Good morning. Happy Monday. I have neural coffee in hand and it is perfect. As usual, a busy Monday. Coming up first, a housekeeping item for those of you on IFast University: we have a call today at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. If you're not on IFast, please go to ifastuniversity.com to get yourself signed up and join us at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time for that conference call. Digging into this Q&A, this was with Ian, and then he had a special guest—my adopted son, Zach, who was on the call incognito. He had on his Clark Kent disguise glasses and a hat so nobody could recognize him. The discussion revolved around split squats, but the thing that I want you to take away from this call is the influence of structure. So we got into this a little as far as, from a structural standpoint, what are the compensatory strategies we're typically going to see under the circumstances of executing a split squat? It also lends itself to the fact that not every exercise is for everyone at every time. We can't generalize these rules that everybody should be able to do all of these different things because structure matters. And it's going to lend itself to being good at certain things and not so good at others. Again, a very, very important aspect of this call. So thank you, Zach. Thank you, Ian for taking care of my boy. And everybody have an outstanding Monday. I'll see you—if you're on IFast, I'll see you today at 1 p.m. If not, then I'll see you tomorrow. Let's go. Ian, I'm sorry, there's only one person allowed on a call. You guys are going to have to split up and get on different screens.

All right, then.

Hey, Ian, who's the dork in the hat?

He says he knows you.

I wouldn't know him if I fell over him.

I apologize, and he has a question. I had to come to Europe to get up at a reasonable time for these calls.

I have to get on a call.

Is it too early for you?

It's like 3 AM in Vegas, right?

I know.

Come on. I've been up. It's like, come on.

Yeah, I'm more of a late worker, but anyways. Well, a longtime listener, first time caller. I had a question for you on split squat programming. So I will say with most of my patients' clients, I have avoided starting or using an early or negative shin angle going into a mid-range position. So if an early knee flexion to a mid-range on the front leg is what you're thinking, I mean, the reason why would be because of the table and tour we just had seen. I felt like a lot of people ended up just pushing forward through the pelvis.

Yeah.

The reason why would be because of the jabber and tour we just had seen, I felt like a lot of people ended up just pushing forward through the pelvis.

Uh huh.

I had one person recently who I did use that for success. I want to know when you say for success defined, like, like I was able to get some appreciable changes on the table and like, what changes though? It's like, that's what I need to know. Internal. He, he had internal. He was a narrow who had, I mean, it was likely orientation, but had significant amounts of ER, limited IR, total arc was close to 100, I would say. And everything else was problematic anytime I was trying to do things that weren't in that range. I want to know what your thought process is when you would program that type of early to mid split squat for someone.

So you're talking about translating the tibia fully over the foot?

You're not even just all the way fully, like I would start someone. Not as poorly as I'm about to do it, but if you have someone starting from here to there.

Yeah.

Versus what I have seen some people do is like, you know, when they come up and they do that sort of thing on the split squat.

Yeah.

Yeah. I've been around a little bit.

When are you going from here to there on a Swiss ball from a programming standpoint?

OK, so if you think about the translation of the tibia, you have to have access to full mental propulsion, otherwise you can't translate the tibia in that direction, right?

You have to have access to metal propulsion, you said. You have to.

You have to. So the only way that you can translate a tibia forward over the foot under that circumstance without access to hip extension is orientation, which is what I don't want to do. And so if you got a whole bunch of internal rotation back, but drop off external rotation in the process, then you didn't access relative motions. All you got was spine movement. That's just spine movement.

So then what are you doing to avoid the scenario where someone gets the negative shin angle, but pelvis is translating forward?

So you're talking about like a tibia that's behind the foot?

Correct. That would be the start. The start I'm thinking of.

In a split squat, having the tibia behind the foot is standard because you're in an external rotation representation for early propulsion. This position is typical for the beginning of propulsion. If the movement ends in that position, it's because the individual lacks internal rotation. Without access to mid-propulsion or internal rotation, they must descend toward the ground in an external rotation representation. Without internal rotation, the pelvis remains externally oriented away from the lead foot. This results in the pelvis not changing shape, leading to compensatory strategies in the rear leg.