Right. Yeah.

I have many questions. The one I would like to focus on a little bit is for a client of mine with whom I had fortunately time for a rather thorough assessment yesterday. And now I was successful at getting some relative motion back within the session, but I kind of have no clue about what my next step is, or actually, I do have a few ideas, but I just want to kind of walk through my rationale and have that be a little enhanced, maybe. So what I say, like probably very, very straight leg IR because we started with zero, like zero IR on the right leg. And at 90 degrees hip flexion, 10 degrees of IR on the left, 70 degrees of ER. And then like straight leg raise of like 70, 80 ish on both sides. I was like, there's no way in hell that's happening. Flat is back in the world. As soon as you put him like you put him on his back, just like prior to the test, like he has his like big toe pointing to each wall, like in a way that would be pain. Like I'm watching that. I'm like, I got you. What's up with your bones, man? What's up with your hip socket, but whatever. And I heard you on a podcast recently talking kind of like the terminator scene, you know, where it's kind of like he's getting very compressed. So like all the sockets are kind of going out. That's where his motion is. Anyway, what I did with him, very, very basic stuff, just like from lower body rolling, going from supine to prone, which went kind of okay and just some quadruped rocking like very classical just like reach, get some some interior expansion. And with that we did gain IR on both legs and a little bit on the left shoulder and that's all we had time for so I'm like okay cool now i have to write a program for him. Is this a wide ISA? Yeah, yeah, like very wide. And very, very like compressed from what it's looking like. So that's why I wasn't sure with the rolling if I was just better off like just going for maybe something side-lying with motion from front to back. So we just actually spend more time getting this interior to posterior expansion back. So that's where I'm at. I'm trying to like, okay cool, we got a little bit of IR back. Eventually, I guess I would like to see the ER numbers to drop so that I can get like, oh, that's nice. Like your sockets have a total 100 degrees available. That's kind of cool because it is like early 50s, I think, and like a few injuries in the past. So it's like, okay cool. Well, that's not damaged. Just mal-oriented or like very outward. So I'm just like, how do I work him back in? Left side rack carry came to mind just because there seems to be greater available motion. Remind me, you don't do manual therapy.

Okay. Did you organize baseball?

More compression on that right side.

OK, I see. Perfect. Yeah. Very helpful. Thank you.

Okay. The concept does not require the hip to be on the same side as the arm.

And I've also, did you mention you could use that to get some posterior lower expansion too.

Good morning. Happy Tuesday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right. Hey, very busy Tuesday. We're going to dig straight into today's Q&A. This is with Zach. Zach had a question that involved connective tissue behavior, which is one of my favorite topics. And again, I still think it's underappreciated. We've been talking about this for a few years now. And I think a lot of people still aren't grasping the significance of the influence of connective tissue behaviors because that's how we move. If we had to rely on muscle behavior to drive most of our movement, it would be exhausting. Number one, it would be terribly inefficient. And then we would also see very erratic movement that we would be very shaky and very inaccurate in our movements because what connective tissues do is they are tuned. So we use the Austin Ulrich principle of connective tissue tuning. So we tune our connective tissues to allow us to execute efficient and effective movements. So this is going to be a really, really useful question. We talk about context. We talk about how that we're chasing an optimum versus the maximum of these behaviors because again, it's very, very context. If you're interested in more information in regards to these connective tissue behaviors, go to my YouTube channel and then search on number one. Connective tissue probably would work. Overcoming, yielding would be also useful to help increase your understanding of how these things are influencing movement. So again, go to the YouTube channel and subscribe there. If you'd like to participate in a 15-minute consultation, please go to askbillhartman at gmail.com. Put 15-minute consultation in the subject line so I don't delete it. We'll arrange that at our mutual convenience. Everybody have an outstanding Tuesday, and I will see you tomorrow.

So think about, let me grab. How's your anatomy? I want to think it's good. What goes from there to there in that one? If I am a narrow ISA, and then I compress myself A to P, I'm going to make my diameter smaller front to back and I'm going to make it wider side to side. Can you see how you create tension on the inguinal ligament? Now, if you're, if you're, you said this guy's not fit.

So following that, then the flatter cylinder, the shorter cylinders would have more of that IR force going into the ground. They would be more valgus compared to the longer cylinder configurations.

I moved from a throne to a Christmas tree.

Right.

There you go. So now you're going to get spinal compensatory strategy. So where can we start her? So we want to teach her at a lower center of gravity. We want to teach her how to go through a late, middle, early representation, right? That would be our representation of like a toe touch, it'd be our representation of a squat, okay? So what activity can we select here that might start to teach her how to lower her center of gravity, keep her in a space that's comfortable for her and then slowly introduce her to something that would be more representative of a middle? Um, very simple, not complex.

Yeah. Yeah.

So think about the ones, all the measures that are representative of that push forward need to improve, right? So the straight leg raise should improve, the straight leg raise should improve, early hip flexion should improve, IR should improve, ER should improve, okay? Yeah, that's how you know. That's how you know, okay?

But when we talk about complex lifts, so I have to use my whole body to lift the weight. Now I have a pressure mechanism that may have a limitation as to what it can demonstrate. But again, it's just like you said, if you look at a muscle in isolation, you look at the pure cross-sectional area of force production, bigger muscle wins.

Yeah.

Right.

OK, so that would be like reaching activities, because for me to reach, reaching is turning, right? Reaching is turning. And so if I'm trying to create an anterior expansion, that would mean I would need some measure of posterior compressive strategy that would allow me to push the fluid volume in the thorax or the pelvis forward. Correct?

Absolutely not. Guess where you got to take them then.

Okay. So I see a lot of bowlers who can't do that and their pelvis sort of moves, like it kind of swivels around. So they're taking a long loop around on a flat turn versus coming straight through. Yes, yes, uh-huh. So, like, I see this common with the right-arm fast bowlers, and I feel that that is probably because the sacrum is biased towards the right and they can't turn the sacrum to the left and load on the left side. As far as I'm aware, they're not good in this aspect. So I think that's because of the natural bias of the outcome. But if I have to get these bowlers to have this relative motion, so in my head I'm thinking they can't own the mid-stance mechanics on the left side. Also, I see these people having a limited straight-leg raise. And I'm thinking whether this is because of the demands of the game or we can work on this and get them better. So how would you go about that?

Yeah.

We have our feet pointing straight ahead and we're going to aim that cable and press the cable straight forward under these circumstances. And in doing so, because of the position of the center of gravity towards the posterior heel, we're going to actually slow the tibia down under those circumstances. We're also going to create a delay strategy throughout the right side of the axial skeleton also beneficial to prevent us from translating too quickly over the foot. Now second circumstance, same exercise, we're just going to tweak it a little bit. Now we've got a situation where we might have somebody that's in an earlier representation through the foot and we want to teach them to translate the tibia forward. So now we're going to teach somebody to move the arch downward a little bit more effectively. So we're going to take this high low cable press And we're going to tweak our foot cues just a little bit. So now I'm going to put pressure through the first metatarsal head and push it towards the lead heel. Under these circumstances, that's going to allow the tibia to translate more quickly over the foot. And we're going to see that arch go down and we'll get people translating much more quickly towards a middle to max propulsion. Now, tweaking the direction of the cable press itself, now we're going to go a little bit cross body. So what we want to do is we just orient somebody on an oblique, just a little bit relative to the cable. So as you press down and forward, you're going to end up aiming for the inside of that lead foot under these circumstances. So again, we're going to push that sickle base forward and that's going to allow us to square it to the front and allows to get through that middle P just a little bit quicker. So again, I love these exercises because they're so versatile. We talked about the versatility of carries yesterday. This is just another one of those activities that's really, really useful when we're trying to create changes, especially through this middle propulsive phase. And I think you'll find it beneficial as well. But just don't forget, pay attention to your foot cues, especially to allow you to control the position of the center of gravity so you can actually create the delay or the advancement forward.

Yeah.

Hip external rotations in the 50s for most of them. Internal rotation is probably ranging from five to 20. What's interesting is I was going back through my notes and there was a pattern where I would see them after a day of deadlifting, whether it be trap bar or RDL, their low backs would be tight and they would lose their external rotations, telling me that they're getting anterior orientation as they get into that hinge position. So my thought was as they're going into their load and getting into the hinge just as they're getting into max pressure, they're dumping the pelvis forward, getting into anterior orientation, which means the force is now more vertical. To move horizontally, I have to come up and then out. If I have more relative motion and can get the sacrum to nutate a little better, maybe I open more doors to be able to push horizontally. Did I get it?

Pretty much.

So we'll add two athletes. This is more of a case study. When I looked at them from the side, they both present with a flat lumbar spine but increased thoracic and cervical curves. However, when I tested them at the table, for example, one has good external and internal rotation (ER/IR) on the right side but limited ER and IR on the left side. The second athlete has an almost straight leg raise, with bilateral hip external rotation and 30-ish degrees of hip internal rotation.

I'm having trouble understanding then what I'm doing. I guess do something like making sense of what I'm doing and then associating it to the representation.

You see it?

So you have two groups of forces that you have to deal with. You have stuff that happens inside of you, and then you have the stuff that happens outside of you. And your strategy for managing that is all based on your structure. So how you are made. And so we are all made a little bit differently. And so we all have a little bit different strategy within certain parameters. So you have the same stuff that I do. It just might be organized a little bit differently. And so this is what you're recognizing is the strategy that you use to control your body in space and to manage these forces. And so some people turn more than other people do. And so that's what you're recognizing. So everything that you're describing is representative of this turning strategy. Okay, so it's not a side to side thing. It's a turn that you're going to have to learn how to manage. So especially when you bring up things like the differences in the thigh musculature. So if I twist one of your thighs in one direction and I twist the other one in the same direction, I have a different organization of those muscles that control your legs. And so you're going to use those muscles a little bit differently. So some are going to be positioned in a lengthened position. Some are going to be positioned in a more short position. And that's what you're recognizing. The strategy, the overall strategy that you need to use is to learn how to manage this strategy and then learn how to turn in the opposite direction enough that you start to offset it. This is not something that goes away. This is something that you learn to control and manage. Chances are the way that you're describing it, if it's accurate, okay? So if you have lost more external rotation on the right side than you have on the left side, then you definitely have a turn to the right and chances are your pelvis is anteriorly oriented. So it's tilted forward and it's probably tilted a little bit more forward on the right than it is on the left.