like what would be the mechanism to changes. So filtering it through a number of mental models allows you to ask a question and then that creates the experiment. And then you observe what happens at the end of the experiment. If I can ask a better question, then I can come up with a better experiment. And then my observations improve based on what I did as an intervention and then what the outcome was.

I think for me, one of the coolest things was having to be creative with my big workout exercises. Being here and being quarantined kind of shows you what kind of the raw stuff that you need and forced me to really be creative on how I can use those raw materials to create exercises that were meaningful and intentional.

The springs are going to absorb that force, absorb that energy, and that's what's going to allow me to propel myself upward off the box. Now, depending on how fast I sit down to the box and how fast I get off the box, I can actually manipulate where I emphasize the load and the stress and the adaptation. So if I want to make the trampoline stiffer, what I need to do is de-load my body weight to the box and allow some of the elastic energy to actually dissipate from the spring element. Then I'm dependent on a concentric orientation and an overcoming action of the pelvic diaphragm to allow me to stand back up. So if I want to emphasize the spring mechanism, which includes the connective tissues and the skeleton itself, I want to shorten the amount of time that I'm spending on the box. So in this case, I may want to use a touch and go, which will create a stronger emphasis on the spring recoil that allows me to go off the box.

And so if I was going to flip flop and go the other way, you can see that I expand on the left posteriorly and expand on the right anteriorly, and that's a left turn. And so these are the mechanics that we need to try to influence. So as I step back on the right or as I move into a cut on the right, I'm going to be in that orientation there. As I push myself out, I'm going to reorient and I change direction. So this is how we create the shape change in the thorax. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of a visual representation of the mechanics that we're actually talking about. Because I do think there's a misunderstanding as to how we turn. Again, if we don't have these expansion and compression capabilities, we have limited turns. Again, these are the choices that you're going to make under certain exercise circumstances or activity circumstances to reinforce or to limit those. Again, if I have somebody that isn't much more linear or straight ahead athlete, I'm going to try to eliminate a lot of those turning mechanics, but for baseball players, for dynamic athletes on the field, then I want to start to reinforce these kinds of mechanics. And so hopefully Justin, that clarifies a little bit of your turning question.

Right. And so I'm really glad you bring stuff like this up because this is something that people need to pay attention to because there is actually a pitch. You can kind of hear the pitch go up and down. And so this is indicative of the shape of the airway. This is indicative of the shape of the thorax because in often, in many cases, these actually are sort of complementary relationship, right? So if I get this sort of like this forced expiratory volume type of an exhale, then you know that you're not getting this full excursion of respiration, right? And they're going to be biased towards this compressive, exhalation-based strategy.

Out in the boonie.

I buzzed through this quickly because I have a hot date with a blonde, so I apologize. However, if there are any other questions, you can list them below in the comments or contact me through Instagram at Bill Hartman PT. You can also ask Bill Hartman at gmail.com, but remember to use the subject line 'Ask Bill Hartman Question' so I know you're not trying to sell me something, as I'll automatically delete it otherwise. I hope you have a great week coming up, and we'll be answering questions and posting content throughout the week. I'll see you later.

Yeah, no, I get that. I get that. But let's understand a few things about your history and some adaptations and then what your training will do. When we talk about concentric strategies, that is one of the primary secondary consequences of training hard with higher intensities and higher levels of effort against load. We're talking about the typical stuff associated with promoting gym strength, hypertrophy—whatever you're chasing. All of those adaptations require a higher level of compression to produce the forces required. For me to get stronger, I have to create more internal pressures. That's the only way. When I say internal pressures, I'm not just talking about the pressures inside your chest or abdomen; I'm talking about the pressures inside the muscle. When we hypertrophy a muscle, we're actually jamming more stuff into the muscle that takes up space. That stuff brings fluid with it, so now I have this compartment that is bigger than it used to be, but it's got more stuff in it that allows us to squeeze harder. Then we call that strength because it's allowing us to produce some measure of behavior in the gym. So I'm lifting more weight, or my muscles get bigger—whatever the goal might be. That's a secondary consequence of training. We have to accept that, for normal people like you and me, we're going to give up something in return for that. Are there strategies we can do to maintain some of the things we naturally give up as a byproduct of that type of training? Maybe, because some of us are structurally designed that to accomplish those goals, we have to give up more than somebody else. There's that percentage on one end of the normal curve that walks into the weight room, takes a deep breath, and puts on muscle mass. There are guys able to maintain a lot more mobility at the same level of strength and hypertrophy. We are not created equal. We have adaptive capabilities, but not everybody gets to be the strongest and biggest guy. We have genetic influences that determine what we're capable of regarding our goals and what we have to give up in return. You and I are demonstrative of those people who to get really big and strong, gave up some hip stuff. And the stubbornness or psychological weakness associated with having the identity of having to be the biggest and strongest in the room at any cost bought us a new pair of hips. So we sort of have to accept that. Having said that, there are probably strategies we can implement to reduce the secondary consequences. But again, we're sort of playing with fire because you don't know your genetic potential and what adaptations will be required if you achieve a certain goal. That's why we need to be more strategic in our application where you and I might have a specific hypertrophy or body composition or force output goal, and then monitor that over time and say, 'Am I giving something up in return for this force production? Am I giving something up in return for this gain in muscle mass?' Then identify what that is and ask if there's a strategy to help maintain whatever this is while still accomplishing the goal. I don't think we can categorize that gives us guidance, but it ultimately becomes a personalized experiment of what happens. I approach everything this way, whether I'm in a rehab room with a patient or in the gym with an athlete. We have to take these things in small bites. We implement a strategy in an attempt to create whatever adaptation might be. You work with athletes all the time, so you see this all the time. You're working for speed or force production or whatever, trying to make a change that enhances performance, but you also have to monitor the other stuff because you want to stay healthy and effective. Ultimately, while we think we know what's going to happen, we still work on a probabilistic strategy where we just don't really know what's going to happen. We have an intention, then we say, 'Did my prediction come true? Okay, I accomplished the initial goal, but what was the secondary consequence? Did I give something up in return?' For instance, I knock a tenth off of somebody's 10-meter acceleration, but I lost 15 degrees of hip rotation. Is that okay? If this guy is a straight-ahead athlete, not such a big deal because I expect that to make him faster in a straight line. But if it's a defensive back who has to lower his center of gravity and change direction, I just took away his ability to do that. Was that a reasonable sacrifice? This comes down to, 'Am I training this guy for a combine, like a dog and pony show, or am I training him to be successful as a field athlete?' You just have to make those decisions. For guys like you and me who have already compromised an element of health, it's like, how much farther do we want to go here? And what are we using as our guide to determine, 'I probably need to alter my strategies, change my goal or intent, and continue to monitor?' The strategy doesn't change; it's always evaluate, intervene, and then reevaluate to make sure I'm on the correct path. If you're doing seven sets of 10 with your kettlebell, what's the byproduct? What are you measuring to know, 'I can still do this because it feels good to me because I get to train, but did I just sacrifice something?' You need to come up with key performance indicators that will be your measures of what you cannot give up.

Because they certainly can, absolutely, yeah.

And so then you just construct stuff that progressively exposes her in that position.

I like that. I like that a lot. OK. And then with the understanding that we're talking about upright standing or that type of behavior.

Okay.

You did. You did. You did. Isn't this internal rotation? Hold your arm up. Turn your thorax away. Turn your thorax to the left. As you preach, what way did you go? Because the talk is there. Don't stare at your hand. Don't stare at your hand. Look at the mechanics, approximately. I see, I see. So this is, although it is twisted in the thorax, it's not twisted in that direction. It's twisting in the other direction. You're looking at your hand.

If I take an ER pelvis, if I take an ER pelvis

Okay, because if you can get them to sense the expansion into the surface that they're laying on, then again, what you're going to do is like, you're not going to have the eccentrically oriented representation of abdominals per se, right? You're going to have more concentric orientation and then a controlled yield as it expands. Does that make sense?

Right. Yeah.

Okay. So there's like two types of things I might do manually. One, pulling on whatever in the other orientation. Pulling on whatever. I like that. OK. Yeah. Or two, try and push the proximal end into IR. OK. So think about this for a sec. To push down on the theme where you have to be over top of it, so to speak. Okay, and that's going to that's going to create a more IR representation most approximately so think about taking the neck from 120 degrees of of a straight plane representation to 90. Like just push down on it so so the neck would be this way and you push down and it's like that so if you're starting there if you're starting there okay and you try to push it into IR. You're going to be quite successful, number one, because it's already kind of getting pushed into that position. When you're going to mobilize into IR, you want to make sure that you do something that promotes the ER representation first. That make sense? Yeah. It may be as simple as just acquiring the position. So for instance, if I put you in a low oblique, And I put you in an ER position through the hips in the low oblique. The setup of the activity literally creates the starting conditions that I want to be able to mobilize your hip into an IR position. So I could take somebody that would be anteriorly oriented, I could put them in a right low oblique sit, immediately capture the ER representation. I've taken the pressure off, I have oriented them into ER, and then I can actually have them mobilize themselves into the IR representation to drive the IR towards the pelvis. Does that make sense?

As far as a chessboard, like maximizing external rotation (ER) orientation with no internal rotations (IRs). So like zero degrees of IR in both hips, but 50 or 60 degrees of ER. My initial thought where I went first, which was unsuccessful, was just doing some manual work—basically putting her in a sidelying position and applying pressure to her pelvis and rib cage to try to reduce the ER orientation, which didn't do much. So then I decided to go after the anterior orientation instead. With a little bit of manual work and then I gave her a hook-lying position with a ball between her knees, trying to get a little more posterior pelvic tilt. That pretty much got most of her pain away. Just hook-lying with the ball between the knees and static breathing. That pretty much made the pain completely disappear at that point—she was almost touching the floor. I was initially confused why that worked, because I felt I would need to improve her IR for the toe touch. But then I realized I needed the ER first. Now I'm trying to refine my thought process: Was it just the fact that she was so far forward that I needed to break her back first before she had room for IR, or if I see someone else with a similar pain and motion but who hasn't lost as much IR and isn't as far forward, then maybe that's a case where I don't need to get the ER first. That question makes sense.

Sure.

Left handed pitcher. Okay.

Okay. Do you understand? Yeah. I think so. Um, eccentric overcome, eccentric yield. Do you understand? Yes.

All right. I wanted to ask you, I was thinking about the narrows and their ability to concentrically orient their pelvic outlet. Like the anterior pelvic outlet. Because my end game narrows, when they're squatting, their strategy is top down. I'm now thinking and trying a few different things in between, like with the box squat with full unload and tap and go. And I'm thinking because they have a tendency to compress from top down, as they're lowering to the box, they're already kind of compressing top down to stay upright to lower down slowly. With some people, I see it visually looks better if I fully unload them and then use that response to help them actually let go of their strategy, which is to compress top down and just relax the pelvic floor and then exhale and create pressure from bottom up versus just keeping them in their compensatory strategy when they're compressing top down and not letting them fully unload on the box. I feel like they cannot shift the pressures if I don't let them fully unload on the box.

Let's just say how are you determining that time?

What do you think the bump to the right is on his lower?

The reason why would be because of the jabber and tour we just had seen, I felt like a lot of people ended up just pushing forward through the pelvis.

Thank you.

She lives in Africa, so yeah. Not so much.

Well, okay, but hang on a second. You change the rules when you, as soon as you put them up on the platform, you have changed the rules. Like I put their foot in a totally different representation than it would normally be on the ground. Systemically, they're going to respond. So the question is, is that enough for me to make the change to use that activity?

Well, as you know, I'm normally like six foot three, so... Well, life has beaten you down.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so everybody everybody has their own right their own representation of of their helical orientation and then that's where you best move you always move best on your helical angle.