If you're trying to figure out the difference between eccentric and concentric orientation or yielding and overcoming, this will be a good video for you. Good morning. Happy Monday. I have neural coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right, coming off a solid weekend. Had my first combatives. I'm very excited about that. I survived it. Didn't get beat up too bad. So it was kind of fun. I'm looking forward to a big week this week. Today's Q&A is with Ryan. So I got a chance to talk to Ryan. I've known Ryan for a while. Ryan's a great coach down in Kentucky. So if you're ever near peak fitness and sports training, I suggest you stop by and see him. It'll be worth your efforts. Ryan is kind of a superhuman when it comes to picking up heavy things. He's incredibly strong. He only weighs about 200 pounds, but I think he's got a troubled body weight dead left or something like that. So maybe even more than that. The Q&A covers a lot of review concepts that I think are still somewhat confusing for people, and I understand that. So we talk about eccentric concentric orientations, yielding and overcoming actions, and we start to put them into some context. We talk about cutting, a little bit of powerlifting, and some individualization of training. So again, I think this is a really, really good review call for a lot of people. to help clarify some of these concepts. So if you have any questions, or you'd like to participate in a 15 minute console, go to askbillhartman at gmail.com, askbillhartman at gmail.com, and I will see you guys tomorrow. We are rolling, clock is starting. Fire, your question, young man.

All right, I want to kind of dive into some more of the nuance with the eccentric, concentric orientation versus the yielding and overcoming. And so I think the biggest thing is, to what extent is it useful to prioritize a yielding strategy over gaining some eccentric orientation? I know, with an athlete, it can be very dependent on what the needs of the sport are. But to my way of thinking and the conversations we've had, the only way I'm going to get eccentric orientation is more or less to stop training. So I want to make sure that I'm understanding this.

So let's distinguish between the two first and foremost because it's very distinct. Okay. Muscle behavior is determined by eccentric versus concentric orientation. So we're looking at a moment in time and we're looking at a relative length of the muscle tissue itself. So this is the part that actually contracts based on the nervous system input. This is what determines range of motion. Yielding and overcoming is connective tissue behavior. This is a viscoelastic tissue that behaves very specifically based especially on the rate of loading. So the faster that I load a viscoelastic tissue, the more resistance it provides, the stiffer it behaves, the slower I load it. And again, we're talking relative speeds here because some things look really, really fast. But from a relative standpoint, the tissues are being actually loaded at a slower rate. So if I were to make a comparison, if I jump off of a box, so I jump off, let's just say I jump off of a 20 inch box and I land, that is actually a slower rate of loading compared to a max effort back squat because the max effort back squat load is instantaneous. It is already there. Whereas as I'm coming down from the box, I have an anticipatory concentric orientation of musculature. And then as I make my initial contact, like where I barely touched my toe. So again, we have to look at this thing in really slow motion. You look at the duration of the exposure to get to the point where the maximum load is applied based on the force production. There's a lot of time in there compared to an instantaneous load with a heavy weight. So that distinguishes the two elements of behavior. Like I said, a lot of people get confused because we talk about a yielding action when we're going into and out of a cut, which looks really, really fast. And it is visually speaking, it is very, very quick. But as far as the rate of loading on the tissues, there is a time span where I'm moving into where I make ground contact so that the tissue has to expand or elongate. It stores energy under those circumstances. And then as I change direction and I reorient, now the tissue can actually release that energy and it behaves more stiffly as I come out of the car. Does that help distinguish between the two? Yes. Okay. Now, so if you have a situation where you have a great deal of concentric orientation, that's where you're going to see the greatest movement and limitations. So goal number one then is to create greater eccentric orientation to allow more motion to occur if that's the goal.

Can we play off of this cutting example? Absolutely. If I've got somebody who's just very toned up, lots of training, they're going to go into this cut and they're going to maintain concentric orientation in most cases, which is what we want because then they can use the rebound of the connective tissues.

Correct. If they can access that.

Yes. What if there is not, they're so concentric that their ability to load the cuts is ineffective?

Okay, so look at it at the two ends. So if I am, let's just say I'm concentric overcoming. That is a muscle that is prepared, that is producing high force, and the connective tissues are stiff. So as I go into the cut, I don't yield as much. So the amount of energy storage that I use is somewhat limited. But my ability to come out of the cut is not. But the problem is that I never got the initial storage in the first place. So that's going to kind of slow me down coming out of the cut. Now let's take an opposing example where if somebody that doesn't create the stiffness as well. So they go into the cut, they absorb this massive amount of energy, and they're slow coming out of the cut because they can't turn it around and release that energy. There's a difference. And some of this is going to be genetically determined. This is why some people are faster than other people is because their connective tissues are just better designed to do these really, really cool things. But we can train this just based on the way that you're loading strategies in the gym. If I'm a power lifter, you think about, I want the minimum amount of eccentric orientation that I need, and I need just enough yielding action to store and release energy as I make the turnarounds in my lifts. Because if you have too much, then there's a lot of distance that could be created with expansion or a dissipation of my force production, which is what I don't want. I want it to be focused so I can create the lift.

Okay. So if I'm loading just any exercise, is it yielding or is it possible to get some eccentric orientation? Because there's going to be muscular activity trying to allow the minimum amount of tissue length, correct?

Well again, depending on what the goal is. So again, it's like if I'm a powerlifter, how important is my deep squat? It's just not that important to me. I need enough to access that. Now the yielding action does help me, because especially with the turnaround, but think about this. If I yield too much, I dissipate some of that force that I use to actually lift the weight. And again, this is why some people are better powerlifters than others. One of the reasons why you have superhuman strength for a guy that weighs 200 pounds is because you yield really well in your skeleton, but most likely the connective tissues that are directly attached to your musculature is very stiff. And this is what you'll see with people that are very powerful, very explosive and very strong. The stiff of the tissue, if I can get it to yield, it releases more energy. Just go into the gym and check your rubber bands. If you take the skinniest rubber band that you have and the fattest rubber band that you have, and it's easier to stretch the skinnier rubber band, but if I can stretch the fat rubber band the same distance, which one releases more energy?

The fat one.

Absolutely. So you see what I'm saying? It's like, you know, some people need 400 pounds in their back to create the yielding action. And you'll see this and you'll see an improvement in someone's squat, you know, visually the representation of their technique will improve under the heavier loads because it is actually helping them to create the yielding action that they need.

So I want to take it to somebody who's got a little bit different needs than a powerlifter, say like a pitcher. They're trying to produce a ton of propulsion in a very short time, but they need the time to yield. Correct. What if they've got so much, let's just call it extensor tone that's shoving them forward? They're late on concentric all over. And I pulled them back with some yielding strategies. Do they need to recapture some level of eccentric orientation as well?

Maybe. I mean, we always have to look at these people as individuals. And that's been a problem because everybody says, okay, you're a right-handed pitcher. You need to be on the right-handed pitcher program. All pitchers the same, which is not true, unfortunately. Because if I take a pitcher that's five foot 10, 225 pounds, and I have a pitcher that is six foot five, 215 pounds, I got news for you. They produce the velocity in different ways. One needs a little bit more time. One doesn't turn as well. And the other one needs to be able to compress very, very quickly. But he has more time. So again, we can't treat them the same way. We have to say, oh, you do it this way, and you do it this way. And then we try to provide them the access to their potential. And that's why this is hard though. So it's like you and I are having this conversation and you go, oh, that kind of makes sense. And then you go and you look at a real human and you go, uh-oh, now what do I do? Right? But the principles don't change. It's just a matter of getting to know someone. So somebody walks in the door, it's like, I don't know exactly what to do with them. I get an idea, and then we do something, and then we see what happens, and then based on that, we do the next thing. And then based on that, we do the next thing. People think that they can predict what's going to happen, and I would respectfully disagree. It's like, I think we need to actually train these people over time, and that's how we figure this stuff out.

Yeah, so I think one of the mistakes are at least the lens I was looking at in the past. I thought I was recapturing some range of motion that was maybe eccentric orientation when I was doing unilateral work, but I was just getting better at yielding.

Quite possibly. So again, you have to look at having some form of key performance indicator that you're going to measure again. You do your intervention and then re-measure and say, okay, what happened under those circumstances? This is how training should be because it's incredibly complex. There are things going on in training that we have no idea about. I am convinced of this. We have no idea. We don't even know what's taking place. But we have observations we can use to say, okay, that was a good thing or that wasn't such a good thing. And what we want to do over time is do a whole lot more good things and a whole lot less of the stuff that doesn't either seem to matter or creates a negative consequence. Everybody thinks there's like a cookbook: you do this, you do this, you do this, and then good things happen. But no, you can do that. You put everybody on the right-handed pitcher program. It's like, okay, three or four guys are going to do really well. Three or four guys are not going to do well at all, and then everybody kind of falls in the middle. We accept favorable change for the best, favorable change. And I respectfully disagree about that too.

Maybe. I got one specific question I think you can answer. Should a super compressed pitcher need to yield or a young athlete who maybe doesn't manage gravity well, but they also need to add muscle mass and add size to produce better force production because they're still underpowered?

How are you measuring underpowered relative to what?

In the case of a pitcher, I'd say maybe their arm strength is low or... Again, how are you measuring?

What's the comparison to determine that one, they have the potential for it in number two? Again, how do you know versus, I mean, I understand that you can measure pitching velocity and things like that. And there's any number of parameters. But again, it's like, what are you using to determine this?

So I would say maybe relative to peers.

Okay, but again, you can't compare them to anyone but themselves. So there I think lies a little bit of the problem. Because genetically speaking, we just don't know. So again, I would encourage you to look at this from a process-oriented standpoint. It's like, okay, if you think that he needs greater force production, if you think more muscle mass is the answer, do that and then see what happens. I'm totally okay with that. But you better have some form of indicator to follow that's going to let you know very, very quickly. If we're on the wrong path, we need to make a change very, very quickly. I think, again, the experience of working with people over time is one of those elements that is lacking. Because again, people are looking for yes and no answers, black and white solutions. When the reality is, it's like we are so gray, it's not funny. It's like, if you say, okay, this kid is underpowered, we need to add force production. Go ahead and add force production. But like I said, have something that you're measuring against so you know that if I accidentally take something away that was important. If you take range of motion away from somebody that needs as much range of motion as a pitcher does, did you help? You know and there's probably times where, you know, adding force production, especially through their levels of, there's differing levels of maturity where it's going to be like, absolutely. We got to drive tons of force production. I want to drive his ability to lift heavy things through the roof because I know it's going to contribute to performance, but that's not everybody. You can't put everybody on that same program because they're all at different places.

That was great.

Good. I hope it's helpful. If you have questions, just send me an email. You know how to get a hold of me.

We'll do.

Post them up in the Facebook group.

OK. Sounds good.

Have a great day.

Good to see you. Bye.

Ultimately, that's what I want you to think about as you're learning and understanding these tests. It's really cool to throw somebody on the table and show the movement limitation, do something, and then make that movement limitation disappear. But ultimately what I want you to be able to do is go into the gym, have people move and perform their exercise activities, and then be able to coach and cue them with that understanding. We're going to dive right into today's Q&A. This is a conversation that I had with Andrew, who is in a really cool place in his evolution as a coach. He is working on becoming more reliable with his table tests and his interpretation. So we're actually going to talk through some of that. We're going to use a little bit more of a shoulder frame of reference in this one. But we also talk about some of the confirmations that we use as checks and balances in the hip. And so we're going to talk a little bit about iterations and such that are very important when you're learning how to interpret these things. Ultimately what we're going to try to do is we're going to try to eliminate the table tests from necessity and hopefully train the eye to be a little bit more effective using table tests only when we need to as confirmations or when we do get stuck. And we do get stuck because this is very complex, it is very gray, and as I like to say the measurements tend to be a little dirty anyway. So Andrew, thank you for your participation and your question. I will see you on the Coffee and Coaches conference call as we always do every Thursday morning at 6 a.m. So everybody have a terrific Tuesday, and we will see you tomorrow. And the clock has started. What is your question, Andrew?

In the past year, I have started to use your sort of test retest method, and I've really incorporated table tests into all of the work that I do with clients as a way to see where their body's at, so to speak. And it's really, really good. It's been perfect for all of my interactions with clients and my work with clients. It's been very illuminating in terms of directions that I need to take to help them. And I realized recently that I don't understand the utility of certain table tests that you mentioned in your videos. And not that I understand the ones that I do do all that well in the first place, but I have some idea. So specifically, the ones that I'm wondering about, just to kind of narrow the focus, are shoulder and hip if we have time for it. Adduction and abduction. And I am unsure of how or if there is a difference in what let's say a shoulder abduction test would tell us about dorsal rostral expansion, right? Versus what an overhead flexion test would tell us about dorsal rostral expansion in that 90 plus range.