So let me tell you a quick story. In 1990, a buddy of mine and I went on our last spring break. We had a hundred bucks each. I drove and we had friends scattered all over Florida. We went from friend to friend and crashed where we could, sleeping in the car one night. But we did stop at Ponce De Leon Park in Florida. And that's where the fountain of youth is. We did drink from the fountain of youth. I think that's my secret—I have somehow taken advantage of the magical waters of Ponce De Leon Park. It has prevented me from getting gray hair.

Okay.

And that's where the fountain of youth is. And we did drink from the fountain of youth. And so I think that's my secret—I have somehow taken advantage of the magical waters of Ponce De Leon Park. It has preserved me from getting gray hair.

You might be onto something because my dad and my mother and actually my daughter all went to that very same park. I don't know if they drank the water, but my dad is aging backwards.

Your daughter looks very young.

Yeah, well, I'm talking about my 22-year-old.

Oh, OK. I was going to say, I've seen a little one all the time.

I'm a 5-year-old. Yeah.

All right, brother, what can I do for you, young man?

Well, I mean, I've been thinking a lot about what you said regarding this concentric strategy I'm kind of locked into at all times and how that's probably affecting my sleep, my ability to relax, and stress as a whole. Now that I've got hips, I'm loving training. I'm deadlifting once a week. I know, I know, I'm ready to bail on bilateral squatting. It just doesn't feel good. I'm constantly shifting into my hip no matter what I do. I just don't feel good. Split squat variations feel good, and deadlifting actually feels good. Today it was seven sets of 10 with a 100-pound kettlebell. So, I'm not tied into loading heavy. I would like to have the capacity to do that every now and then, but I'm not married to that idea at all. So I just wanted to talk to you more about that and some things I can do from the training standpoint to unwind some of this, but also feel like I'm still getting after it. That's an important thing for me—to feel like I'm still pushing myself.

Everybody wants to feel like they can train and kick their own ass every once in while, right?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, no, I get that. I get that. But let's understand a few things about your history and some adaptations and then what your training will do. When we talk about concentric strategies, that is one of the primary secondary consequences of training hard with higher intensities and higher levels of effort against load. We're talking about the typical stuff associated with promoting gym strength, hypertrophy—whatever you're chasing. All of those adaptations require a higher level of compression to produce the forces required. For me to get stronger, I have to create more internal pressures. That's the only way. When I say internal pressures, I'm not just talking about the pressures inside your chest or abdomen; I'm talking about the pressures inside the muscle. When we hypertrophy a muscle, we're actually jamming more stuff into the muscle that takes up space. That stuff brings fluid with it, so now I have this compartment that is bigger than it used to be, but it's got more stuff in it that allows us to squeeze harder. Then we call that strength because it's allowing us to produce some measure of behavior in the gym. So I'm lifting more weight, or my muscles get bigger—whatever the goal might be. That's a secondary consequence of training. We have to accept that, for normal people like you and me, we're going to give up something in return for that. Are there strategies we can do to maintain some of the things we naturally give up as a byproduct of that type of training? Maybe, because some of us are structurally designed that to accomplish those goals, we have to give up more than somebody else. There's that percentage on one end of the normal curve that walks into the weight room, takes a deep breath, and puts on muscle mass. There are guys able to maintain a lot more mobility at the same level of strength and hypertrophy. We are not created equal. We have adaptive capabilities, but not everybody gets to be the strongest and biggest guy. We have genetic influences that determine what we're capable of regarding our goals and what we have to give up in return. You and I are demonstrative of those people who to get really big and strong, gave up some hip stuff. And the stubbornness or psychological weakness associated with having the identity of having to be the biggest and strongest in the room at any cost bought us a new pair of hips. So we sort of have to accept that. Having said that, there are probably strategies we can implement to reduce the secondary consequences. But again, we're sort of playing with fire because you don't know your genetic potential and what adaptations will be required if you achieve a certain goal. That's why we need to be more strategic in our application where you and I might have a specific hypertrophy or body composition or force output goal, and then monitor that over time and say, 'Am I giving something up in return for this force production? Am I giving something up in return for this gain in muscle mass?' Then identify what that is and ask if there's a strategy to help maintain whatever this is while still accomplishing the goal. I don't think we can categorize that gives us guidance, but it ultimately becomes a personalized experiment of what happens. I approach everything this way, whether I'm in a rehab room with a patient or in the gym with an athlete. We have to take these things in small bites. We implement a strategy in an attempt to create whatever adaptation might be. You work with athletes all the time, so you see this all the time. You're working for speed or force production or whatever, trying to make a change that enhances performance, but you also have to monitor the other stuff because you want to stay healthy and effective. Ultimately, while we think we know what's going to happen, we still work on a probabilistic strategy where we just don't really know what's going to happen. We have an intention, then we say, 'Did my prediction come true? Okay, I accomplished the initial goal, but what was the secondary consequence? Did I give something up in return?' For instance, I knock a tenth off of somebody's 10-meter acceleration, but I lost 15 degrees of hip rotation. Is that okay? If this guy is a straight-ahead athlete, not such a big deal because I expect that to make him faster in a straight line. But if it's a defensive back who has to lower his center of gravity and change direction, I just took away his ability to do that. Was that a reasonable sacrifice? This comes down to, 'Am I training this guy for a combine, like a dog and pony show, or am I training him to be successful as a field athlete?' You just have to make those decisions. For guys like you and me who have already compromised an element of health, it's like, how much farther do we want to go here? And what are we using as our guide to determine, 'I probably need to alter my strategies, change my goal or intent, and continue to monitor?' The strategy doesn't change; it's always evaluate, intervene, and then reevaluate to make sure I'm on the correct path. If you're doing seven sets of 10 with your kettlebell, what's the byproduct? What are you measuring to know, 'I can still do this because it feels good to me because I get to train, but did I just sacrifice something?' You need to come up with key performance indicators that will be your measures of what you cannot give up.

And then the stubbornness or the psychological weakness that's associated with having the identity of having to be the biggest and strongest kind of room at any cost bought us a new pair of hips. So we sort of have to accept that. Now, having said all of that, there are probably strategies that we can implement to reduce the secondary consequences. But again, we're sort of playing with fire because you don't know what your genetic potential is and you don't know what adaptations are going to be required if you achieve a certain goal. And so that's why we need to be a little bit more strategic in our application where you and I might have like a specific hypertrophy goal or body composition goal or force output goal. And then you have to monitor that over time and you say, okay, am I giving something up in return for this force production? Am I giving something up in return for this gain in muscle mass? And then identify what that is. And now we say, okay, is there a strategy that I can implement that will help me maintain whatever this is and still accomplish my goal. And so I don't think we can, we can sort of categorize a little bit that gives us some guidance, but it ultimately becomes a personalized experiment of what happens. So we, and this is how I approach everything, whether I'm in a purple room, working on the rehab patient or whether I'm out in the gym, working with an athlete. We have to take these things in small bites. And so we have to say, okay, so we're going to implement this strategy in an attempt to create whatever adaptation it might be. So you work with athletes all the time. And so you see this all the time. So you're working for speed or force production or whatever you're trying to make a change with, right? That enhances performance. But then you also have to monitor the other stuff because you wanted to stay healthy and effective. But ultimately, while we think we might know what's going to happen, we still work on a probabilistic strategy where we just don't really know what's going to happen. We have an intention, and then we say, OK, did my prediction come true? OK, great. So I accomplished the initial goal, but what was the secondary consequence? Did I give something up in return? So for instance, I knock a 10th. off of somebody's 10 meter acceleration, right? But I lost 15 degrees of hip rotation. OK, is that an okay thing? So if this guy is a straight ahead athlete, not such a big deal because I expect something like that to make him faster in a straight line. But if it's a defensive back that has to lower center of gravity, change direction, guess what? I just took away his ability to lower center of gravity and change direction. OK. So, so was that a, was that a reasonable sacrifice? And so this is, this comes down to like, okay, am I training this guy for a combine, you know, like the, the dog and pony show of the combine. Or am I training this guy to be successful as a field athlete? And so again, you just got to make those decisions. But again, for guys like you and I, where we've already compromised an element of health, it's like, how much farther do we want to really go here? And then what are we using as our guide to determine, I probably need to alter my strategies, change my goal or my intent. And then, again, continue to monitor. So the strategy doesn't change. It's always going to be evaluate, intervene, and then reevaluate and make sure that I'm on the correct path. And so, you know, if you're doing seven sets of 10 with your kettlebell, okay, what's the byproduct of that? You know, what are you measuring to let you know that, okay, I can still do this because that feels good to me because I get to train, but did I just sacrifice something? And so what you need to do is you need to come up with those key performance indicators that are going to be your measures of this is what I cannot give up.

So, was that a reasonable sacrifice? And so this is, this comes down to, okay, am I training this guy for a combine, you know, like the, the dog and pony show of the combine? Or am I training this guy to be successful as a field athlete? And so again, you just got to make those decisions. But again, for guys like you and I, where we've already compromised an element of health, it's like, how much farther do we want to really go here? And then what are we using as our guide to determine, I probably need to alter my strategies, change my goal or my intent? And then, again, continue to monitor. So the strategy doesn't change. It's always going to be evaluate, intervene, and then reevaluate and make sure that I'm on the correct path. And so, you know, if you're doing seven sets of 10 with your kettlebell, okay, what's the byproduct of that? You know, what are you measuring to let you know that, okay, I can still do this because that feels good to me because I get to train, but did I just sacrifice something? And so what you need to do is you need to come up with those key performance indicators that are going to be your measures of this is what I cannot give up.

Well, given that I don't have a whole lot of internal rotation and I'm still trying to recapture those things, I could see these strategies pushing me further away from capturing it. But it's also hard because I don't have a physical therapist on staff to help assess. I mean, one of my coaches is pretty competent and I think he can help in that area. But when would you recommend me doing that? Like how often? Because I don't want to stop deadlifting, but if I can say every four weeks I'm coming back and I'm checking these measurables to use as my guide, I feel confident I can create some type of strategy like that.

I don't think you need to be thrown on a table to figure this stuff out. But what I do think you need are some sort of physical active measures that you can recognize that will allow you to identify where you are in the process. So maybe it becomes something as simple as a toe touch variation, something as simple as a split stance variation, something as simple as your squat pattern. And then you say, okay, what am I giving up? Because I will offer you this, that if you drive your deadlift hard enough, you will give up your squat pattern. It's inevitable because they are in conflict with one another and so I'm not talking about a powerlifting squat pattern I'm talking about a legitimate like yes, you'll tuberosity of a heel kind of a squat because that is representative of a totally different end of the spectrum in regards to how we acquire movement. So your deadlift is a compressive pattern, your squat is an expansive pattern. And so what you want is some measure of adaptability between those two extremes that provides you enough health where you go, I'm okay, I can accept this as my capabilities or do I need to skew in one direction or the other? So if your training skews you towards this highly compressive a hinge type of training, you have to decide whether that's okay for me because the better you get at that, the more you're gonna give up your squat pattern. And I would offer you this is that, so when we're looking at a self measure or a gym measure that helps us identify whether we're giving up a broad spectrum of adaptability, that that squat pattern is gonna probably be a biggie because it represents your ability to expand where everything else compresses you. So when we talk about pressing, when we talk about heavy pulls, when we talk about deadlifts, all of those compressive strategies limit your ability to expand on the backside of your body where that deep squat represents your ability to re-expand that area. And so again, I don't think you need to be thrown on a table at all, but I do think you need to be able to recognize this, when am I giving something up?

So here's my thing with that. My brain goes to the fact that everything feels so much better now than it did a year ago. I don't feel like I'm giving up anything because everything feels better. Even my squat pattern feels good. Other than when I tried to safety bar squat with a ramp, that still doesn't feel good. Kettlebell loading, bear hug, tempo type squats—that feels good. With my heels elevated, I can get into a deep position and expand and breathe, and it feels amazing. I don't know if I have enough perspective or context yet to evaluate things. Even before hip surgery, I could touch my toes. Now I can touch my toes, and it feels like how a toe touch should feel.

Yeah. But I think this is, from a process standpoint, I think this becomes a simple thing. So you establish a baseline wherever you are as a standard. So maybe you put a video on yourself, and then you go through some of your activities, unloaded activities first, and just establish, okay, what happens when I do that? Now what happens when I establish some load? And then you establish a visual representation of what you would consider acceptable, as if you were looking at a client objectively in the gym. Now it's harder to be that way with yourself. And we always know this, but at least you've got a visual representation of that. And then you just monitor these things over time because I would trust your eyes. I think you're, you know, your coaching experience is off the charts. I mean, you've been doing this your entire adult life. And so you have a representation of what is acceptable to you and what it's not acceptable to you. But you might have to ask yourself the hard question every once in a while. It's like, okay, does that really look as good as I want? Or am I just being biased? So I get to keep doing stuff. Right, that's the hard part with yourself. Those are really hard questions and virtually impossible to be objective. But like I said, I trust your coaching eye and your maturity that you would go, okay, this is probably, it's really starting to change now, or you have a perception as well. It's like, how hard was it for me to maintain that, right? Because your level of effort, your perceived exertion to accomplish a deep squat and then looking at how you're executing it. Now you got it, like I said, I think you've got some measures of objectivity here that are very effective for you, but you monitor them like literally just you would for an athlete. Every couple weeks, you know, you write a 12 week program for somebody and you're not expecting to execute that program as it's written ever, right? You're monitoring every week or two and you go, oh, we need to make a change here. We make him tweak here and you have to do the same thing with yourself. And so you say, okay, so I'm going to establish this volume of activity. I'm going to select these exercises. And then these three things are the things that I think are most important for me to monitor in regards to my adaptability. And you know, you'll figure out what those are. I don't think there's anything magical about it, but I would offer you that if your love of a deadlift is in the mix of things as far as your exercise selection, then you have to use something that is in direct competition to that as your KPI.

And I think maybe you keep the heels elevated squat thing or you do your toe touch. But I would video it from several angles and say, OK, where am I in this squat? So just getting your hips below parallel may not be representative of what you're wanting in regards to maintaining some measure of better variability. Gotcha. And then, let me offer you this. So you've always been this hypertrophy dude, ever since I've done you. So you carry around a lot of muscle mass to begin with. So right away, you know you've got a strong concentric strategy that's a byproduct of that. And so one of the ways that you're going to need to capture eccentric orientation. So eccentric orientation is what allows you to move. Concentric orientation will take away your movement, but allow force production. is that you might need to integrate some loaded eccentric orientation activity. So like bringing back some old school bodybuilding stuff like a dumbbell fly, and not with the intent of increasing load, but making sure that you can move through an excursion and then breathe through it allows you to recapture eccentric orientation. So simple things like getting yourself into a split squat position and doing that low isohole. Like I said, the end of it.

I'm doing a lot of this. I'm doing a lot of this. Let's watch ISO holds and even mission push up holds. So I'm doing a lot of those.

Right. But again, looking at this from a length-sending perspective. So making sure you're hitting some of those end ranges. So again, you think about the anterior compression associated with having big strong pecs is like, okay, let's take those to the length and make sure that as I'm holding this position, I can breathe through that position. And that assures that I've got a skeleton that will move underneath that muscle tension and you'll be surprised. So old school pullovers, but without the compressive strategy on the backside. So you don't want to maintain the arch, right. So maybe you do those inverted. So you do them on a decline, right. So you're, yeah, so you invert the airflow. And so that keeps the upper part of the chest expanded as you're doing it. And so things like that come in really, really handy, but like I said, the split stance stuff, the flies, the pullovers, anything that expands those areas that get compressed over time is a wonderful thing. Like you take your inverted row and just do a hang in the stretch position and just hang out there and just allow that stuff to re-expand after you've compressed it.

One of the guys that went to your intensive, Kevin Steen, when he came back he had me playing around in that inverted row, breathing in that position, which was really valuable. And I've been playing around with a lot of like just hanging, like just bar hangs, like old school, like what was called like ISO extremes, like one minute to five minute holds in different positions and trying to focus on just relaxing and stretching into that position. That stuff feels really good. And I seem to be able to get a lot of input in with that throughout the day, as opposed to just doing it in my session. I'm trying to mix it in throughout my day. And the more I'm doing that, the better my body feels for sure. You know, absolutely.

I love it. I love that as a strategy. I think it's, and again, for bigger, stronger, more hypertrophy guys, you need some element of load to allow the expansion to occur because simply trying to push from the inside out with a breath-related expansion is insufficient to overcome the concentric strategies. So we need load to expand. We can't just count on that because again, when you've driven 25 years of concentric strategy in an attempt to get bigger, stronger, and faster, it's like the kinder, gentler expansive stuff has its limitations. So we have to start looking at this as we would any other athlete. It's like, how do I accomplish these positions that I might need to maintain the expansive capabilities, the adaptive capabilities? Because it's all compression, compression, compression. What we're talking about force production and hypertrophy.

So I love that. And I remember us having a conversation before about like hypertrophy in my lower body is important to me, right? Listen, I could never gain any more muscle in my upper body. And I think I'd be okay. Like when I'm lean, I feel I like the way I look. Maybe a little more trap, a little more neck. I could always use a little more of that yoke. If I'm being honest, but everything else I'm cool. But you mentioned one point I believe about like old-school single joint like bodybuilding type activities and like I'm so biased towards these big compound movements. The only reason I'm doing them outside understanding that they're fundamental patterns of movement is because I want to grow. I want hamstrings. I want more glutes. I want more quads. So I might need to consider like a secondary workout at another gym with some of these single joint leg extension type exercises and curls that like I really had like I haven't touched in 15 years, you know? It's like just very scared of those activities in a very irrational way. You know, so that might be a return to that type of style of training. You think that has any value?

The muscles don't know how you get the stimulus in there. They're just responding to the stimulus, right? Now, the things that you always have to consider are like, okay, what are the secondary consequences? There are certain elements of compressive strategy associated with some of those activities. So if I skew too far in one direction, I am placing focal loads in certain places because I don't have to use the same control elements if I'm sitting down on something. But from a hypertrophy standpoint, it's very, very rational to do those things because again, all the muscle is doing is responding to the stimulus. If you're doing a knee extension, a seated knee extension, or you're doing a front squat, it's like the quads don't know where the stimulus is coming from. They're just responding to what you're forcing this muscle to do. And it says, hey, quit killing me. I'm going to make myself more resilient and more adaptable. Or if we borrow from my uncle and the same, it's like we make ourselves more antifractal, right? So then I have hypertrophy. So hypertrophy doesn't care. Now, but again, just understand what the secondary consequences are. It's like maybe I'm putting some focal load and some stress in some places. So maybe if I'm predisposed to being sensitive with knee loads, then I got to be careful with some of that stuff. But as a supplement, it's like how? If you do one set of knee extensions, is your body going to explode? Is your knee going to be destroyed? Probably not. But if I do it for 30 years, maybe there's some stress-related load there that I need to monitor. But again, it's just a monitoring process. It's like, what am I giving up in return? And I don't think there's so many rights and wrongs as there are what is, is. And then, but what people don't do is they don't have a performance measure other than putting more weight on the bar or other than getting the tape measure out and measuring limbs for circumference or body composition or whatever. When we're talking about adaptability and movement-based health, we do give stuff up. But I'll offer you this. We get shoulder motion and neck motion back from people doing curls. You just have to know what you're doing when you're doing the curls, right? It's not this blind execution of overload. It's about execution with position and control. And then it's remarkable to see these things. And so again, people still get to train, they get to train very, very hard, but we also establish constraints as to how they execute to make sure that we're actually reinforcing what we want as a secondary consequence versus allowing a negative secondary consequence to occur.

Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, I think the good thing is that I feel better than ever.

So I love that. And I love to see you smile because I know how frustrating this was for you.

Incredible.

But you don't want to let that run rampant. Which it very could with my conversation. Yeah, everything seems all fine and wonderful until it doesn't seem all fine and wonderful, right? And if you don't pay attention, you don't see it coming because all you're seeing is the good stuff and you're not monitoring for the things that you've taken away. And let me offer you this, the fact that you and I can speak the same language because we're part robot, you know is that we didn't see it coming until it came. Right.