summer legion baseball. So I played, I mean, we play a lot in the summertime. So I'm guessing it was one of those just overused things that I'd been dealing with the probably a little bit up into that point. And I'm guessing it was just sort of that last little bit. And I mean, it was one of those things that I'm sure God was just like, Hey, this is not where you're supposed to be going. So I, uh, I ended up getting to the point where if anyone plays baseball and if you can't make the throw from right field to second base, man, you're a crap outfielders, they'll move you to the left field.

Exactly. I mean, I was, I was devastated obviously cause I'd played baseball my whole life, but it was one of those things that as soon as I did not make the team, this is back when Facebook, like the first year Facebook was a thing and we had groups. That was the big thing is you would scroll through the different groups of your college to see sort of what people are a part of. And I remember scrolling through and seeing the iron dogs, Olympic weightlifting team. And I was like, Oh, this looks pretty cool. Cause I had done Olympic weightlifting to a point in high school. I'd done a lot of barbell training specifically cleans, a little jerks. I'd never really done snatches, but I had gotten into weightlifting up to that point. And I, I had known what Olympic weightlifting was to a point, but I was like, you know what, this looks like fun. And I still had that competitive side of me that I wasn't just ready to be astute. I wanted to be an athlete still. So I went to one of the first informational meetings, like the week of school started and I just got hooked and I walked up to the coach, uh, Alex cook, who's now out East, uh, at a different school, but he's a, um, he's a doctor of exercise physiology, amazing guy. And I was just like, Hey, can I start tomorrow?

He's like, yeah. You know, I, I actually had a pair of weightlifting shoes from high school. I actually had bought my first pair of weightlifting shoes back then. And, uh, I just hit the ground running and I've been doing it ever since, uh, now 13 years being in the sport of Olympic weightlifting. So that's sort of my background coming up with that. I had, uh, I ended up getting my bachelor's in exercise science and then I went to the university of Missouri or Mizzou, which is about an hour and a half South of Truman, um, for my doctorate in physical therapy. While in school, I continued to try to mold where I wanted to go with my physical therapy practice to work with athletes. So I ended up being able to get one of the first, um, internships or clinical residencies with, um, the university of Missouri strength and conditioning staff.

So it was one of the first times to my knowledge where a graduate program had partnered with a strength and conditioning staff, um, for the actual learning, uh, clinical rotation. So not like a postgraduate, but actually in the graduate school. So I was, um, waking up at four 30 in the morning, get into the strength and conditioning room meetings with all the coaches, just like I was a regular strength and conditioning intern, except after the regular practice that we would all then do the weight training sessions, I would then pull out a couple of people, maybe five or six that I had as my individual, like focused care athletes. And they were guys that like tore their MC all year back. They were released by the athletic training staff, but they yet weren't a hundred percent. So I was able to work with them from like a physical therapy point of view to understand, Hey, you're the sort of transition athlete where we're not back to a hundred percent, but you're not in pain anymore. And I think that's sort of where I've excelled also as a physical therapist. My practice is because at my current, uh, job boost physical therapy and sports performance, we're out here in Kansas city.

Um, you know, we really try to stress for athletes that my goal during the rehab process, isn't just to get you to the point where you don't have pain and then sort of see you send you on your way and let you try to get back into the sport that you want to do. And hopefully things go well. We have the facility. We have a, like a 40 yard turf football field out there. We've got weights, we've got a bungee cords, hurdles, speed bags, different things that you would see in a traditional strength conditioning setting. And my goal is to basically make sure that when I release you and I'm like, all right, you're good to go. Uh, you've done most of the things barring the full contact of football. Um, most of the things that you should be able to do as an athlete, and you should know that you're strong and safe to do those things. I should be able to test you at a high level. I think as a physical therapy profession, you know, too often we were the table exercise, hot pack, ultrasound profession where people came in and their shoulder hurt. And we do a bunch of table exercises and you get a massage, you get a cold pack, you get ultrasound, which I don't even know how to turn on an ultrasound to see anymore. That's how much I don't even like using you. Concentric circles. I know that every day. And, um, yeah. So, you know, I think sort of changing that whole thing, we're seeing so many people now from the physical therapy, chiropractic world that have molded and become more practitioners of functional medicine, I guess is a good way to say it to where, yes, we're going to get you out of pain in the first couple of weeks, hopefully, depending on the type of injury you have, but we're going to make sure that you're able to do the things that you're supposed to do. You can't just do physical therapy on a table and expect that to be the end result because often the same injury that you had or a very similar one is going to come back to bite you in the butt, literally depending on the type of injury you have later once you go back to your sport. So that's sort of where I've gone with my practice and through that and my application and understanding of physical, of, uh, strength and conditioning, specifically Olympic weightlifting in the past, I've molded that with my physical therapy practice. And that has become sort of the outlet of squat university. Now, why the squat? Cause I mean, you could pick a thousand exercises. Why the squat?

Well, whenever I was coming up my first couple of years practicing as a physical therapist, there was sort of this aha moment, deja vu moment. I would get time after time, be sitting down talking with an athlete and I would, you know, whatever type of injury they have. Most of the time, if you have a post-op, someone that's just out of surgery, you know, what caused their injury. You know that they have a surgery. There's often a protocol, you know, first couple of weeks, we can only bend your knee this much, blah, blah, blah. Well, you don't have to do too much digging to find out why the person injured themselves. It's pretty straightforward case. Well, when someone comes to you and they're just like, I've got knee pain or I've got hip pain, you then have to be a clinician and a puzzle solver to basically find out why did that person have pain? Because we're not just here, like we talked about, to just treat the symptoms. Anyone can get someone out of pain by just slapping a hot pack on them or doing some deep tissue work or my favorite nowadays, let's do some Graston technique and, you know, do some scraping and then we'll do some kinesio tape. That's how you know you're a sports doc, okay. Exactly, exactly. You can get a lot of followers on Instagram using a fancy piece of technology nowadays to get someone out of pain. But the true clinicians, they spend time to try to fix why the problem's there. So during that whole process, I'd always ask someone, show me your squat, take your shoes off, just show me a deep body weight squat. I don't care if you had ankle pain, knee pain, hip pain, back pain. Let me see what your movement quality looks like. In like 9.9 times out of 10, the athlete, even if they were like squatting 600 pounds prior, even if they were running a 4-4-40, even if they could dunk a basketball, they could perform to their greatest potential of what we now think is possible with athletic performance nowadays. They couldn't perform a basic body weight squat. Regardless of what that, you know, they couldn't even, or on top of that, they couldn't even perform a simple body weight squat with one leg, you know, a single leg squat. And I think it was almost that time after time, I'm seeing that athletes of today have rearranged their athletic priorities to such an extent to where they view the squat as an exercise only, in no longer a movement pattern. So for that reason, we quit learning how to move well first. We quit the application of the squat moving well first. How often do you see someone just pop a squat and sit down in a body weight squat nowadays? Never.

I tried right before we got on, by the way, about 10 seconds without a kettlebell. I was like, holy shit, I need a doorway here. Yeah. And that's the thing is, you know, we look at these other third world countries that don't necessarily use chairs all the time, and they're able to just sit down in a deep body weight squat easy. And obviously, there's a lot that goes into it. But what's the long-term, you know, injury rates of back pain, or things like that, where, you know, these people are using their body through full ranges of motion, like it's designed to, and we're not holding ourselves back by using chairs, or just, you know, we're not only, we're not limiting our movement potential throughout the day. And I think that has long-term ramifications, not only on injury potential, but also potential performance when you don't use your body as it's designed. So that's sort of where what University came out of was, is it was a combination of physical therapy, combination of strength conditioning principles, and then just sort of mashed into the idea that if you can master movement quality first, if you can learn how to squat well first, then your potential to perform just grows. It's like when you're building a pyramid, you're not going to build the base really tiny and then try to make it really, really wide. And then all the way up, you know, a pyramid can only be as tall as it is wide. Well, the quality of our movement, how you're squatting, which is obviously relatable to how much mobility you have, how much stability you have, your coordination, the quality of your movement sets your body's foundation for how well you can perform and how much potential risk you have for developing an injury down your road.

So that's sort of where the whole idea of Squat University has come out. And that's been the outlet for me trying to share and give as much free information as possible way to as many people as possible when it comes down to improving mobility, learning how to squat with good technique and, you know, eventually avoid and how to work with aches and pains of daily injuries. Yeah, definitely got a couple of talking points in there is first off, where'd you learn public speaking? Because you go between good storytelling quite a bit in complex topics. Mm hmm. You know what? It was never something that I really excelled at. I was pretty shy when I was in high school, but I'll tell you this. And this isn't something I don't think I've shared on other podcasts before, which is funny. So when I was in college, I joined a fraternity. And in being a young fraternity member, one of the things I really enjoyed, and I looked up to some of the guys that were in this position was it was called the external vice president. Basically, you go around and you're the one that runs all the philanthropies, like you would have volleyball tournaments. I mean, everyone knows other different things fraternities do to, you know, pageants and stuff like that. Well, I would always I don't know if it was because of the title that they had or the person who was just in there that I looked up to. But I always wanted to be around that type of person. And I would be like in a lot of their meetings and go and help them do things. And eventually did have that job as I got older in the fraternity as I went through school. Well, part of that job is to get up and talk in front of sororities and tell them, hey, guys, next week, we've got, you know, sisters in the sand, our volleyball tournament to raise money for the March of Dimes kind of thing. And let me tell you, as a shy high school boy, right, then get up in front of 300 very good looking females and try to talk and articulate your message without, you know, stumbling over yourself and make yourself look like a fool can really make you learn how to articulate your message very well and get over those nerves. I'm not even joking. Since then, I love getting up in front of people and talking. And in doing so, I think also that's why I'm geared towards more creating videos where I'm talking over them. I just recently started my own podcast and I've enjoyed trying to teach as many people as possible. And I think it's one of those things that when you practice it enough times, you get a feel for, you know, what you're good at. And then you just sort of go from there. Some people aren't great public speakers and they're great at writing, you know, or they're great at, you know, this form of content. I think you sort of lean towards where you're your best at. So do you remember in your sorority speeches, which type of person you typically looked at and where they were at in the room? Usually the one girl I was also trying to talk to at the time was the one I made contact with. Oh, cool. So back on the clinical part then is with the, so when someone comes in with knee pain or back pain or whatever, would you, do you feel confident that you can make them feel better without actually touching them?

A hundred percent. Now that's the thing I like to, like to tell my young clinicians, uh, that are doing their clinical rotations is that you need to have as many tools in your toolbox as possible. If you're a carpenter and you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But what happens when a screw is, needs tightening. You need to have, you know, you need to have something else in your, you know, you need to have a screwdriver screwdriver. And I think often when we graduate, we sort of have this, uh, think about it like a, a Tonka tool set. You know, you got a little plastic hammer, yellow plastic screwdriver. You have, you have tools. You don't have many and they're usually pretty crappy. And then as you grow as a clinician, you're like, Oh, it's time to upgrade my hammer to a real metal hammer. You know, it's time to get that new drill. So you eventually add more tools to your tool belt and you strengthen tools that you currently have. I do think in your perspective of treating people that it should always come down to how they're moving in the end. Um, I feel like too often I hear of manual therapists that overdo the manual. Every single person that comes in, they have to do a ton of manual and that's why the person got better. As much as I think manual therapy is great and it's definitely has its application. And I definitely do manual therapy as well. Yesterday I had someone come in and I did, you know, 15 minutes. We were doing mobilizations on his thoracic spine where I was physically doing the manual mobilization. Uh, there are times where I do, um, some scraping technique. I made fun of Graston technique a couple of minutes ago. I don't use Graston techniques. I'm not going to shell thousands of dollars for a couple of tools I can do for, you know, $125 scrape tool, but you know, I still do soft tissue mobilization, but I think at the end of the day, I think it's our goal, no matter who we are to make sure that the person that we're working with is able to be treated in a way that a relates to what they're doing outside of the clinic. Uh, but B empowers them to take control of the treatment process. If someone came to me and they have knee pain, I was the only person that did anything to them. They did not receive any empowerment to then fix the injury or know why they had the injury in the first place. They know Dr. Dave was the person that fixed me. I need to go back to Dr. Dave every single day whenever I have knee pain again. Instead, when you come to them and yes, there's nothing wrong with doing deep tissue mobilization or maybe patellar mobilizations, depending on what type of knee pain they have. If I come to them and I'm like, look, the reason you had knee pain is because you had poor control of your knee.

When you do a single leg stance activity, you just showed me a single leg squat. It looked like crap. Your knee caved in as soon as you try to do a single leg squat. What do you think's happening every time you run or cut or land from a jump? Likely something is not working correctly in your body as far as coordination to make sure that your joints are moving appropriately and your knees staying in proper alignment with your body. And just like a machine that is not working in alignment with the other gears, eventually something's going to break down. So while some of the treatment that we're going to do today is going to help decrease your symptoms, decrease some stiffness in some areas, realign things that are maybe not moving as well as they should, we're then going to do a lot of treatment today that's going to help you learn how to correct the way in which you're moving, effectively treating why the injury started in the first place. I'm then going to give you two to three things that we did today that you can do by yourself at home. Good technique doesn't hurt.

And that's your homework. And you need to start doing that every single day. So having that empowerment of a home exercise program of movement specific exercises to help that person fix why the problem start in the first place, I think is key. So I wouldn't say that I think everyone should be able to treat without touching the person. I think that they should have the necessary skills as a condition to know how to fix someone or help someone with manual treatment. But I think that where most people miss the boat, and I find this largely in young clinicians getting out of school, is that they like the manual treatment side of things. They like changing things and seeing that it creates an immediate change in their symptoms. So where they go too far down the road, down that rabbit hole, and they don't expand their knowledge. The big thing I try to tell people, when you're looking at a person's injury, you don't want to view that person's injury through a microscope. You want to take, you know, take a step back. And I call it, you're looking through the looking glass of movement. Yes, when someone comes to you with back pain, knee pain, any type of pain, it's very easy to get tunnel vision to say, this is the reason why that person has pain. For example, if we have a shoulder and someone has a rotator cuff impingement that has led to maybe a little bit of a fraying of the rotator cuff, we'll just say it's inflamed, whether or not there's a tear or not. Well, obviously we know that that person probably needs to do some rotator cuff strengthening to improve how the shoulder blade and the rotator cuff is stabilizing the humerus of the golf ball sitting on the golf tee kind of thing. But in the same sense, if we don't understand, take a step back and go, wow, this person has horrible thoracic spine extension. And I never addressed that.

And maybe I did some manual therapy and that shoulder's feeling better and I did some strengthening, but I didn't address the person as a whole. I think you missed the boat and I think you're missing the potential of what you can do as a clinician to help that person really long-term fix the problem so that they don't have to come back to see you in the end. I like that with the, you're allowing them to establish some control. And I actually noticed that a lot too from the interns that come in. They see some of the cueing, at least that I do, and they think it's like amazing that you can cue them out of a position of discomfort. And like, I'm with you. Like I dig manual therapy. I do it. I adjust. I do that kind of stuff. But at the same time, like, I feel like if I do that first, then the person will become dependent and I really don't want that. So, a question then when you have someone, because I definitely get these, when you have someone who's resistant and they're coming with a preconceived notion of they're like, I want you to ultrasound me in concentric circles. And then they keep asking for that every single time. What kind of conversation do you have with them? Or do you just realize that you might not be the one. Yeah, you know, I think there's sort of both sides of the picture. I think the big thing when people come into me, and the thing I really, that grinds my gears, I guess, is physical therapy still, at least in the state of Missouri, unfortunately, is still a referral source profession.

We cannot get direct access patients in the state of Missouri. Really? I think in California you can, huh? It's hard. There are six states remaining that you cannot go directly to a physical therapist. Damn. You have to go to a chiropractor or a medical doctor to get a referral to see a physical therapist. So, it's technically considered a specialty, I guess, just as the same way you couldn't just go see an orthopedic surgeon. Usually, you need a referral. Hopefully, it's going to change soon. It's all, you know, up to the lawmakers in Jefferson City, which is our capital. But the thing that really bugs me is whenever a doctor sends, a medical doctor sends me a script for someone, and it's like, knee pain. And it says on there, it just says, ultrasound.

Yeah. I'm like, dude, come on. You just see, he just screwed you, really. Exactly. Because what happened was the patient then heard from the doctor themselves, the medical doctor, that ultrasound is going to fix their injury. And they already come in with the preconceived notion, well, my doctor told me that ultrasound is going to fix me. What are you, why are you saying it's not? Because now I'm getting conflicting messages. The first thing I also try to say is, well, I'm a doctor as well. I'm a different type of doctor. It's a doctor of physical therapy. So sometimes, and that's a big thing. People have no idea that physical therapists are doctors nowadays, or a large majority of them. So the big thing I try to do is just educate. I'm like, look, here's the deal. Ultrasound is, this is what people are thinking it is supposed to do.

This is what is actually happening. And this is what the evidence says. It's actually very poured that it's going to create any lasting change, or it actually is going to do what it's meant to do. And then the big thing I try to tell them, and this is another reason why I think a good physical therapist or a good chiropractor is also a good public speaker. Because you have to convince someone in the educational process of that initial interview to buy in to what you're trying to sell them, which is the treatment plan that you're then going to give them. And understanding that today, we're going to learn how to fix why your problems started and say, you know what, could I decrease your pain in the short term with a couple of these little tools? Sure. But you'd be right back into me next week, or even worse pain down the road. So we're going to take the time and we're going to fix why your injury started in the first place. So that I think that education is key.

Um, and I think the missing factor in why people don't buy into whatever, uh, clinician they're going to go see is because the person just doesn't know how to talk to someone. They don't know how to relate to someone. Of all the people that were in my physical therapy school class, we had 40. There's a number of people in that, that didn't have the, uh, the people skills, I would say, to relate and talk to someone. And then also physical therapists and chiropractors with our medical degrees, we love to talk down to people. Right. And you've been, you've been like in a class of all these people for like three to four years. And then you don't know how to speak to like lay public. You say, well, your shoulder flexion is 10 degrees less than your right. And you're a chromium process. And they're like, what? Like, unless you're getting a medical student, they don't know what you're talking about. So you have to convey what you're trying to educate them on in language that they can understand. So I'm going to use sloppy language that my physical therapy school professor would just, you know, just shake her head at. I'm going to say that, you know, the golf ball is going to move on the golf tee and smash into different things in the front side of your shoulder. It's going to cause, and they're like, oh, that makes sense. You know, but if I'm using technical language and jargon, they're not going to relate to that. They're not going to buy in and they're going to go down the road to the next clinician that's going to treat their symptom because it feels better right after. So in the same sense, I do think there's going to be some people in every clinician is going to get this down the road where the person just, they're looking for the quick fix and they're looking for the ultrasound. They're looking for the, the grass and they're looking for this. And that's all they want because they heard that that's all they need. And they're, they've already come, uh, come into you with that preconceived notion and you're not going to change their mind. I think it's tough to, uh, it's one of those things that as much as you try, you got to give it your best shot to convince that person and also understand that there's going to be losses. There's going to be times where you're not going to win that person over and you need to learn from it and maybe say, well, could I have done a better job at convincing them? Because maybe you do need to strengthen your interpersonal skills at talking to someone else, but maybe it's just that person and you can't, uh, you can't change their mind. And that's that.

You got to move on to the next person and help the next person out. Yeah, I agree. There was one time I told this girl her ankle was broken, but it was sprained because that was the only thing I could think about at the time to make her come back. So is it, that's the only way I was going to be able to help her. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Yeah. Oh, oh, we got a new t-shirt today. What is this? What's up? I'm trying to look at. Oh, do you Dorsey? Yeah. Do you Dorsey flex? Yeah. This, I had a guy, it's called Gamba Athletics. He just reached out to me and he was like, Hey, I'm going to send you a couple of these shirts.

Okay. So I thought it was pretty funny. There's a, another one that was like, be a muscle nerd. And it was like force equals distance over time. Like with some dude just jack on the front. It's pretty funny. Yeah. There was a, I swore a t-shirt that would sell really well is up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, A, B, select, start. I like that. Yeah. It's like some, something that's just totally from a certain era where like it's nostalgic and they'll, and it's, it's all you need. It's like an unsaid thing. You're like, yeah, we're the same age. Yeah. It's like, I saw one the other day and it said, you know, that you'll see a guy that's anywhere between the ages of like 20, maybe 30 and 38. If you yell into a big room regulators and someone's just going to go pound up.

That would be amazing. Have you tried that yet? I probably in a bar a while ago, but yeah, that was definitely something we played all the time in college. I am going to try that now. I, you just gave me a very annoying thing to do. Some kids are going to be like, what is that guy doing? Like you're too young. You won't understand. Yeah. Um, I had, I had to actually relisten to a little bit of what we talked about, but I know where we stopped. Okay. You were, uh, you were talking about how when people write you scripts for ultrasounds, man, I saw the ultrasound machine the other day and, uh, I looked at, I'm like, I, I really don't think I could turn it on and use it anyway. I don't even know the, like, I remember like parameters, I guess a little bit. It's just, I don't know.

I think there's, and I think some clinicians, they go with the idea of if something is going to bring a patient benefit, even if it's not backed up by research necessarily, it's sort of that anecdotal evidence. They're like, they'll go with it. And I, um, I don't know. I just really don't think ultrasound is one of those things that has much evidence by it. And even it's, it's just like one of those, it's one of those things that it's, it's a passive modality. I just, I know that they have their place, but I'm very against using a lot of passive modalities. I'm down with you. Uh, I guess, I don't know if you can already tell. I just hit record. You, we didn't say anything offensive, so I'll, I'll keep it if you're good with that. I'm good with that. Okay. The, uh, I guess, I guess the, I guess everyone who's listening, we actually, I screwed up on time zones last time we had a 30 minute and then we had to stop and this is a week later. So he's got any, he's got any t-shirt on. I'm wearing the same one. Um, we both got a coffee refill. Oh yeah. Um, okay. So going into, going into, I want to ask you about femoral acid, tabular impingement. Uh, in the chiropractic profession, the schools, I think do not really address it. And I feel like most of the people that, that have some type of pinching in the hip, they tend to go the route of like tight hip flexors or some type of stretching type of technique. What, what's your, what's your thoughts on FAI? Definitely. So I think you have to look at FAI in a couple of different aspects. First, we have to understand, is there an anatomical sort of bias towards having that early impingement just because the way your body was formed? Um, I think if you have, um, femoral or acetabular retroversion, you're going to have a lot more coverage on the front side of the hip. So you're going to have that early inclination of hip impingement.

And if you try to squat with that ideal squat stance that so many coaches try to teach, which is that foot, like, you know, relatively straightforward, which I think most people should be able to do. But if you have, um, femoral or acetabular retroversion, which for all the listeners out there, if you don't know how to test for that, Google Craig's test, that's an easy way to do it. Um, but if you have that different type of anatomy, that's outside of that normal textbook, it leads to an early inclination of having that impingement. So that's one thing we have to understand straight off the bat is if you have anatomy, that's going to set you up for having an impingement. Sometimes just changing your squat stance can be enough to decrease that impingement and take it away. The next thing we have to understand is the joint capsule in my research.

And in my experience in treating FAI, I find that a lot of people may develop stiffness in different portions of the capsule, uh, particularly the posterior and the lateral fibers of the joint capsule. And I think the joint capsule can sustain stresses and forces just like our muscles can, and can adapt positively or negatively to those. And sometimes we find that those posterior and lateral capsules, capsule fibers, when they become stiff are going to lead to that ball of the hip socket, moving a little bit forward and smashing into the front side of the hip joint, early impingement. So we can do different things like banded joint mobilizations to improve the mobility of those. I always love to do a test retest on those because if you're doing a banded joint mobilization, either you're doing it as a clinician to the patient or the patient is doing it to themselves as you have taught them how to do. Um, you always need to test after because if you don't find any difference, you're not doing the right thing for your body or the restriction that you have, you're just wasting your time. So that's another thing. Um, I think a lot of early clinicians or athletes will see a cool exercise and they'll go, Oh, I'm going to try that. And they do it. It's not right for their body.

So they're just doing it to do it. And it's not being efficient or effective for their body. So that's another thing you always need to test and retest as the most simple method to find out if an exercise corrective exercise is right for your body. You know, there's, uh, I was talking, uh, with Greg Knuckles, he's a really great, um, exercise scientist as far as the ability to understand periodization. And he said something that there's, there's research backed and there's me search backed. Oh, I love the idea because just as in periodization with training, one training style may not work for everyone, but it may work for you. The same sort of goes for corrective exercises, particularly at the hip joint, because while a lateral banded joint mobilization may not work for some people, it may be what your body needs to be able to improve the mobility and get over that impingement. So I always like doing that knee search, I guess you could say, and just sort of playing around with it. I just started listening to that one. Actually, that was your latest release, right? Yes, it was. And most of my podcasts are like 25, 30 minutes long. And it's just me speaking, but I've done two now, uh, guest interviews and they're like 130 minutes. We just keep on talking.

The long thing. So it's very different. So if people like listening to longer ones, that's, that's an option. Yeah. How do you, how do you actually feel about, uh, I have my own thoughts on interviewing versus doing solo. Which one do you like better? I think it really is just sort of, you know, where you want to take your program. I don't think there's a right or wrong. I think, you know, uh, for example, there's many really, really good podcasters out there that they've just made a name for themselves. Just interviewing people, you know, and then interjecting their thoughts here and there. And then there's some people that just, they just talk. And I think it's, um, I think you can go about it either way. And each one can have their, their upsides.

You know, I think if people, uh, you know, with a lot of mine, I guess 90% of them now are just me talking. I guess if people didn't find the stuff I was talking about interesting, they just tuned me out or didn't like the way I was talking or using very simplistic terms, like smashing into the front side of the hip capsule. I know there's some, my professors out there at physical therapy school are probably shaking their head in the way I described that. You got like, I think it was like 105 five-star reviews. So someone likes it. There's a lot of, there's a lot of people like it so far, I guess.

Well, that's, that's probably only got to be like, like 2% of the listeners ever do reviews. So, um, just go question on with, with the FAI then. So you said there's the adaptation of the lateral capsule or the posterior capsule or whatever. What do you think they're adapting to? Um, I think just the stresses that you're placing on it throughout the day, it could be the way in which you're lifting. It could be the way in which you're, uh, you know, the postures that you assume throughout your day. I'm sure, uh, the seated postures that we may have, and this is obviously just an assumption that when you're sitting down throughout the day, obviously the forces from the chair that's pushing up on your body, shifting your hip forward, which may then adaptively change your posterior capsule fibers to not be in that stretched out position. I don't know just different things I'm sure throughout the day. Um, I guess if we think about it like this too, just like muscles would adapt to a very straight line way of training. We see very certain types of injuries in track athletes, especially sprinters. All they do is run straight. They don't do any lateral work sometimes. So in that same sense, you're having adaptations to the way in which your body's handling stresses throughout the day. I'm sure the same thing can happen to our capsule fibers, just like it would our muscles. Um, so in, uh, you know, just through my own anecdotal experiences, training, I own research. Um, I know that on myself and also on patients, you know, we found some great changes when we did do hip joint mobilizations in going with that. Also, I think there's another factor that people don't also realize is you can also have, I think stability and strength imbalances around the hip, uh, particularly the glute medius in how the body is then moving as far as the hip mechanics, the glute medius, uh, despite what people have been taught often in medical, physical therapy, chiropractic schools, the glute medius isn't one stiff muscle. There's three portions of the glute medius and the posterior capsule or the posterior fibers of the glute medius have a very important job of centralizing the femur in the hip socket. As you're going through motion, it's sort of almost the, you can compare the glute medius to some of the rotator cuff muscles in the way that it's main job is to create dynamic stability for the joint during movement. So if you have an imbalance in the way that the glute medius is either firing or if it's just plain weak, I think you can get an early, um, I guess we'll use some, some scientific trans, uh, words, uh, we'll use some, there'll be early anterior translation of the femur in the socket during hip fletch. So you're going to get an early forward movement of the hip, uh, of the femur in the hip socket as you're going into a deep squat, different exercises, therefore like, um, you know, your side planks, side plank clamshells, your, uh, hip airplanes, which is a great exercise. I think Dr. Stuart McGill, the renowned back expert has, uh, shared many times, uh, where you're dynamically moving in training your glutes to kick on at the right time to provide sufficient stability for the joint can be great. I know personally with my own experience, I had a hip impingement that I was working through a couple of months ago and I was trying the traditional things. I was trying banded joint mobilizations. I was trying a couple, uh, there's a few stretches that people like to do that they say hit more of the posterior fibers. I think it's probably more of the muscles. You need a lot of force to be able to hit the posterior capsule, uh, versus muscle.

Um, I wasn't getting much change. I wasn't getting much change with, you know, changing up my stance or anything like that. And it wasn't until I really focused on trying to fire my right glutes that I was finding that there was an imbalance in the way that I was coordinating. And after going about that fix, that's where I was able to find a really true, uh, resolution in my issues. Yeah. I was actually, a couple of things you said there would, uh, made me think of something is first is that the, cause I know McGill's all, McGill likes suitcase, farmers carry loaded carries and so on. Yes. And, and we just walk, but, um, obviously we can do asymmetrical squats and so on. But I kept thinking about like, what if you just went, uh, I have this like speaker down the hallway of my office that it's obviously off to the side, but if it was on top, maybe I could just put it in the middle and navigate it while I'm doing like a rat carry or something like that. I don't know if there's a use for anything, but I I've never had.

Yeah. There's always different things that you can change up and get different, uh, effects from. Yeah. The, uh, just another thought too, was that with, I I've done this with quite a few people recently where they've been lumbar spine cases and so I'll come in and I'll compress them just manually together, like at the pelvis just to support them. And they're like, Oh, it all goes away. So I'm considering the possibility of just like, you know, like you do it like a hundred bicep curls and you walk out of the gym, just like bent armed and stuff and you just can't move. So can you just do that to like the glute med and the glute max and just everything crossing those, like whatever or hip or SI joint and just get them to at least have a change in tone for a little bit of time to make these people's patterns resolve?

Yeah. I mean, I think there's definitely the issue of instability at joints, particularly the SI, you know, the low back. Often we find that certain joints have a propensity or a tendency to become unstable. And when they're unstable, their body's not handling forces correctly, which then leads to a subsequent stiffness and then pain. So a lot of times we see that stiffness, we see the feelings that they're having, the pain, and we try to stretch or we try to create more mobility in an area through manipulation stretches or whatnot. When often sometimes you just need to create the underlying ability to stabilize certain areas. Um, I think it sort of goes sort of the old joint by joint approach. And obviously it's very simplistic in its nature, but the low back is something that often needs more stability. The hips are something that often need more mobility. Now, obviously the hips is a crazy joint in that it also needs stability as well to be able to maintain, uh, coordination and stability or, you know, movement pattern, um, quality. So I think, yeah, when you do to a point improve the, uh, the coordination, the firing, the strength of certain muscles, and you're getting them to kick on and work as they should. Um, and obviously that brings in the coordination understanding, which coordination and stability is different than pure strength. And that's something that a lot of people don't understand. Strength is just the ability of a muscle to produce force.

So how strong the muscle is, we can test it, but stability is the ability to limit excessive motion. So a muscle can be very strong, but not have a very good ability to stabilize. A muscle can be very weak and also not have the ability to stabilize, but we need to go about fixing the issue, not by doing strength exercises, but by doing exercises that are going to work on improving stability. So that's why, like, especially at the core exercises like a side plank or exercises where you're doing an isometric contraction and moving over to the top, like a bird dog are so helpful at improving stability. And there's actually been research shown that exercises that do that type of stability activation do leave that person with a sufficient amount of increased tone afterwards in those muscles. They're basically primed to sort of maintain that minimal amount of stability and tone in their muscles. Um, which is why I always give the recommendation, especially for someone who's had a history of instability in their back or dealing with back pain to do those core stability exercises prior to them picking up the barbell, because it's going to prime your body to maintain that stability better throughout your workout. The, how long does that tone change last? Do you know?

I think it's, I think it's variable based on the person, but I think sometimes upwards of an hour. Okay. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Um, I was going to ask you, I see pictures up there. What'd you propose at? Yes. So I proposed on the top of, uh, the building that I was living at, uh, in Kansas city. Uh, it's a 12 story building on the plaza, which is sort of our, uh, downtown nicer area. That's not like downtown, downtown, but it's, uh, a nice shopping center area. There's restaurants, bars and stuff. So I lived there for a couple of years and yeah, got one on the, uh, the rooftop, rented it out, bunch of lights. And how'd you get the picture taken there? I actually hired, uh, one of my friend's sisters who is a professional photographer. I hired her to do a little behind the scenes, uh, photography.

So did she, was she like, was she strategically placed behind like a power box? Yes, she was. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah. So yeah, she was, uh, hiding in the back, taking some photos. Yeah. Does she have a, is she controlling a drone at the same time or is that pre-drone era? Oh gosh. Yeah. It was pre-drone era. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there were drones out, but definitely not as, yeah, it wasn't as accessible to get a drone for something like this. Yeah. Um, so I saw, I saw it, I think it was a perform better years ago. I think it was Lee Burton. I don't know. Okay. There was a whole, I think it was an hour ish where he was saying there's multiple ways to squat. You can squat feet out one foot in, uh, one foot back, one foot forward and so on. I think he called it, I think that the thing was squat Aussie, but it reminded me of just basically, uh, variations of squatting or dynamic systems theory. Even, I don't know if, is that, is that still, uh, talk to me about variations of squatting and what's okay. What's not okay.

Yeah. So, I mean, obviously as someone who participates in the sport of weightlifting and then I also, a lot of my content is centered around those in weightlifting and CrossFit and powerlifting, obviously the big exercises of the back squat, front squat, overhead squat, those are the main lifts that I tried to teach about and explain. But I think once you have those main lifts out of the way, the idea and the ability to have, um, accessory lifts that get you out of that two feet down plane of motion, always looking straightforward kind of thing are great at helping clear up asymmetries that can occur in the different stress adaptations that your body can have that can lead to eventual injury. Now, I'm not huge on saying we're going to do a lot of our main training as a staggered stance or even that like a Bulgarian split squat is going to be our main lift for the day or lunges, our main lift for the day.

Obviously, because I think the strength adaptation that you get from a front squat, a back squat, an overhead squat, those are your big lifts. Those should be sort of the priority for your strength days for most of the athletes that I'm talking to. But in saying that, I think that the different types of stresses that your body have imposed on them with a Bulgarian split squat, with a lateral lunge, things like that, they're going to get you out of that norm that you're so used to, exposes your body to such different types of stresses that it's so important for long term longevity and injury risk, to decrease injury risk. I know in my own personal training, you know, if I'm not also doing some single leg squats, after my main training, if I'm also not doing lateral bandwalks, things to just stress my body differently than the way because I mean, if you think about it in weightlifting, squats, jerks, pulls, clean snatches, you're all in the same plane of motion. So your body is going to adapt accordingly. So if you don't expose your body, especially the lateral forces a lot, I think you can easily develop, you can overtrain certain muscles and undertrain certain muscles. And I think when you do it to such an extent, you can expose your body and almost open up weak links that can then invite an injury eventually to the picture.

Mm-hmm. I'm actually kind of curious with like, you know, like there's certain phases of exercise or just like environmental change or whatnot, where like 10 years later, 20 years later, you see like the same injury. You're like, why the hell is there so many back injuries? Like with the explosion of all the barbell lifts, I wonder what we're going to see in about 10 years or so? Because I don't, do you, are you noticing that everyone's doing stressors of different ranges and different, different planes of movement? Or is that just a anomaly right now? I mean, I think the big thing is whenever you're having the traditional barbell sports, you just have common patterns of injuries. You know, you, your back is often going to be a flexion intolerance type of injury because you're having so much weight on your back. And often the easiest way for it to break down is rounding forward. You're going to have injuries to the knees that occur because of knee wobble, often side to side, um, knee cave, or you're going to have sort of that patellar quad tendinopathy because of overtraining or that sudden spark. Someone's like, yeah, train twice a week, but let's try the Bulgarian method and start training seven days a week. And it's like your body sort of, you know, that, that quad tendon or patellar tendinopathy. It's so that's a very common injury.

Um, you know, the same sort of thing with upper and lower cross syndromes. I think you're often going to see these similar patterns of injury development in the barbell sports because we do the same exercises day in and day out. Now I think, uh, sports like CrossFit, I think are exposing us to a little bit different or a little bit more variation because of the requirements of running and then there's biking and then there's rowing and then there's gymnastics work and stuff like that. So it's a little bit more, uh, of a variety to the training compared to Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting. I mean, Olympic weightlifters and powerlifters, it's so common. You just get in the same mode of doing the same exercises and different variations of them over and over again. So I think you see a little bit more pattern, uh, injury rates of those sports, but yeah.

Okay. Interesting. Um, you, I've listened to quite a few of your podcasts already and your content, the joint by joint seems like a big thing for you, right? Yeah, it is. It's, it's, it's one of those things that I think as an early clinician, it allowed me to take a step back from the way in which we're taught in physical therapy school and other medical schools, how to understand the body. And you see, um, you see a knee pain and you're looking at the knee and you're testing quad strength and you're looking at patellar mobility and we're not even realizing, Hey, I need to test ankle mobility, closed chain, ankle mobility. I don't need to have that person lay on the bed and get out of going on a meter and go, well, you've got five degrees of open chain dorsiflexion. That doesn't tell me how that person's squatting. No, we need to understand how to take a step back. And I always say some people view the body through a microscope.

You see back pain. I want to treat the back and I'm never going to first get them up and say, show me a squat. I want to see how you're moving. I want to see your hip mobility. Because it doesn't matter how much I fix your back pain. If I never addressed your immobile hips or your unstable hips, that back is always going to break down in the future. The next time you do what you were doing before and you're going to be in that same cycle of pain again. So I think the joint by joint approach allowed me to take a step back and view the body. I call it the looking glass of movement. I'm going to look first at movement and then I'm going to see the connections of why someone, for example, a pitcher will develop elbow pain, not because of something necessarily at the upper body, but because they're missing hip internal rotation on their left side. So whenever they're going into their stride, they're unable to fully rotate forward and then they have to compensate by changing their arm pattern and the way in which they're moving. So just sort of understand full body mechanics. I know some people have an issue with the joint by joint approach in that they think it's gold and that it's the only pattern that you ever think of. The way that the joint by joint approach works so great is that it just gets you out of your normal way in which you view the body.

It causes you to take a step back and view the entire body. From there, go with what you want as far as the different tests you want or find the different exercises that you think are right for that person to find the fix, but it gets you out of your comfort zone and it gets you to take a look at the body in a different way. So do you, what do you think the next, uh, cause they wrote that thing and done on a napkin, I think, right? What's the, what's the best napkin concept you think is gonna, if you had to, if you had to develop one right now and change the whole course of therapy. Yeah. You got anything? I don't, I don't know. I, I do, I have, I've had many, uh, occasions where we're sitting down over a couple of drinks and just jotting stuff down on napkins and different things like that. But I say most of the, the big things that pop into my head are on a Thursday mornings where I'm sitting around just answering questions on direct message over Instagram and just having a, you know, a couple of sips of coffee and then poof, something will just pop into my head and I'm like, we'll go with it. How, you must get a lot of questions on there, huh?

Man, let me tell you, I could spend hours and hours answering questions on Instagram and I love it because it's like, man, I've been put into a place where I can help others. And why would I not try to do as much as I can? I, when I first started squat university back in 2015, I would do a simple thing and I would just say, who needs help with their squat form direct message me. And the first day I got like 40 direct messages and I sat there for hours and I directed and I messaged every single person back. Hey, try this test. All right. That looks good. Try this. All right. That looks awesome.

This looks much better on your technique. Good job. Keep this up. You know, cause you don't just direct messages and once there's a, it's a continual conversation and building a relationship. And then I would do that a couple more times. The next time I got 80, the next time I got a hundred. So I would sit there on my days off from clinic work and I would sit on my couch and I would message people for four hours straight doing nothing but just, just creating community and engaging with those who are following my stuff and trying to help people. It's gotten to the point where, I mean, I, I probably get close to a hundred direct messages every single day just through Instagram and I try to respond to as many as possible, but it's so tough. So what I'll often do is, you know, I'll try to respond to at least like, you know, 40 people every single day and try to, you know, continue conversations. But what I try to do is also I'll use the different platforms and different shows that I have to take one person's question that's so common and just create a big content series for it.

So if one person messages me and they're like, my low back's hurting whenever I'm squatting, I watch them squat, their back's rounding. I'm going to create a piece of content on that. Hey, does your back hurt when you're squatting? Does your background hear something to try so that I'm able to, you know, continuously make new content that's covering different questions. So you basically never have a never ending supply of content that you can create. And the big thing is it never gets stale. I'm never going to be only talking about one thing because I'm trying to continuously create content from those who are asking me for help. So, but it's, yeah, I, I love, you know, jumping in and talking with so many people. You know, I, I think some people, they get to the point where they're like, Oh, so-and-so reached out to me. That's this, you know, they've got a million followers.

And I'm like, dude, I'm, I'm loving helping out Joe who's got 20 followers and doesn't even have an Instagram picture, but it's because when someone tells you, thank you for helping me, getting me out of pain or helping me squat better technique, it doesn't matter. Like it's just, it's a great feeling. And I love helping, trying to help as many people as possible. I think would you come with that sort of approach to things, just things grow like crazy. Yeah. Yeah. The, I'm just wondering if you have figured out how to post direct messages to Instagram without your phone, like do it on a computer or like audio dictated. Yeah. Um, I, that, the weird thing is Instagram is only a mobile first platform, so you can't even get into your direct, uh, messages through, through the computer.

Man, you must have nimble fingers right now. I've been able to learn. I'm like a 13 year old girl and how fast I can type on my phone, I guess. I think that's a good, that's going to be a good quote for this podcast. Yeah. I remember back in the day when they would have those phones with keyboards and they would have, uh, competitions to see how fast you could type how many words per minute. So I've probably gotten up pretty close to that. Damn there. I remember the, uh, they had that thing, I think it was on Blackberry where it would just, it would start to kind of guess what you were going to say. It was like, uh, uh, TG five or whatever was the, was the program. Um, I don't feel that does pop up on, on Instagram direct message when you're typing, at least on my phone, I have an iPhone eight. It will guess different words sometimes that I'm trying to type in, which, which helps sometimes, but yeah, sometimes it's up. So yeah, I, I just knows it keeps like, it keeps trying to capitalize certain things or it keeps changing to something. I don't want to say I'm in it and I need to go back three, four times and finally correct it. It's like you have to train your phone, I think. Right. You do. And actually I think there's a program where you can go in and be like, this is not a shortcut to this. Yeah. Yeah. Is, um, is there anything that you've been considering making content wise that you haven't yet that you're really excited about?

I am in the process of writing my second book right now. So my first book, yeah, my first book, the squat Bible centered on how to fix technique, uh, how to improve your squat. Um, how to obviously the first part was back squat, front squat, overhead squat, high bar, low bar. Um, what's the basics of squat technique? Then it was how to break down your body through the joint by joint approach. Find out, do you have limited ankle mobility? Here's how you screen it. Here's how you fix it. You know, here's some exercises. Um, so that was the big part with the squat Bible. So the second sort of part that I'm coming through now and writing a lot of content on is, all right, you have developed a normal ache and pain of training. You've developed a small injury, no weightlifter, crossfitter, powerlifter, no enthusiastic fitness person ever trains an entire year, probably without having some sort of ache and pain in their body. And the older you get, the more aches and pains you're going to have. My big thing is the medical industry today, unfortunately has gotten to the point where it's like so over monetized and so checks and balances that someone who has hip pain either doesn't want to go to their doctor because they know it's going to be a $80 copay or something like that. And their doctor doesn't understand weightlifting is going to send them to, or just tell them to stop lifting or give them a medication, or they'll go to unfortunately a bad physical therapist or a bad chiropractor who's going to give them some short-term relief and not fix their underlying cause of what they're having.

So they're, they're frustrated. So they don't know what to do. So my goal with this next book is going to be just like, here's what's going on. Here's how to fix why that problem started so that you can return to the stuff you love. So it's coming from a, after common aches and pains have already occurred, here's what you can do. So sort of the, the follow-up to the original, which was don't hurt yourself. Start with good technique, fix your problems before they turn into an injury. The next one is here's an injury. What do you do? And then obviously if things are not progressing, when do you need to go see a medical professional?

So what are you going to call it? The new Testament? Oh yeah, I'm actually, yeah, I haven't decided yet what it's going to be called, but, uh, yeah, hopefully it'll be out. I still have a couple more chapters, all right, but we'll find out. Hey, what, uh, I've, I've, well, I've, uh, your squad Bible, how thick is it? Can you give me fingers? It's not really thick. It's, it's gosh, it's maybe not even an inch thick. It's, uh, it's only 128 pages or something like that. And the, the big thing that I've heard a lot of people say, as far as the reviews of it were, this is a ton of difficult information conveyed simplistically straight to the point, no BS. I didn't want to give you a 400 page book on how to fix your squat. I want to give you the most important information straight to the point, straight value packed fire content that can be practically, you can take away from it that you could probably read over a week. Um, I think sometimes, especially in the medical profession, we'd love to over the complicate things and give you a 10 page rant. When I could easily give you a one page simplistic version of that, that's going to be even, or just as efficient, but that much more practical and understanding for you.

And I'm also not writing to, you know, the doctor that's been out for 20 years. I'm writing to the CrossFitter. I'm writing to the fitness enthusiast. I'm writing to the weightlifter. I'm writing to the college kid who's going through exercise science and wants to figure out why they have hip pain. I'm writing to the, you know, the 28 year old dad who's loving going to CrossFit and his shoulder starting to hurt. You know, those are the people that I love writing to because those are also the people that love to learn and say, thank you for it. Whereas a lot of times, you know, we get a lot of the medical professionals and they don't enjoy the way that you're writing simplistically. So they automatically tune you out. Right. You know, well, and you got to write simplistically for, I mean, it's, it's, was it fifth grade reading level? Like we're not like your audience is not going to be medically based. So I think it's perfect. Exactly. Well, and the thing too, that I wanted to do with it is I also did a lot of research inciting my research in the, in the book. So you can go through in each chapter has cited research for it. So if you are an exercise science nerd, like myself, if you are a medical practitioner and you pick it up, you can go, oh, that's where he got that specific thing that he's talking about in here. It's in this, you know, international journal, sports, physical therapy, or American, you know, journal of medicine, you know, article right here. It's still based in science. It's just written in a way that everyone can understand. I imagine, I imagine this book is being like, so each CrossFit should have like a, uh, kind of like a library has like the checkout section.

Yeah. So I mean, that, that, that was the big reason I wanted to write. I wanted to write for everyone. I got tired of, I used to write, I loved writing research and I wrote two articles that were published in the international journal, sports, physical therapy. It was awesome getting it done and getting it published. And then I'm like thinking, and I'm like, how many people actually read that? Yeah. The only other people reading the international journals, first physical therapy are nerd physical therapists like myself. Susie, that's a CrossFitter. Susie, that's the Olympic weightlifter isn't reading that journal. So what am I doing to make a change in the world and help other people? The reason we all develop or became medical practitioners is because we want to serve others and help other people. So why am I writing necessarily to 10 people at a journal of the month club? Not that writing medical journals isn't important because yes, you're still making a change in that medical community. Hopefully. I just feel like my strength in the way in which I know that I've been given the tools to take the difficult and often, uh, complicated medical research and take it and deliver it to you in a very simplistic way. I feel like that's a strength of mine. So why should I not try to follow that and, and write to those and affect hundreds of thousands of people, which is my eventual goal to, you know, just create a better community out there. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that, um, I mean, I appreciate the researchers, but, but also too, I think there's definitely a good skill set of translational from, from Latin to common folk that, uh, you might as well do shit.

Yeah. Yeah. That's my goal. One of my, one of my friends told me that I, I don't know where he pulled this number at, but he, but he said that research takes about 10 years to get to the public. I'm like, you gotta be shitting me. Yeah. 10 years. It's crazy. I, the thing is, you know, you just, you take so much time to do the research and you have to sit down and then you have to find all the research that could possibly be, uh, related to your research to just, you know, to create your introduction. And then you have to have, I mean, I know a lot of researchers and they have like, you know, an article and it's got 80 sources and, you know, you have to explain how you got to your hypothesis based on where all this research has come in the past, how it all relates and how your, you know, specific question is different than the rest. And it's just so tedious. And then you have to send, you've worked hours and hours and hours on this paper and you send it off to four reviewers who sit behind a desk in their, you know, ivory tower. And then they try to completely rip apart your paper and basically tell you you're worthless and all the stuff you wrote, you poured your heart into is crap. And this doesn't make sense. And you better support that better because that doesn't make sense. And have you even thought of this? Because you're not smart enough to think of that.

And it's just like anyone who's published research knows what I'm talking about. Reviewers tear you apart as they should, because the goal is to create the best product possible. But I'm just like, you know what? I have much more fun spending a couple less hours, create an amazing blog post that has 10 resources because it's based in science. It's based in practical application. And I'm just going to publish it for free on WordPress.com. And guess what? You can understand it and read it and share it with your friends. And if you don't like it, you know, whatever. But if you like it, share with your friends, leave a comment, let me interact with you. You can't do that with a published journal in the, you know, any, any journal, whatever.

Well, when you're in, I think too, when like, I would imagine like, so I read, I read a shit ton of content. I feel like at least with, um, when you write your own and publish on WordPress, then you, you can kind of be yourself. Like you don't have to be such a robot behind there, you know? Yeah. And you can write, you can write in a way in which people read and people understand. If you pick up a journal article, it's so boring sometimes. And I tried to go back after I wrote the squad Bible, I tried to go back and try to write another article, uh, for a journal. And I would, I halfway through, I was just like, this is dumb. This is boring. This is why you have to write so differently. You can't write matter of fact in a journal article because you'll get torn apart. So it's, it's much more fun writing the way I do now. So how, how, uh, where are you selling the squad Bible at? Is it a Amazon or is it only in your site? Oh no, it's all over. Yeah. Amazon.com, um, all over the different world, Amazon or Amazon EU, amazon.co.uk. It's all, all over the world on Amazon sites. Um, it's obviously you can find it through my website, squad university.com. Um, and then I think I've seen a couple of links for Barnes and Noble books. I don't know if it's in any Barnes and Nobles.

That'd be sort of cool to go through and see one day, but yeah, I mean, I find like most people, they don't go to bookstores anymore. You go online, find your books. So yeah. Did you, did you use a publisher or how come you went to, why'd you, why'd you get a hard copy actually? Great question. Great question. So, um, when I was writing my book, well, obviously most authors, you try to go to a traditional publisher. That's all you've known. Well, there, uh, it is very difficult to get your book published nowadays through a traditional publisher. There's less and less money to be made in publishing hard copies of books.

And, um, it's very difficult. So obviously, you know, the, you take your losses. I probably sent my book out to, I don't know, 10, 13 different publishers and got denied, denied, denied. I had, and I won't mention their name. I had a number of, uh, a publisher that deals primarily in exercise science-based books for the public. And I said, you know, I've got, uh, you know, a fairly big audience at the time was, you know, 90, a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. And she said, matter of fact, uh, no one knows who you are. And I don't think you can sell anything through Instagram. And it was one of those things where I was like, I feel like I can guess who this is actually. Yeah. And I was like, all right, here we go. And, and here's the deal is I'm so glad that I didn't go through a traditional publisher because it's a learning experience. Nowadays it's 2018, the gatekeeper that was standing behind the door and saying you, your material cannot get published.

Your material cannot get published. We hold the key to delivering public to the people. Nowadays, anyone can publish a book. And like 15 years ago, if someone was self-published, people would be like, yeah, it's a self-published book. Nowadays there's amazing books that are self-published. Brent Bartholomew, he's a coach. He wrote conscious coaching. His book is all over. He published through create space, which is the same website I published through, you know, uh, you don't, the, the gatekeeper that limited the availability of books to people before is no longer there because of the internet.

And I can go direct to consumer, which is I can build my community of people and I can say, Hey, here's a book. This is a product that I've created. Please buy my book. And I think it's, uh, you know, something that I was, it was almost fueled to the fire when that person said, you know, it's not anything through Instagram. And I'm like, I have to disagree with you. I have a much larger audience, um, than every single one of your publishers put together because I'm going about doing things the right way. So many people in the past and these, this is the people out there who have been the role models for us as far as in the strength and conditioning and fitness and physical therapy and chiropractic community in the past, they just put out information to then give, just take it right back. And all they do is ask and sell and sell and sell. And I'm like coming about it in a completely different way where I'm like, you know what, I'm going to provide you straight content to help you and, you know, be of value to you. I put that out there. I put out stuff for two years. And then I said, you know what, if you enjoyed the content that I've given out for the past two years for a hundred percent free, if you would buy this book for 28 bucks, it'd mean the world to me. If you don't want to buy it, that's cool. I've written this book. It's a very simplistic and just smashed altogether of all my content so far. It's all available in 128 pages that can be very helpful for you. If you would buy that for 28 bucks, it'd mean a lot to me. People spend 30 plus bucks on a caffeine and kilos shirt to wear around. Yeah, right. I mean, I may bring you some value for a couple months. Eventually the shirt's going to wear out a little bit. This book is something that can stay on your shelf for a long time and bring you value in a way that it's going to help you fix your technique, decrease your aches and pains, help you reach true athletic potential, and you can share it with people. Well, I think if that, if your book comes with a flat bill hat, I think it would probably increase sales. You know, I, I thought about it for a while. Yeah. If it's, if it's a snapback hat, it'll really pop. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think, so I just, I just spoke with, uh, Jenna Scare, the doc, Jen fit. And she, she's, she's had great success for it with, uh, Instagram sales too. And so, yeah, I think that, I think when you go about things the right way and building community and helping people, you know, you're going to, you're going to build an audience and then they're not going to resent you or be turned off when you just ask them to buy something. I think too many people in the fitness and in medical community, they just go in for the ask and they just try to sell you stuff. They try to sell you a product. They try to sell you this and that they don't provide any value to you. That's going to draw you to, to want to follow that person. When Kelly Starrett, he was, I guess Kelly started sort of the main Kickstarter behind this sort of concept in our community. The dude made a video, a helpful video every single day, his mobility, 365, a video every single day for 365 days. And then even then after that continued to do a lot of free content after watching all that, how much it helped me when he came out with a book, I was like, here's my money. Take it. Like just because I knew how helpful it was to me, the least I could do was support him in, buy a book from him, you know? So I think if you're an up and coming person in the fitness community and the strength conditioning or in the medical community, provide value first, help others first. And then if you have aspirations to, to write a book, you don't have to sell it to a traditional publisher nowadays. It's a lot of work to self publish. Let me tell you, especially with everything that goes along with it, but you know, it's, it's a possibility.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely do agree with the, uh, like just buying support. And I know I have a couple of docs around here, like my, my optometrist, like she doesn't take insurance for me, which my insurance is crap insurance, yours is too. Um, which I understand it because I'm on, I'm on this side, I don't take insurance either, but like I just, I just hand her cash. I say, whatever your fees are, I will pay it. I, it's like keeping, it's keeping money in the family. Yeah. And if everyone follows you and they like you and you're part of their family and you give something back to them, like, why not support, keep, keep running the family, you know? Exactly. A hundred percent agree. So is there anything else that you would like to cover that I missed? I don't know. We, we covered a lot of stuff in these past two weeks. I know, right? Uh, God, I, I, I swear to God, I, I, I, the, the time zone thing, if my mission is to stop the time zone just, just from happening, like I said, uh, the last week. Yeah. It drives me crazy. Well, one day we'll get there. Oh, I, I interviewed one guy in Arizona and, uh, I forgot Arizona doesn't have daylight savings time. And he's like, well, yeah, like, it's like, he just knew a common knowledge. He's like, yeah, half the year we have the same time as you. I'm like, huh, that makes sense. Yeah. The hardest thing is when you're talking to people overseas and they're trying to figure out what time to Skype with you. And they're like, all right, well, I'll be up at five in the morning, which means that you'll be awake at eight o'clock at night. And I'm like, all right, it's going to be tough to figure out. So they're just waking up. I'm just going to bed or vice versa. Well, right on. Um, yeah. Well, thanks for being on. That was good. I'll, I'll, I'm going to, Oh, how can everyone reach you with, um, all your handles as well as website? Just make sure everyone knows a lot. Yeah. So all across social media at squat university, my main, main website is squat university.com. Um, but as far as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, uh, podcasts, it's all squat university. And then obviously I have my own personal Dr. Aaron Horschig on Facebook as well. Now I started my own personal page as well that people can follow and see more amazing content. And so people can be treated by you in person.

Um, I do have, um, I work at, are you touchable? I am touchable. I am a real person. Yes. Uh, if anyone wants to come through Kansas city, Missouri, uh, I work at boost physical therapy and sports performance. We have six or seven locations now, uh, across the Casey Metro area where we do both, uh, speed and agility, physical therapy and, uh, yeah, it's a fun location. Right on. Well, thanks for being on. Uh, just hang one sec. I'll just pause the recording. Thank you for having me on. It's been an honor. Yeah, man. Okay. Good interview. Thank you so much, Dr. Aaron for being on everyone. That was Dr. Aaron Horschig. You can find him in Kansas city if you need to go, or you can go online and go to squat university. He has all of his great content on there. Um, he has a ton of stuff on Instagram, obviously, but if you're looking to read and go a little bit more than just a small section, go to it, go to his website. And as you heard, he has a squat Bible too. Uh, I read quite a bit of his content. I think it's really good.

Like it's like, I can tell by just by his intention, like he really does want to help. He's not trying to make a bunch of money off everybody in some crap. He's trying to say good stuff that you need. If you're going to be lifting, if you're going to be moving, you should consider squatting. Well, period. I mean, you listen to the whole podcast, you know what's up. So if you're looking for the show notes on this, go to p2sportscare.com, type up Dr. Aaron Horschig or A-A-R-O-N. He's probably going to be one of the only Aaron's I interview for a very long time. Um, especially with the double A Aaron. And, uh, there's also going to be a link in these, uh, in your media player as well, right here.

If you guys want to hear someone specific in the upcoming podcast, please let me know. I would love to interview anyone that you have, as long as they have something useful to say. I don't always have something useful to say on the solo podcast, but I got to fill some time, right? So, okay. So talk to you guys later. Leave better, literally leave people better than how you found them and date and equal scout. Talk to you later.