I'm not trying to push people towards something that they have no capacity to reach. I will never be an NBA basketball player. I'm not even going to try because I know I can't do it. Kind of along the same lines. Okay, so what we have is an ISA that helps us determine part of the structure that's going to determine the behavioral bias of this human being. So, now we gotta talk about how do we measure this thing? So I've got a video on YouTube that shows you how to measure this. It's gonna help you determine whether you're biased towards a wide or a narrow. And there's a certain way that I do it, so go watch the video please, and then you'll have a really good idea of how this happens. I don't give a rat's patootie about the number, but I'm going to give you a heuristic to start you, because what you need, you need something to guide your thought process. So we're going to say that if the angle looks kind of like it's close to 120, it's going to be a wide. If the angle is kind of close to 60, it's going to be a narrow. And you go, oh, wait a minute, halfway between 120 and 60 is 90, so 90 must be optimal. No, no, no, no, no. Don't chase that. All you're trying to do is you're trying to determine what this person's structural bias is going to be. Will that angle change to some degree? I hope so if they don't have movement in the ISA, because what we need is that ISA to move as a representation of a diaphragm that moves and an axial skeleton that has reacquired adaptability. That's what it's for. Once you start measuring these things, what you're going to do is you're going to say, oh, this is a wide and this is a narrow, and the numbers are going to slowly disappear from your mind, and you're going to start to represent the bias. If you're not sure, make your best guess as a human being, intervene, and then pay attention to what happens. The goal here is to narrow the probabilities of your success. It is not to chase a number. It is not to chase an optimal. Real quick, so if you read Shirley Sarman's stuff, she's gonna talk about moving the shoulders into full flexion during this ISA test. I think that's a mistake because to get your arm fully overhead, the ISA has to reclose, which means that you're gonna have some false positives towards your narrows and you're gonna have some of your wides look like they do have a dynamic ISA. So please follow the instructions in my video. Zoe, I hope this helps you to some degree. Stop chasing numbers, get the goniometers off everybody's rib cages.

So when we talk about like a golf swing or a tennis serve or throwing a baseball where we have these max propulsive elements, this type of rotation is going to occur after. And this is actually where we demonstrate the velocity. So we can't move at very, very high speeds with a lot of concentric orientation because it actually creates interference to the velocity and to the turn. When we talk about an ipsilateral load, so we're loading through the upper extremity, so for like a split squat or a deadlift or any kind of actually upper extremity load, an ipsilateral load, so load on one side. So if I'm talking about my right side load, so we're gonna say that's the ipsilateral side. What is that that's going to do? It's gonna induce a posterior compressive strategy on that side. So if I'm right hand load, so let's just say I'm doing a suitcase carry with my right hand. I'm going to see a lot of posterior compressive strategy on that side. The load is instantaneous and so I'm also going to see an overcoming action on that right side. The cool thing is is that when I get this right-sided posterior compression, I'm going to get an anterior expansion. And so this is why we see the restoration of internal rotation on the sides of our carries. But it also reduces the external rotation that's available to me. So flexion being one of our external rotations, especially in this early phase. One of my compensatory strategies under those circumstances is to actually turn away from the restriction. If I'm carrying weight in my right hand, I'm actually inducing my ability to turn away from the load. This creates a potential yielding strategy on the contralateral side that I would need for this nice clean rotation. And so we use words like facilitates and potential and induces intentionally here because the load is going to provide us an opportunity for this rotation to occur but it doesn't guarantee it. So again the loading approach creates the utility strategy but we can resist it and if you've ever done a dumbbell row, like a one arm dumbbell row with the intent of increasing strength, whatever that might be, or hypertrophy or something along those lines, chances are you're actually resisting this yielding strategy because your goal is to try to maximize your force production. You're trying to maximize the load demand on the musculature. So any resistance exercise where load is maximized or we're using symmetrical loads with the intention of narrowing the propulsive phase to increase force production, we're gonna resist this yielding strategy that allows us to turn. So this is where strength training actually becomes interference. So this thing is not as black and white as people would make it out to be.

So the expansion within the, within the public's AP would, would do what to the issue?

Yeah, so let me just grab the pulse. How about that? So if you see about a wide presentation where they're going to be mutated, right? I try to get this posterior lower expansion, right? Okay. Which means that I'm going to get shoved in that direction. You look at the pelvic axis, so as the gut volume would come down and it goes that way, right? It's going to make me go, so it's going to tilt me like that and then I want to propel forward, right? And so, I'm sorry, it's going to push me backwards. And this is going to push me forward, right? So this would be the equivalent to my dorsal rostrum.

But we also have to think about how all the other tissues adapt over time. So the more exposures I get to these loads, I have to think about how the connective tissues are going to adapt over time. I have to think about how the skeleton adapts over time. So one of the impacts on increasing your ability to lift a lot of weight is the shape change that takes place in your skeleton. So the better squeeze you are, the better exhalation strategy you can develop, the more weight that you're going to lift. So you have to be able to learn, you have to learn how to create internal pressures. And so that takes time to make that shape change as well. And so again, the repeated exposures to this higher intensity, the higher volume at this higher intensity is going to promote those changes a little bit quicker. So let's consider that. When we talk about training with repetition maximum, so if I say you're going to train with your 5 RM weight today, this is a great way to be testing your ability to recover from workout to workout. It sort of sets your training capabilities for that day. So there's a whole lot of monitoring systems out there that people are using and those are great and useful. But when I come into the gym, whether you've got the green or the amber or the red on your device, what we want to do is see how I can execute in the gym. That's really going to be the true measure of what your capabilities are for that day. And so when we use the training repetition maximum, it allows us to determine where we should be in our level of effort for the day. So if I come in and say I'm doing 250 pound squats for my 5RM on Tuesday and two weeks later I come in and my 5RM is now 260, then I can identify that I'm making progress and I'm recovering. If I start to see that number decline, obviously I'm not recovering enough in between workouts. I have other influences that are maybe impacting my recovery and I need to make the adjustment, but you're always training at the appropriate level of intensity if I'm using that 5RM. And so, again, these are just some of the simple concepts that I would use to accumulate volume in the coordination and the tissue adaptations. A second way that you want to consider adjusting your program is to follow this type of training cycle with something that is much, much higher intensity. So instead of coming in and training with a buffer, now we're going to actually train at our repetition maximum. And so now we get another coordination effect. So when we talk about concepts like the output of the central nervous system, now we're going to start to train that at a much higher level of effort and intensity.

Or it's not an actively plantar flexed first ray. So again, is it like a really crazy straight leg raise? Is it extreme at the other end?

It's so simple, an idea. The way that you challenge people is you take them up to their self-image, like whatever they believe their capabilities are, and you try to keep them as close to that as you can because if it's too easy, then the attention span goes down. If it's too hard, then they give up. So there's a sweet spot in there. If you read Rise of Superman, there's another nice little book. It's a better read than trying to read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow, which put me to sleep because of all the creativity and the thoughts. I talk about walking and stuff; when you have a question or a problem to solve, it's like go for a walk. It works great because what it does is it reduces the frontal cortex influence on brain processes, and then you get what's called hypofrontality, which leads right into creativity. And again, it's great for problem solving, great for coming up with great ideas and such. So, the mentee and we were talking about something that he had read before, like early on in his career, and then going back and rereading some of these things that you've read before, because having evolved, your whole thought process can be totally different. Your whole perspective and seeing certain things can be totally different. You know, things that you had thought were 'oh, that's just not very useful'—it just happened to be not useful at the time. And now you read it with a different perspective and you go, 'oh, I see how this can play into it. I see how this can work.' But the cool thing about fiction is, I don't like fiction books. So my fiction is my comic books. But the element of creativity where you have to actually create some of that story in your head is really, really powerful because it just promotes this process of being creative, which then allows you to carry that over to something that seems a little bit more concrete when we're evaluating an athlete, or we're trying to structure a program a little bit differently, or we're trying to come up with a solution for somebody to execute an activity. It's like people don't recognize the value of that. And so I think that there should be an element of, if you're a reader, I think there should be an element of fiction. However you like it, it doesn't matter—there's like no rules and stuff like that. So the diaphragm is two muscles. There's the crural element, and then there's the costal element. And so they can behave differently even during the same breath. And so there's a certain shape that is created when you're breathing under load.

No, I had a cough.

For me to actually create the expansive strategy in the upper dorsal rostral area, I'm going to have to drive expansion from the top down. So what I'll have to do is I'll have to use a neck position during the exercise that will actually max out my upper cervical rotation so I can drive the remainder of the lower cervical spine into a turn that will promote expansion in that upper dorsal rostral area. If I was to keep my head straight ahead, chances of me creating the eccentric orientation in the musculature that is causing the compressive strategy in the first place is unlikely. So again, I'm going to have to turn my head all the way into this expansive strategy in the upper cervical spine that eccentrically orients upper trapezius, eccentrically orients an element of the levator scapula and the posterior scalene. So out in the gym, I'll frequently use chopping motions to help restore this upper dorsal rostral expansion. Many times, if we do any sort of overhead reaching under these circumstances, they can either be provocative if I'm dealing with a painful situation, or they'll promote a compensatory strategy where I actually turn the cervical spine in the wrong direction. By using a chopping motion, as I chop down and across the body, I can actually reorient the entire spine in the direction that I'm trying to promote expansion. I also need to remember to orient the head and the neck in the appropriate direction to promote the upper dorsal rostral expansion. Once I reacquire the upper dorsal rostral expansion, which is indicated by my restoration of my end range shoulder flexion, I can start to restore normal cervical mechanics to my activities. Under these circumstances, a high to low cable press fits the bill. I'm still going to promote the posterior weight shift, the posterior expansion during this exercise as I reach forward. But under these circumstances, I'm going to utilize normal cervical mechanics of lower cervical rotation in one direction, upper cervical rotation in the opposing direction. Now under these circumstances I get normal eccentric orientation of all of the musculature that would be causing the dorsal rostral compression in the first place. So once I can consistently capture this dorsal rostral expansion as indicated by my short deflection measure, I want to learn how to maintain expansion under load. So this is where I may want to use activities such as unilateral carries, especially a kettlebell carry in a rack position, which places that dorsal rostral area in an expanded position as I'm moving dynamically under load. So hopefully this gives you a little bit of understanding about this upper dorsal rostral area in the lower cervical area. I would suggest that you go to my YouTube channel and check out some of the manual techniques that are addressing this area as well as some of the other activities that influence dorsal rostral expansion.

Right. Right. And actually I just got to that part in your book.

That is correct, sir. Welcome to Gray. Yeah, you just don't know. You don't know. Has anybody ever written a 12-week program that they didn't have to change at all?

And so, whether it's the carnivore diet or vegan diet, if you look at opposite ends of the spectrum, I think you need to consider what are those gaps that you are creating due to your food choices and then are you fixing them or are you just choosing to live in kind of nutritional ignorant bliss? So how Jim, you know you're saying you're doing a lot more BANDs and you've gotten more creative with all the home workouts. Yeah, do you think this is going to change in you know like in 2022 when you get back in the gym? Is that going to change like how you go about like the implements that you use or how you go about training and programming?

Okay. I'm cool with that. Give me another perspective of that. That would be, well, it isn't the only thing that's going on. Right? So now give me something else. Give me another layer of thought process in regards to what's happening there.

Right. So you know what direction you're going. And this is something that I was talking about, especially with the paddle ones, is that you evaluate, you determine what their needs are. You intervene based on those needs and based on the probability of the outcome. And then you retest to make sure that you're getting the outcome. So it's a stepwise process. Everybody's their own experiment. So that's awesome.

Our luck has been a great deal. From the first square foot, I think we only paid like seven bucks a square foot in the initial outlay. So it worked perfectly; it was clean. We had a weird kind of a sealed floor, and we just threw down some mats and a bunch of homemade platforms. And so here's an interesting thing: a lot of business people think they need to take out loans or lay down a lot of money. Because I had a gym in my home and you had a gym in your car garage, our initial outlay as an investment was maybe a couple of grand to buy a couple of extra racks and a couple of pieces of equipment. What we did was we literally just moved all the equipment out of my house, moved all the equipment out of your garage, and then opened the doors. So our initial financial outlay was very, very small.

Which it very could with my conversation.

Well, a collapse doesn't necessarily require expansion. So Alex's question at the beginning of the call was talking about somebody that was actually collapsing towards the ground, but was not expanding. They were just bending. So they were fully compressed and then creating a bend to try to create a space to move into to breathe into. So we can't use that as a representation of expansion per se. OK? Compression, if a downward compression can create an expansion. So even in a worst case scenario, we also talked about a wide ISA that was compressed A to P, well, they expand sideways, but it takes away all of their turns. It takes away all the relative motions, but that's the direction that they do expand under that circumstance. But if I take that away, then all you have then is like I said, the bending capabilities that we were talking about before.

Because of the activity that she can't.

They are. Yes. That statement right there means that you have an understanding of what's actually going on. And then they'll use the K word, right?

Okay. So if we had an anterior orientation of the pelvis, we would expect to see the hip abduction drop off.

Well they're both behaving. So you're not going to have one without the other.

OK. I think that's what I was getting at when we're talking about traditional performance capabilities, whether they be around different rates of force production or metabolic-type things like that. I guess there's a little more evidence to understand what your tradeoffs are there and the timing part. But then when you factor in improving movement capabilities, that becomes very individual. Again, they're all individual, obviously, but I guess I just notice that in observation, improving movement capabilities becomes very individual as far as a certain amount of exposures to higher output work can really take away a lot of movement capabilities from one athlete and not so much the other.

Yeah, I guess so.

It just doesn't make any sense. Dude, I'm with you. We're in the same group of people that are asking the same question. It's like, why would you think that way again? But see, you've thought it out logically as to like, well, this doesn't make sense when I get like, yeah, you can say that because you've got what appears to be a certain orientation. You can see that because of the way that you have tested them in a context that looks like a representation of weakness. It's just a reduction in force output in that context, right? Again, give the guy a barbell and have him deadlift. It's like, he's probably fine. But here's what I want you to think about. So he's got to learn strategy. Let's talk about why he's doing the way he's doing. He's got to learn strategy to produce a lot of force down into the ground so he can lift the weight off the ground. So he's trying to get as much internal rotation downforce as he possibly can, which requires that you anteriorly orient the pelvis to do so. Right. That's his strategy. That's why he's doing that. And he's learned over and over and over. It's a very strong representation to be really, really good at it all the time. He's got to remain close to that position in most circumstances. Right. So that's why you see that orientation eventually arise.

Oh, yeah.

And when you talk about an arc in man, shame on you.

So I had a question following up something we talked about a few weeks ago, although I think we've sort of touched upon it the last few weeks, which was like the shorter impulse in IR, especially for our narrows. And you'd given the recommendation of like using a force plate to find, as I understood it, basically how long they're pushing into the ground before they can release from the ground.

He lays on a day when he tries to open.

Okay. So in a situation in which you try and push right to left and you get something like a big side bend or some IR orientation competition, you're going to step on the ground. They don't have to go through that sequence incorrectly.

All right. Understood. Thank you, sir.