Here's a question. Can you move without a gradient? Good morning. Happy Monday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right. Just a little bit of a compressed week this week as we all know. But we'll figure something out. We will be doing the Coffee and Coaches Conference call on Thursday morning, 6am Eastern time for all of you playing the home game. So don't miss out on that. But let's go ahead and dig into Monday's Q&A and this is from Brian. Brian says, Bill, we're reviewing some of your videos this week. So thank you, Brian, for reviewing those videos. So they came across your video titled When Stretching Works and When It Fails. Would it be fair to say that the concentric on concentric orientation you discussed is what causes bones to eventually approximate due to arthritic changes? I understand that under normal ideal circumstances, bones never touch. You are a corrector that is accurate. It seems that all range of motion is solely dependent on the ability to create a fluid gradient in one's joints, which is influenced by concentric and eccentric muscle orientations around the joints. Is that a fair statement to make, or is there more to the big picture? Brian, I love the way you're thinking. You are absolutely correct that we must have a gradient to exist to allow movement to occur. In fact, this is an absolute universal principle under every circumstance. So in the physical world, nothing moves without a gradient. So gradient is merely, in its simplest terms, a difference. And so gravity is representative of an energy gradient. Electrical charge moves on a gradient. The solutes that move in and out of a cell move on graded. So everything requires a gradient to move. But it would probably behoove us to do a quicky review of the whole concept of bones don't touch for those folks that haven't watched that video yet right there. Maybe we want to go watch that after we get done here. So we want to talk about the mechanisms that keeps bones apart. So first and foremost, we want to talk about the water behavior. So the synovial fluid in the joint is mostly water. It's got some protein stuff that floats around in it. But water behaves very specifically when it's approximated to different surfaces. So the hyaline cartilage that aligns the joints is very hydrophilic. So it likes water. And when water's up against it, the water separates into positively and negatively charged water. And that positively charged water stays right through the middle of the joint because the negative would approximate to the highland cartilage. And so now what we have is an electromagnetic force that actually keeps the joint apart. So these positive charges repel one another and it's just like trying to bring two north poles of magnets together you get that repulsive force so it pushes the joint apart. It also makes this anovial fluid in that middle very very slippery which is kind of good so it keeps the joints from squeaking just like the motor oil in your in your car engine. So again, very, very useful on multiple levels. We also have connective tissue behaviors that surround the joint. So if we were talking about, say, a knee joint, if you look at the connective tissue, we've got connective tissue that go in all sort of witchaways. But there's a strong horizontal element to that. And so when we compress the knee joint, so we put weight on the knee joint, that connective tissue becomes very, very So it's loaded very, very quickly. So this is actually the overcoming action that we talk about in the connective tissues when we're talking about any kind of movement. And so that makes the knee joint very, very stiff. And so it compresses the fluid inside the joint. And so now we have an external compression that actually pushes those bones apart. And so we need all of these mechanisms to be intact. So we have this nice, nice healthy knee joint. But we also need to be able to shift this fluid around to have normal movement. So as you stated in the concentric on concentric orientation, so let's just say that we only have two sides of a knee joint here. If we have concentric on one side, concentric on the other side, we have a resultant pressure that is straight through the joint. So we have this compressive strategy throughout the joint. The problem here is this high-linked cartilage that creates our electromagnetic element of our protection, if you will, against the bone's touching is going to be affected by this. So the nutrition that supplies this high-linked cartilage comes from the subcontral bone. And so if I put enough pressure on the subcontral bone over a long enough period of time, I'm going to reduce the ability of the nutrients to diffuse with a gradient rather, to diffuse from the bloodstream to the hyaline cartilage. And then so what we eventually get is a breakdown of this hyaline cartilage from the bony side. And so if this cartilage breaks down, I lose my electromagnetic capabilities, I can no longer keep the joints separated and so now I have this high potential that I'm going to develop some form of our threat condition as this Highland Carriage starts to break down. That's concentric on concentric. So I think you're correct, Brian, that this is a mechanism. But now I want you to think about a specific circumstance. So let's talk about, let's just say somebody with a narrow ISA. So here's what we know about those folks with narrow ISA that have limited breathing excursion is that I have an inhalation biased axial skeleton with a compensatory exhalation strategy. And what that does, Brian, is it's gonna bias towards extra rotation throughout the peripheral joints. And so under this circumstance, what I have is a concentric bias on one side, eccentric bias on the other, which is a gradient that's going to move our joint in a direction. But if I cannot concentrically orient the eccentric musculature or eccentrically orient that concentric musculature, I no longer have the fluid chip that is required for me to move this joint effectively. Now I have the same concept that I had with the concentric on concentric. I just have it more localized to one aspect of the joint. So this might be why you see in a knee you see the medial compartment tend to break down a little bit quicker than everything else or you'll see the posterior shoulder break down a little bit quicker than the rest. I also want you to understand the circumstance that this is going to affect all of your connective tissues. So anytime I put a prolonged pressure or tension on these connective tissues, I'm going to see the same progressive degeneration because I'm reducing blood flow and reducing the nutrients that are getting to those tissues. So this might be why we see the degenerative changes in tendons over time in addition to the arthritic changes. So I want you to keep that in mind as well, Brian. Brian, this is a great question for those of you that are interested. Go watch the Bone Stone Touch and Joints Aren't Leverage video. And then also when stretching works and when it fails, video will also talk about these concepts as well. So I would refer you to those. If you have any further questions or comments, please send them to askbilthartman at gmail.com, askbilthartman at gmail.com. And I will see you tomorrow.

It also makes this synovial fluid in that middle very, very slippery which is kind of good so it keeps the joints from squeaking just like the motor oil in your car engine. So again, very, very useful on multiple levels. We also have connective tissue behaviors that surround the joint. So if we were talking about, say, a knee joint, if you look at the connective tissue, we've got connective tissue that go in all sort of witchways. But there's a strong horizontal element to that. And so when we compress the knee joint, so we put weight on the knee joint, that connective tissue becomes very, very stiff. It's loaded very, very quickly. So this is actually the overcoming action that we talk about in the connective tissues when we're talking about any kind of movement. And so that makes the knee joint very, very stiff. And so it compresses the fluid inside the joint. And so now we have an external compression that actually pushes those bones apart. And so we need all of these mechanisms to be intact. So we have this nice, nice healthy knee joint. But we also need to be able to shift this fluid around to have normal movement. So as you stated in the concentric on concentric orientation, so let's just say that we only have two sides of a knee joint here. If we have concentric on one side, concentric on the other side, we have a resultant pressure that is straight through the joint. So we have this compressive strategy throughout the joint. The problem here is this hyaline cartilage that creates our electromagnetic element of our protection, if you will, against the bone's touching is going to be affected by this. So the nutrition that supplies this hyaline cartilage comes from the subchondral bone. And so if I put enough pressure on the subchondral bone over a long enough period of time, I'm going to reduce the ability of the nutrients to diffuse with a gradient rather, to diffuse from the bloodstream to the hyaline cartilage. And then so what we eventually get is a breakdown of this hyaline cartilage from the bony side. And so if this cartilage breaks down, I lose my electromagnetic capabilities, I can no longer keep the joints separated and so now I have this high potential that I'm going to develop some form of arthritic condition as this hyaline cartilage starts to break down. That's concentric on concentric. So I think you're correct, Brian, that this is a mechanism. But now I want you to think about a specific circumstance. So let's talk about, let's just say somebody with a narrow ISA. So here's what we know about those folks with narrow ISA that have limited breathing excursion is that I have an inhalation biased axial skeleton with a compensatory exhalation strategy. And what that does, Brian, is it's gonna bias towards external rotation throughout the peripheral joints.

And so under this circumstance, what I have is a concentric bias on one side, eccentric bias on the other, which is a gradient that's going to move our joint in a direction. But if I cannot concentrically orient the eccentric musculature or eccentrically orient that concentric musculature, I no longer have the fluid shift that is required for me to move this joint effectively. Now I have the same concept that I had with the concentric on concentric. I just have it more localized to one aspect of the joint. So this might be why you see in a knee you see the medial compartment tend to break down a little bit quicker than everything else or you'll see the posterior shoulder break down a little bit quicker than the rest. I also want you to understand that this is going to affect all of your connective tissues. So anytime I put a prolonged pressure or tension on these connective tissues, I'm going to see the same progressive degeneration because I'm reducing blood flow and reducing the nutrients that are getting to those tissues. So this might be why we see the degenerative changes in tendons over time in addition to the arthritic changes. So I want you to keep that in mind as well.

In my mind, it is conceivable that someone could have overly developed specific muscles through poor training programs and actually benefit from selective hypertrophy of the antagonistic muscles provided that there are no compensatory strategies being reinforced, as this could alter their center of mass favorably. Is there any merit to this thought process? And let's give that a big fat maybe. So we have to start thinking about what the secondary consequences are here, Andrew, because it's not just muscles that we're talking about. So we're always talking about other potential influences. So the consequences of hypertrophy training. So we got to think about this. So we get superficial muscle cross-sectional areas. So that might be favorable. Increased force production might be favorable. Exhalation strategy may be favorable. Compression may be favorable and then shape change may be favorable. And so I always say maybe because we just don't know and we'll talk about this a little bit at the end of the discussion as to how we want to approach this from a training perspective. But one of the things that we always want to recognize is that we always have tension in the system itself. And so the way that the shape of the system influences that is it's going to increase or decrease tension. So I got my little Hoberman sphere here as a representation of what our starting conditions may be. So this is a sphere. So we're going to make an assumption that our compression and tension elements are rather evenly distributed. And so what I want you to recognize is if I create a compression on this side and a compression on this side and I'm going to change the shape of it and you can see my little X in the middle changes its orientation and now I have greater tension through the system. So the same thing is going to happen under the circumstances when we talk about hypertrophy training because we're focused primarily on this superficial musculature. So we're talking about pecs, we're talking about rectus abs, we're talking about trapezius, we're talking about the lats. So the big stuff that's on the outside and what we want to recognize is that those muscles are going to be squeezers. And so they're always going to create this anterior, posterior, compressive strategy, which is going to change the shape and sometimes favorably, sometimes unfavorably. And so because there's always tension in the system, if I lose the ability to produce a gradient, so I have to have expansion and compression to create a gradient, I may sacrifice something that's important. This may or may not influence performance. So if force production goes up, that could be a good thing. If movement is not negatively affected, then I might have a favorable outcome.

In the case of like say a large human being who is an offensive lineman in football, it may behoove me to superimpose a tremendous amount of muscle mass on him, increase compressive strategy, and actually take away certain things—make it more difficult for him to rotate because as an offensive lineman I don't want to get turned. So this might be a favorable shape change that's going to maintain tension through the system, and while the sacrifices are in certain ranges of motion, they don't negatively affect my performance. And so what we want to again take a look at is how we actually produce this compression and expansion and what the resultants are. So if I say create an anterior compression and I have posterior expansion on the opposing side, I have just improved my capabilities towards external rotation. If I look at the opposing representation where I have posterior compression and anterior expansion, I have now improved my abilities to capture internal rotations. Now, where we run into difficulty is with this antagonistic representation which is actually quite incorrect because if I have compression on one side and my assumption is that all I have to do is train the opposing side and then I'll recapture range of motion, I actually have to strategize, alter training to alleviate the initial compressive strategy. So if I create anterior compression and I have posterior expansion where I have ER capabilities, and I think, well, I have to recapture my IR, I'm just going to train the backside. What I'm going to end up doing is I'm going to have a compression on the front side and a compression on the backside unless I do something that alleviates that anterior compression. And so then my resultant is, again, I'm getting squeezed front to back and I'm giving up something potentially—potentially, again, I just don't know what the answer is going to be. So the antagonistic representation of the superficial musculature is incorrect because I don't have pushers on one side and pullers on the other. What I have is compressors on one side, compressors on the other side, and I have to manipulate their ability to expand and compress if I want to influence performance in a favorable way if I need to recapture some element of movement. So the way you do this, everybody's there in an experiment. It's an N equals one situation. I have to determine what my key performance indicators are. Sometimes I don't even know what those are until I start training someone and I see what the results are. So for instance, it may behoove me to strength train one of my baseball pitchers to increase their force production, and I will get a favorable response in velocity. However, if I sacrifice their ability to turn because of the shape changes involved or the reduction in movement, say through a baseball pitcher shoulder where I reduce this range of motion and I take away velocity, bad strategy. So I just don't know what those answers are going to be. And so again, we can't just automatically say, oh, muscle mass is good, oh, increased force production is good. I have to look at what the results are and then how does that influence that individual's performance.

However, if I sacrifice their ability to turn because of the shape changes involved or the reduction in movement, say through a baseball pitcher shoulder where I reduce this range of motion and I take away velocity, bad strategy. So I just don't know what those answers are gonna be. And so again, we can't just automatically say, oh, muscle mass is good, oh, increased force production is good. I have to look at what the results are and then how does that influence that individual's performance.

Shirley Sarman participated in this study with another practitioner I'm assuming named Zeller in 1983. It's in a supplement from the physical therapy journal, which apparently doesn't exist. I can't find it anywhere. But they talked about 83 degrees as some sort of average or optimal. I think the Koreans found something that was just shy of 90 degrees. So it's almost like they said, okay, well, you know, it's kind of like that. So let's just say 90 is the standard. And so a lot of people are using 90 as the standard. The New Zealanders are using 90 as the standard. But I think it's a little bit of horse hockey. It's kind of like just throwing a dart at a dart board and going, oh, 90, okay, we'll call it that. Because there's really no foundation for it. It doesn't really represent anything useful for us to try to chase a number and say that this is optimal. This is the standard and we need to push people towards this because again, it's just not very useful. The one number that I've used and talked about is the 108 thing. And where that comes from, Zoe, is from tube behavior. So Graham Scar did some work in 2013. And he was looking at the helical orientation of a tube. And so the helical angle is where everything crisscrosses, right? So it looks like an ISA. And then they measure from the vertical. And what he found was that when you have an angle from the vertical at about 54.44 degrees, I have a tube that can elongate and expand in both directions equally. And so what that would be representative of somebody that would have say the ability to inhale and the ability to exhale effectively. And then we say, well, there's the optimal, but the reality is it's like, no, that's just somebody that has that capacity when they have that kind of an angle. So chasing it is useless because trying to put somebody into a standard is like trying to change somebody's height or their shoe size and say, oh, I'm sorry, sir, you're six foot six, you're way too tall. If we can make you six foot three, you'll feel so much better. And so we can't look at this thing as something like that. So we're not chasing an optimal, we're not chasing a standard and we're not chasing a number. Get the numbers out of your head, except for one reason, and I'll tell you that here in just a minute.

That's what I did when I constructed the wide ISA and narrow ISA archetypes. I was looking for behavioral bias that would help me determine the best intervention for this person to restore some capacity of adaptability. The ISA represents a structural element that this person will be biased for life. It is a genetically determined structural element that tells me what type of muscle activity they'll be biased towards, what type of breathing strategy they're biased towards, concentric/eccentric orientation, and whether they're biased towards internal or external rotation. That's why my archetypes are so important for me because they allow me to determine the best possible intervention to restore adaptability. I'm not trying to chase a number or push people towards something they have no capacity to reach. The ISA helps determine part of the structure that determines the behavioral bias of this human being. Most of our resting breathing should be relaxed and comfortable and not require any thought. When discussing the archetypes, we talk about using different breathing methods to reinforce a change. While it appears to be a dichotomy of inhalation and exhalation, they're actually occurring at the same time. Because the diaphragm does not descend uniformly in the two archetypes, different breathing approaches are needed when restoring movement capabilities. For narrow ISAs, because they trap air in the thorax, using a high pressure strategy reinforces the compensatory strategy and fails to create desired changes. We use a more relaxed mouth breathing, like fogging up a mirror, because slowing exhalation provides time to clear trapped air. For wide ISAs, we use more forceful exhalation to close the wide angle using superficial musculature like the external oblique. However, a problem with wide ISA archetypes is they're using high levels of muscle activity and forceful exhalation during breathing, reinforcing their concentric orientation strategy instead of creating change. So for wide ISA individuals with strong exhalation tendencies, we use very relaxed, casual breathing with slow movements and low effort to avoid reinforcing the strategy. We must consider what the individual brings to us and reason through strategies to alleviate or reinforce what we're trying to change. For performance, if someone needs high force output, we may use a concentric strategy and aggressive exhalation. We always take the individual into consideration.

With a wide ISA, we tend to use a little bit more forceful exhalation because what we have to do is we have to close the wide ISA and the way we do that is using superficial musculature like external oblique, which would then narrow that angle. So that actually does require a little bit more of an effortful exhalation. But here's the problem that people are running into, especially with the wide ISA archetypes, is that they're using high levels of muscle activity during the breathing activities, and they're using a more forceful exhalation. The problem that you're running into with that is I've already got somebody that's utilizing a very, very strong exhalation, concentric orientation type of strategy, and then all you're doing is reinforcing that during the activities that you're attempting to use to restore movement capabilities. So what you end up doing is you just reinforce the strategy because by driving the exhalation too aggressively, they recruit their superficial strategy just like they're doing under most circumstances and then you don't get the changes that you want. And so we have to take the superficial strategies into consideration whenever we're trying to coach somebody through some form of breathing activity, especially when we're trying to restore movement. So, under those circumstances, we actually use a very relaxed, casual type of breathing with very slow, methodical movements. Very, very low tension, very, very low effort. Because again, if we have this really, really strong, wide ISA, superficial, concentric orientation, you're never gonna get your way out of that by trying to use more effort. Because again, you just reinforce the strategy.

Okay? And so what this is, this is caused by a limitation in shoulder flexion below 90 degrees. So this is a posterior lower compression that steals the early phase of external rotation of arm elevation. Again, go to YouTube and check out my shoulder flexion video so you can actually see how to measure this thing. We're also going to end up with an anterior orientation of the thorax because for me to have that posterior lower compression, I got all the other stuff laid on top of it. So I got dorsal rostral. I got pump handle down. So again, I'm dealing with a lot of compressive strategy and the anterior orientation. So I've got an early loss of shoulder flexion, but because of the orientation, I'm going to hit that IR early and then I'm gonna run out of internal rotation very, very quickly. So again, I get this compressive strategy right at 90 degrees. So here's the solution. Number one, we want to eliminate interference. So we're going to avoid bilateral symmetrical exercises. So most of this stuff with a barbell in your hands is probably a bad idea. Anything that's considered a lat development exercise is probably a bad idea with an exception that I'm going to talk about in a minute. So that takes chin ups and stuff like that off the table. Next step, restore the dynamic ISA. I have to have an ISA that can move so I know that I can recapture breathing excursion. We're going to keep the activities in below, rather, 90 degrees of shoulder elevation. Because what we're going to try to do is we're going to try to capture that posterior lower expansion. But I don't want to provoke any symptoms in the process. And so again, everything's going to be below that shoulder level. The exception might be that we can use a variation of a deep squat pull down. This might not be the first exercise of choice, but it might be something that we can go to because there's a turn that's associated with this. So once we drive something with a reach below shoulder level or a supported activity below shoulder level, we may be able to access a higher level of flexion without any symptoms whatsoever, and especially in this deep squat where we're gonna get some of that posterior lower expansion in that position. And then we can superimpose a turn. So we're actually going to use the compensatory strategy that Mihail was talking about to our advantage. And we create that turn and we create a reciprocal expansion as we move one arm through the pull down at a time. And that's going to give us the expansion that we want. So there you go. So there's your solution. This is for the Hawkins Kennedy positive test.

The thing you have to recognize is that external rotation and internal rotation are not either/or; both happen simultaneously in different ways. For example, if you turn a femur to the extreme of external rotation and then fix it, then turn the pelvis toward that leg, the femur remains externally rotated. However, as the pelvis turns toward the leg, the external rotation bias decreases while the internal rotation bias increases. Both are present simultaneously, with internal rotation superimposed on external rotation. That's why I use the word 'bias' when discussing ER and IR—both occur at the same time, just to different degrees. The problem with the representation of internal/external rotation based on dead guy anatomy is that it's been depicted as a zero point with everything on one side being IR and everything on the other being ER, which creates a false representation of reality. To get closer to reality, we must recognize both are occurring simultaneously. The range of external rotation represents the maximum amount of motion I can create, while internal rotation moves between the extremes of external rotation. So when I say ER or IR, particularly in the context of a squat, we're talking about a bias. If you're standing up straight and initiating a squat, the bias will be toward external rotation. External rotation is not a line, arc, or plane—it's a space around you that you can access depending on your body's shape. For representation purposes, I've drawn it on a whiteboard, but a whiteboard is two-dimensional and flat. What you need to understand is that external rotation is a space around you. As you descend into the squat, you'll be biased toward external rotation. Wherever that space is—where you can access external rotation—is where the leg will tend to point when you initiate the squat. If you can expand the backside of your body (dorsal rostral expansion in the upper back) or achieve counterneutation in the pelvis, you can typically keep your knees pointed straight ahead because you can access external rotation bias in that position. As you descend, you move through that space of external rotation. As you descend farther, you'll go through a range where you have to increase internal rotation— the pelvis changes shape to get through that middle range, moving toward what would look like an exhaled position. The inhaled position at the top is an external rotation bias. As you move through the middle range, you must capture an exhaled bias (internal rotation), so the pelvis changes shape, though the femur might maintain its position. The overall representation of the pelvis and femur at that point is internal rotation. As you descend farther, you have to re-expand and return to external rotation bias at the bottom of the squat. How often have you seen a perfect squat? Almost never, because most people can't assume the ideal shape to pass through those ranges and capture the full position due to lack of adaptability, much of which is based on structure. We can tie this back to the initial question: what's your bias? Are you a wide ISA or narrow ISA? A narrow ISA would bias you toward being good at the top and bottom of the squat, while a wide ISA would generally make you good in the middle part of the squat.

That's where I can actually access it. As I descend farther into the squat, I'm going through a space where I have to increase the amount of internal rotation. The pelvis actually changes shape to get through that middle range. It moves towards what would look like an exhaled position of the pelvis. So the inhaled position of the pelvis is at the top—that's an external rotation bias. As I go through the middle range, I have to capture an exhaled bias, which is internal rotation. So the pelvis changes shape and the femur could maintain its position. But the overall representation of the pelvis and the femur at that point in time is internal rotation. As I descend farther, I have to re-expand and I have to go back towards my external rotation bias at the bottom of a squat. Now, how many times have you ever seen a perfect squat? Almost never, because most people can't assume the ideal shape to pass through those ranges and capture the full position because they don't have full adaptability. And a lot of that's just based on structure. So now we can go all the way back to what's your bias? Are you a wide ISA guy or a narrow ISA guy? That would bias you towards one end of the spectrum. So if I'm a narrow ISA guy, I'm really good at the top and the bottom of the squat. If I'm a wide ISA guy, I'm really good in that middle part of the squat, generally speaking.

Bill, can I ask a question on that? Absolutely not. I was on a roll, dude. You interrupted my training. No, go ahead. Of course you can. Is this why if you watch a, I watch a lot of power with their squad just repetitively over time. And once you see they hit certain areas, they either have like a hip hinge or something goes wonky. Yeah. They're out of room. throughout a room. So here you go. So let's just say that you can't expand posteriorly. Knowing full well that to initiate the squat and move through an extra rotation bias or to hit the bottom of the squat, which is an extra rotation bias, and I can't do that. So I'm initiating the squat more towards my internal rotation bias. And so it's gonna look, for lack of a better explanation, hingey. It's gonna look more like my deadlift than it is my Olympic weightlifter is sitting down at the bottom of his squat, right? Because that, and again, it could be physical structure. It could be the training strategies that you've been using that don't allow a shape change to occur that allows you to access that motion. So again, you can diagnose, I've been doing this a lot lately. I gotta stop that. So you can diagnose a squat or what people can and can't do, based on that shape as they move through the squat. So when I see somebody that's got this really, really hingy squat, they've got what would be termed a really strong lordosis as they're trying to squat, That's a pelvis that is compressed on the backside and anteriorly oriented. Very, very useful, very useful for producing force, very useful for stopping motion from occurring. So again, let's use Joseph's power lifter as an example. So as they try to squat, they don't want to squat too deep. They want to stop the motion at a very specific point where they just get far enough down towards the ground where they get a pass from the judge. I did it again. Somebody slapped my wrist. Where they pass their lift, so they get their white lights so they can say, oh, it was a good squat or it was not a good squat. And so then that becomes useful under those circumstances, but it doesn't make it better than something else. It just means that it is a variation. So when you see someone's knees deviate, when you put, one second, when you see someone's knees deviate early in a squat, And then people say, you're externally rotating. What they're doing is they're moving their knees apart because at that point in time, the shape of their body does not allow them to access extra rotation straight ahead because it's out here. Extra rotation is out there. That's where they find it based on their physical structure or based on the context of the lift or the performance of the movement. That's why extra rotation is a space that is around you based on the shape of your body. Neutral spine.

Absolutely not. I was on a roll, dude. You interrupted my training. No, go ahead. Of course you can.

Is this why if you watch a lot of powerlifters with their squat just repetitively over time, and once they hit certain areas, they either have like a hip hinge or something goes wonky?

Yeah. They're out of room. So here you go. Let's just say that you can't expand posteriorly. Knowing full well that to initiate the squat and move through external rotation bias or to hit the bottom of the squat, which is an external rotation bias, and I can't do that. So I'm initiating the squat more towards my internal rotation bias. And so it's gonna look, for lack of a better explanation, hingey. It's gonna look more like my deadlift than it is my Olympic weightlifter sitting down at the bottom of his squat, right? Because that, and again, it could be physical structure. It could be the training strategies that you've been using that don't allow a shape change to occur that allows you to access that motion. So again, you can diagnose what people can and can't do based on that shape as they move through the squat. When I see somebody that's got this really, really hingy squat, they've got what would be termed a really strong lordosis as they're trying to squat. That's a pelvis that is compressed on the backside and anteriorly oriented. Very, very useful for producing force, very useful for stopping motion from occurring. So again, let's use a powerlifter as an example. As they try to squat, they don't want to squat too deep. They want to stop the motion at a very specific point where they just get far enough down towards the ground where they pass the judge. Where they pass their lift, so they get their white lights so they can say, oh, it was a good squat or it was not a good squat. And so then that becomes useful under those circumstances, but it doesn't make it better than something else. It just means that it is a variation. When you see someone's knees deviate early in a squat, people say, 'you're externally rotating.' What they're doing is they're moving their knees apart because at that point in time, the shape of their body does not allow them to access external rotation straight ahead because it's out here. External rotation is out there. That's where they find it based on their physical structure or based on the context of the lift or the performance of the movement. That's why external rotation is a space that is around you based on the shape of your body.

Got it.

'That's a bad word. See, everybody freaked out for a second, didn't they? They go, I didn't hear him say it, did you? Yeah, he said neutral. Yeah. Gotta get rid of that one, pal. Spine moves. Through every squat, it moves. Okay? There is no ideal, there's no one, there are many. Okay? You're spanked. That's your first spank, your first call and you get spanked on the first call. Wow.'

I think it's a good sign.

You know I have a list of words, right? Are you unfamiliar with that? There's a few people on the call that have been around me long enough. They kind of know where all the bad words are. So Damien here is having trouble with this sticking point in his squat. He wants to know why it happens. Good morning. Happy Friday. I have a coffee in hand and it is perfect. Okay. Wow. So it's kind of an unusual Friday. It is a holiday for some and just a normal Friday for some. So if you're celebrating, enjoy yourself. And if you're not celebrating, have a great Friday so far. Okay. Yesterday's Coffee and Coaches Conference call was great. We had a great time. We went two hours. It felt like 10 minutes. We covered a lot of ground on a lot of topics, but it was very, very squat heavy. And we talked about a lot of aspects of the squat, especially the interaction of internal and external rotation and pressure management and such. And so I wanted to throw this segment up for you. Because anyway, at some point in time, you're gonna have to watch something today. Might as well watch this and actually learn something by accident, perhaps. But regardless, enjoy the segment. Have a great Friday, and I will see you next week. Right. Under a normal circumstance, again, we're making this comparison to an ideal. We would want to be able to externally rotate again to access that space. But if you move your feet apart, if you point your toes out and your knees follow and you're capturing depth, the femur is rotating inward. Okay. And there's good reasons for that because of the way that intramotation influences the position and the shape of the pelvis also influences how much pressure you create inside your body. So if I release the pressure inside my body in a deep squat and I have a barbell on my chest, it's highly unlikely that I'd be able to stand up with it if I release too much. So I have to maintain internal rotation with this force into the ground so I can keep pushing up, so I can maintain high levels of pressure inside my body so I can eventually push back up. Because if I can't produce pressure upward, I don't go upward. I stay down. Right? So again, we're tuning, that's why I say this, internal extra rotation is happening at the same time. We're tuning how much ER we need to get depth and how much IR we need to keep force going up. That's why there's no black and white. You can't say, oh, this is ER and this is IR because they work together. They don't work in opposition. They're not opposites, right? They're always there at the same time. It's just to what degree?

I have a question related to this. I'm wondering then, is there ever a point like when does the shape actually change? Is it more just gradual? How can you ever associate like, I guess an identifying label? There are my air quotes. ERIR. Do we ever end up at 50-50 in which the bias shifts?

Yeah. So think about it, Grace. There has to be a point. There has to be this one point where the force output is maximum, right? And the effort is at maximum. So everything sort of collides together and then changes. So I have this ER that's disappearing, this IR that's increasing. And then they meet at this one point in time and space. And that's where this maximum force output is, where there's almost no motion and time stops. And the highest force that's possible is being produced. And then they just kind of pass each other and then go through it. If this is the top of my squat, and everything goes like this, and this is the maximum force that I need, and then this is me going to depth in the squat, and everything spreads back out, and then as I push back out, I hit the maximum force spot again, and then it expands back out. You see it? So everything does this. Everything in the whole universe moves this way. We move from a position of expansion to compression to expansion. So there has to be a place where that happens. Can you pick it out? We have representations of it. That's why I talk about things like the sticking point. So the sticking point in a squat, if you've ever put enough weight on your back and you've done enough reps, is the spot where people come up out of the squat and then they slow down dramatically and they grind and grind and grind and then push through it and it gets easier, right? So they look at the sticking point and go, why does this happen? Because that's where this transition is occurring. So you can see it. Can you see the exact moment where it happens? No. But in every movement where we have this expansion to compression to expansion again, whether we're walking across the ground, there is a point where the maximum force is applied to the ground. Yeah, it's not your maximum force that you could tolerate or produce. It's just the maximum force in that activity, right? So walking is this. Okay? A squat is that. Right? There's a point where that force is at maximum for that activity, for the activity that we're describing.

Can you elaborate a little more, please?

Yeah. So think about it, Grace. There has to be a point where the force output is maximum, and the effort is at maximum. Everything sort of collides together, and then it changes. So I have this external rotation that's disappearing, and internal rotation that's increasing. They meet at this one point in time and space, and that's where the maximum force output is, where there's almost no motion and time stops. The highest possible force is being produced. Then they just pass each other. If this is the top of my squat, and everything goes like this, and this is the maximum force that I need, and then this is me going to depth in the squat, and everything spreads back out. As I push back out, I hit the maximum force spot again, and then it expands back out. You see it? Everything in the whole universe moves this way—from expansion to compression to expansion. So there has to be a place where that happens. We can pick it out. We have representations of it, like the sticking point in a squat. If you've ever put enough weight on your back and done enough reps, the sticking point is where people come up out of the squat, slow down dramatically, grind through it, and then push through and it gets easier. That's where the transition is occurring. Can you see the exact moment when it happens? No. But in every movement where we have expansion to compression to expansion—whether walking or squatting—there is a point where the maximum force is applied. It's not your absolute maximum force, just the maximum force in that activity.

So getting stuck in the sticking point, does that mean you have trouble transitioning shapes or that actually, or could it also be that you have trouble creating IR enough force production to get out of that shape? I guess that would be.

How about a yes? How about we say yes? Because I think you're describing, everybody's kind of going like this. It's like, okay, that's the maximum shape change that I can produce under these circumstances. And so you go up and you literally meet the force that's trying to crush you. And then you stop dead. Anybody ever do a squat like that, where you just like sitting there and you're pushing and pushing and your spotter's going, come on. And you're going, this is it. You know and then it's like uh, oh and then what happens you release the pressure and you start going the wrong way. So literally you have demonstrated your maximum shape changing force producing capabilities in that lift. That was it. You're done, your toast, you have just represented your ability to overcome gravity.