Oh, okay.

We'll do.

Really specific, because we use the extremities to turn the sacrum. It's not about the pelvis per se. We say the pelvis sometimes, but let's be really specific about the sacrum for now so we don't create confusion. Okay, so the leg forward lead leg is left and the sacrum is turned to the right. So that's a late propulsive strategy.

So narrow it down to four. You have time to talk about four things. Four things. That's it. And it's not four concepts. You have four things that you'll be able to make use of in that time frame. Because number one, it's like you have to pay attention to what you have to appreciate people's attention span. They're not going to be able to walk away an overwhelm of all this information.

Dropping that front foot a little bit.

Yeah. Okay, okay. Do you need more than that? Yeah, so think about it. So what sensory input do you have if I'm standing up? Other than my spatial senses that I use, vision, audition, et cetera. What is the most impactful sensation that you have? I only have contact with the ground. And so if you look at, I tell you what, if you look at shoe research, This is this is where where it really starts to show up so so they'll take, like, three different kinds of shoes, right, that are supposed to do different things to feed. And I think it's the sherry. I think is the researcher's name, DI, S-C-H-A-R-R-Y or something like that to Sherry. And what they did is they actually stuck markers in the bones of the feet, which must have been just the most pleasant of experiences. And then they put them in different shoes and then they monitor the bones of the feet. And what they found was is that the feet don't really change much at all regardless of what type of shoe you put someone in. However, what did change is the upstream muscle activity. And so it's kind of a big deal. So again, when you don't have a contact that's coming up from the ground, then the message doesn't get propagated up as to what you may want to be capturing in the hip or the pelvic orientation or the rest of the axial skeleton. So I'm very particular about how I orient the feet depending on where I want them in this propulsive cycle.

It's not so much off topic, but real quick. I just want to say it was so cool about the configurations, especially with martial arts. And then Michael just mentioned Jordan Burroughs, like with wrestlers, why they're always short, wide and stocky. It just makes so much sense. First is like those long guys who are like, have a certain style. It's just really cool. You can apply it to any sport.

OK.

I don't know. I think it's going to be an individual thing. I think some people are just really, really self-aware. And that's one of the greatest superpowers. And some of us find it early. I'm a late bloomer. I'm going to be 55 in May. So I'm a really late bloomer as far as I'm concerned. I think that if I would have had the opportunity to be exposed to the amount of information that is available now, I think it would be probably a different evolution. But I'm really happy about the way it turned out because I'm like ridiculously happy where I am in life in general. Like it took me forever to get here, but I'm really happy to be here. And so again, I think you just kind of, everybody finds their own way, but feeling lost is not something to worry about as long as you remain curious. And as long as you continue to ask questions and as long as you continue to seek more information and not just information, but to gain the experience that goes with it.

Okay, so Kegel exercises in isolation are not very helpful or effective because they don't respect the position of the pelvis. What you want to be able to do is create a shape change in the pelvis. We can do that through various positions. For instance, when you lie on your side, you get compression from side to side and can create an anterior-posterior diaphragm expansion. That's the advantage of being in a sidelying position. If you're having trouble creating a concentric orientation of the pelvic diaphragm, you need to first capture that position. If you've seen any of the inverted lazy bear exercises where you're in a quadruped position with your head down, that approximates what looks like a squat but is an unweighted pelvic outlet. This gives you a mechanical advantage to create the concentric orientation. That's why we put people in those positions. If I put your hips up and head down with the pelvic diaphragm unweighted and teach you to exhale in that position, I've captured the hip position I need. I can start to drive the pelvic orientation I want and get a concentrically oriented pelvic outlet based on the breathing pattern. Just like progressive resistance exercise by adding weight to the bar, all you need to do is progressively change the body's position. I slowly bring you to upright activities while continuing to drive the same strategy of exhalation and concentric orientation. Eventually, the inverted lazy bear exercise, where you're in quadruped or on your elbows with your hips up, becomes a box squat. We're going to talk about how external rotation measures get manipulated.

Yeah, okay.

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.

I guess I have 30.

Big chest.

I don't.

There, your world's changing.

Yes. Is there a curve? Curve meaning what? Like, does it look like a side bend through his trunk and his butt kind of skews to the right? Yes, and his chest rotates to the left. Yes, yes, yes. And if he like loses, he has no shoulder here.

OK.

And so, Johnny, when we talk about the internal rotation, I have to internally rotate my femur because I need to drive down into the ground through internal rotation. So more often than not, I'm going to be applying a little bit more force towards that medial compartment as I internally rotate the femur to push into the ground. And so if we talk about the pressure mechanism that we just talked about in regard to the arthritis, that's why we would probably see a bias towards more medial compartment problems than lateral compartment problems because we're applying forces into the ground. We have to, just because of gravity. Okay, so I'm going to breathe for a second. That's a lot to cover. Hope you guys have some questions. I'd be happy to answer those to the best of my ability. But that's kind of what we're talking about—bones not touching and how we develop arthritis in a nutshell. I hope it was useful for you. Have a great weekend and I'll see you next week.

Right, so they're just following where the volume is going. So we can only move into a space that we can expand. That's how we move. We move into a space by expanding. So we can press somewhere and then we expand somewhere else and that's the direction that we go. When you see someone accelerating straight down into a squat, they're expanding straight down. So the pelvic diaphragm is most likely eccentrically oriented. And so they're going to follow where the expansion goes. More often than not, when you see that acceleration, it's somebody that cannot produce enough concentric orientation to resist or reverse directions. So if anybody, since we went over everybody's PR deadlift, let's put a PR squat on your back for a second. If you've ever had a scenario where you sat down into a very, very heavy squat and you started to come up and you went right back down, that's the same scenario. It's not that you don't have concentric orientation. You just can't produce enough pressure to overcome the downward forces that are associated with the external load and the internal pressures at the same time. So it's literally the same scenario. What would you do under those circumstances to raise your ability to come up out of that deep squat with a very, very heavy load? It's the same strategy that you're going to use for anybody else. So do they have to back squat? Is there a reason that they would have to back squat? If there isn't, then what I would do is establish some element of control in a position that you can be successful first and foremost. So if I want to make a pretty squat first, which is probably under most circumstances what your goal is going to be, it stands to reason that I don't want to create another force downward that they're going to have to manage when they can't manage the first one. So it might be that you take any external load away.

Is that basically the rule? Yeah, it can't work.

Get a job and then work your business.

Right.

So there are a lot of activities that we can utilize rather than trying to rely on some ineffective form of stretching which might give you some sort of temporary impact in your ability to acquire the rack position but ultimately you have to re-teach yourself to expand in the appropriate areas to move the shoulder through its full excursion to get to the rack position. Now worst case scenario is we still have to train. So what are you going to be your substitutions? So right away, we elevate the heels, we get posterior expansion. So maybe that's going to be sufficient for you to acquire a better rack position and a more effective front squat. If you can't acquire the position for the shoulder, a really common substitution is to take some lifting straps, wrap them around the bar, and that's going to allow you to at least get the shoulder into a position where we can actually support the bar across the shoulders. But keep in mind, I still need to get that anterior posterior expansion in the thorax so I have a place to rest that weight. So the expansion of the thorax provides us the shelf that we're going to ultimately use to hold the rack position. Derek, hopefully that gives you some strategies and some ideas that you can allow us to improve your own front squat. If you have any questions, send them to askbillhartman at gmail.com. I will see you guys next week.

Yes. Yes. Very important for creating end-range rotations. Because the end range rotation is using a compensatory strategy to finish the turn, right? The more extreme and the more forceful or the tighter the turn that has to take place. So when you think about like a change of direction, a very, very aggressive change of direction, when they're coming out of the cut, to get that the last bit of turn to reorient the body into a straight line. That requires that. So we don't talk about this very much, but the scapular retraction towards the spine has to occur to create enough velocity out of the cut. If you don't do that, you don't get enough expansion to redirect into a straight line. You're talking about the single arm kind of a cable thing. The end range position of that is the position that you're going to use to produce the last element of turn to redirect out of a cut. But again, if you just watch the arm position, you'll see them trying to move the scapula to create the turn because the scapula are those paddles that block things really, really well because they're very solid. They create a compressive strategy. And then if you know that if somebody's trying to retract their scapula to make a turn, you know they're trying to drive expansion on the other side. Question is, is do they even have expansion on the other side? Good morning. Happy Friday. I have no coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right, we are squeezing this one in between mentorship calls this morning. So I'm going to dig right in. We got a neck question. This is kind of exciting. I haven't had one in a long time. It comes from Adrian. Adrian says, I have an athlete with a great deal of neck limitation who appears to be very compressed in the upper ribs. Are there any good tests that can lead me toward a solution or let me know that I'm making progress short of trying to assess neck mobility directly? Does compression of the manubrium affect neck position and movement? So this is actually a really, really good question. Trying to assess neck mobility directly by hand can be somewhat unreliable. And if you're not a manual therapist and you're not constantly touching people, then it difficult to develop that feel. So it would be helpful to have some fairly reliable tests that would give us an idea of what might be influencing neck range of motion. And I think we do have a couple of really good ones. So you asked about the manubrium. And there's a great way to test whether we have this mobility in the manubrium. So when we have a down pump handle, the manubrium is going to follow a little bit later in the compensatory sequence. An easy test to determine whether we have a down manubrium is actually the old school aptly scratch test. So this is where you reach behind your back and try to touch the opposite shoulder blade. And this is internal rotation behind the back. And actually to access this range of motion, we have to be able to eccentrically orient some of this anterior musculature. So if we think about if we're going to pick on a muscle, clavicular pec for instance would have to be able to eccentrically orient force to reach behind our back and touch that opposite shoulder blade. So if it's concentrically oriented and creating a compressive strategy that's pulling the manubrium down, you're not going to be able to reach behind your back. When we think about another potential influence on the neck position, especially the lower cervical spine, we have to have dorsal rostral expansion to have normal rotation through the lower cervical spine. So our big test for that would be end range shoulder flexion. And so now we have two really powerful tests to let us know whether we're getting this anterior posterior expansion especially in the upper rib cage. Now from a strategy standpoint, we want to monitor these tests as we're intervening to make sure that we're on the right track. But the first thing that we want to look at is we're going to have differences in our Y's and in our T's. And so when we think about the compensatory sequence and how they arise, so if we're looking at a T, we may still have some upper dorsal rostral expansion in many cases. So their in range shoulder flexion might still be good, but they're not going to be able to reach behind their back. So in this case, we're still going to have some lower cervical rotation, but upper cervical rotation is going to be restricted. And so what you'll typically see is that typical forward head posture. We have the upper cervical extension, lower cervical flexion by traditional representations, manubrium will be depressed. If we're looking at a Y under the same situation, you're probably going to have dorsal rostral compression, again based on the way that these compensatory sequences arise. So in this case, we're going to have a limited amount of lower cervical rotation, but we're probably still going to have upper cervical rotation available to us, but this is going to be a more military-style posture where you're going to see the mandible pulled backward actively, which is going to pull the hyoid bone up. As far as the treatment training strategy goes, first step, let's not do anything that interferes. So we want to eliminate that. So bilateral symmetrical pressing activities tends to be a bad idea because it's just going to emphasize the compressive strategy that we may have that's pulling that manubrium down. If we have the dorsal rostral compression as well, then we want to take away symmetrical pulling activities, especially things like face pulls, T's and Y's. Because if it's already compressed, we don't want to emphasize more concentric orientation to drive more compression there. So when we go into the gym and we start to train these people, we're going to start to think about for our Y's, we're going to use like a high low cable press. So we're going to play in this angle that would emphasize the inhalation capabilities, as well as maybe some say chopping activities to again promote this posterior expansion. Once we can recapture that posterior expansion, now we can start to work on a little bit more of our reaching activities at 90 degrees and start to emphasize that anterior expansion. For the T's, we're just going to reverse the process. We're going to start somewhere in this 90 degree shoulder flexion reaching activities, and then we're going to try to expand that posterior aspect of the thorax. Adrian, I hope this gives you some ideas to work with. You've got a couple of tests that you can follow. You've got some strategy as well as a representation of probably what you're looking at. So if you have any other questions, please let me know at askbillhartman at gmail.com, askbillhartman at gmail.com. Have a great Friday. Have an outstanding weekend. I'll see you next week.

I started with your NRRCI mode.

We do talk about the importance of sleep, especially with the group of people who are losing weight. That's one of the big rocks we focus on, especially if they're feeling frustrated that they're not losing weight. And we kind of look back at their stress management and go into how they're sleeping. Are they getting adequate sleep? But I just didn't know if you're seeing people who are in pain and if they're getting adequate sleep, do they actually go through rehab a little bit faster than people who are getting less sleep? And how, I guess, would sleep impact your side of the spectrum?

Yes.

They also see the large complete opposite spectrum: the very high arch, which is a very rigid foot. We started to notice, again, observing those that tend to have very flat, collapsed feet also tend to have a lot of bounce and are considered like your high flyers or dunkers. And then some of the rigid ones we've seen are just kind of stuck in the mud a little bit.

The secrets off. I never thought of that with pain before. So basically, like we were talking with weight loss, I talked about it as action goals versus outcome goals. But I never thought about it from a pain perspective, which is really clever.