Good morning. Happy Monday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect. Okay. Great weekend. Busy Monday coming up. Let's dig straight into today's Q&A. This is with Manuel. Manuel had a question in recording an observation of watching people trying to lock weights out overhead and seeing the limitation in the ability to extend the elbow to straighten the arm. And so we talked through the reasoning as to why this may be and then this sort of expanded into, okay, what about the shoulder orientation? What about elbow orientation? What about hand orientation? And then what sequence of events do we need to execute to recover relative motions under these circumstances? So this unpacks a lot of information in a very short period of time. So it's going to be useful for a lot of people that are having questions about these elbow orientations and then how to address them. So thank you Manuel. Great question. If you'd like to participate in a 15-minute consultation, please go to askbillhartman at gmail.com, askbillhartman at gmail.com. Put 15-minute consultation in the subject line so I don't delete it. Please include your question in the email. We'll arrange that at our mutual convenience. Everybody have an outstanding Monday, and I'll see you tomorrow.

I'm observing in that distal humerus. What do you see? Do you see the proximal humerus twisted in the way you would see a Varus oriented, the cowboy orientation?

Thinking about this, Manuel, especially as the loads increase, the amount of force I apply has to increase. Which means I'm going to squeeze you more front to back. I'm going to stick you more in a middle representation, which means I'm going to be taking away your ER. So I have to orient harder into ER, which means I have to twist harder into IR. Same process as we were just talking about in the work journey.

Yeah. Because so what I'll see is, you know, I do see a lot of hyper extension overhead in what I do, but that's not shocking. Right. But in really compressed individuals, what else he is, it looks like they can't even bend their arm or they can't even straighten their arm. So like they'll go overhead and it looks like they're like this. And so what I'm wondering is that kind of like what we're talking about with that cowboy representation where they had that hyper extension and then they had so much twist going on that they had to twist at the proximal humorous to then get that kind of orientation. Looks like they're not straightening their arm, but they're not straightening their arm because they can't. But when you ask them to straighten their arm, they're like, this is as far as it goes.

Right. So why does it stop?

They don't have enough ER for the IR.

Yeah, so they ran out of room. They literally hit the threshold where they can no longer compensate into ER and produce an IR on top of it. So the motion literally stops. And they'll be accused of being weak. Right? Oh, you're not strong enough to lock it out. It's like, well, okay, you're not strong enough to twist the bones harder to finish the lockout under these circumstances. Like that's literally they are at the threshold of their current state or anatomy, or it's literally the end. They have actually hit the limit of their systems capabilities to create an orientation of ER and superimpose the IR on it.

Right, so I was wondering if that kind of orientation is like what we see at the leg.

Same thing. Absolutely. That's why you can't lock out. And it doesn't matter what exercise we're talking about where we would see the elbow having to go from a bent position to a straight position. It doesn't matter. If you can't finish a bench press, it stops because you are out of room. Like you're squeezing as hard as you possibly can. You can't squeeze yourself anymore. There's no more orientation, ER, to create a space to move into. There's no more IR that I can superimpose. It stops.

And then in terms of strategy, how do we untwist the humerus in that?

Well, you have to get an axial skeleton that can recapture relative motions. You have to restore the relative motion at the shoulder. You have to identify the hand position so you know what position the elbow is in, so you know which way to twist it. It's not as clean and simple as 'oh, you just do this exercise.' You have to understand what you're trying to recreate. So the simple answer is you have to get your AP expansion so you have relative motions available at the shoulder, but then you have to understand where you came from. If you're oriented into ER, if you have a proximal humeral orientation into ER, you have to IR that first. Otherwise, you don't have access to any elbow position or hand position. You can go after elbows and hands right away with the understanding that you have a shoulder that's probably going to kick them right back out into that same orientation if you're trying to control a symptom. So if somebody comes in with elbow pain and they can't do anything because the elbow is so uncomfortable, we might do something at the elbow that would alleviate a symptom to allow us to do another activity proximal to distal first from a strategy standpoint, because it's a matter of selecting activities that would reduce the concentric orientation that got you into that position in the first place.

Right. I understand that. When I work with half kneeling, I find it pretty effective at addressing the twists at the hips, and then we can go from there. When I'm working overhead, I don't have an equivalent position that I can think about. I can do stuff for AP expansion, but I feel like I'm doing it in pieces rather than integrated.

You are. In many cases, you are.

It's like- I guess what I'm looking for is what would, you know- Do you want a big bang or something?

Like everything all at once?

I'm looking for a home run. I want to be super good.

Hey, you want to walk in and go, 'I have one exercise that you need to do and we'll be ready to go.' Okay, but think about where they're trying to produce force in an ER position. You're going to be moving most of these people into a middle representation where they're going to produce more force. And then you're trying to give them the relative motion to get into the most advantageous position to produce force, right? You're going to move people towards middle representations as you start to align them into an internally rotated representation from proximal to distal. This is side stuff, right? Like if you were in the lower extremity, like you mentioned a split stance or a half kneeling representation, because that's an IR representation, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so think about what they're trying to do. They're going to end up trying to produce force in an externally rotated position. So you're going to be moving most of these people into a, like you might have to go early, like for your narrows, you're gonna go early first, but ultimately you're trying to bring them back into a middle representation where they're gonna produce more force. And then you're trying to give them the relative motion to get into the most advantageous position to produce force, right? And so you're gonna be moving people towards middle representations as you start to align them into an internally rotated representation from proximal to distal. So this is side stuff, right? Like if you were in the lower extremity, like you mentioned like a split stance or a half kneeling representation, because that's an internally rotated representation, right?

Right, so we do oblique sit do the same thing?

Yeah, so we do oblique sit variations a lot of the times because those are middle representations and then I can work proximal to distal on those. And then depending on whether I'm high or low, then I can influence which segment I'm emphasizing, right? That should get your brain started in the right direction.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah. Cool.

Yes. Thank you.

Good morning. Happy Tuesday. I have no coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right, a quick housekeeping item or two. Great call yesterday on IFAST University, great Q&A. For those of you that are on IFASTUniversity.com, the call is posted for you to view. If you're not on IFASTUniversity.com yet, please go there, get yourself signed up and participate in those activities with such a great group of coaches, trainers, and therapists. Okay, second item. A lot of questions about the next intensive will be in the summertime. It's going to be in July, probably at some point in time. Haven't set the dates yet, but start looking at your July schedule. If you would like to participate in that, applications will be required as usual. For the intensive, it is not for everyone, only eight people at a time, so please keep that in mind. Okay, digging into today's Q&A, this is an extension of one of the videos that we posted not too long ago, probably last week, where we were talking about the seven components of force and then we got into whether the atmosphere is predictable or unpredictable and how does that influence our ability to produce forces. So we're talking about yielding and overcoming and how is that applied in these unpredictable atmospheres. This is one of the reasons why we talk about things like specificity and why it's so important for athletes to actually play their sport because it is the most specific way that they're going to demonstrate these capabilities. And so what can we do in the gym? How do we make it a little less predictable? Because most of the stuff that we do in the gym is in a predictable environment. And how can we start to influence force production in that manner? So this is a really good discussion. I believe Alec and Andrew and Ian all participating in this one. So thank you guys for your contributions. If you would like to participate in a 15-minute consultation, please go to askbillhartman.com, put '15 minute consultation' in the subject line so we don't delete it. Please include your question in the email. We'll arrange that at our mutual convenience as usual. Everybody have an outstanding Tuesday and I'll see you tomorrow. That's why those things are useful. If I compress the time, all of my rate changes. And all of my force output changes. So again, it becomes very useful as a training element where I don't have to make everything so predictable. Like I would in the gym, like I was training box jumps or agility exercises or things like that.

Cool.

Yeah. Cool. We should probably throw predictability in there, huh? What do you think?

Like as an eighth component of force.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. I think we're going to do that as of today. As of today. There you go. It's the Krastin Duval principle.

Yeah, sure. But would it actually influence connective tissue behavior? Like in anticipation of the lift, I would actually pre-store energy.