Okay, so like these people are kind of making up the exaggerated thoracic rotation and probably lateral flexion as well, maybe.

Okay. Like the kind where they actually have to move the sails to direct the boat. Okay. Do you know what tacking is? No. Okay, so boats don't travel in straight lines, or at least very rarely they don't travel in straight lines. So what they do is they have to, they have to take advantage of the direction of the wind. So that's the way they move the sails. So to go from point A to point B, you see me on the screens to go this way, I might have to go that way, that way, that way, that way to get to the endpoint. Okay, that's training. Training rarely goes like that. It goes, oh, I went over here. Oh, I got to change that. Oh, we got to make an adjustment. Okay. But eventually you're going in the right direction, right? That's ultimately what you want to do. You don't want to go in the wrong direction. And that does happen sometimes too, right? Because we don't know the answers, Grace. We don't know. We have very limited predictability. What we do, did you read any Duke's book yet?

Depending on what he can recapture on his feet, you might have to take him to the ground in an arm bar series or something like that. Depending on how far back you need to go, then it becomes a cross connect or something like that. It's like starting him at the high level. He's a performer. If he's not broken, then I would treat him like an athlete first and see what you can recapture that way, and then just regress as much as you need to to capture what you think you need to recapture.

You see the difference?

Okay. I thought it's more over on the left side because you know, I just read something.

On the narrow side of things, they're going to want to do things that are more associated with like a glute bridge or the barbell hip thrust because what that does is it compresses the backside of the pelvis. So we get a pelvis that instead of being nice and round like this, we want to flatten it out as much as possible. So your glute bridges and hip thrusts with your knees apart will actually help compress that strategy right there. And now you've got compression where you typically would have expansion in a narrow. And so again, the goal here is to maximize the performance regardless of health, increase the arching capabilities in a bench press. Let's stay at the obvious. Don't forget to bench press because you have to practice the position because it's very very specific and so all you have to do is get on YouTube watch a bunch of videos about it and you'll see a bunch of high-level powerlifters getting into the position practice practice practice the better you get at that the more compressive strategy that you're going to get. The bench press itself is a compressive exercise so let's not ignore the specificity in regards to some of your other training: sumo pulls, cross bench pullovers, a good old classic. So drop your hips below the level of the bench, arch backwards over the bench to perform your pullovers. Another great compressive exercise. Now, secondary consequences. Here's the bad stuff. You're gonna lose range of motion. Now, on a certain level, that's performance enhancing. Like I said, it's going to keep you in your groove. It's going to improve your efficiency in the big lifts, but the secondary consequences of losing that range of motion is you're going to create a bunch of compressive strategies. You're more likely to see a bunch of soft tissue injuries because the concentric orientation associated with the compressive strategies will reduce blood flow to key areas like connective tissues and bone and things like that. And so that's why you're going to see a lot of the soft tissue injuries that you see in powerlifters. That's why you're going to see the progressive arthritic conditions in powerlifters. So the thing that I want you to understand is yes, I'm talking about performance. Yes, I'm intentionally compressing you and yes, you're going to increase your powerlifting performance, but there is going to be consequences that are going to compromise your health in the long term. So please keep those in mind. You get to be an adult. You get to make all of your own decisions here. But the reality is, the harder you drive yourself into these positions, the more likely you are to experience the negative secondary consequences associated with high levels of concentric orientation over prolonged periods of time and exhalation strategies, which can compromise who knows how many different levels of health.

All we're doing is turning the sacrum from side to side.

An empty pop can? Okay, hang on. You ever stand on a full pop can?

That makes programming a little bit easier for sure.

Yep. All right, so I have to think about it if I'm pushing everything forward.

Okay, so where do you want the early and the yield?

I'm with you. So now we have a point of reference. And so, is it safe for me to assume that it is your perspective that that type of an activity needs to be included in a program? Is that what you're saying?

We good to go?

Yeah, the dynamic effort.

Right. Yeah. So you get, literally you're getting shoved into the ground on that side as well. So what that push forward becomes is the source of your internal rotation. We talk about internal rotation with humans as this thing that turns in and downward. It's the downward force that we're trying to create. And so because of the orientation of your pelvis and your ribcage, and because of the influence of your playing position, you have to create inter-orientation somewhere. You can't do that when you're oriented the way that you are. So what you do is you just push harder from behind. That throws that side of the pelvis down and forward, and your pelvic outlet is going down and that's what pins you into the ground. So it works great, unfortunately it's going to create the limitations that we're talking about, which is that shoulder flexion, hip flexion, and extra rotation measures are all going to be in deficit. Let me tell you a quick story. I worked with the number two Viola player for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. She had a similar kind of an issue. Think about the position that they're playing in—very similar to your situation. I did a little test with her and had her bring in her viola. She started to play, and I asked her to show me the position she practices in. She likes to stand up when she practices, so she was standing pretty much the way you would stand if you were playing your stand-up bass, very similar. Then I tried to flip-flop her orientation—not her upper extremities, just the way she was standing. She was compressed left posterior, getting shoved forward just like you were. We put her in an early propulsive representation on that left side. I had her push forward on the right and create the delay on the left. She had already played a piece of music and then froze. She literally didn't know what to do because it was so unfamiliar to her—she's never in that orientation in regard to her playing. She proceeded to play in her mind horribly. The thing we want to recognize is, number one, if you're going to keep playing the bass, don't worry about the position you're using to play the bass. Play the bass really well. What we need now is the strategy for all other circumstances. There's got to be enough work done to make sure you can create that delay strategy on the left side. Everything that you do—you're going to be the guy that falls into the platformed, heels elevated, goblet squat stuff to start to create some of that. When you get into the deeper end of that squat, you want to be able to create the counter-neutated sacrum with the delay strategy—so with the yielding action at the base of the sacrum. You're going to do a front foot lead, so split stance activities for you are going to become very, very important because split stance is what allows you to create the turns. Traditional single-leg stuff probably isn't where you'd want to start. You need two-foot contacts but asymmetrical foot contact, and everything that you're doing except maybe the foot elevated goblet squat, because you need to learn how to maintain and create turns. That requires a two-foot contact. The minute you pick up the other foot and you're in a single-leg stance, you reduce the amount of turning you're capable of within the pelvis. That's where we have to start to look at this. We're going to build this from the pelvis up. So split stance, staggered stance—that's where your money is. Does that make sense when I say things like that? Again, that's going to be so you have to think about all the cool stuff that I want to be able to do, and then I just need to offset it with enough of the opposing activities so I don't lose my ability to make those turns because that's what's blocking your ability to raise your arm. Any questions so far?

Good. And now, you remember when we're talking about getting her back to early. So if you put her in a split stance with the left knee forward, with left foot forward, anything in a split stance, you want her in a heel elevated position, but you want a platform. You don't want her in late. You want her in early. So you got to get the whole foot supported on the platforms where toes are in line with the foot. So we don't want any toe extension under those circumstances. Otherwise, you're not going to get the yielding action. You get ER, but you don't get the yielding action. Everything about this whole situation right now is about teaching that tendon to yield. And to do that, you got to get the foot. You got to get the pelvis because the knees are the dumb joint, right? And these don't make very good decisions. They're not very bright. They're just going to follow along and they're going to try to take over when everybody else can't. And so you've got to create that situation where the knee does not have to be the compensation.

Got it.

No.

And they're going to think you're FOS. So what you would want to do is you want to create a context. So you're going to treat a theoretical patient. And you're going to say, somebody walks in with this. Because the way that most therapists will think is, OK, somebody walks in with shoulder impingement diagnosis. And then they break out the They go to the shoulder impingement protocol sheets and they pull it out of the file and then they say, here's what we do week one. And this is your homework because everybody knows that all shoulder impingements are the same.

Yes.

Okay. Step one, they have to have the disposable income to see you. Male or female? It's okay, you're not passing judgment on the opposite sex. It's just a matter of, who is it?

Like, what do you mean? So, what do you mean? How would you describe it?

Well, do you understand what I understand? You know what I know. I'm just asking, maybe. No, I don't. I don't know what you know. Right. So we can't really talk about my process too much now, can we? How valuable, hang on, how valuable to you is the information you just asked me about. So how valuable to you is an ISA?

And then going off of that, what about in-person sessions, like when you have students or when you're giving, you know, talking with your coaches at IFAST or for example, like if you have an onboarding of a new personal trainer or something like that, how does that conversation of where you would start with teaching your model or starting with that information kind of change depending on the room of where you're going from? And what underlying principles do you kind of use to decide what that starting point is?

I don't know. We had a girl that made a pretty significant change in about four weeks. If you break a bone, Michelle, how long does it take to heal? Yeah, it's true. It's a good point. It doesn't take that long, right? You just need enough stress over time. Okay, so let me ask you this. So I got braces on, right? You can move a tooth pretty darn fast. That's very true, yeah. So when you look at a dry cadaver as a representation of human behavior, that's a misrepresentation that is in a normal dynamic human. So again, it just gets misrepresented as to what is possible. Good morning. Happy Friday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect. Okay. It's a good morning. We woke up this morning to check the box scores. Josh Limblom, our boy at the Brewers, got his first win of the season, seven strikeouts. So a very solid appearance there. Also I've mentioned Lomo, Logan Morrison, A pinch hit, one for one, so very, very exciting for both of our guys at the Bruce, by the way, you gotta check out Lomo's Instagram, it's Lomo Graham. If you're a fan of coffee, baseball, and personality, so check him out. We're going to lead into the weekend with a really good question that I think will be helpful for a lot of people. It comes from Mikhail from Russia. So that's very exciting to have somebody send a question all the way from Russia. It's a really good one. So here we go. If someone is standing on their left leg and the other leg has the hip and knee flex to 90 degrees, and you see the standing leg turn into excessive external rotation and also abduct an extended shaman you for thinking in the imaginary planes, but that's okay. Why is that? And then what do you do with this? So this is really, really useful because it's very similar to my load propulsion test that I teach at the Intensive, and it's also going to have some similarities to the Gillett test. So if you're one of those people that uses those motion palpation tests as if you're evaluating the secret iliac joint, excuse me. This will also be helpful for you, but let's describe sort of what we should see under these circumstances and then What you're seeing and then we'll say well, okay, what do we what do we do with this? How do we improve this situation? And so what we want to think about is So we're starting from a standing position, so we're not propelling ourselves forward, but we're sort of in this middle range of propulsion. So we're going to create a little bit of a delayed strategy where we're probably going to be a little bit more inhaled by us, a little bit more ER'd, and a little bit of counter-neutation. So we're going to create a yielding strategy on this posterior aspect of the pelvis, because if we're not propelling ourselves forward, we're going to create a delay strategy here in the pelvis. If you recall, in this first early phase of hip flexion, we're still going to be in that ER bias, but as we approach 90 degrees, we're going to move towards an IR bias. So as the foot breaks the ground, and this would be our advancing leg if we were walking, We're going to create a bigger delayed strategy. So we're still going to be concerted at yielding on this standing leg. So we're going to be starting in ER. But as we break that 60 degrees or so of hip flexion, we're going to start moving towards IR on both sides. So this leg will be slowly advancing forward towards that really strong middle range of propulsion in the stance leg. And this leg is going to be approaching 90 degrees of deflection, which we also know is going to be IR. So what we should see is the pelvis moving from a slightly ER position to an IR position. So we're going to see some mutation of the sacrum under these circumstances. And we're going to be approaching that IR position. And so if you've ever worked with kids and you have to do A marches or A skips and you'll see all sorts of sort of mobility issues or substitutions and you'll see them turning into or away from their hips or you'll see some side bending, these are the kids that can't really create this IR position of the pelvis where where they have to have a constant or pelvic diaphragm and they can capture this internal rotation, which is the really strong propulsive positions. And so again, this is why this position becomes very, very useful. Because when you start to see these substitutions, you know you've got somebody that cannot capture this internally rotated position. As we take the hip past 90 degrees, we're gonna re-er under both circumstances. So now I'm gonna move this hip towards a later propulsive strategy. And I'm gonna have this hip moving towards an early propulsive strategy. So now I'm gonna create a delay on the lifting side leg. So as I break this 90 degrees and this goes into a deeper hip flexion, now I'm gonna see this moving into a much more erred position on this side. So that's what should happen. So I should see the ER, the IR, and the ER strategy of this normal propulsive phase. But what you're seeing, Mikhail, is you're seeing that very, very early representation of this external rotation on the standing or the support side leg. So you have something that's moving into the later propulsive strategy too soon. And so that's why you're seeing this really, really strong ER position when we know that we should be approaching IR under those circumstances. Now, so the question is, it's like, okay, so what's going on over here? Am I seeing an anti-orientation? Probably not, because the anti-orientation will actually steal my ability to yarn this hip. So again, most likely we're just seeing this later propulsive strategy too soon. So what do we do about it? Well, it just so happens that we've been talking about this during the week.

Yeah. Right there. They attach right there. Yeah. And they would push this back. And again, it's like the naming of these things is what creates a lot of the confusion. Because if I tell you that glute max is one muscle, you immediately create this representation in your head of how it should behave. If I told you that actually glute max is five different muscles instead of being one, now you've got to figure out, OK, wait a minute. If it's five muscles, then how does it behave differently? And that's the perspective that you have to have when you're looking at the anatomy. Because again, the guys that did the first dissections got to name all this stuff. And so it was their perspective that we are unfortunately still using, which creates a lot of confusion for us as far as how things do behave. Because people look at glute max as a single muscle. It's not. It's many muscles, right? External oblique, you now know, is more than one muscle. But again, so this is literally how things move. So when I'm superficial and expanded, I can move really fast in one direction. And then I have to create this compressive strategy. So with an expansive strategy and compressive strategy, the compressive strategy reverses gears and turns it in the other direction.

Correct. Correct. But again, yeah. So center of gravity is over the foot, far enough that it's pressing the foot into the ground. Yeah. So it's not like the, you know, the really rigid supinated foot that looks like they just put their heel down on the ground. It's going to be somebody that's over top of it. And again, so you've got the orientation. You've probably got some mutation to the sacrum. And that's where I would go first anyway, to bring them back. Because if you can get them, if you can get their center of gravity backwards, then you've just alleviated all that, all that, the anterior concentric orientation. So you've got like a tibial anterior that's pulling the knee forward over the foot, right? And then your posterior compartment's going to be, be eccentrically oriented. Right? So you got to reverse that. And the only way you're going to do that is to get them back on their heel, but you're going to have to do it from above because if the, if the pelvis isn't oriented forward and the sacrum is nutated, you can't fall back.

So again, what you're looking at at Vikram is a performance related strategy to allow them to lift more weight. And so again, is there anything wrong with it? I don't think there's anything wrong with it if performance is the goal, but understand the secondary consequences. Now second question on the neck. So Connor, He wants to know, he says, hi Bill, hopefully I have an interesting question for you. An athlete who wants to train their neck because they're a combat athlete, love that. I was curious what your thoughts are on neck training and how did you go about it for wider and narrow ISA. They're fairly well progressed in their program, feeling great, but have had issues with neck tension in the past. Okay, so we'll take the same concept that we talked about with Vikram. So anytime you're trying to increase neck strength, strength, or force output, or however you want to term that, you're going to have the same kind of consequences that we talked about in the bench press, because you're going to start to utilize superficial strategies. You're going to start to compress upper dorsal, rostral areas, so that upper trapezius, the guys with the big thick mix, or the no neck look with the big traps, very beneficial from a force output standpoint, not great for movement.

Okay.

Another tell, especially if you work with gymnasts, is if you ever watch them stick their landings. So they fall from incredible heights when they come off like a high bar or the uneven bars, and when they stick their landings, the squat that they land in is actually very shallow. However, they are landing with the hip really close to 90 degrees, which is where they can capture a concentric pelvic diaphragm—a high-pressure strategy to create the upward force against the downward force of the landing. So again, that tells you a lot about how their pelvis is oriented and how their pelvis behaves. So Domen, I hope I answered your question for you on that. Second question comes from Josh. Josh says, 'Are there specific cues used when coaching the side split squat when dealing with a compressed wide ISA individual? I'm guessing we shouldn't allow the knee to move laterally, but just wanted to make sure.' Josh, you are dead on. There's a darn good reason for this, too. I'm going to open the pelvis up from the bottom so you can see. I've got a wide ISA, IPA individual, so they do not have full breathing excursions, so the ISA and IPA match. I also have this lower compressive strategy. This person is deep into the superficial compressive strategies, and this is going to bias that hip towards external rotation. So if I'm teaching a side split squat and I see that knee moving laterally, I'm not making the change most likely that I'm intending because what I'm trying to do is allow eccentric orientation to occur in this lower posterior musculature that is holding me towards ER. So what I might have to do is actually start with a very, very shallow step length, so I'm moving laterally into the split squat, and I'm trying to actually restore a normal hinge first, and that's what's going to allow this eccentric orientation to occur near the apex of the sacrum. And so this is where we would use things like a cossack deadlift. So what a cossack deadlift is—it's a side split squat. Don't tell anybody, right? It's just really, really shallow. And so you might have to start with something like that to start to recapture these positions before you start to try to increase this excursion laterally because they may not be capable. So again, we want to work within the limitations of the individual first. Some people can't do half kneeling. Some people can't do a really wide side split squat or side lunge. All right. Allow them to evolve. Allow them to develop. And so Josh, like I said, I think you're dead on. So we want to keep that knee kind of pointing straight ahead. We're going to move into that.