Good morning. I have neural coffee in hand and it is perfect.

So I've been thinking a lot about back pain still with the one girl I've asked you a couple of times. She's pretty good with straight-ahead movements, about 90% there, just building volume. She's a soccer player who started back this semester. Last week, the team began training once a week, playing indoors.

Oh, sweet.

And the change of direction gave her a lot of issues.

Uh huh.

So we shifted focus from doing a lot of linear drills to now working through change of direction progressions. And basically what we realized is that we were just doing a lateral squat. Her initial strategy was to really not move her pelvis over that leg at all, which is essentially just a twist through her back, causing pain right where she gets it. But then as soon as we cued her to actually get the shift into that hip, there was no pain.

Yeah.

And basically what we realized is that we were just doing a lateral squat. Her initial strategy was to not move her pelvis over that leg at all, which essentially caused a twist through her back and pain. But when we cued her to shift into that hip, there was no pain. The assumption is that although it may not be as easy to see at higher speeds, she's using the same strategy. Now I'm trying to figure out how to regress this task since she's probably not ready to change-of-direction drills yet.

So you put her in a side split squat, you gave her the right strategy and she was okay. Yes. Okay. So at high speed. So it's a velocity based problem, right? Yes. Okay. So. As long as she can capture it, awesome. She's capturing it against gravity, awesome. So your progression is the exposure to the forces that she has to capture the internal rotation within. So the problem is not the ability to access the position. The problem is to be able to access the position in real time at speed in context.

Yes.

Okay. So at high speed. It's a velocity based problem, right? Yes. Okay. So as long as she can capture it, awesome. She's capturing it against gravity, awesome. So your progression is the exposure to the forces that she has to capture the internal rotation within. So the problem is not the ability to access the position. The problem is to be able to access the position in real time at speed in context.

This could be viewed from a more simple context, from a great exposure standpoint, with absolutely. There you go. Yeah.

And so then you just construct stuff that progressively exposes her in that position.

Right.

All right. My least favorite book in the whole world is Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So Chris White has actually corrected me: 'Begin with the end in mind' is in chapter two, not chapter one as I thought, but I was wrong because I don't like the book. Anyway, what you want to do is set her up in the position you're trying to acquire and move her out of that first. Don't try to move her into it and out of it. Put her in it so you have access to the position. Set up the connective tissue behavior and then start to create the impulse out of that.

Okay.

You see it? Then move her into it and move her into it with some measure of control out of it quickly. And then progressively increase the rate at which you are applying the IR into the ground. So this is an early IR problem. So it's like going into the cut problem. Cause she's using, she's trying to use a max P out of the cut strategy going into the cut. That's why she's twisting the machine.

Yeah.

Then move her into it and move her into it with some measure of control out of it quickly. And then progressively increase the rate at which you are applying the IR into the ground. So this is an early IR problem. So it's like going into the cut problem. Cause she's using, she's trying to use a max P out of the cut strategy going into the cut. That's why she's twisting the machine.

Yeah. And she'll say like, even as we were doing something like just the slower and more controlled drills last time. So her tendency, like when she comes in with like a little bit of a flare up, like she's just very tiny, narrow. And then like her measures, like she'll have like 67 degrees of beer on the right hip and like two. So she just gets shoved way over. Well, like she can feel it where like she just knows she has a harder time going into the left side. So I feel like she's getting shot. She can't get out of the cut on the right. You can't get into the cut on the left.

Right. There you go. That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

All right. Yeah.

As I said, set her up, have her capture the position first and then move her out of it. Then play with the rate.

Gotcha. And then, there may not be a perfect answer for this, but I've had discussions with her and her coach. She knows most of the other training except for this one day a week, but they do foot drills that just wear her out. So I said to her, and I think it's your opinion. It's not just about being approved for playing after surgery; it would be more about how much you want to manage the flare-ups while still progressing. In your opinion, if she's aggravating herself once a week as we continue to work through it, how detrimental do you think that is to her long-term success versus removing her from that stimulus for the time being, or is there no real way to say?

How many times do you want to get punched in the face?

That's basically how I phrase it to her. I was like, you tell me how physically and emotionally taxing this is to [her].

Well, OK, so think about it. What is a flare-up for her? What does it mean?

What does it mean? A dramatic increase in symptoms.

Okay, why does she have symptoms?