Greetings, hope you got your neuro coffee in hand, I got mine. And that is perfect as usual. All right, I got a Q and A question that I was pretty excited about because it's referencing the terminology that we use to describe a lot of the things on my videos. And so I think there's a little bit of confusion in regard to those terms that we use to describe position and strategy and such because many of them are synonymous, but it requires a little bit of perspective to understand them. So we're going to try to clarify that in this video. And the question comes from Andrew. And Andrew says, one thing that would help me better understand and apply some of the concepts you reference in your videos is aligning more precisely on terminology. Specifically, some of the terms and concepts you frequently use feel synonymous even though they're not. So what Andrew is talking about are things like an exhalation strategy, compression strategy, and concentric orientation. They're all related. And they can be superimposed and therefore they can all occur at the same time under certain circumstances. But in certain contexts, maybe one is more influential or we're speaking specifically more about one aspect of it. And so that element stands out a little bit more. And so that's why we need to use a specific terminology. But let's go through these and clarify. So he's got a list of terms that he just asked me to clarify. And so let's knock him out one at a time. So his first one is flexion extension. I tend to not use flexion extension all that much other than to describe the traditional planar movements so we can have a conversation because flexion extension really doesn't exist in our movement capabilities that it was a planar movement to describe an observable movement, but because we only have one plane in which we move, which would be transverse plane, basically. And I even question whether that one exists when we talk about space and such, but those are just traditional movements. Afflection obviously is an external rotation movement. Extension is obviously an internal rotation movement. So please keep that in mind as we go through those types of discussions. That's just so we can communicate. It's just like talking in 3D when the real world is in 4D. Again, that's another discussion. We'll just set that one aside. Now we want to start looking at more of the broad scope or global strategies. And so when we talk about movement, there's only two strategies available to us. And that would be to expand or to compress. The easiest way to look at this is to look at a worm and how they move through space. So a worm is essentially just a tube full of fluid, and the worm shifts the fluid.

It expands on one side, compresses on the other, and it slowly works its way through space however it wants to move. You're basically a worm, and so we would move through space in the same way. From a global perspective, we create expansion or compression that allows us to change our shape and allows us to move through space. So from a broad scope, we either have an expansion strategy or a compressive strategy. Now, if we go one step deeper and we're still staying global, we think about how we influence our ability to expand and compress. One of those strategies is through breathing. As we breathe in, we expand, creating more volume inside the body. As we exhale, we reduce that volume. That's one of our primary strategies to create this expansion and compressive strategy. So we can say that if we're using inhalation to influence our expansion, we can discuss that element of the strategy. If we're talking about exhalation and compression, we can talk about that aspect of the strategy. Now, we don't have to move air to create compression and expansion strategies. Under those circumstances, we might not use the terms inhalation and exhalation, but if breathing is one of the primary drivers, we want to include that in the description. So we have expansion and compression, and we have inhalation and exhalation, and those are synonymous. Again, those are the broad scope global strategies. Now, if we think about how breathing influences the position of the entire body, as I breathe in, it tends to be an external rotation-based overall strategy of the human. As I exhale, it tends to be an internal rotation-based strategy. What this does is it changes the position and direction of many of our joints towards internal or external rotation. In doing so, muscles that surround those joints will pick up either a concentric or an eccentric orientation based on the position of the joint. This is going to allow certain motions to occur and prevent certain motions from occurring, and that's why we want to use the concentric to eccentric orientation as a descriptor. We're looking more at a local strategy around a joint or a smaller area of the body. So let me give you a for instance. If I eccentrically orient the posterior hip, that's going to allow hip flexion to occur. If I eccentrically orient the posterior hip, chances are I'm going to get a concentric orientation on the opposing side. Here's the really cool thing: we can take our global expansion-compression strategy that we talked about that grossly describes movement, and we can move that to the local level when we talk about concentric and eccentric orientation. So let's use the hip example again. If I expand the posterior hip, that's eccentric orientation. If I compress the anterior side, that's concentric orientation. So I take this global representation of expansion and compression and I can look at that locally because it's going to be the exact same strategy.

We can take our global expansion-compression strategy that we talked about, which grossly describes movement, and we can move that to the local level when we talk about concentric and eccentric orientation. So let's use the hip example again. If I expand the posterior hip, that's eccentric orientation. If I compress the anterior side, that's concentric orientation. So I take this global representation of expansion and compression and can look at that locally because it's going to be the exact same strategy. The universal principle is when nature finds something that works, it repeats itself, and so this is one of those elements. We could use this as a fractal representation of movement where I'm looking at it at a smaller scale at the joint level and I'm looking at a macro scale when I'm talking about global movement of the body. Then we want to finally talk about the overcoming and yielding action of muscles. What we need to understand is that if I have a concentrically oriented muscle, that position of the muscle—so we're taking a snapshot in time—means that it would be shorter than its resting position if it had full excursion from its full extensibility to full compression. Again, we could think of that as the traditional concentric contraction being a shortening contraction. What I want you to look at it as is a shortened position relative to its middle, wherever that imagined middle may be. So it's behaving in a shortened position. When we talk about eccentric orientation, we're talking about the opposite. Eccentric actually means away from midline. So an eccentric orientation would be a muscle that is positioned longer than its imagined middle, wherever it may be if it has full excursion. So now I can describe two different positions of the muscle. Again, as a snapshot in time, I can describe its length, but now I need to describe what it's trying to do. If it is limiting motion, then I would describe that as an overcoming contraction. That would be a muscle that is attempting to shorten to limit motion in the opposing direction. So if I use my elbow and position myself at 90 degrees of elbow flexion and brace here while trying to pull this way, that would be an overcoming contraction. If I am trying to hold position against the resistance that's trying to move me, that would be yielding. So in both circumstances, the arm doesn't have to move, but my intentional strategy is different. If I was positioned in a lengthened position, that would be an eccentric orientation. If I was trying to shorten it and was being successful or just attempting to shorten it, that's still an overcoming contraction. If I am moving in that direction, yielding contractions allow movement to occur. That means it's giving way and allowing motion to occur. That would be a yielding action.

If I am moving in that direction, so yielding contractions allow movement to occur. That means it's giving way and allowing motion to occur. That would be a yielding action. And so now we have this, this broad scope understanding of terminology that we have to describe the overall strategy. How does that strategy occur through breathing? How does the position affect the orientation of a muscle? And then what action am I trying to produce? And so now you can see that I have an expansion compression strategy. I have an inhalation exhalation strategy. I have concentric and eccentric orientation. and then I have overcoming and yielding actions. So hopefully that helps you in sort of bringing this to a level of understanding that it becomes useful to you. If you have any questions specifically about any of these terms, please throw them out there. We're going to use these in context as we progress through videos. And obviously, if you look back through some of the older videos, you're going to see these terms used. So now maybe those are a little bit more meaningful to you. But hopefully that's helpful. And then we will keep up with the Q&As. And I'll see you later.

So I'm pulling the two bones together, the synovial fluid. the synovial fluid gets pushed out of the joint equally in both directions. And so what I have is concentric on concentric. This actually creates a very stable position of a joint, but it doesn't allow a motion to occur. So this actually may occur in someone that has a very, very strong training experience in the gym. So they lift heavy weights, they carry a lot of muscle mass, or they perform at high rates of speed or high forces. And so they use a lot of concentric on concentric muscle activity to create stability in a joint. So we could have that scenario going on. Under normal circumstances for normal movement, what we actually have to do is create a gradient across the joint. So we'll have one side of the joint that has a high pressure strategy, which would be concentric. In the other side, we have a lower pressure strategy, which will be eccentric. And this is what allows movement to occur under most situations. And so as long as we can create this scenario, this is what allows us to recapture range of motion. Because the people that come in with restrictions tend to have some sort of concentric bias or a compressive strategy or an exhalation strategy. that actually prevents motion from occurring. And so I could have the same thing here where on one side of the joint I would be biased towards concentric orientation and then on the other side I would be biased towards eccentric orientation. And what that may allow is a lot of motion in one direction, but not a lot of motion in the other direction. So for instance, if I am biased towards an inhalation strategy, I may show a lot of external rotation in my joints and not very much internal rotation or vice versa if I am in an exhaled strategy. So again, this can represent my ability to move through space under normal circumstances if I can create concentric here, eccentric here, or it may represent a strategy that limits my motion in one direction. If we were to apply a stretch that fails. So viscoelastic properties of tissues aside. So we have viscoelastic tissues that may show a temporary change in the ability to acquire range of motion just because of the property of the tissues. What we're talking about here is the contractile element. in regard to the muscles. If I take a concentric on concentric situation and I pull on one side I may actually create a small enough gradient to acquire temporary small changes in range of motion but ultimately what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a strain on one side of the joint as I try to acquire an eccentric orientation where I have a muscle that is trying to stay concentrically oriented.

And so under these situations, this is where stretching is going to fail. So maybe you get an increase in stretch tolerance, maybe you get a temporary change in viscoelastic properties of tissues, but ultimately this is why stretching is going to fail. So what happens when stretching does work? So say for instance, say I'm doing a long seated toe touch, and I do it over time and eventually I find that my flexibility improves where I can actually take my forehead to my knees and I say, wow, my hamstrings really increased in their length. That's not really happening. What you're actually doing is you're actually creating this scenario in a favorable way where you're actually able to capture a gradient that allows greater motion to occur at the hip joint which might allow you to bend forward more or you're allowing the posterior aspect of the thorax and pelvis to expand to capture its inhalation capabilities and then I again capture gradient that allows me to move better. So the bottom line of this entire situation is for normal movement to occur or for your ability to recapture range of motion, you have to be able to create a gradient inside the joint or inside the space. So inside the space would be inside the thorax, inside the joint would be inside any synovial joint. If I cannot move the fluid from side to side across the joint, I cannot recapture range of motion. That's why using breathing and position and trying to acquire concentric orientation of eccentric musculature and in trying to capture eccentric orientation of concentric musculature is so important in reacquiring range of motion because I have to have this scenario. I have to have a gradient that exists to allow movement to occur.

I think people misunderstand meditation, believing it's about not reacting to the environment. However, you can't stop your brain from reacting. Instead, meditation provides a 'big brother' element where the prefrontal cortex can assess situations and prevent overreaction. This self-regulatory aspect is the most important part for lowering stress levels and recognizing that things aren't as bad or as good as they may seem, keeping you on an even keel. I had to stop using the meditation app because it started interrupting my thoughts. You begin with guided meditation and gradually transition away from it, learning to recognize when you don't need external guidance. While Andy from Headspace is brilliant and soothing initially, the app eventually becomes an interruption as you anticipate the voice rather than addressing your own thoughts. People also don't realize that the thoughts that arise during meditation are you processing your own issues. This can be scary because it brings up heavy things like past behaviors you're not proud of, but that's where you confront and release them. I highly recommend spending at least an hour alone with your thoughts—it's scary but incredibly useful for dumping anxieties, past regrets, and ruminating thoughts that interfere with focus and concentration. It's the most powerful thing I've ever done.