You now have absolute control over the thorax. Okay. Well, hopefully not like that. Unless they don't pay, then by all means you just keep cranking it and then they will pay. Okay. Yes, you have a great idea. Okay, there are very relaxed and resting on yours, their arm is very relaxed and resting on yours, but the idea is that you have—I look like—my left hand is now in the front of the shoulder girdle, my right hand is now in the back of the shoulder. So, so I can do all sorts of cool things. I can create a downward pressure into the table, and then I can start to move the scapula in the shoulder girdle in whatever direction I want. If I want to create the delayed strategy, I compress the medial border of the scapula against the thorax and I lead that forward. If I want to create the delayed strategy on the bottom, I just put a little bit more pressure there, and then I use my elbow to push the thorax back so it leads with the downside. You see it?

So scoot back away from the camera for a second and then turn yourself a little sideways to the camera.

So, you know, how we would talk about, like, the compression sequence. Once you see somebody say, like, 'Reach end game,' you can kind of just reverse the sequence. So I was wondering about that in the sense of, for example, maybe like a front squat or going overhead, where we have these ranges of shoulder flexion going from ER to ER again. If somebody is lacking, we talked about the front squat last time. So if somebody has some compensatory strategies in the rack position, should I be working on restoring more from the top down, trying to restore expansion from the top down, relative motion from the top down? Or should I be thinking more from the bottom up? Because I'm trying to piece that together with what I know about shoulder flexion and then also just from a gross understanding of posterior and anterior compression.

Okay, perfect. So you literally create sort of like a stirrup on the heel. You go from lateral malleolus, just underneath the lateral malleolus, you're gonna grab the lateral aspect of the calcaneus, and you're gonna bring it back underneath her, and then you tape about halfway up the inside of the foot to the tibia. Does that make sense? So you're gonna create a stirrup, like it looked like a J. How high am I going on the medial side? You gotta get it far enough up on the tibia so it's not on the IR portion of the tibia. You understand? No. So if you give her the calcaneal representation into the floor, you have now reduced her ability to produce the compensatory strategy from the top down. So think about a lead foot in the split squat. You just gave her a better shot at an early representation.

Okay. When people don't know you're paying attention, it's the best time to observe. Today is Wednesday, which means tomorrow is Thursday, which means 6 a.m. tomorrow morning for our Coffee and Coaches Conference call as usual every Thursday. It's a Q&A session, so bring some coffee and bring a question. We're going to keep doing these as long as we can, and please join us. Now, digging into today's Q&A. This is a short question from Jordan, but it's really good and represents how we discuss the superimposition of external rotation and internal rotation—both being present at all times, occasionally becoming superposed into a single entity. This is demonstrated well when we talk about gym strength. We'll even get a definition of what 'strong enough' may be in this discussion. It will help you understand how we use external rotation for form movement and internal rotation for force production. Jordan, outstanding question and thank you for that. If you would like to participate in a 15-minute consultation, please email askbillhartmanedgmail.com with '15 minute consultation' in the subject line and include your question. I'll see you tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. for the Coffee and Coaches Conference call. Everybody have an outstanding Wednesday, and see you tomorrow.

But again, don't try to do a leg arm bar. I'm just trying to figure out the mechanics of what is happening under those circumstances. Because if you do a tee push-up—going down and turning into a side plank through your hands.

Wherever range of motion stops, whether it's limited within the averages or at end range, there is compression. That's why joint range of motion is not unlimited—compression is what stops range of motion from occurring. So for me to move into any space, I have to have expansion in that direction. And then as I move into that space, I compress, and then my range of motion will stop.

Get the yield down to level the bone.

Right.

Yes sir.

There you go. So what you had to do there is you are now starting to orient more into ER on the right side.

And again, we don't necessarily want to take that away. So then it becomes our responsibility, like I said, to be the other sport. And I think you asked the question, and I think you already kind of knew the answer. You know what I mean? You just need the objectivity that is difficult to produce when you're in this situation. You're probably doing already a whole bunch of good stuff, you know, as far as, you know, building the buffers in, you're doing a variety of activities, I'm sure. But I think that, you know, from the 10,000 foot view, you always got to step back and you go, how much of this do I want to allow? And then how much of this do I need to protect him from?

Right?

I've been doing it wrong.

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.

Okay, so it's not necessarily the squat pattern that's the problem, right?

So very compressed A to B. Right.

Okay. That's just something that you track as the boss, right? You say, I need you to get five more degrees or we're okay for now.

I was reviewing some old client notes and unfortunately I didn't previously take the same set of table measures or in the same way that I do now, but I had a fair number of people along the way who showed what seemed to be pretty normal hip flexion but then very limited straight leg raises—around 100 degrees for hip flexion and 40 degrees for straight leg raise. Is this probably just poor measurement technique on my part, or is this something that makes sense within the larger model?

I guess it just made me think about it, but are these the people that have a hard time getting into that medial aspect, they kind of skip around mid-propulsion, they're having trouble getting into the medial aspect of the calcaneus? So whether it's like baseball, cricket, whomever, are those the type of people you might actually use like a lateral wedge if it doesn't hinder their performance? I rarely hear about ever using it. Most people I've been around say never use a lateral wedge for whatever reason in terms of orthotics, but would this scenario be possibly beneficial?

Good morning. Happy Wednesday. I have no coffee in hand and it is perfect. So today is Wednesday. That means tomorrow's Thursday, which means 6 a.m. tomorrow morning the coffee and coaches conference call as usual. I believe if you're keeping count, we're upwards of 72. I'm not even sure when I started counting, but we've been doing these things for a while. They get better and better every week. Enjoying these calls thoroughly. Please join us at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning the link will be on my professional Facebook page just prior to the call. Okay, today's Q&A. I had two questions. This is really weird. Robert and Rory both asked about shoulder impingement and so I'm going to kind of combine their question into one and it goes along the lines of is shoulder impingement associated with rotator cuff weakness and putting pressure against the acromion. So let's break this down a little. I don't think that we can necessarily say that there is an intrinsic weakness in any musculature under these circumstances. What we're looking at are mechanical relationships that allow us to boost force in certain positions. So this goes back to shape change and position and so if mechanically we can't produce these positions that do allow force then it may test weak in certain positions based on how we perceive these things how we were measured. So if you're an old school manual muscle tester you might say oh you're weak in this position and you can go ahead and blame a certain muscle for that which is probably untrue again it's probably a relationship problem that you're looking at. Secondly, I think that we probably need to start telling ourselves a new story in regards to some of the so-called impingement tests. And so if we're going to pick on one, let's pick on Neer for a second because we've got some decent research on that. So the Neer test is where we're reaching above shoulder level and we get the shoulder pain. And traditionally it was thought that oh you're just impinging the rotator cuff against the acromion. If you look at some of the available research, it's not really happening. So we get above that shoulder level reach. And some people will say well you're probably approaching 120 degrees of traditional shoulder flexion and then that's where you get symptomatic. If we look at this, they've looked at these things internally and there is no impingement of the rotator cuff musculature against the coracoid in that position. What they did find was that there is some compression against the superior aspect of the glenoid which would be concentric orientation or compression if you will. And so what I think that we're looking at here, Robert and Rory, is we're looking at the influence of the superficial compressive strategies, limiting the shape change, limiting our ability to position ourselves to create spaces to move into.

Well, those are nicer because you can almost get immediate real-time feedback. It's like, are you able to redistribute it the way in which you were intending? Because the symptoms take time.

I would fall this way.

Okay. The heel breaks from the ground. So I hit max P, and then I go back into an ER representation of the foot. So the tibia is not going this way. It's actually going back relative. So if I put you back in an early representation, the tibia is moving back into an ER representation. So the tibia goes forward, hits max P, it can't go forward anymore. So for it to go back into an ER representation, the heel comes up, but the tibia is moving backwards at the same time. So even though from the ground perspective, it looks like it's tilted forward, it's actually tilting backwards relative to the foot, which is the ER representation.

Do you know how old I am? Yes. Do you know how many evolutions that I have been through? Yeah, let's hear it. It was horrible. It was miserable. I was an idiot. I would not send my worst enemy to Bill Hartman year one. Again, I don't think about that stuff too much, to be honest with you, Nikki, because I don't like where I was when I started. It was kind of embarrassing. But yeah, I don't know. It's just been an evolution. The last 10 years have been really, really good. I've just been able to ask better questions because I've had enough reps and horrible, miserable failures. I think I was young when I came out of school. So the concept of failure was something that I was afraid of. Now it's just another part of the puzzle. If you want to go like hardcore end game philosophy, that's probably the biggest thing. I'm just not afraid to fail anymore. So I did not have a philosophy when I came out of school. I was lost. I was a puppy. I had oatmeal for a brain.

Happy Wednesday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect. So it is Wednesday. That means that tomorrow is Thursday as usual, 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Coffee and Coaches conference call. Please join us for these calls. You see that I show these segments of the coffee calls here for the Q&As because these calls are really, really good. We usually go a couple hours. Great people. Great questions. Please join us. 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The link will be on my professional Facebook page. Just a prayer to the call. All right. Today's Q&A comes from a segment from the Coffee and Coaches Conference call. And this is with Colin. And Colin had a question in regards to the right oblique orientation also had a request yesterday that came through Instagram that requested that we talk a little bit about the right oblique so this is one of these representations that are I don't want to say that it's simple but it is certainly less complex than many situations so early on in the right oblique orientation we have preservation of internal rotations. So there's your radio bleak right there. And so again early on when we don't have this anterior center of gravity shift, we don't lose internal rotations. So a lot of times you'll see people just following the orientation of the sacrum in regards to the movement. And in those cases, all we're going to do is push them right back on the oblique axis in the opposing direction, which will be back into the left. And so this is one of those situations because we were talking about a hinging motion most specifically, but we'll break it down as to how you identify these things and then a couple of strategies in the call itself. So it will be useful for many, I think. If you would like to participate in a 15-minute consultation, please go to askbillhardman at gmail.com, askbillhardman at gmail.com, and put 15-minute consultation in the subject line. We will arrange that at our mutual convenience. Tomorrow evening is Intensive 14, by the way, so very excited about that. Intensive 15 has not been set yet. Got some stuff to do before we figure that out, but we will do that very, very soon. So make sure you get on the mentorship email list and I will see you all tomorrow morning, 6am. Coffee and Coaches, careful to go.

Okay. You just got a little bit of time left.

I'm telling you, man, first of all, don't watch Karate Kid for the karate. All right? You watch Karate Kid for the philosophy, right? You know, gosh, man who catch fly and chopstick can do anything. That's brilliant. So you're just looking at the same twist. What you have to discern is how much of each twist do you have?

Yeah, I've been having the treatment I've been doing with him so far. Yeah, sideline, just taking the foam roller between the thighs and just trying to roll the femurs back and forth. He's at 90 degrees of hip flexion, which probably as we were talking is obviously is compensatory if he's in a range of motion.

Like expanding the right chest wall and things like that.