You mean the clean plays? Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Strike one. Keep going. I'm on the Palmer side, my friend.

It slows it down?

Yes, I was thinking either like narrow versus wide grip bench press or just narrow versus wide grip overhead press.

OK, yes, yes.

Thank you. That's a good one, man. I like it. I will move them into the position with an exhale and then inhale in the, where I want that expansion to occur.

It's impossible to hit the end ranges. So just think about like, if this is the full excursion, so over here is early, over here is late, in here is middle. As soon as I put you under load, I just took away the ends, right? I still have an early, I still have a late, it's not as big. And then my middle is going to be represented as a much more pronounced component of the activity because I'm spending more of my time there.

Okay. Are they the same?

You still have an orientation. Okay. You still got it. You still got, you got a little bit of work to do, to bring the, uh, the, the right side back.

Yeah, it just wasn't sure. Interesting.

Yeah, kind of the other way. Because you're taking the twist out of the towel. So if I hold the towel here and I twist from this end only, and it goes this way, right? So if I can untwist this to a little degree, and then I twist this in the other direction, I take the tension out of the towel, right?

If I have to reduce the field of external rotation that I have available to me, which is representative of the amount of motion that I need to demonstrate ranges of motion or velocity, if I have to compress that to increase my force production, I have now again created an interference. So bilateral symmetrical exercises are well designed to increase my ability to produce a compressive strategy, which allows me to increase my peak forces at the right time. Hypertrophy is a byproduct of that. Hypertrophy by itself, again, to develop any significant amount of hypertrophy, there's going to be some compressive strategies associated, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's interference. So again, the way that we figure this stuff out Andrew is that we train people and so we actually have to do things and we determine what is the best course of action and so we have to have some form of key performance indicator that is going to allow us to determine whether we're on the right path or not. So if I'm trying to improve someone's acceleration so let's say that I'm measuring their acceleration through a 10 meter sprint from a standing start I take them into the gym, I train them, I bring them back, and I retest that 10 meter sprint. And if that continues to improve, then my strategy in the weight room is good. And so if I'm using bilateral symmetrical activities to do that, great. But at some point in time, and maybe it happens and maybe it doesn't, at some point in time, it can become interference. The only way that you can tell whether this is going to happen is as you train them. And again, this is why we monitor key performance indicators. So if I increase force production, if I reduce my external rotation field, but I don't need that range of motion to perform my activity, then again, I'm not creating interference. So all of these activities are great activities. We use them all the time. We have to buy bigger trap bars because we have people that can pull so much weight that we don't have enough room to put the weights on. And so again, these are not bad things. Bilateral symmetrical activities are very, very useful at certain times for certain people in certain circumstances. What you have to do is you have to understand that this is always an N equals one experiment and we're talking about an individual here and then their response to training. So again, we've always got the expansion, compression, expansion on the table as a representation of movement. We superimpose force production on top of that to determine what is going to be the best course of action under a specific context. We don't know exactly where they are. We don't know how changeable they are. We don't know to what degree we need to make a change to get the influence that we want. So this becomes the experiment, but as long as you're following the principles, that's where you're safest in doing your work.

Okay, I see that, but I don't see you. All right. So Jordan, have you ever seen me do the back-to-wall flexion test? Yes, okay. So here's what I want you to do: keep your hand and extremity in what would be represented as external rotation as far as you possibly can. Okay, go, go, go, go, go, go. It's okay—don't worry about screwing it up. Now, what direction do you have to turn the shoulder to scratch the other shoulder blade? Oh, it's internal rotation, isn't it?

Sorry, you're guiding me in a better perspective of this kind of stuff.

Yes, definitely.

That's helpful. Yeah. Cause like, obviously as the ego strength coach, I want her to be able to do what everyone else is doing and get after it and stuff like that. But that's just good.

So I'm out here, my force into the ground is less and it gets more and more and more until it's max, and then it's less, and then it's less, and then it's less. Good morning, happy Wednesday. I have no coffee in hand and it is perfect. Okay, today's Wednesday, that means tomorrow is Thursday, which means 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, Eastern Standard Time, we will have the usual coffee and coaches conference call. So, please join us for that. We've had great groups of people, great questions. I think everybody enjoys these calls; they seem to keep coming back. So, I appreciate you all, and I will see you all at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. Okay, digging into today's Q&A. It's with Andrew. So, Andrew's questions pertain to compressive strategies and breath-holding. The one thing we want to try to recognize here is that it's not always a bad thing. They are representative of certain elements during performance where we need to limit movement options. Under those circumstances, we are going to hold our breath. We can also use it diagnostically in the gym when we're working with clients; we're going to see compensatory strategies that are associated with limiting ranges of motion or limiting movement options and breath holding. So, we sort of hashed that out a little bit and then we got into a little bit about the influence of how important experience is as you evolve your coach's eyes in the gym and how we accomplish that, which cannot be acquired through consuming explicit information. So, I hope you enjoyed this call. Everybody have a terrific Wednesday. I will see you tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Oh, don't forget if you would like to participate in a 15-minute consultation, please send an email to askbillhartman@gmail.com. And we will get that set up at our mutual convenience. Okay. Have a great Wednesday. I'll see you tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. We are recording and the timer has started. Andrew, fire away.

There's no space. There's literally no space.

So you're talking about that position of max propulsion on that side, okay? Yes. With the forefoot, it looks like it's pronated, but the heel is off the ground. So that is the highest force production on the right side. So yes, you are correct that that is the appropriate position because again, it's like, again, I compare it to the way the sprinter hits the ground when they're at top speed because their heel really doesn't touch the ground, but the foot has to make contact into the ground and the internal rotation has to as a representation. Max propulsion is when the forefoot is on the ground in its pronated position, but the heel is breaking from the ground. So there's a twist through the foot. You're absolutely right.

It seems like powerlifting is this sport that requires you to a degree, depending on the person, to decrease movement options from the standpoint of this is something's necessary for performance. We need to be able to compress and display. And what really differentiates the lifters who can get to the highest levels is how much they can compress without losing that relative motion or without experiencing these side effects. And so a lot of the powerlifters that I work with, it's different in every case, but a lot of them at some point will run into some issue, whether it's an elbow, shoulder, hip, it's always something. And so it becomes more a story of how can we best manage these things over the longest period of time without succumbing to worse injuries and things like that. So my question relates to the general scheme of like it seems like we're sort of fighting this uphill battle. So presuming that we have things like eating, sleeping, load management, frequency management, all those things in check, what are some strategies as far as exercise selection goes that we can really take advantage of with powerlifters, assuming that we are including a fair amount of this alternating reciprocating work in our accessory programming? Because I do, it is helpful to a degree, but at a certain point we are still trying to get strong. We are still trying to get bigger and even using these alternate activities can become at a certain point more compressive to the individual.

I was hoping. Yeah. I don't want to take too much of your time. It's okay.

Okay.

Always, always you have to pay attention because that's how you're going to learn over time. And that's, again, we're always playing probabilities. We don't know what the answer is going to be. We can figure it out by looking back. In hindsight, we can figure this stuff out, okay? That's why that's important too, is to always look back and say, what happened? What could I have done better this time? What did we do wrong this time? That's how you start to narrow the probabilities, but it's always gonna be like that. It's always gonna be uncomfortable. Yeah, so it's okay. It's okay. It's okay to not know as long as you're as long as you're safe. Okay. Yep. All right, brother. I got to go to another call. So it was good to meet you. And then, hey, man, get on get on one of the coaches and coffee calls, man.

We'll have a minute. So back to that sort of first client, he presents with a little bit of the, you know, the sort of the bunions on the foot as well that are kind of pointing him in the right, in the direction he wants to go, I think.

So you want them to keep their head with the wall then?

Right. And I kind of stumbled my way to this point trying to figure it out. It was interesting because I had both of these clients occur on the same day with the same kind of epiphany with it all. I hate to use that word, but, um, and I was like, wow, what are the odds of it happening on the same day? So, yeah, those are the main questions I've had with regards to that. Cool. You got a little bit of time. Okay. So what's another question I have? Maneuverial expansion. You posted a video a few weeks back about that. I have a client that has a bit of a down pump handle and also this is secondary compensation—concavity in the ribs, but a wide ISA. And I'm trying to get her to not be in pain during shoulder flexion. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, you're going to tell me the same thing as a minute ago. But, yeah.

Well, if I am pressing a load, right? I have to squeeze. If I have to squeeze, I have to internally rotate. I have to internally rotate, don't I?

It's going to be lower posterior.

Sure, it constricts and probably exactly.

What is happening in the right hip now?