How many different representations are there?

The same rule applies. So anytime the load is magnified. So the heavier the resistance, the harder I have to push into the ground. The longer I push into the ground, which means that you're going to bring the ERs in. So think about this for a sec. So let's put 10 kilograms on a sled. Okay. And we'll drag that. How big a step can you take? Pretty big. Okay. Now I want you to put 100 kilos on the sled. And what happens to your step length? Yes, shorter. Exactly. Why does it get shorter? Because you don't have ERs anymore. So the rule applies. So when you're using sled work to try to create relative motions, the load matters. We can go back to Matt's question. So the position matters. The load matters. The extremity behavior matters. And so you just have to decide what it is that the intention right? It's like, I can create more emotion with resistance, but the resistance has to be to such a degree that I still have access to compression expansion because that's what's turning is. The minute I ramp up where compression becomes the predominant behavior, I've just narrowed my cones, so to speak, into the IR representation.

The opposite of what everybody thinks is that one way is that you lift things with muscles because that's what we see. It's easier to see muscles than it is to sort of see the tendon behavior or fascial behavior. But it's like there's no way to take the muscle away from everything and just watch it behave and then say, well why is it connected to all of these connective tissues? Yeah, well because that's what produces the force. That's what's elongating and I mean walking is incredibly efficient. It's very low energy because it's mostly connective tissue behavior. It's like the muscles turn on and off to tune these things so that the connective tissues behave at the right time so they can dampen forces or create stiffness when I need more force. Okay, right? So there's like a point in every step that you take where there's a maximum force into the ground and you have to be like and it's literally like a jolt. And so that's what continues to propel me forward. But then I have all of these connective tissues throughout my entire body that dampen the wave behavior that allows it to look very smooth. Otherwise your head would be snapped around and your vision would be so blurry. Yeah, so there's a lot of cool stuff about connective tissues in regards to the behavior and dampening protection, you name it. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And it doesn't rely on the nervous system. So it's fast. It's like instantaneous because the nervous system, even though the nervous system is very fast, takes like 300 milliseconds when you step your toe to get to your brain and you go, because you ever step your toe? You step your toe and you go, oh this is going to hurt.

It's always fun to talk about this stuff.

It begins turning that way, right? Swing through.

Got it.

Awesome. Any other questions?

And then, how are we doing on time? We've got four minutes. So then I've kind of been doing almost a cookie cutter thing. Because I kept thinking in my head, it was like a posterior compressive strategy on that left side that was pushing up and over. And I'm ready to clear that up on a coaches and coffee call. And Alex, I remember, had asked that question. But then I guess, then the other thing would have to really be looking at the person's foot to make sure like what part of the gate cycle they're kind of biased towards to get them out of it to really see that change or could you at first?

Get out of here. All right, man. No worries. That's a good question. Good questions. Really. This is going to help a lot of people. This is going to help a lot of people. So, because I think that people perceive these things to be the same when they're not even remotely the same. Okay.

I use that a fair amount because it's one, it's really, really easy. And it's something that I can give somebody to take home. Like in my situation where I'm working in the purple room, it's like I can give somebody elastic resistance and I can say, here's what I want you to do. Here's why I want you to do it. And then they can capture their positions that I'm looking for. Because typically, a lot of the folks that come to see me need more relative motion. What makes sense?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so I totally get where you come from. So first and foremost, let's talk about the lever issues first, okay? The thing that I think is confusing in regards to the representation is that we still have a lot of cadaver based anatomy concepts that we use. And it's not that they're not useful. So there are times where that model helps us visualize things and discuss things. So I can still talk that model if we need to make a point because there are there are things that we pull against to create a shape change. The thing that you got to recognize, so when you look at like the way that a ladder a pack attaches to the humerus and produces the shape change in the turns that we would talk about, you got to understand that that thing is surrounded by water. And that's something that a book can't show you that. And a dry cadaver dissection can't show you that because dry dead guys do have levers, okay? And that's why that model exists is because, and like I said, it's useful for an understanding of how some of this stuff is produced. But now put a water balloon and then stick all that stuff inside the water balloon. And that's literally we're creating these fluid shifts. When we're creating areas of density, what we do is we slow the motion down in that area. Right? So you have one area of the body that moves faster than the other. And so that's what's producing this relative motion between a segment that is moving and one that appears to not be moving. It's just moving slower. And then we have cancellation out of directions. Right. So, so if I have, if I have two, two sides that can turn in opposition to one another, so they can both internally and externally rotate against one another. Right. So if I want to turn left, they both turn in the same direction. If I want to turn right, they both turn in the same direction. If I want to internally rotate, they turn towards each other. They cancel each other out and my force goes down. If I want to actually rotate, they both turn away from each other and they go up. So now, I can see the light bulb going off in your head, right? Now you start to see where this stuff happens. And so what you're doing is, remember, ER and IR are always occurring at the same time. Right. So if I'm if I'm seeing motion occurring, I have established a field in which I can move. So that's my extra rotation field. And then I superimpose the IRS on top of that. Okay. But understand that. Okay. So if you are, um, you've done dynamic effort bench presses before, right?

The lumbar area all the way up is, it's like visible and it's something that when that kind of kicks in, because when you're holding the brace, you kind of like go to it. Like when that kicks in, then the shoulders just, it can't, it can't hang because everything's just so far pushed.

And then I think you talked about, and I guess maybe if it still applies, but can you have all the information on the Zoom call, like the starter and that lazy bear position, and then just like gradually progressing her to upright squatting.

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.

Have a great evening over there in Russia, okay? All right, bye. How about we talk about clenching your teeth and creating extension for performance? Good morning. Happy Tuesday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right. It is Tuesday. Clinic day to day, so very, very busy. Got a lot to do before we roll into the clinic. So let's dig into today's Q&A. And today's Q&A is with Sarah, and I've known Sarah for a little while now. She actually went through the intensive, and so we communicate on a regular basis with ongoing communication in that regard. And finally got a chance to talk to her face-to-face, which is fun. And we talked a little bit about some issues associated with people that clench their teeth, especially at night and influence of guards and things like that. But then we went into a situation where you actually need to create what it would be considered traditional spinal extension for performance. So we were talking about gymnastics and a couple of other sports, but there are situations where we actually want to use these compensatory strategies for performance. And so we talked about how to create some of those situations. So this is a pretty interesting call. I'm sure you will enjoy it. For those of you that would like to participate in a 15 minute consultation, just go to askbillhartmanedgmail.com, askbillhartmanedgmail.com, put in your request, throw me a question. and we'll get that arranged. We've got a few calls to get through yet, so there's a little bit of a backlog, so please be patient. Have a great Tuesday. Here's the call and I'll see you tomorrow. All right, we are recording. Sarah, what is your question?

So you have basically four little talks inside of your big talk. And then you leave time for questions. So what would be most impactful for the people that you work with to walk away with? That's the questions that you have to ask yourself when you're organizing this talk to make it useful.

So if I had an orientation of fibers as such that if I loaded them at a higher rate, I can make them really, really stiff. And so we actually have that. So when we look at the fascia that surrounds everything. So we talk about the periosteum. We talk about the fascia that surrounds all of the ligament structure and all of the structures around the knee. So the knee is very busy when you look at it from a connective tissue standpoint. And so what happens is when we load that joint, those viscoelastic tissues behave very, very similar to my silly putty. They get very, very stiff and they create this rigidity around the knee and that actually pushes the bones apart. So now we have a mechanical protective mechanism that helps us keep those bones apart. So that's very, very useful. It's a little counterintuitive, too, by the way, when you think about it. It's like you think of these are like tension elements and stretchy stuff. They become very, very stiff, so keep that in mind. Now, let's go to inside the knee joint. So the knee is filled with water, basically. It's synovial fluid, so it's water with some protein stuff that floats around. Well, water is this really, really unique substance that is cooler than you can imagine. And so water behaves differently, just like our viscoelastic tissues behave differently under different forces, water behaves differently depending on what substance it's next to. And so we have hyaline cartilage that lines the joint. If we talk about the knee, so at the end of the femur we have hyaline cartilage. On the tibia we have hyaline cartilage. And so when the water is right next to it, it promotes the separation of the water into positively and negatively charged water. So the negative charged water is right along the hyaline cartilage on both sides. And then the positively charged water is going right through the middle of the knee. So if you took the north end of two magnets and try to push them together, you can feel the repulsion between the two magnets. So this positively charged water is constantly trying to push its positive charges apart. And so now we've got this electromagnetic force that is now pushing the knee apart. So now we have an electromagnetic effect to create this separation. And so there's a school study from 1980 from Teriyama. It's Japanese. And they took fresh cadaver knees with intact synovial joints and they applied downward pressure through the joint about 220 pounds into the knee joint and they compressed and then it hit sort of like a maximum position but the bones didn't touch. They got really, really close together but they did not touch. And so right away, even in a joint that's not living but it's intact and we have all the structures available to us, it still behaves similarly so it keeps the bones apart.

You're trying to create the ER or the IR as much as you can.

And would your strengths influence that? I mean, if, for example, a male has a relative motion, it will need more weight before losing the relative motions.

So what does the internal rotation representation of the pelvis look like? And how might you go about acquiring this? And he asks because he wants to relate it to the golf swing. Because we've talked about this before, where I mentioned that the two ends of the golf swing are external rotation, which I think is confusing to a lot of people. Because I think that the representation has always been that it is an IR position. One of the things that we always need to understand is that we have superimposition of internal and external rotations. It's not an either or. So dead guy anatomy has given us this imaginary zero point that's straight up, and so anything out here is ER, anything in here is IR, and the reality is that we have this expansive field of ER, and we superimpose internal rotation on top of that. if we take away the external rotation field. So if I squeeze this external rotation field inward, then that creates a limitation on my internal rotation capabilities. And this is where we're gonna see compensatory strategies evolve. And we'll get to that kind of at the end of this talk where we talk about some of the substitutions that we may see for this loss of range of motion. But we wanna go back and look at how our external rotation represents our expansive strategy and we move towards internal rotation. This is where we have that maximal compressive capability and this is where our highest force is produced at this point of maximal compression. Our expansion is where we demonstrate movement and velocity. So let's not confuse the two because we move into these positions of internal rotation and that's where time stops. That's where we squeeze. That's where we compress and that's where we produce our highest forces. Now, what does this ER look like in the pelvis? Because, Johnny, I want to talk about the ER position so we can move you towards the IR position so you get that representation as well. Now, what I would refer you to, we talked about early and late propulsive strategies in a recent video. I think it was back in December. I'll post the little thingy here that you can click on. on YouTube, so we're going to look at this early propulsive strategy. I'm going to talk about the right hip. If I was a right-handed golfer, this would be my backside hip, so my back swing is going to go to the right. What we're going to see, Johnny, is we're going to see this sacrum moving back on the ilium because I've got to turn the sacrum towards the right side. I've got to turn the lumbar spine towards the right side. Lumbar spine can't turn in that direction if I'm internally rotated on this side. So I have to have this representation of external rotation. Now, does that mean that there's no internal rotation? Absolutely not. Because I have to create this and then I can actually turn into this hip. And so again, I'm starting to superimpose internal rotation on top of my field of external rotation that is created by my early propulsive representation of the pelvis. So, let me reach over here. Give me one second. I gotta grab my foot. So now, if we talk about foot position, and you'll see this on just about every golfer, but when I see my foot position, I got this early propulsive representation of the foot. that's gonna look like that as they move into their backswing. But I wanna make sure that I hang onto this first metatarsal head because if I pick that up off the ground, I am in a compensatory strategy. And so you'll see this in people that do not have their full field of external rotation. They try to internally rotate on top of it and they don't have enough rotational capabilities. So they end up picking up their big toe off the ground and they can still turn, but it becomes an orientation. And if I can recapture the first metatarsal head as I perform my downswing, a lot of good things can still happen. But if I don't do that, then I'm all over the place. I'm going to hit that. I'm going to hit thin. Who knows what the clubface is going to do actually under those circumstances. And so if you're spraying the ball over the place, I would start looking at your right foot position. If we look at the thorax, we're going to have the same concept that we have in the pelvis. So where I was creating that yielding action in that early propulsive representation, I'm going to have a thorax that looks like basically the same shape. I'm going to create a delay. in that right side of the thorax. I'm going to have an expansive strategy in the right side of the thorax, and that's what's going to allow me to turn. So turning is both sides moving forward at the same time. It's just that one side is moving faster than the other, and that's what produces the turn. So I have the delay on the right, I have overcoming on the left, and that's what produces my turn into my back swing. Now, Johnny, your question about the internal rotation representation. So if I am moving from my expanded inhalation, ER strategy, early propulsive representation in the backswing, I need to get to IR. So that's going to turn the sacrum straight ahead.

Okay? So just pay attention to those.

Mostly.

Take a breath in that I'm.

Maybe I'm trying to move away from that.

And then in return, I can also position you to where it can. That's typically why therapists on here, it's like any old school manual muscle tests that you do, they're still useful in the fact that it will help you confirm positions. So let's just say that you were testing hip extension or you were testing glute max. So the traditional manual muscle test would be a prone hip extension kind of a thing where you're testing glute max, right? And I believe they would bend the knee to try to eliminate hamstrings as you would. But the reason that that would test weak is because you lack the ability to capture the traditional hip extension position because the fluid volume in the synovial joint is too far posterior you can't compress it therefore you cannot move into that space and therefore you cannot produce force there. And so again it's like there's nothing wrong with the muscle tissue itself. The muscle tissue produces force. What the concern is is where are you in space and can you even access that space to produce force? If you can't get there you can't produce force there. That's all. It's real simple.

Just knee for right now.

Yeah, and you just land on the ground.

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. I don't think you can see this very well. So I got helices drawn on 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, 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 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. So what comes out of all this stuff, so all the people that came before us had bits and pieces of information that are very, very useful. But you got to look at a whole bunch of resources and then try to bring them together. And that's kind of what I did when I constructed the wide ISA and narrow ISA archetypes is I was looking for the behavioral bias that would help me determine what the best intervention for this person is to restore some capacity of adaptability and so what the ISA represents is one small piece of a big puzzle because what it represents is the structural element that this person will be biased for for life. It is a genetically determined structural element that will tell me what type of muscle activity they're going to be biased towards. It tells me what type of breathing strategy they're biased towards. It tells me concentric, eccentric orientation. Are they biased towards internal and external rotation? And so that's why my archetypes are so important for me because it allows me to determine the best possible intervention that's gonna restore the adaptability. I'm not trying to chase a number.

It's going to progress into some form of side plank in the gym. If we continue on into the gym, you might not be able to use 90 degrees right up the bat because if I put somebody in half kneeling, they can't recapture their internal rotation right away in an upright position because I've got an external rotation on both sides of the pelvis which tilts the pelvis on a bit of an oblique axis. However, I can bring them up into a staggered stance situation and so now I can get my cable chops. I can do a high low cable press and I can work some backwards sled drags and so now I can be effective in the gym. I can maintain my posterior expansion, the yielding strategy on the backside. I can push off that right foot into the backside, and now I have just reoriented everything and I'm maintaining all of my changes. So Ryan, I hope that gives you a few ideas on how to approach this so you can go manual. You gotta recapture the positions and then reinforce that stuff in the gym, but it's a great representation of the iterations.