How To Design Your Perfect Warmup | Dr Sam Spinelli | Modern Wisdom Podcast 162

Dr Sam Spinelli is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and Strength & Conditioning Expert. The first thing you do before any workout is warm up, but understanding the specifics of how an effective warmup routine is designed is unknown by most of us. Expect to learn the key principles behind designing your warmup routine, which movements bring the greatest returns for upper & lower, how to improve your overhead position, deepen your squat, save time and stay resilient. Do not miss this one. Check out everything I use from The Protein Works and get 35% OFF SITE WIDE with the code MODERN35 - https://www.theproteinworks.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Check out Dr Spinelli's Website - https://www.thestrengththerapist.com/ Follow Dr Spinelli on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dr.samspinelli/ Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #fitness #warmup #crossfit - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  First thing, get warm. Figure out whether you want to do that on the ERG, the bike, or doing some dynamic movements. Pick a few different dynamic movements if that's going to be your main thing, or if you just want to check off some boxes for getting in and out of the ranges you're going to go to. If we're talking about being in like a CrossFit class or general lifting, try to do like a thoracic range of motion drill, some sort of trunk stability exercise, some sort of hip motion exercise. And then after that, either do some accessory range of motion drills if you need to, such as like the shoulder ones we discussed or the hip ones. Afterwards, get into the specific exercises that you're going to start to do for the day. Do some skill work for a few minutes. Get moving

• 0:42Speaker 00

  fast on it though. Be deliberate with it. And then get into what you're doing. Start training.

• 0:51Chris Williamson?

  Sam Spinelli in the building. How are you doing, man?

• 0:54Speaker 00

  I'm doing fantastic. How about you?

• 0:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very good. What do you think is more difficult to control, the human body or Skype when you're trying to record a podcast?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Oh, man, I think I'm going to have to shift towards Skype today. If you asked me before, I would have said a different answer, bud.

• 1:09Chris Williamson?

  We have had an absolute technical nightmare, but we've wrangled it. We're here and we're talking. So I want to, I want to talk about warmups today. Everyone that's listening, even from the people that don't do sport anymore and they just did PE in school, they'll have had to do some sort of a warmup. And I don't have a clue really why I should be doing a warmup. I do one at the start of every CrossFit class. When I did Thai boxing, I was warming up there. I've got programmed warmups from my swim coach. If I do swimming or anything, you know, you warm up to do. I even kind of like cough a little bit before I speak on a podcast. Everything has that like on ramp to begin it, right? But I don't know. Where do we start? Like, why, why do we warm up? Why should we do it?

• 1:51Speaker 00

  No, it's a really important question. And at the end of the day, whenever it comes to any of these activities, whether we're talking about swimming, talking on a podcast, or working out, we always want to try to have the best performance we can. When we have a better performance, we reduce our injury risk. When we have a better performance, we have better outcomes. They're just the desired outcomes at the end of the day. And warming up, regardless of the activity, is going to help to do that. If you look at pretty much any high level activity, people do this where they progress in certain ways. And they build up into the activity so that they can then perform at their peak when they're doing the actual activity. And if you don't have that progression into it, then you're just going to be going from cold to into it. Like you have an increased risk of injury, you are going to have a poor performance.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  There's just tons of negative outcomes with it.

• 2:39Chris Williamson?

  I get it. Where do we start? I'm going to do something, let's presume, because we could, there could be a million different warmups, a million different sports. But I think if we take something like CrossFit slash powerlifting, slash a run endurance sort of thing is the broad spectrum of what we're looking at. Where do we start with that?

• 2:59Speaker 00

  So when it comes to pretty much any major physical activity, there's going to be a few, a few things that we want to ensure that we get. And there's basically like three buckets that we can think of. And the first one is going to be that you legitimately need to warm up. You need to actually get physically warm. And there's a lot of reasons behind that. But at the end of the day, when we have an increase in our body temperature, we actually have a faster ability to have metabolism occur. So all of our body reactions occur through metabolism. And they're expedited, so they can happen faster when we're actually physically warm. And there's a lot of chemistry behind that, but for everyone listening, you got to legitimately get warm. This also helps with like nerve conduction velocity. So when we're trying to do things

• 3:43Speaker 00

  that require us to be responsive, reactive, we want to be able to do that quickly. And that's going to be dependent upon how physically warm we are. And so all of these things are very heavily based upon just the simple fact of you have to get physically warm.

• 3:57Chris Williamson?

  That's so fascinating. I didn't even know that.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why, like,

• 4:03Speaker 00

  You can look at different events where people relatively don't have to do like long endurance activities or anything like that, like a high level 100 meter sprinter. They will spend a very long time warming up at a very slow gradual rate so that they get to a very warm state, but they do it where they don't have to like expend a lot of energy to do so. And for most people, it can be as simple as like doing a few minutes of jogging, skipping, rowing, whatever you like, or it can be done through other things to help to achieve other tasks that we'd want in a warm up. So then when we get into like the other characteristics of a good warm up, we're going to be looking at other things like getting your body physically prepared to go through ranges of motion that you're going to be going through for the day.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  So, you know, if we're talking about running, there's not a really crazy excursion that we have to go through. Whereas when we get into things like weightlifting, CrossFit, other lifting sports, you're going to be going through huge ranges of motion for a lot of these things. And that's where maybe doing some dynamic warm up exercises can be really beneficial. And that also layers on the added benefit of when you do these dynamic warm up exercises, they also get you physically warm. So they can be really beneficial for hitting two aspects of it. And the third key thing that we want when we do a good warm up is getting physically prepared neurologically for what we're about to go into. This is where you have like the idea of a steady ramp up in whatever activity you're going to do.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  So like if you're going to be snatching, you shouldn't just go from doing some body weight squats to trying to snatch 135. It's not really a great decision. Whereas, you know, practicing the skill aspect, doing some sets, gradually working up in weight, or if you're going to be running, gradually building up an effort that you're going to be running at, and then getting into the actual activity. So essentially, those are like the three main buckets of a good warm up.

• 5:52Chris Williamson?

  I like it. It's cool. It seems like getting warm would probably quite easily come as a byproduct of the other two. And I'm going to guess that priming yourself neurologically would come by potentially drilling movements, empty bar, poly bar, you know, like hanging from a rig perhaps, or hanging from rings or whatever it might be. That sort of stuff would start to get those neurons firing.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. And those are the things that I would call like the essentials, not necessarily what could go into being like the perfect warm up, but the essentials of what someone would want to not screw things up.

• 6:31Chris Williamson?

  I mean, straight off the bat, I have done, and there will be people listening as well. Loads of times you go in a gym, maybe it's a bit cold, especially in the UK, right? It's constantly cold. Go into the gym and you do some stretches, you get the bar out, it's overhead. Maybe you're not doing class and you just go, I'll go do my own thing. And you do, you start your workout, you can start your workout without sweating. So I mean, is a good heuristic that there's a couple of beads of sweat floating around? How hot's hot?

• 6:59Speaker 00

  That is actually a great question. And so that gets into a little bit more of like, what's the actual activity you're gonna do? And also the individual's ability to sweat? Because there are people that like, don't easily sweat. There are some people that, you know, they look at a gym and they start to sweat.

• 7:12Chris Williamson?

  That's me. I mean, the second camp, and there's a couple of girls in our gym who managed to come in and their faces just looked totally flawless when they finished. Whereas me and some of the guys look like we've been in a fight.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm in that first camp where like, if you see me sweating, I've, it's pretty rare. So for a lot of people, it's kind of tricky to go off like that simple heuristic of a couple of beads of sweat. But if you are, if you feel cold, you've not done a sufficient job. And you should be able to like move around, feel loose. And those are like some pretty good markers. Because as we start to warm up, I talked about like all these different things of like metabolism. And one aspect is when we start to actually get physically warm, our fluids in our muscle tissue, in our blood vessels, in our fascia, they start to flow more freely between each other. And

• 8:05Speaker 00

  it's called this thing called the viscoelastic properties of muscles and other tissues. And actually getting physically warm allows that to happen easier. So you should feel looser just by actually getting physically warm.

• 8:18Chris Williamson?

  I get it. I get it. Okay. So where do we go next? We know that we need to have our three buckets. We need to be warm. We need to begin to drill some of the movements and kind of prime ourselves mechanically. Does that include, does that include like sort of static stretching to open up range? What about dynamic stretching? I had Dr. Quinn Henneke on and we, he did his mobility myths and we spoke about the, the vibrating foam roller and the percussion gun and the one that's got wifi connectivity and it's got Bluetooth enabled. And plays you Spotify songs and stuff like that. Like, you know, what do I need?

• 8:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think Quinn and I are pretty similar lines. For anyone that doesn't know, Quinn and I are friends and he was actually a mentor of mine for a long time. So I'm not against static stretching. And when we looked into a lot of the literature on it, there's some stuff that indicates like, if you do a challenging static stretch and then try to go into a physical activity that's very demanding, you're going to have a worse performance. We have some good information telling us that. Whereas that same information is a little bit challenged because if you do a hard, challenging static stretch, but then move around a little bit more, which is what most people do. No one really like does a max effort hamstring stretch and then tries to immediately go into a max vertical jump.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  That's not really like what happens in real life. That's where the research came from on this.

• 9:40Chris Williamson?

  Wasn't it, um, there was one that I saw where people had done an extended quad stretch and then it was forced production on a quad extension as well. I'm gonna guess that's precisely the same thing. Like who does that? No one does like a one minute max effort, like quad stretch straight into then using that muscle.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  Exactly. And so, um, that's where then we see other studies that have done like where they do like that max effort one minute stretch. And then people get up, walk around for a minute and then do the leg extension. And those people actually don't have a significant drop in performance.

• 10:10Chris Williamson?

  What do they gain?

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Oh, that's, that's another important one. They don't actually seem to gain anything. So

• 10:19Chris Williamson?

  Man, honestly.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  That's one of the things is like, people are very perseverating on like the idea that static stretching is this like magical thing. And unfortunately, we don't really see anything telling us that. Like, there are some arguments that static stretching can do a wide range of different things. But in most cases, we can get the same benefit from other activities and get it easier and better. Like, you know, the simplest thing of people static stretch because they think they're going to get more range of motion. Okay, well, we actually have like some pretty strong research showing us that lifting weights through a full range of motion does that, but it also does it better. So then it's like, okay, why should I static stretch? And then there's other stuff on like, okay, well, if you static stretch really, really hard, it can actually create hypertrophy. It can give you a bigger

• 11:02Speaker 00

  muscle. But it does it worse than lifting weights. And there's like, just all these things of like, I'm not against it. If you enjoy it, go for it. But most people don't really enjoy it.

• 11:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So I did an episode, since I did that one with Quinn, he was like, episode number 12, I think that I did with him. So we've done like nearly 2 million downloads since then. So there'll be a lot of people listening who didn't listen to that episode. I will link it in the show notes below. I implore you to go back and listen to Sam's peer, just dispel basically everything that you've ever done as part of a mobility routine. But yeah, he, he essentially said that people use static stretch, stack overhead stretch, let's say typically with a poly bar, so they can open up their shoulders to get into a snatch. But his argument was, you can do that by snatching with the poly bar, plus

• 11:54Chris Williamson?

  you'll drill the movement, plus then you can slowly load up over time. We spoke about kind of some tenuous information about activating the parasympathetic nervous system and kind of getting people into their body. But I'm going to guess, again, as you've said, you can drill that by moving into the more mechanical priming aspect. Is that correct?

• 12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, essentially.

• 12:18Chris Williamson?

  Hey, I've remembered, a year and a half later, Quinn, I've remembered, man.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  I'm sure Quinn will be very happy to hear that.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  No, that's where we get into like some of the challenges of some of the traditional information of like, you know, stretch, go for light jogging, you're good to go. It's not inherently wrong, but it's maybe not the best advice either. And that's where I think a lot of the information has shifted because, you know, most people don't have a ton of time to exercise. Most people don't have, you know, like if you're a professional athlete and you got three to four hours, do whatever you want, different conversation. But, you know, like for me, I go to the gym like four days a week. I've got usually like an hour to an hour and a half. I don't got a lot of time to screw around and I really want to like maximize what I do. I give a shit about what I do. And so then it's like, what will give me the best outcomes with the reasonable investment? So, um, for most people, static stretching, pretty low on the list.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Whereas like dynamic movement, actually, um, going in and out of deeper ranges, controlling that motion. If you want to like go into it, hold, hold a little bit of a quote unquote, stretch for a second. There's some value in some of those things. I wouldn't ever say like there's none. And, um, for most people, they probably benefit from it. Uh, cause we can gear different aspects and that's where some of the conversation would go in where we move past like the basic levels of what would be, uh, the essential components of a warmup and get into like what might take you to the next level. Because we can do some things where you, like if you are someone that's struggling to get into an overhead position for a squat or for an overhead squat or a snatch, you could do some lower level, different activities.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Like for instance, a thoracic rotation drill that might allow you to then get into an overhead position better. We do have some research showing that, um, going into higher levels of shoulder flexion. So basically taking my arm above my head. If we proceed it with doing some sort of thoracic motion drill, we can get an enhanced motion going overhead. So now you wouldn't necessarily get that by just snatching. But you could get that through doing a dynamic stretch first and then, then snatching. And that's where it comes into like the individual variation that people have and what they need. Like for me, I can get overhead just fine, but I have a challenge in getting into a deep squat. And so then for me, doing some different things for my hips makes me be able to be more proficient when I actually start snatching.

• 14:34Chris Williamson?

  I get it. Yeah, it's, um, it first off, I'm very jealous of the fact that you can get into a good overhead position without having to really loosen up first because I'm not in that camp. But then I can, I can happily sit on my heels, right? We all have our crosses, our mechanical crosses to bear in our bodies. Um, so yeah, I, I really like the fact that we're now getting into a bit more of the nuance of it, right? Like it's not just black and white. It's not just that you need to do the movement. It's point, you know, you may be able to move the needle more by not just going in and starting to snatch. There might be some things you can do, but they're likely to be a little bit more specific to your physiology. Cool. Okay. So we've got the fact, we've got our three buckets. We've got the fact that

• 15:15Chris Williamson?

  there's some nuance in there. Let's start to talk about some nitty gritty. What are, in your experience as a coaching person and online, um, some of the best overall warmups that you can give people? You know, if you were to just structure one, we want five minutes on a bike and this of this and a dynamic and blah, blah, you know, what, what is going to give people 80% of the benefit broadly for the movements they're doing?

• 15:40Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, uh, most of the people that I work with are in a similar position to me. They don't got a ton of time. And so then it comes back into that conversation of what can I do to get that 80% return with the investment? And for most of those people, it's going to be, I'm going to pick four to five different movements that, um, has them moving through a different range of motion that they can do relatively moderate pace. And then, uh, that will achieve the first bucket of getting them warm. It'll achieve the second bucket of getting them through these deeper ranges. Um, it won't necessarily get them primed up, uh, from the neurological standpoint, because we'll get into that in a second. But the other benefit that it does is it'll target those limitations that they often have. So for the majority of people,

• 16:24Speaker 00

  picking something like a thoracic mobility drill, because most people do generally have a limitation in their thoracic extension, which is going to impact their shoulder flexion. So if anyone is doing some sort of exercise with their arms past their shoulder and going overhead, which is like the majority of people, like if you're doing a strict press, push press, incline bench press even, like any of these things, having improved shoulder flexion is going to be easier from doing that. So usually we're going to pick some sort of like thoracic extension or rotation drill.

• 16:52Chris Williamson?

  Can you describe what that would, what that would look like?

• 16:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you could do like a sideline windmill. So you lay on your side, bring a knee up towards your chest, and then with your top arm, you just make a big windmill. And I can see some videos if you want in the notes, but that's like a very easy one. It's not very complex, but most people instantly feel better once they do it. Like you have someone try to reach overhead, lay down, do it, boom, feels way better.

• 17:17Chris Williamson?

  Are you in a side plank while you're doing that, or are you just completely prone on the side on the ground?

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, laying flat on your side, yeah.

• 17:23Chris Williamson?

  Got you, got you.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, then doing like some sort of hip movement. Again, most people are going to the gym. They're gonna either do like a full body routine, a metcon, running, something. So it's gonna be realistically, in the majority of cases, like a full body routine. So then we're gonna get that upper body with the sideline thoracic windmill. Then we can get into a hip movement. So for a lot of people, in my experience, people usually will either struggle with a hip rotation, either an internal or external rotation. So like if you're sitting on a chair right now, and you try to bring your one foot across your midline, or you try to push it out, that's gonna be like internal and external rotation. And people usually struggle with one or the other. And we can do this drill called a 90-90 hip rotation. So you're sitting on the ground,

• 18:09Speaker 00

  and you've got your, you've got one leg in front, one leg to your side, kinda like that classic hurdler stretch. But then you have your front leg bent, and then what we do here is we rotate our hips forward and back. And by doing this, we work through internal and external rotation. And if someone struggles with one, then they get the benefit of also doing the other one. And so the front leg is being stretched into external rotation. The rear leg is being stretched into internal rotation, where we're actively moving in and out of it. And so for most people, getting that allows us to then get into more hip extension, more hip flexion. It's just like this super easy one that covers a ton of stuff.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  So unless I like go through and find someone has like a specific issue, it's just like an easy one to just say like 90% of people are going to benefit from it.

• 18:54Chris Williamson?

  Awesome.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then usually some sort of like trunk activation based exercise. So whether it be like a dead bug, a side plank, or some sort of more challenging variation.

• 19:04Chris Williamson?

  Stuart McGill is loving it at the moment. He's hearing, he's hearing all of his stuff come through now.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, he loves it. And at the end of the day, for most people, learning how to create some trunk tension is really beneficial. It's not like this magical thing, but for a lot of people, it teaches them how to be able to create some tension in the trunk that allows us to be able to move around it better. And a lot of people just struggle with that. So it's an easy thing. So for most people, I would pick like those three as a minimum and then pick something else usually. And then it's just like cycle through them for six to 12 reps and repeat for two to three sets. And you know, like if I, that's essentially what I do in my warmup and I can usually finish it off in five-ish minutes. And then I would go into like my first exercises and just gradually ramp up and do some skill work.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Cause the other advantage is when we're doing that neurological aspect I said, most people are not perfectionists or

• 20:03Speaker 00

  perfect technical precision demonstrators and whatever they're going to do. Like if you are a weightlifter, you probably aren't fantastic at snatching. You're probably okay, but you're probably not fantastic. If you're a runner, you're probably not fantastic at running. You're probably okay. And so doing like five minutes of some technical skill work. It doesn't have to be done slow. It can actually be done relatively at a fast pace. We're just trying to be working on improving your precision with it so that as you get into your lifting, not only are you now warm, not only have you now improved your neurological efficiency, but now hopefully over time, you're going to be more technically proficient. Because the goal is like when we actually lift or we actually run, you don't think about a lot. You should just be like doing the activity you're doing.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  And so hopefully by doing a little bit of it at the start where you're thinking and trying to be, you know, aware of what's going on, you transfer that over time.

• 20:56Chris Williamson?

  I like that a lot. Yeah, you're totally right. Anyone that's doing a CrossFit class or anything, you know, like even just lifting in the gym on your own, that guy next to you, he's got, he's got three plates on there. Right. Well, I better, I better hurry up. I'll get three, I'll get three plates on. Fuck, he's put another, he's put another plate. Right. Okay. Well, you know, I mean, like everyone's kind of distracted away from the integrity of their movement, precision just by, and especially, you know, you take it to CrossFit, there'll be a lot of CrossFitters listening. You take it to that, you know what it's like. Class gets going, the music gets turned up and you're like, let's fucking get after it. And it's like, dude, you've got 15 minutes to establish a back squat. Like it's fine. Like you don't need to hurry up. And everyone's like clattering plates on straight away.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's real funny because like, you know, I'll assume the majority of people listening here aren't freak savages with like 700 pound back squats. And, uh, you know, if you are squatting 400 pounds as your one rep max, you shouldn't need more, you shouldn't need 15 minutes to be able to establish that. Like you don't need to rush into it.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  Like I can hit a max squat in, I squat just over 500 pounds and I could get there in like 12 minutes. Assuming that I've done a basic level of a warm up first. And so that's where like spending some time doing that, because most classes and most people working out are going to go through some level of warmups. So if you've done a good job, then you're ready to start building up and you can do a little bit of practice work before rushing into it.

• 22:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that. So we've spoken about the fact that we've got our three buckets. We've spoken about the sideline windmill or anything else really that's going to get that thoracic moving. The hurdle stretch, which I know how it looks. I hope the people listening do. If not, we'll, I'll get a link off you. It'll be in the show notes below if you're a little bit confused.

• 22:42Chris Williamson?

  What about cardio? Is there like, should I not be on an assault bike? What about a rower or a C2? You know, like pretty much all of our warmups make us go for a run or sit on a bike or whatever before. What's your thoughts there?

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so again, it comes back into that like conversation of how much time do you got? And by no means is that a bad thing. It's just like, um, I would put it as a lower priority. And if someone has the time, I actually coach a bunch of CrossFitters. And so most of them will do a five minute thing on either a run, an aerdin or ERG. And they're going to do that first, then they're going to get into their other stuff that I outlined. But most of those guys are training for like an hour and a half to two hours. And for them, I think that the merit is there to do it. And if we're there, if they're doing activities that are more based on those as well, like if they're doing an ERG workout, we're going to warm up on the ERG. If they're doing a running workout, we're going to warm up running.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  But if you're doing lifting, if you're doing a lot of these other things, I'm going to put less of a priority on that.

• 23:39Chris Williamson?

  Allow you to get warm through your movement, through your dynamic stuff, all the rest of it. Okay, cool. So the main movement that I see people struggling with, especially in CrossFit class, and I'm like, I'm speaking as patient zero for this, is the snatch. Is getting a barbell overhead, getting yourself into that position, especially if like me, people have been a bro for the last 10 years and have just done that chest and biceps every twice a week. Um, so can we talk about perhaps some slightly more specific stuff to help people get into that good overhead position, both lower and upper?

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, absolutely, man. So again, we're going to be looking at, when it comes to the upper portion, we're going to want to check off that box of the thoracic motion. It's going to be really beneficial for the majority of people. And so that's again, like that sideline windmill, or we could get into something that's very specific. So when we're talking about the snatch, when we take our arms above our head, that's what we call like a thoracic extended position. And there are different drills that we can do, for instance, like a bench T-spine mob. So what happens here is we have a bench, we're to the side of it, we're going to put our elbows on it, we're kneeling. So kneeling and you're almost like a prayer position, like you're gonna be praying on the bench. Then ideally you have a dowel in your hands and your palms are facing you.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  And that way you can then sit back and it takes you into a shoulder flex position. And that extends your thoracic spine. And then you can bend your elbows and bring your hands back towards behind your head. So what this does here is by having our elbows bent, it puts a little bit more tension on our triceps. Our triceps cross our shoulder joint so they can limit how much shoulder flexion we get. So how well we can bring them overhead. By going into shoulder flexion, it helps to encourage us getting into a thoracic extended position. And then by sitting back, what makes this drill specifically really great is when we sit back, we go into some posterior pelvic tilting, some lumbar flexion. So essentially like our back rounds a little bit. It's unloaded, so it's fine.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  And the benefit there is that we see that in the research when we go into a little bit of lumbar flexion. It limits how much motion occurs at the lower back and encourages at the upper back. So because our goal is to specifically try and encourage more upper back motion, to get more shoulder motion, this drill just like works beautifully for that.

• 26:05Chris Williamson?

  That's really cool.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that's a great one. And then when we're talking about again snatching, so if everything else is moving there, a drill that's similar to that but a little bit different would be like a pull over exercise. This is one that actually Quinn is very well known for, but it's essentially where we just lay on our back. And then you can have a dowel, you can have a dumbbell, a kettlebell. I probably not utilize a barbell specifically for your warm up, but you could. And then you're just laying there on your back, arms extended out, pointing towards the roof, holding something, and then you're gonna lower it down towards the ground above your head. So you're trying to flex your shoulders, so reaching up above.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  And as you do that, you're trying to reach out, trying to have your shoulders extend out more and then keep going back. And then as we do that, we're just trying to slowly go into that range and then come back up out of it. Now, earlier we discussed the differences between like static stretching and strengthening. And whether or not this is strengthening, different conversation, but it's like resistance based stretching essentially. And so this is a type of motion. If we go really slow into it, that's called eccentric motion. And we've got some good research on different motions like this, showing that it actually does really well before exercise to enhance motion. And so then just doing a nice few repetitions slowly into that range and coming back out

• 27:29Speaker 00

  of it is going to enhance how well you can bring your arms above your head.

• 27:32Chris Williamson?

  Is that sort of biceps brushing the ears in that position?

• 27:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Okay. And would you advise knees up, so feet, feet up, so sort of knees are a little bit of an angle or legs out flat?

• 27:44Speaker 00

  So my preference would be more towards like the knees up. So if you can think of like that dead bug position even, like bringing them up all that, all the way that far. Cause what that does, it really encourages people to make sure that they're putting the motion at their shoulders. Cause one thing-

• 27:57Chris Williamson?

  Not going into too much extension in that.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 28:01Chris Williamson?

  Got you. Got you. Yeah. I can see how that would happen if your legs were out straight. You'd be tight, tight in the hips and you'd push up through the, through the midline, right?

• 28:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Or if you're tight to the upper back and shoulders, then you use your lumbar spine to extend to get around from having to go through them. That's one of the reasons like for a lot of people that are maybe not as competent going overhead, you'll see them extend at their lower back a lot more.

• 28:24Chris Williamson?

  That's me. That's me all day. That's me. You're describing me. You've seen me snatch some.

• 28:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we've got, we've, we've got ourselves in with that. I've just noticed there's something that I meant to bring up. What about PNF? Is there a place for PNF? And can you describe what that is?

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. So for anyone that doesn't know, PNF is a really fancy term. It's originally from a company that like formulated it and it's called proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation. And It's nothing special. Sorry.

• 28:56Chris Williamson?

  I love it.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, like theoretically, there's a lot of like mechanisms that they talk about and like in, in, you know, physio school to give you like all these different terminologies to memorize about PNF. The terminologies make it sound cool and the some of the stuff and the rationale they say sounds fantastic when they start talking about, you know, reciprocal inhibition, all these different terminologies that they start throwing at you.

• 29:18Chris Williamson?

  I want that.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  But most, most of the time it's just like, that's shit that we get when we just lift weights anyways.

• 29:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  And it, and I think that's like a really common thing in like the physio chiropractic and like all the rehab world. It's essentially like make things sound more complicated and that means that it's actually way better. And it's like a big load of bullshit.

• 29:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Super frustrating to me.

• 29:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, better it is. It's, it's like that signaling, right? It's like, look at my technical expertise. I'm using this word which sounds so convoluted. I mean, I, you know, you don't need to worry. Don't worry about the, about the, technical reduction inhibition or whatever it is. Like you don't need to worry about that. Like, um, yeah. Okay. So, don't fuck around with PNF. I don't think we actually describe what, what, what PNF is, but it's essentially putting yourself into a stretch and then forcing muscle contraction in that stretch to then allow yourself to stretch further. Right? Is that close to a description?

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Well, that's, that's like one, one aspect of PNF. That's the hard part is like, so, um, people that are like in the details of PNF. It's like a whole system of structures. It'd be like saying, what is CrossFit? And you describe a snatch.

• 30:24Chris Williamson?

  Holy fucking shit. I didn't realize I'd opened Pandora's box. Is that what the P in PNF stands for? Pandora's?

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 30:31Chris Williamson?

  Fishy fascination.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:33Chris Williamson?

  Pandora's bollocks. Yeah. Um, okay. So, uh, no PNF. We've just, we're snatching. We've decided to do our, thoracic stretch. We've got down into our prayer position. We've got a dowel out. We've also made Quinn happy because we've got ourselves into a dead bug and we've allowed our hands to come up and over our heads. Like one, one kilo dumbbells or like a dowel or like just something super, super light, right?

• 30:55Speaker 00

  So yeah, like you don't, you don't want to grab a 45 pound bar and start busting it out. Like 20 kilos is too much for most people. Whereas like, you know, when I do it, I grab a 10 pound dumbbell. Or so it'd be like a four kilos for most, for all the metric system users. I am metric system, so, but you still my American friends. And I just lay back, bust it out and then I'm good to go.

• 31:18Chris Williamson?

  Are you, sorry, just for clarity here, are you having palms facing forward towards the ceiling? Or palms facing in towards the ears?

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that depends on what you're holding. So if you're holding a dowel, you're gonna have palms facing the ceiling.

• 31:33Chris Williamson?

  For dumbbells?

• 31:35Speaker 00

  If you're holding a dumbbell, you're likely gonna be holding it palms facing each other.

• 31:39Chris Williamson?

  Got you. Cool.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, because as you get like more narrow, so essentially if you're grabbing a small dumbbell, it's gonna be a little bit more narrow. The more narrow position while keeping your palms facing the roof is gonna be more challenging to hold. And it can be a little irritable to some people. It's one of the reasons why people have a little bit easier time. Like if you lay on your back and you try and take your arms above your head and you go into like your snatch grip position, it's easier to hit the floor than if you go into your jerk grip position.

• 32:05Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:06Chris Williamson?

  Well, you see these, I'm sure you'll have seen them, these videos online of like these hyper mobile people. Sonny Webster, who I'll send this video to, one of my buddies, past Modern Wisdom guest. Like he's got videos of him going into ass actually touching the ground with a barbell overhead and his hands crossed in like some weird Power Rangers shit.

• 32:29Chris Williamson?

  It's like,

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, Sonny's a freak.

• 32:30Chris Williamson?

  What, what, what is your like construction? Honestly, man, I came, so he was on a night out, he was in the living room, just through the back there once, after we'd been on a night out and I came in in the morning and he was stretching. You know, people just do that stretch, they put their arms in the air and they do this. And you can see mine, mine are essentially just lateral with my body when I put my arms out. I promise you, his arms were parallel going backwards behind him like a bird, like a bird at the top of the flap. And I was thinking, this is what happens when you do weightlifting at a high level from at the age of 10, isn't it?

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 33:02Chris Williamson?

  Insane, man, and he does it under control. Like it's just. That's what you want. Okay, so we got that. We've got ourselves into some good movements there. Are we going to lower or is there anything else we need to do with upper to prep ourselves for a snatch?

• 33:16Speaker 00

  No, I think for most people, they're good to go like at that point. And then when we're getting into the lower body stuff, again, like that 90/90 motion, so like similar to that hurdler position, that's going to be a good starting point. And then after that, you know, maybe some sort of ankle motion exercise. So similar to the the shoulder flexion one where we're laying on our back and then pulling the dumbo overhead. Doing that's an eccentric based stretch. I think doing something similar to that for the calf is really beneficial. So most people are going to struggle with having their knee go forward. And when your knee goes forward, it allows you to stay more upright, which is really beneficial in a snatch. It's really beneficial in most activities, but again, people struggle with that.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  And getting some sort of like deeper calf raise type exercise done first can usually allow for that. Like if you set up on the edge of a step and then you lower down for like three to four seconds, pause for a second in the bottom and then come back up, just like what we were doing for that overhead one. It's going to be really beneficial. And if you do it steadily over a long time, it's going to help to increase that range of motion, get you comfortable, able to control the position too, and have a really good transfer when you start the snatch.

• 34:26Chris Williamson?

  Is that one foot, one leg at a time or both together?

• 34:31Speaker 00

  The biggest deterring there for one foot versus two foot, I would say is like how strong the person is. Cause if you can't like really get out of a one legged one very well, you probably just want to do two feet.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Man, a lot of people, I think a lot of people don't realize how weak their calves are. As like a, as a physio who does a lot of work with different people, like I work with a lot of runners and triathletes. And they come in and I make them like bust out legitimately good quality calf raises. They're often quite shocked at how weak they are.

• 35:02Chris Williamson?

  Especially as people who use them all the time, right?

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:05Chris Williamson?

  Using their calves every day.

• 35:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so we've got that. We've, we've got ourselves, I think that's the, that's if I was to do a survey of what movement do you struggle with? I think snatch might be number one, but why don't we do a couple of bonus rounds? What else?

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 35:22Chris Williamson?

  What else do you find people coming to you and saying, hey, Sam, I need a warm up for this movement? What are some of the common, the common requests?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, deadlift is a pretty common one. And I think like, you know, when we're looking at things that are different from the snatch, you know, like a, like a squat, I'm going to probably do a lot of similar things as what we just outlined for the snatch, similar kind of requirements. Clean, other than the aspect of the front rack, which a lot of people do struggle with, and we could talk about, um, like getting into the bottom position of the clean is going to be similar from the hip standpoint, but there's going to be a little bit different aspect for the front rack. And then otherwise, the deadlift is a pretty different one because we have like a much higher demand on being able to get deep into the hips. Because if you're doing a good job, like you're not squatting the weight, whereas you're going to be keeping your legs more extended and then hinging at the hips to a higher degree. And so for a lot of people,

• 36:16Speaker 00

  that's going to be like a different demand. So I guess we could jump into either the front rack or the deadlift.

• 36:22Chris Williamson?

  I'm feeling, I'm feeling, let's deadlift first and then we'll go into front rack.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So when we're talking about the deadlift again, um, a couple of the main things that challenge most people is going to be that deep hip flexion position, particularly with the knees extended, because essentially for most people, they feel like their hamstrings are going to rip off. And

• 36:42Chris Williamson?

  I'm going to guess, sorry to interject there, I'm going to guess that, um, what that causes some people to do is probably stay too upright at the bottom of a deadlift, right? And squat, squat into it too much.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:54Chris Williamson?

  Interesting. Yeah. Cause I see, I, you know, all of the guys that I know that I've got some friends, Johnny, one of the co-hosts of this show, he's deadlifted. 307 in the 105s. So he's like, he's got, he's got a regional record up here.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:11Chris Williamson?

  Um, and you see the position that he gets into and he's not squatting the way he's squatting the way when it's, when it's his time to squat. But when he's deadlifting, he doesn't do that.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. That's what you see with people that are very proficient at deadlifting. And it's one of the reasons why, like, if you ever watch Sonny as an example, Sonny deadlift and how he does it compared to that guy. It would look probably quite different. And it's because Sonny, while he's still strong, he's not like a high level deadlifter. He's a high level weightlifter. And when weightlifters set up, they're, they're not looking to maximally deadlift. They're looking to, um, perform a higher velocity based movement. That's going to set them up to receive a weight in a different position. And so it's just like a drastically different position. But that's one of the reasons they set up with like their knees more forward and more of like a squatting type ish movement. The problem is that if someone's trying to legitimately delve the big weight and be very strong in that position, that's not the position to do it from.

• 38:04Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. I wonder how many people that do CrossFit perhaps have started to confuse the mechanics thinking to me doing it. I probably do. I probably think, oh, well, a deadlift's just a hardcore clean with an over under grip, you know?

• 38:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, that's actually a really common thing. Yeah, definitely.

• 38:24Chris Williamson?

  Interesting. Okay. So we're deadlifting. We need to get ourselves into that position. How are we going to do it?

• 38:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. So I think for a lot of people, again, starting off that 90 90 drill, just to like clear off some stuff, boom, get it done. And then we could get into, um, getting the hamstrings a little bit more comfortable and getting into a deep position. And so a good exercise for that is where you have like a, a rig or a doorway or something that's going to be like firm, uh, stay in place. And then you can put your leg against it and then have your other leg down by the side. So what you're going to do is you're going to lay on your back and you're going to put, uh, one leg extended up on the rig, the doorway, whatever it is. And then we'll start off having both legs up. And then you're going to lower down the one leg that's in like the doorway or beside the rig and the other one stays in place. And your goal is to be able to lower it down towards the ground while keeping your leg

• 39:12Speaker 00

  straight. You'll see a lot of people try to bend their leg. Your goal, keep it straight, keep your back pressed into the ground, don't let it arch up. And then over time, you work closer and closer to having your butt touch the rig and having your leg extended. So the further out you are, the less hip flex you'll be in and the more you get close to the rig, the more flex you'll be. And the same with your knee extensions. People that really struggle are going to be really far out, have their knee bent. And then people that are really comfortable with it are going to be basically their butt against with leg totally straight. And then going through essentially somewhere kind of setup where you're going down nice and slow, three to four seconds, pause in that bottom position, come back up and then

• 39:56Speaker 00

  switch sides and do as many times as you feel. The thing here is like, if you get to a point where you're just like absolutely demolishing it, then you can come off the rig and try and maintain that leg up. That's going to put a higher demand on having like trunk activation.

• 40:11Chris Williamson?

  Oh my god.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  It's a great exercise.

• 40:14Chris Williamson?

  It is a great exercise, Simon. It sounds terrible.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I think for a lot of people doing that 90/90 position, doing that and then doing some sort of like lat based activation exercise. So we essentially want some sort of like pullover based exercise, but different than, so like when we did the pullover earlier and we're talking about the snatch, the emphasis was on getting the shoulders opened up overhead. Whereas now we're looking to come down and bring the hands by your side as you do a pullover. And so like that same position doesn't work very well. But instead what we can do is like be standing, little bit bent over position, have a band out in front of us and then pull our arms down by our sides. So it's like you're trying to sweep your hands back by your side.

• 41:00Chris Williamson?

  Have we looped the band, have we looped the band around a rig here or is it literally just between our hands?

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Uh, I would loop it around the rig.

• 41:06Chris Williamson?

  Okay, around the rig and we're just pulling down and yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah. And doing that is going to allow you to get a little bit more lat activation. The lats are really beneficial in deadlifting, whether it be from the standpoint of being able to help maintain the bar close to our body, but then also your lats actually have attachment into your spine. And so when they have a higher level of attachment, we can create more stability around the spine.

• 41:30Chris Williamson?

  We're focusing on driving those shoulders down towards the ground.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah. Yeah, for everyone deadlifting, don't pull your shoulder blades back, pull them down.

• 41:40Chris Williamson?

  Okay, why is that?

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Well, so if you think about physics, when we do a deadlift, we want to reduce the range of motion. So we want to have to move the bar as little as we need to. And if you have your arms in place and you pull your shoulders back, it actually increases the relative length because now your chest is closer to the ground. You still have to move the bar the same distance. Whereas if you put your shoulder blades down, it'll relatively decrease the length that you have to move. And the other benefit is that actually increases your lat activation, whereas pulling them back does not.

• 42:17Chris Williamson?

  Got you. I once got red pilled on what low bar squatting means by Johnny. And he was telling me about, is it moment force arm? Is that what it's called?

• 42:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's called a moment arm, yeah.

• 42:28Chris Williamson?

  Moment arm, yeah, yeah, yeah. He fully red pilled me one day about that and I was like, okay, no worries, man. Right, we're gonna either front squat or we're gonna prep for our clean. How are we sorting out our front rack?

• 42:38Speaker 00

  So I think doing like a thoracic rotation or extension drill, kind of like those ones we discussed earlier. So either sideline windmill or the bench moab, those are two great options to start off with. But then things get different because we're not going overhead really. And so instead, what a lot of people complain about with the front rack is having like wrist discomfort. So a lot of people will like complain about the wrist, say that's bothersome. And it's because like, at the end of the day, it does require you to get into a decent amount of wrist extension. The difference though is that for people that usually don't complain about it, they usually have pretty good shoulder external rotation. And if you think about it, like when I'm in this position, this is where my arm can set up. I have to really extend my wrist hard back if I can't rotate outwards very well.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  But if I can rotate out really well, then I don't have to extend my wrist as much. That's where if you ever see like a video of Klokov doing a push press or any kind of position like that, the dude has almost a straight wrist. And so like his wrist is not extended, but he has like such good external rotation that he's able to get into that position, be very strong from there.

• 43:42Chris Williamson?

  Bro, so to interject there, Sam, I saw Body Power 2018 was when I first met Sonny, right? So two years ago and we're on a stand with a full rig setup and we're doing muscle ups and like chilling out and Sonny comes and does a little, he wasn't like booked on it, does a little presentation and um, Klockov walks by and he sees, he sees him doing his circus lifting and um, then he, he messaged, so Sonny messaged him and was like, hey man, like, do you wanna, should we do something tomorrow? Cause he's got his um, Klockov brand of weights and plates and bars and stuff. And they had a big lifting platform over there. And uh, he just replied, I can't remember what he replied, but it was like the most

• 44:24Chris Williamson?

  Russian. It was like, yes, tomorrow, strict press. And it's like, fuck, fuck. So you watch um, Klockov's, he, he put like, I think he jerked 210 from the rack. Um, like just like animal, absolute animal. And um, yeah, him and Sonny are doing stuff and there's like a couple of videos floating around of it. That was really cool. But the man met him, said hello, said like, I think I really like sort of what you do and blah, blah. The dude shook my hand and I swear to God, it was like, you remember when you were a kid and you used to put on your dad's slipper? Pretend to be your dad? I put my hand into his hand and I was like, there's, there's room in here. I could sell

• 45:07Chris Williamson?

  this as real estate. Like there's genuine square footage inside of this thing.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's just like an absolute thick beast.

• 45:18Chris Williamson?

  Everything about him is very thick, isn't it? Yeah. Even his neck, man. Actually, I want to ask you about that. Fuck it. I've, I've wanted to ask someone for ages. Why does Klockov set up with his knees out so wide in that particular position? Cause I don't see many weightlifters set up in that position for the clean.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  Oh, in the clean?

• 45:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  He does it in the snatch too, right? Like uh, you're talking about his bottom position?

• 45:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's funny because I actually set up very similar to Klockov and it's like really common for, so I was talking about like these hip rotation things and for individuals who have a limited hip internal rotation, it's hard to maintain your knees directly forward in front of you because you don't actually have that internal rotation. And so then if you turn your feet out, turn your knees out, it allows you to get around that. And if, you know, I've never assessed Klockov, I can't claim to have done that, but I've watched thousands of videos of him move. You can just tell in the way that he chooses to do a lot of things that he inherently has that same issue. It's really common in a lot of like larger males to have that limitation.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  And so it's just like a likely scenario for him. And you see that a lot in a lot of like Russian descended males where they have like limited hip internal rotations, then they set it that way. That's why you see it a lot across like Ukrainian lifters, some Belarusian lifters, all these different kind of people where they have like that similar bottom position and they also squat in a similar way. Yeah, just like very different from a lot of other places.

• 46:49Chris Williamson?

  I guess girls don't know how good they've got it with the Q-shaped pelvis.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Maybe not. It's hard to say.

• 46:56Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  There's benefits and limitations and all these things, right?

• 46:59Chris Williamson?

  They've got the pain of childbirth, but they've got the benefit of a deep squat like, you know, throughout life. So.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:06Chris Williamson?

  Pluses, pluses and minuses. Okay, so we've got, we're talking about front rack. We've talked about that external rotation. What are we doing for it?

• 47:13Speaker 00

  So a good one is going to be, you look, simple, simple is fantastic, especially we're talking online. No one's going to give it, understand why I give a complicated exercise. So, simple thing, you're gonna lay on your back, you're gonna have your elbows out to your side, and then you're gonna try and bring your knuckles to the ground. So you're gonna have arms bent, so you're gonna make like a, like a U shape. And what you're gonna do here is if you can get your knuckles to the ground. Okay, you passed that test. Nice job. Now, what you're gonna do is you're gonna put your elbows on top of something like the edge of a 25-pound plate, a little step up, something that you can increase the range of motion, and then repeat.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  And then you can hold on to like a 2.5-pound plate, a 5-pound plate, something relatively light. That's just gonna help to pull you back into that range, sort of like the shoulder flexion exercise, and just slowly go back, then come back out of it. And what's that gonna do is it's gonna pull you into shoulder external rotation, and then you can scroll back out of it, and it'll allow you to have that extra range that hopefully you're able to get into a more excellent rotated position and less stress on your wrists.

• 48:23Chris Williamson?

  Got you. So for the people who need a little bit more clarification there, it's like the, it's the classic double bicep pose from a, from a bodybuilder, right?

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah.

• 48:32Chris Williamson?

  But instead of that, we've got, shoulders are running at a straight line, arms are at 90 degrees, then I'm gonna guess as they go back that, that angle maintains, that forearm to upper arm angle maintains as we go back?

• 48:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:47Chris Williamson?

  Cool. And then, again, slow on the eccentric, touching the floor, and then coming back up. You're just coming back up to, to vertical, like as you're on the floor?

• 48:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:56Chris Williamson?

  Cool. Why don't we do it as a bonus round? How can I sort, so that's my external rotation. How about, how about improving my internal rotation on my arms? What should I be doing for that?

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Oh, I like actually just the opposite. Keep going down.

• 49:08Chris Williamson?

  Okay, okay.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  It's a very simple one, and it's really effective, especially if the conversation is about weightlifting, because if you think about snatching or cleaning, you're basically in that exact position. You have an extended torso, you've extended up, and your arms are right there. Yeah, exactly. And so it's highly specific, which is gonna be really beneficial. The only thing there is that I tell people that they should take their, they should do one arm at a time, and they should take their non-moving arm, and they should put it on the front of their shoulder, and that way can, they can feel as they turn down, if their shoulder starts to pop up, like it leaves the ground, then they're not really moving through their shoulder anymore, and they should stop going down and then come back up. Because the emphasis is on like shoulder motion. And so if you're just getting more motion, because like your shoulder blades moving funky, or you're moving out of your back,

• 49:55Speaker 00

  like that's not the desire because you don't want that during the motion. So let's just keep it to what you're looking for and keep it on the shoulder.

• 50:02Chris Williamson?

  That movement, that U shaped line on the ground, I'm going to guess is that definitely meets our criteria for 20% with 80% of the benefit, right? You know, you can just continue that down and then go back up and you've sorted your internal and external rotation with one exercise. That's pretty cool.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:21Chris Williamson?

  I like it. That's one of the big winners. I'm just thinking about some of the other things that people might want to prime for. How about lower traps? How about someone potentially again, like me, a little bit of a bro tight in the upper traps, tight in the chest, that rolled forward, classic sort of bro lifter type posture? How can I prime myself to get back and down?

• 50:42Speaker 00

  So assuming that you've like gone through these other things that we just discussed, particularly like the thoracic motion or any of those ones, because those are going to be really beneficial to get some thoracic extension. But then after that, a nice, easy one is where you lay on your stomach. So if you just did the W1, for instance, you could just progress off this, or if it's not relevant, like if you're not snatching or anything, you just want to get some lower trap activation for other reasons. You can just lay flat on your stomach, face down towards the ground. And then you're going to take your arms so that you make like a T shape. So your arms are straight up to your sides. And then you're going to lift your arms up and then you're going to try and make like a snow angel motion where you try to bring your thumbs together overhead.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  And as you do this, your goal is to keep your chest down on the ground. And that way you have to actively lift up through your shoulder blades. And that way you're utilizing your lower trap, you're using your rhomboids, these other musculatures of your upper back that require you to use scapular motion. Now, if you're not able to get all the way overhead, I'm going to guess like you might struggle with that. Just go as far as you can and then come back down and repeat. And you know, like if people are trying to find this exercise, if you Google like prone angels, it's a common exercise, it's named for it. They can find variations of where it's shown. It's like you just lay flat on your stomach, lift your arms up and then try and bring them. A lot of times you'll see people like go all the way back down to their hips

• 52:08Speaker 00

  and then come back up overhead. And it can be a great way also just for developing the upper back too.

• 52:13Chris Williamson?

  Got you. Okay. So we've got palms are flat to the ground, arms are out to the sides.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:18Chris Williamson?

  And then we're just going to take them up and then we're going to allow them to come back down. I can like that would, that must feel probably quite nice. I can imagine that feels quite nice. Would you ever, if you became quite proficient at that and then got yourself to overhead, would you then maybe add like a point two, five plate or a point five plate like into either hand to, to start progressively overloading?

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 52:38Chris Williamson?

  We've got it. Quinn, Quinn, Quinn, mate, if you need some advice from me at any point about how you need to do your warmups or something, just come speak to me. I'll give you a bit of a

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 52:48Chris Williamson?

  A few tips. Man, I think, I think we've got it, you know, I think we, I think we've managed to create a, a pretty good, robust warmup for people. So why don't we, why don't we do a recap so that people know what they're, they're going away with for this week? How are they gonna, how are they gonna move the needle this week on their warmup?

• 53:03Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So first thing, get warm. Figure out whether you want to do that on the erg, the bike, or doing some dynamic movements. Pick a few different dynamic movements. If that's going to be your main thing, or if you just want to check off some boxes for getting in and out of the ranges you're going to go to. If we're talking about being in like a CrossFit class or general lifting, try to do like a thoracic range of motion drill, some sort of trunk stability exercise, some sort of hip motion exercise. And then after that, either do some accessory range of motion drills if you need to, such as like those shoulder ones we discussed or the hip ones. Afterwards, get into the specific exercises that you're going to start to do for the day. Do some skill work for a few minutes. Get moving fast on it though. Be deliberate with it. And then get into

• 53:48Speaker 00

  what you're doing. Start training.

• 53:50Chris Williamson?

  Man, I love it. I like the idea of getting the warm up, you know, really cutting it down to size. You are right as well. Everybody's strapped for time now, especially, you know, in CrossFit class. People like the fact that you can get in and get out. I, you know, the powerlifters that are listening, I salute you. The fact that you guys go into the gym and, and you have to spend because of some of the rests that you need, you've got to spend, you know, two hours plus in the gym, but the total tonnage that you've moved, maybe, you know, well, it's not that much. It's just that you've got, you're putting yourself under so much stress. So yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. And then just a final thing, you know, we talked about some of the specific stuff for movements. Is there a way that you would be able to begin using your movement or begin doing your movement? Let's say

• 54:35Chris Williamson?

  I'm going to start snatching and then interlace that with some of the positional stuff? Or would you have warm up is warm up and then once warm up is finished, it is lifting? Or would you then maybe start to try and intersperse them?

• 54:50Speaker 00

  So like, I'm a big fan of people doing something active in between their warm up sets. So like, if you are doing technical skill work or any, or just like light snatching and those kinds of things, doing one of the range of motion type exercises in between sets, particularly if it's one that you find really beneficial to you, because then it helps to ingrain it even better. The thing that I would say is like, once you get into your actual working sets, I would like try to limit that because you want to legitimately rest if you're trying really hard. So, you know, like if you are a 60 kilo snatcher and you find that like doing that overhead, that shoulder flexion drill is really beneficial, do it up until you get to like 50 kilos and then shut her

• 55:35Speaker 00

  down and get into your working sets.

• 55:37Chris Williamson?

  Man, I love it. I love it. We've, we've made it, man. We've gone through, we've got a great, a great warm up. I'm super, super impressed. What, where should people go? They want to hassle you online. You've just rebranded, kind of. You've just changed it. I couldn't find you on Instagram.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Yes, on Instagram, I am Dr. Sam Spinelli. I also have accounts of Citizen Athletics and E3 Rehab. So they can find me there if they're looking for fitness based stuff. Citizen Athletics is a great resource, lots of stuff. YouTube channel now where we're trying to pump out high quality content. And then E3 Rehab, if you're looking for rehab stuff, tons of resources there.

• 56:14Chris Williamson?

  I love it, dude. We've done it. Thank you so much for your time. Everything that we have spoken about will be linked in the show notes below. This episode's awesome. Like, send it to a friend, find a person that you think, fuck, like, they need to know how to warm up as well. Send it to them and, uh, yeah, Sam, I'm gonna have to get you back on. I need to find something else to talk to you about now.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me on, Chris. That was great.

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