Pod Insights Modern Wisdom The Dark Truth About Human Mobility - Dr Quinn Henoch - #013 About this episode Quinn Henoch is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Head of Sports Rehabilitation for Juggernaut Training Systems and Founder of ClinicalAthlete.com
It's very hard to find a definitive answer about what strategies work at improving mobility. From stretching to foam rolling, resistance bands to hanging therapy, there are a lot of approaches, but for every article claiming X is effective, another claims Y.
Today we put the lacrosse balls down, and look to science for the answer. Expect to learn what ACTUALLY improves your mobility, why your warmup routine can be shorter than you think and why that £500 Massage Gun might not be a worthwhile investment.
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Transcript 13,677 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Chris Williamson? Hello there. This week, I have the pleasure of hosting Quinn Hennig. Quinn is a doctor of physical therapy. He's the head of sports rehabilitation for Juggernaut Training Systems and the man behind ClinicalAthlete.com. He is about as no bullshit as you can get and I've wanted to have him on the podcast for so long. As far as I can see, mobility is this like charlatan rich, awash world where no one really knows what's going on. And there's so much disinformation that it feels like the Trump presidential campaign all over again, which isn't good, right? People need mobility.
0:44 Chris Williamson? They want to be mobile within particular ranges of motion. They want to be able to do an overhead squat and a normal squat and complete a variety of tasks that require their bodies to be mobile. But there doesn't appear to be any consensus or appropriate information. Quinn does a series on YouTube called Mobility Myths. And as soon as I saw that, I knew that I had to have a conversation with him. And it went better than I could have hoped. I've just about managed to pick my jaw up off the floor after finishing with him. And we go through what the science says about typical approaches to achieving mobility. We look at the word mobility, flexibility, stability.
1:28 Chris Williamson? What do all of these words mean in a performance context? What are the typical approaches and their efficacy, their usefulness within training? From static stretching to dynamic stretching to soft tissue work? What do they actually do, if anything? And I think there's some, there's some very surprising takeaways. Even if you're not a highly functioning or even moderately functioning athlete, even if you're a couch potato, this information is so important to understand how our bodies work in relation to moving.
2:07 Chris Williamson? I couldn't believe some of the summaries that he gave me and some of the conclusions that he's drawn. Hopefully, we're going to save people an awful lot of time in the gym. And we're going to improve their ability to understand their body and to adapt their training to the needs that they've got. So I'm going to stop bloviating here because this podcast, it speaks for itself. Hope you enjoy it. Here it is. Quinn Hennig.
2:56 Chris Williamson? So Quinn Hennig, Doctor of Physical Therapy, Head of Sports Rehabilitation for Juggernaut Training Systems and the man behind ClinicalAthlete.com. How are you today?
3:07 Speaker 01 Chris, I'm doing well, man. Thanks for having me on.
3:10 Chris Williamson? Thank you for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. So I want to cut sort of straight to the chase here. Researching mobility online for me can feel a little bit like a minefield of disinformation. For every article that says yes to one approach, there does seem to be 20 arguing against it. Do you think there's a lack of clarity with what's published online?
3:38 Speaker 01 Oh, 100%. As confusing as it is for you, it's as equally confusing to me. The word mobility is not well defined. It's not really defined at all. You know, in physical therapy school, when we used the word mobility, it was regarding like patient and patients in hospitals, whether they can walk, you know, whether they can roll over in bed, bed mobility. It was like functional things, functional tasks like that. And so I think in the last, you know, five to eight years or whatever, the word mobility, this nebulous term. Has probably the biggest buzzword, you know, has been in that timeframe and I don't think we have a good grasp on it. Um, you know, you'll get, is it synonymous with range of
4:22 Speaker 01 motion? Is it, does it equal the control of movement? You'll, you'll, you know, see some people describe it that way.
4:29 Chris Williamson? Covers, covers all range of sins, right?
4:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. So when you say, I gotta work on my mobility, we don't, nobody knows what the hell that means. So I try not to use the word, but I have kind of gauged my interpretation of it because it is so popular. I tend to put the word as synonymous with range of motion.
4:51 Chris Williamson? Well, I was gonna say, what, what does mobility mean to you?
4:54 Speaker 01 It, it, for me, it means the potential for a movement, meaning, do you have the hardware to perform the task? Meaning, again, do, do your joints get into the positions that we plan to train? So if, if we're talking about the hip and our positions that we want to train is the deep squat and we want to squat below parallel or hips below 90 degrees. If you lay on the table, can I move your hip joint past or through that range of motion without apprehension or, or issue or a hard, some type of hard block, some type of structural
5:33 Speaker 01 block? And in many cases, the, the reason I define it like that is because it's a way for me to create the, the, the buy-in that most people do not have the limitations that they perceive to have in regards to their structure.
5:51 Chris Williamson? Okay.
5:51 Speaker 01 I think, I think a lot of people, they, they blame their structure for not being able to hit certain positions in training, when the reality is those positions and or, and or those training modalities are simply too intense and too complex for their particular athletic prowess at the time. And so if we simplify the word mobility to simply, can your joints get into the positions? Let's establish that first.
6:19 Chris Williamson? Okay.
6:20 Speaker 01 And if the answer is yes, but shit goes, can I cuss on this show?
6:24 Chris Williamson? Fire away, man.
6:27 Speaker 01 If if if shit hits the fan with some type of increase in intensity, be that actual weight on the bar.
6:33 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm. Underload.
6:35 Speaker 01 Exactly. Velocity, fatigue, all these markers that can make something more complex or motor control is more needed. And then you're unable to hit the positions. Well, that has nothing to do with your structure. That has to do with your motor control and your strength or pick, you know, whatever athletic attribute that's required for that task. Yeah, go ahead.
6:53 Chris Williamson? I was gonna say, so does are there other terms that we need that are pertinent to this discussion? Stability, flexibility, mobility? I hear all of these terms thrown around. Is there a way that you can create a paradigm of how these all fit together in your sort of conceptually?
7:10 Speaker 01 You can try. You know, the reality is the more terms that we use, the more convoluted things get. However, I I try to, anytime that we hear a new term or or start to use a term in this context, I try to see if it's actually been defined in the scientific literature. Mobility has not. Stability has been. It's a little bit more consistent in its in its definition, still kind of some some, you know, variability there, but it's actually in the scientific literature. So stability is is typically defined as the ability of a system to stay and or return to a homeostasis after some type of perturbation or stressor.
7:53 Chris Williamson? Okay.
7:54 Speaker 01 So in regards to movement, it's the whether or not it's static or dynamic stability. If it's static, I'm trying to hold a position, a desired position, and resist outside forces. That could be the barbell, that could be gravity, that could be a an opponent.
8:11 Chris Williamson? Yep.
8:12 Speaker 01 So that's static stability. Dynamic stability would be I'm attempting to move through a desired path again while trying to resist external forces. In the literature, they use the word. Perturbation, tongue tied if I say that too much.
8:28 Chris Williamson? Perturbation.
8:30 Speaker 01 Perturbation, yep. And then, yes. So, think about this, something like the overhead squat. From the belly button up, you're looking for relative static stability. Right, you're trying, you're trying to lock that overhead position in place. But from the, from the hip, knee and ankle perspective, you're looking at a dynamic stability situation where you're trying to move through a desired path while offsetting other forces that are attempting to take you out of said path.
8:59 Chris Williamson? Okay, so glob- globally, how do you put that together when you've got both static and move and dynamic stability there?
9:08 Speaker 01 To me, then, the overarching theme is, is motor skill acquisition, motor control.
9:16 Chris Williamson? It's a lot less sexy than mobility, isn't it?
9:19 Speaker 01 I think it is, but that, I think it depends on who you talk to, because I think motor skill acquisition is the sexiest of all.
9:25 Chris Williamson? That's, that is the heritage of a doctor showing through right there, I think.
9:30 Speaker 01 Exactly. So if we think motor control as this overarching theme of taking, it's your, so it's task plus individual plus environment.
9:41 Chris Williamson? Okay.
9:42 Speaker 01 So, we don't, and this is where, you know, there's about 25 different rabbit holes we could jump into, but you gotta kind of get, when it comes to human movement, we've gotta get rid of the dichotomies and the black and whites. Because human movement is so variable. The task itself can be done a million different ways and the human is so variable in, in so many different ways. So, we, we're looking at like optimizing things or general guidelines, but if, if we think about motor control as, as it's specific to the task. So, one position may be optimal for one thing and suboptimal for another. So, think about. Think about your spinal position with an overhead squat.
10:25 Chris Williamson? Mine is absolutely terrible. It is the biggest point of contention in my training.
10:30 Speaker 01 Okay, so I was gonna say then, I was gonna contrast that with like a competitive rower, or like a strong man who has to pick up a stone, who has like a turtle back. That's the optimal position for that task, so maybe you, maybe you're using that position for, you know, the other thing.
10:46 Chris Williamson? I don't know what I'm using, but it's definitely not helping my overhead squat at the moment.
10:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. So the task matters, the environment matters, you know, what type of equipment are you using? What's, uh, what surface are you standing on? What are the implements? And then the individual, what's the build of the individual? What's the training history and the response? All these factors play in. So all those things lump into motor control and then motor skill acquisition is basically what we do every single day in the gym. We're trying to acquire skills. Under that, I think is where these mobility, stability factors lie.
11:19 Chris Williamson? Okay.
11:20 Speaker 01 Do the joints get into the positions? Can you control those positions? And then if the answer is yes and yes, now we can layer on practice and skill and then.
11:31 Chris Williamson? Fatigue and load and all the rest of it.
11:34 Speaker 01 Exactly. So factors like strength and power are developed as we're loading intensity over time. You know, those attributes take a long time.
11:46 Chris Williamson? Okay, I think certainly from my experience and most layman, uh, understanding of this, mobility would probably be confused with range of motion. Do you think that's probably fair to say?
12:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:02 Chris Williamson? If you can, if you, if someone believes that someone's really mobile because they're able to do the splits.
12:11 Speaker 01 Right. So then I guess the, now the term of flex and extensibility kind of come into play too. So flexibility is usually defined as the, the ability of all tissues involved to get into a position. So like take your example of the splits. It's the muscles involved, it's the connective tissues, you know, the ligaments and the joint capsule and everything that's involved to allow that position to happen and then. Within that, extensibility is usually referred to for specifically the muscles. So muscle, I think, must sensibility is what people call flexibility a lot.
12:50 Chris Williamson? Yeah, okay.
12:52 Speaker 01 When people say flexibility, they, you know, it's assumed that only the muscles are involved when you hit a position. But there's a whole lot of other types of tissues that have to be, you know, stressed into that scenario. So this is where it gets so confusing because it's extensibility, flexibility, mobility, just, you know, range of motion.
13:09 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
13:10 Speaker 01 I like range of motion, to be honest, most because that, that tells the story. Excursion of range of, can I, can you put your shoulder over your head? The position that I want your shoulder when that barbell is over your head, does it go there? And if I move the joint in that position, it's obviously assumed that all the soft tissues are going with. If you've got that range of motion passively on the table, but yet you don't, you can't express that range of motion in a training scenario, then we have to develop these other qualities that we talked about.
13:43 Chris Williamson? Yep.
13:44 Speaker 01 Motor acquisition, stability, strength, these, you know, these types of things.
13:48 Chris Williamson? Okay, I think that, I think that starts to zero in on how these elements play together. So when we're talking about someone's capacity to get into a particular position, I think a lot of the people who are listening will be potentially CrossFitters, powerlifters, weightlifters, or someone who's looking at perhaps making the transition across into this. So when we're talking about someone getting into these positions, how much of this is enabled by someone's natural physiology?
14:21 Speaker 01 That definitely plays a part. I think that it plays a part in their ability to catch on right away and/or take more time. I mean, there are people who walk into my door where they've never, you know, it's just like you said. They want to do, they want to snatch and clean and jerk, or they want to squat. They've never done it before, but I just say, okay, well, put your feet, you know, shoulder width apart and keep your feet flat and just sit down as far as you can, you know? And I just want to settle, give them, I give them minimal cues and I just want to see. What's, what's, you know, to see what I'm working with.
14:55 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
14:55 Speaker 01 And there are some people who just naturally rock bottom. Beautiful squat.
15:00 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
15:00 Speaker 01 Wow. They're like, you know, they look at you and they're like, you mean like this? And it's like a perfect squat.
15:03 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
15:04 Speaker 01 Just like that.
15:05 Chris Williamson? Like what's, like watching Ray Williams in front of you or something like that.
15:09 Speaker 01 Totally. Yeah, exactly. So then it's like, okay, that's basically the screen because it passed. My, my initial test of can the joints get into the positions? Now this person is going to need very appropriate and, you know, progressive, appropriately progressed. Intensity and training and overload and these types of things. But they pass the initial test of the joints go into the positions. There's no need to stretch or try to passively tug and gain more range of motion.
15:36 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I understand. I definitely feel that sometimes when we're in the gym and there'll be, especially a lot of girls who'll come in for the first time and they'll have a, will be doing a squat snatch workout. Let's say in CrossFit and they'll come in with a PVC bar and just drop underneath it beautifully. And there's me, there's me sweating and shaking at the back of the class with my entire posterior chain turned on so hard that I could pick up 200 kilos, but I've got a PVC bar overhead and to get myself into that. I've already mobilized for like an hour beforehand and I'm just about overhead with this PVC bar. And then certain, certain newcomers can just walk in and they've got this beautiful overhead position.
16:17 Speaker 01 And you know, some factors that play is natural structure, bony, bony structure. So at the hip, there are a lot of factors that can make a squat position just simply more natural feeling and more comfortable. It's like the more shallow a person's hip socket, the generally the deeper they can squat without feelings of restriction in the hip. Hip sockets that are more in front of the pelvis as opposed to laterally will allow the person to squat pretty narrow. Uh, and, and kind of sink straight down. Did the angle of the femoral neck? So there's tons of, the point is you got to kind of play with position. Squat position and overhead position are very, are variable based on structure and that definitely plays a role.
17:00 Chris Williamson? And this technique needs to be taught appropriately to the person's physiology.
17:05 Speaker 01 Exactly. There's no, especially with the squat, there, there can't be a one size fits all. Because human anatomy is so different. It's just, it's so clear that it has to be tailored to the individual.
17:18 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
17:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:20 Chris Williamson? I certainly, I certainly notice that sometimes I've travelled around to a lot of different gyms over the last couple of years. And there's certainly some coaches at certain gyms that I've been to who've got the cookie cutter set of cue cards for cues for lifting. Knees, knees narrow, toes turned in, whatever it might be. When you're doing, for instance, something like a wall ball, which for me is that a lot of people seem to be able to find their own natural way to drop into a wall ball.
17:50 Speaker 01 Exactly.
17:50 Chris Williamson? And for me, that involves driving my knees out quite wide and that feels lovely. And I know that I'm efficient and I know that it's safe and I know that I don't get injured doing it that way. And then, as you say, sometimes you may go see a coach or be to a new gym and they've got their preconception about how you should be moving.
18:11 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
18:12 Chris Williamson? And sometimes that can be overlaid erroneously, I suppose.
18:16 Speaker 01 Well, and I get it, you know, the, the whole eye test, we all want our movement to look aesthetically pleasing. You know, we want, we want that overhead squat to be Instagram worthy. I get it. But yeah, so, you know, if we look at like the very common box that people are put in in regards to the squat in particular, it's that toes completely straightforward, relatively narrow stance. And it's funny because that stance is not optimal for most people. Like, most people can't squat to the depth that they desire with their feet completely straight.
18:51 Chris Williamson? Why is that?
18:52 Speaker 01 And their feet just shoulder width apart. It, it doesn't really respect the common structure of the hip. The, the orientation of the femoral neck is such that 15 to 20 degrees of external rotation.
19:08 Speaker 01 At the start, so like just toes pointed out a little bit.
19:11 Chris Williamson? Yep.
19:12 Speaker 01 Tends to clear some space in the hip joint at the bottom. Cause keep in mind, the squat is an extreme range of motion. We're talking about all the way down.
19:21 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
19:22 Speaker 01 We're talking about maxing out the joint. And so you, at that point, you have to respect where the joint is most congruent. Now, if we're talking quarter squats or like jumping position or like athletic position, like, like a linebacker in the NFL or something like that. That's a different conversation because you're not squatting all the way down. So in that respect, a little bit more narrow stance, toes straight forward so that you can change direction so you can drive straight into the floor. That's probably, that's much more understandable and valid, you know, as an argument, but. You gave a really good example of the wall ball and we use the goblet squat. As a way for people to kind of figure out their natural squatting groove. So I just have them experiment. I say, you know, hold this.
20:08 Speaker 01 10 kilo kettlebell in front of you and just experiment with different positions. Your, your general guidelines are your feet have to stay flat. Your knees have to track. Kind of like middle of the foot, just naturally over the, over the center of the foot. And then that's pretty much it. I, I look at spinal position, just kind of. If we have to clean it up, we will. I like the goblet squat almost. Uh, keeps people upright just naturally.
20:35 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
20:36 Speaker 01 And it's a really good tool for people to explore. And, and that's what we have them do. And then we, you know, when they find a comfortable position and they kind of meet those criteria, just, you know, feet stay flat, knees track over the middle of the foot, we'll say, okay. Try to bank that and then let's see if we can recreate that position under the bar.
20:55 Chris Williamson? Okay.
20:56 Speaker 01 It's a process that way.
20:57 Chris Williamson? I understand. So someone that may be relatively new to the sport of either weightlifting. Powerlifting, CrossFit, anything that is requiring a more.
21:08 Chris Williamson? I want to say a more extreme level of mobility, for want of a better term, the umbrella term for the things that we are discussing at the moment. Someone who has come into that, it's likely that they're going to have some deficiencies within certain ranges or planes of movement. Is that likely to be compensated by some in other areas? Or are there some people who come in and have got really poor mobility globally? I suppose you've got people who are hyper flexible and there must be people at the opposite end of the scale as well.
21:40 Speaker 01 Of course, yeah, everything's a bell curve, everything's a spectrum, but I will, I would argue again, that the people that walk into this, into the door that say, ah, I just don't have the mobility, it's because they haven't provided their body with the appropriate variation of the movement to set them up for success. It's very common for the person that believes they don't have the mobility to perform a snatch is because all they try to do is max out their snatch and their technique is so horrid and they have not, and they don't know how to control their bodies, that their body, that their body literally kind of puts the e-brake on.
22:18 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
22:19 Speaker 01 And it's very common that we say, okay, lay on the table, their move, their joints move just fine, or, you know, hold this 10 pound, 10 kilo kettlebell in front of you, do a goblet squat, oh, looks like you're hip.
22:29 Chris Williamson? Squat's lovely, yeah.
22:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, squat's beautiful to me, what are you talking about? You are, you are correct though, I'm not, there are certainly individuals who, whose joints do not go into the positions.
22:43 Chris Williamson? And then some that go beyond the positions as well, right? Some people that are too flexible.
22:49 Speaker 01 Some that, some people have a surplus of range of motion and those are the people that, you know, it's really just, okay, well, you don't need to do anything else, but, but train the movements, but train, you know, find the amount of intensity that you can control your position and can come back to the gym day in and day out and you'll probably get better.
23:09 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
23:10 Speaker 01 But you don't need to stretch, that's, you know, there's that thing for those individuals. But even... The individuals whose joints don't go there, it's still about finding the appropriate variation in order to load the joint at the range of motion that it currently possesses. And then over time, the body will adapt and range of motion will be increased to the potential of that particular structure. Like, some people are just not meant to be Gumby. Not cut out to be a gymnast, you know, it's that kind of deal, but.
23:45 Chris Williamson? I think I fall into that category.
23:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, me too. You know, it's okay. I've got, when I, when I get the courage here, sometime, sometime I'll release some footage, some old footage of me doing the lifts. And then I'll release the footage of me doing them now and I'll say, hey, not a, not a stretch to be had.
24:04 Speaker 01 And they're totally opposite, but it, it kind of gets now to the mechanism of, of stretching and these types of.
24:12 Chris Williamson? I was gonna say, you've touched, you've touched on one of the buzzwords, one of the few buzzwords that we're going to go through today.
24:19 Speaker 01 I figured we were going there.
24:20 Chris Williamson? You are, you were directed towards Stretch City. So, someone has entered the gym, they have the desire to complete a particular movement, whatever that may be, but they are unable to get into the, into the position, perhaps under load, as you say, or perhaps under fatigue. Typically, I think, I've tried to look at broad categories of what I think would be prescribed, quotation marks, and I think a combination of soft tissue work, static stretching and dynamic stretching seem to be the kind of go-to,
25:05 Chris Williamson? these are the things, these are the camps that you could do something in. I think there's a, certainly what I see in, my experience is a lot of.
25:18 Chris Williamson? A lot of weight towards static stretching.
25:21 Speaker 01 Hmm.
25:22 Chris Williamson? But of those three, would you say there's anything else that is commonly prescribed if it's bro to bro in the gym? Or is there, have we covered those the three, the soft tissue work, the static and the dynamic stretching?
25:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that covers it. The other aspect of it is just do more of the movement, which.
25:41 Chris Williamson? Well, that's what, that's what you'd prescribe, right? That's the, that's the, that's the, that's the actual solution.
25:45 Speaker 01 So we'll, yeah, so we'll back up, you know, teaser, you know, spoiler alert.
25:50 Chris Williamson? I know. You've just given away the end of the movie, man.
25:54 Chris Williamson? So let's start, let's start with soft tissue work. Can you tell us what soft tissue work is? And what people think it does and what it actually does?
26:04 Speaker 01 Um, I don't mean, to be honest, I don't know the answers to any of those questions, but I can sure as hell try. Uh, what it is, I, I, we are talking generally about foam rolling, sticking a lacrosse ball and various areas. Whatever the foam, the fancy, the gun thing that costs $600.
26:25 Chris Williamson? Very good. Just on a side, just on a side point, one of the guys in our gym has come up with his home solution to this, which is a bandsaw that he's removed the saw from, milled, milled a solid steel part, welded it in and it's 60 pounds. So probably about a hundred dollars. And does the exact, the exact same thing, but has about four times the amount of torque.
26:49 Speaker 01 There you go. So.
26:50 Chris Williamson? Sorry, sorry, Theragun. I'm definitely not going to get one sent out to me now, am I?
26:54 Speaker 01 Yeah. So one of those things, you can, whatever foam roller you like, the one that vibrates, the one that's got lights, the one that has knobs. The ball with the, you know, the.
27:03 Chris Williamson? Wifi connectivity that plays your music, it's waterproof. Yeah.
27:07 Speaker 01 Let's just throw all of those things in the same bucket for now.
27:10 Chris Williamson? Okay.
27:11 Speaker 01 So those, the mech, we have to talk about the mechanisms, what they do, what they don't do. We're going back to the scientific evidence here and it. There's no evidence currently, there's no evidence to support the common narratives of those things break up your tissue as if we were made of clay. And I want, so I'll just kind of like let that soak in for a second. There's no evidence to say that you are breaking up your scar tissue or releasing or breaking up adhesions in your tissues using these implements.
27:41 Chris Williamson? So just, just to interject there, there's micro tears which will occur in the muscles during training. Is that correct?
27:47 Speaker 01 Yes.
27:48 Chris Williamson? And the commonly held assumption is that by rolling them on one of these implements, it will somehow smooth them out, help to break them up. Is that an erroneous assumption?
28:04 Speaker 01 It's, it's just that, it's an assumption. There's zero evidence to support that. Absolutely not.
28:09 Chris Williamson? Which is, I'm sure there's some jaws on the floor at the moment, some non-believers.
28:16 Speaker 01 Let's think about common sense here for a second. If you were able to rearrange your tissues that way, what would a barbell sitting on your back do to you?
28:27 Chris Williamson? Fall straight through you.
28:28 Speaker 01 You would disintegrate. You would have a permanent dent in your upper trap, your barbell squat workout.
28:37 Chris Williamson? That can be quite useful for low bar. If you're squatting low bar, that would be really useful, like a little shelf.
28:42 Speaker 01 Nice little groove there. That's, that's a good point. What about sitting down? Your ass would turn into SpongeBob's, you know.
28:50 Chris Williamson? Buried shapes to the, to the seat. Yeah.
28:53 Speaker 01 Exactly. And then also, so that's just the common sense rule in that respect, but also how can we possibly select the tissues that we want to break up the adhesions, but yet it leaves all the other tissues intact? You know, how, how does that foam roller selectively get down four layers deep to the muscle, but yet doesn't jack up the fascia, the skin? And then how does it perfectly realign the tissues the way that we want them? Really think about this.
29:22 Chris Williamson? It sounds, it sounds so stupid when you say it.
29:25 Speaker 01 It's not plausible. It's just not plausible. So. What the evidence does say about these things is that they you can have short term range of motion changes and you can have short term changes in perception in regards to what you feel.
29:43 Chris Williamson? Okay.
29:44 Speaker 01 So, yeah, and there are no argument there. My, my argument is that you can get those same changes with moving. And there is evidence to show that, that they compare like just riding a bike, stationary bike for five minutes versus foam rolling for five minutes. You get the same range of motion changes.
30:06 Chris Williamson? Within the, the legs?
30:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, whatever they're testing. It's like usually like hamstring, whatever.
30:12 Chris Williamson? Okay.
30:13 Speaker 01 So my point is, why not do more of the movement? And, and then you will get the same warm up effect. You will hit that inflection point where you're like, oh, you know, things feel good now.
30:24 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
30:24 Speaker 01 Number two, you will get more practice with said movement. So it comes down to the skill acquisition thing. It's just, it's just, how do you plan on spending your time?
30:38 Speaker 01 I think my general recommendation with that stuff is if you're going to do it, minimum effective dose, meaning that if 20 seconds is enough to foam roll your glutes or hip flexor or whatever, and you're, that makes your squat feel better, then there's no need to do two minutes of it.
30:52 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
30:53 Speaker 01 Cause there's diminishing returns. You're not breaking anything up. So I would recommend sticking those short bouts in between the movement as a kind of like a back and forth type of thing.
31:02 Chris Williamson? Okay, so go in, little bit of a roll. Begin your squat, barbell on your back, couple of, a couple of repetitions, then back across, roll something else.
31:13 Speaker 01 Exactly. Maybe three or four rounds of that with your warm up sets of back squat and then you're good to, like, you're good.
31:19 Chris Williamson? Okay. Can you explain about the, the pain perception thing? Because I, I know that that does actually have a, you've mentioned it has a contributing, a positive contributing factor.
31:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, so what they test is something called pain pressure threshold where essentially they poke the person. They have like, you know, it's like, think about just poking somebody with your finger. They use like a pressurized tool to gauge the amount of pressure that it takes for the person to perceive it, these types of things. The person rates the discomfort level and then they foam roll and then they poke them again and there's a decrease in pain perception. I'm gonna make two arguments here.
31:55 Chris Williamson? Okay.
31:56 Speaker 01 You can't, placebo is inherent in everything that we do. The words that I say, the exercises that we give, placebo is inherent in everything. We can't blind the participants to the foam rolling. So there's a
32:10 Chris Williamson? You just don't, don't think about what's happening. Ignore the feeling in your leg. There's nothing going on here.
32:16 Speaker 01 Right. So there may be a testing effect there.
32:19 Chris Williamson? Yep.
32:19 Speaker 01 But then number two, let's say there's not a testing effect and that's a true change in perceptual physiology. It's synonymous with if you bang your knee against the table and you like rub it really fast, you know how you like you hit your knee, you're like, ah shit, and you rub it down. You're just, you're just basically taking a sensory stimulus and overriding another sensory input.
32:41 Chris Williamson? Okay.
32:41 Speaker 01 Or if you jam your finger and then you shake it in the air really fast. That's your natural way of creating a sensory overload to try to override the pain perception. Does that make sense?
32:52 Chris Williamson? Yeah, absolutely. So where, if, if there's such tenuous research that is showing any efficacy for soft tissue work, who, where was, where's the charlatans that, that have been propagating this? Where did they come from?
33:08 Speaker 01 You gotta ask them, man.
33:10 Chris Williamson? I've got to track, I've got to track back up to the, the guy in the sky, in the sky.
33:16 Speaker 01 Just think about, just think about it from a marketing standpoint. I mean, it's sexy and it sells and it's easier than training really hard.
33:22 Chris Williamson? It sounds like it works.
33:25 Speaker 01 Sure. It sounds fancy.
33:26 Chris Williamson? Adhesions and slippery sliding surfaces and muscle fibers and...
33:32 Speaker 01 Right. I can PR my snatch without actually having to work really hard for the next two years and put my head down and come to the gym. So I, you know, it sounds, I know I sound like a curmudgeon. And I, but it's important for people to understand, not necessarily in terms of these things, not necessarily what they do, because we don't really, other than what I just mentioned, we don't really know. But it's more important to learn what they currently don't do.
34:02 Chris Williamson? Yep.
34:02 Speaker 01 And so that way, you can, if you're going to implement them, you implement them in the most efficient way possible, which again is my thing is like short effective bouts in between your movements.
34:12 Chris Williamson? Okay. So someone's, someone's working on, let's say the squat, because we've talked about it a lot today. You would recommend getting warm to the point at which they're warm enough. And then you've said, what, 20 seconds to, 20 seconds to a minute of rolling within an area and then go and move?
34:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. Now, I don't, just to be clear, I don't actually recommend any of that stuff.
34:35 Chris Williamson? Yep, yep.
34:36 Speaker 01 I recommend...
34:37 Chris Williamson? If someone's unable to let go of the tether to the beloved foam roller.
34:41 Speaker 01 Exactly.
34:42 Chris Williamson? That would be the most effective way to do it, right?
34:46 Speaker 01 Exactly. So you know what? If you want to do that stuff, I get that it feels good. I totally get that.
34:50 Chris Williamson? Yep.
34:50 Speaker 01 So this is the way that I would implement, exactly like that. Short bouts, if it's, let's say you're going, you're going to do a squat and then you're going to do an overhead press. So you'll, you'd foam roll your glutes and hip flexors or whatever, in between sets of your warm up, in between your warm up sets of squats. And then you would actually train your squat and you'd not worry about the foam roller. You'd have your training mind on. And then it's like, okay, I have to overhead press. I'm going to warm up with the empty bar, overhead pressing, and then I'm going to go foam roll my lats for 20 seconds. You know, I'm just making up time period. It could be 10 seconds, it could be 30 seconds. I think anything beyond that is probably just a waste of time. And then you're back and forth with going a little heavier in the press, maybe three or four rounds of that. And then when you're, when you're up to your like last couple, either
35:34 Speaker 01 second to last or last warm up set, certainly your working sets of your particular lift,
35:41 Speaker 01 don't worry about that stuff.
35:42 Chris Williamson? Put the fucking foam roller down. You've got some weight to lift.
35:44 Speaker 01 Please. Yes.
35:48 Chris Williamson? So can you just quickly?
35:50 Speaker 01 The day.
35:51 Chris Williamson? Can you just quickly explain how a massage fits into this?
35:55 Speaker 01 Sure, it fits in a very similar way. And I know that, you know, you've probably lost whoever is soft tissue therapists right now, listening to your show is immediately.
36:05 Chris Williamson? Fine.
36:06 Speaker 01 Turned off. And so there's it's the same conversation. There is no evidence currently to say that somebody's hands can magically rearrange somebody's tissues selectively. Again, it's just not plausible. Now, we may be looking at the wrong thing. So any topic, I have the I reserve the right to change my mind when evidence is presented to me.
36:28 Chris Williamson? However, there is no evidence suggesting that it does have any efficacy at the moment.
36:33 Speaker 01 On on from a biomechan from a biomechanics standpoint, no.
36:38 Chris Williamson? Okay, so what was the very briefly, can you explain the study? I think it was done on mice or rats? Where this came from? About soft tissue work?
36:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, sure. There's I mean, the narrative on soft tissue work has been that's been a lot longer than those those studies, but they've done studies with the instrument assisted soft tissue work, the metal tools. And the study that is most cited, what they did was they ruptured the little mice MCLs. And then it was like a six week protocol of scraping the right mice MCL with tools versus none, nothing at all. And at the end of the six weeks, they did show that the group that got the scraping, their MCL tissues were more aligned to normal. Whereas the control group, it still showed abnormal fiber alignment, you know, where the
37:35 Speaker 01 tear was.
37:36 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
37:36 Speaker 01 Or parallel at all, there's scar tissue had built up, all these things. So it's like, okay. That's, you know, that's some evidence of of plausibility in mice. The kicker is not that mice physiology is so much different than ours, but it's the logistics of it. The mice were put to sleep when the scraping took place. And then they were using human sized tools. So.
38:00 Chris Williamson? They were using a tool bigger than the bigger than the animal.
38:03 Speaker 01 So the amount of force that was applied to the tissues was beyond the what we could. What we could tolerate as humans. They've been unable to recreate those effects in human studies. It's beyond physiological realm. There's an actual, there's a 3D model in 2008. Shadri is the lead author and they tried to make a model to how much, how much pressure would it take to realign these types of fibers to create shear in the fibers?
38:35 Chris Williamson? In humans.
38:37 Speaker 01 It was upwards, in humans, it was upwards of 2,000 pounds of force to create a 1% change, something like that.
38:42 Chris Williamson? Oh my god.
38:43 Speaker 01 But it was, and then like the caveat was, well, you could create a 4% change in the bridge of the, the fascia of the bridge of the nose. So like pinch the skin on the top of your nose to, and it was like almost beyond physiological realm to create that amount of change. So it's just, it was implausible.
39:01 Chris Williamson? That's for everyone, everyone who needs soft tissue work doing on the nose.
39:04 Speaker 01 Right, yeah, exactly. And then the other areas was like the fasciolata and the plantar fascia. So like the IT band in the bottom of the foot, so very thick fibers bands. And it was just beyond what we could tolerate. You know, your flesh, your skin and flesh would rip apart with that amount of force before you ever got to the muscle adhesions or whatever.
39:22 Chris Williamson? You laid on a 30 centimeter piece of foam rolling up and down on a soft floor is definitely not applying that much force.
39:30 Speaker 01 No, and, and so that was shear force. There are some arguments to be made, well, what about compression? Uh, what about, what about compression plus shear? And I get it, we haven't necessarily studied every different.
39:42 Chris Williamson? It's not exhaustive, right?
39:44 Speaker 01 Exactly, and so there may be a way to create plastic change. If the force is great enough and if it's frequent, or if it's frequent enough. But in real life, you're not getting, you're not getting a very extremely aggressive massage five times a day.
40:00 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
40:01 Speaker 01 Probably the type of prescription that it would take, and I bet you that the changes would be minimal over time anyway. Like you would get more change with just consistent movement under load. And you would get the motor scale acquisition part of training if you did it that way. So now to your question of where does massage fit into this? And, and, and you know, SMR with foam rollers.
40:26 Speaker 01 It's not to say that that stuff has has zero place. I don't implement or recommend currently, but I can see the applicability not for directly in the movement itself or even pre-workout. But it's the notion of winding down and the notion of recovering and quieting the mind and these types of things that I do think there's probably some effect. There's some decent effect on meditation, you know, shifting the body into some type of parasympathetic state, however that's defined. So I recommend longer bouts of foam rolling. Like, again, if the person just likes it, they're like, I'm gonna do it. Just tell me the best way to do it. I'm like, alright.
41:07 Chris Williamson? It's a relaxing, meditative pursuit, right?
41:11 Speaker 01 I think post-workout and on the off days, I think post-workout, the effect is not the actual area that you're rolling, but it's the routine. It's the winding down routine. Like, I'm foam rolling now. It's the workout's over. I can start to chill out and relax.
41:27 Chris Williamson? Yeah, well, there'll almost certainly be a reduction in cortisol and if you're if you're going to be anxious or frantic about the fact that you haven't done the thing today that you thought you were going to do on your day off.
41:39 Speaker 01 Right, yeah, totally. Now, if you're if you're that stuck on your routine, like, maybe that's another problem. But, you know.
41:46 Chris Williamson? I think we may have I think we may have opened up some people's routines and freed them up from a couple of a couple of half-hour bouts here and there today so far.
41:54 Speaker 01 My post-workout routine is just chilling. You know, I take off my shoes and I sit and or maybe I'll lay on my back and just chill. But some people might want to just kind of roll out. Like, it feels good. But then that's fine. Whatever gets you to wind down, to get your appetite back, gets you to just kind of like recover for the next bout. I think massage has a similar thing.
42:15 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
42:15 Speaker 01 The lights are dim, you're relaxed, you're just chilling. Somebody else is doing something for you, like you're treating yourself.
42:22 Chris Williamson? Yes.
42:22 Speaker 01 To something nice. And that has just a general effect.
42:26 Chris Williamson? But understand what's happening here.
42:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, and understand what's not happening is probably more important.
42:31 Chris Williamson? Yeah. Okay, so, moving on, static stretching. What do people think it does and what does it do?
42:39 Speaker 01 It's almost an identical conversation. There the evidence, there's more evidence on static stretching just because they've been studying it longer.
42:47 Chris Williamson? Okay.
42:48 Speaker 01 And the evidence. Kind of keep saying the same thing is that we're not really creating permanent changes in the muscle tendon structure, like the pennation angle, the uh where the the tendon and muscle meet, like that juncture point, doesn't really change permanently. It's like not when you when you stretch and there's an increased change in range of motion, it doesn't stick that way. It goes back.
43:12 Chris Williamson? Okay.
43:13 Speaker 01 So it's a way that they describe the effects of static stretching, the reason why it changes your short your range of motion short term, which it does, by the way, just like foam rolling can, is that it increases your tolerance to stretch. So so think it's a nervous system thing. So think about this. If somebody lays on the table and they try to put their arm over their head and it doesn't quite go all the way over their head, if they were put under anesthesia, it's very likely that that arm would just flop to the table.
43:45 Chris Williamson? Okay, yeah.
43:46 Speaker 01 Unless they've got some type of like doorstop in their shoulder joint, you know, an actual
43:50 Chris Williamson? Some serious physical imbalance.
43:52 Speaker 01 Some people do, and in that case, we're just not throwing a barbell over their head. We're you know, we're doing landmine presses or something like that. But anyway, if that if that same person who was under anesthesia, their arm flops over their head, and then they wake up, you know, a couple hours later, and then all of a sudden, they're kind of that restriction is back. I don't that's that tone, whatever we want to call that, that nervous system holding pattern is what stretching works into.
44:17 Chris Williamson? Yeah, so I'm I'm right in saying it's tone is tightness, is tone is similar to tightness?
44:24 Speaker 01 That's a word that I've been trying to define for like three years now. I'm not even gonna say it. I haven't said that
44:29 Chris Williamson? Oh, no. I've opened up I've opened up Pandora's box of glossaries.
44:34 Speaker 01 I don't know how to define tone. I don't know what's because if somebody's relaxed completely, tone would would hypothetically be zero.
44:42 Chris Williamson? No.
44:43 Speaker 01 The EMG.
44:44 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
44:45 Speaker 01 But there's still some type of something's holding there. So I don't know what it is. But I do know that warming up, literally getting warm, and moving through range of motion will will give you that same change in range of motion as static stretching. And they've also shown that PNF stretching Contract, relax, adding some load to the stretch actively.
45:07 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
45:07 Speaker 01 Is a better alternative as well. It gives you range of motion changes faster.
45:11 Chris Williamson? Ahead of, ahead of static stretching.
45:14 Speaker 01 Correct. So it just, to me, like, my favorite hamstring stretch is an RDL. Like a, hold a light kettlebell, Romanian deadlift, hold a light kettlebell, hold it between your legs and just kind of sink into that hip, hip hinge position.
45:26 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
45:27 Speaker 01 Take a couple, sink a little bit further. So it's like a light bell, you know, something that you can hold and sustain.
45:33 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
45:33 Speaker 01 You're letting that weight do its thing. You're letting gravity do its thing. All the while, your hamstrings are still being contracted eccentrically.
45:39 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
45:40 Speaker 01 But, you know, but they're also being stretched. So that's kind of a, an example of what people have like described, what we talked about is like loaded mobility. Uh, get into the positions and hang out there.
45:52 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
45:52 Speaker 01 You know, it's, it's active, your body, you'll, you'll melt into position and you'll have the same effects with the skill of the position.
46:00 Chris Williamson? Okay, I understand. So can you explain how someone like a gymnast or a yoga instructor that I'm sure everyone's got a friend? Who, well, she's done yoga for five years and she can get into the over splits now, or she can do a, a back bend.
46:20 Speaker 01 Yep.
46:20 Chris Williamson? Where, if static stretching doesn't elicit a long-term effect? How is it that these people have been able to get into these, what appear to be extreme positions?
46:32 Speaker 01 I was gonna, I was gonna go there and I forgot. I'm glad you brought it back up. There's always a spectrum to things. So let's say somebody is a, is a gymnast and that person has been training for 15 years and since the age of like six.
46:48 Chris Williamson? Yep.
46:50 Speaker 01 There's a combination, it's, it's likely, I don't know what, to what extent, but because of the frequency of training, what did I say with soft tissue? If a load is heavy enough, if the frequency is high enough, because of the frequency over years.
47:03 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
47:04 Speaker 01 There is likely some type of structural adaptation, but think about the training for a second.
47:11 Speaker 01 It's with gymnastics specifically, it's very active. Gymnasts can do the splits in the air.
47:18 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
47:19 Speaker 01 They can do it actively. They can hold these isometric positions. So they've been loading these.
47:24 Chris Williamson? Strength through range as well, right?
47:27 Speaker 01 So my argument is because based on current literature, it's limited because we don't have a, we're not tracking like a gymnast over the course of years. I think that if we did that, you would likely, you would probably see some type of change in the architecture of the muscle. But I'm going to argue that that change is relatively small compared to the positions that they can tolerate. And I'm going to go back to the fact that they have trained the ability to tolerate the positions.
47:56 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
47:58 Speaker 01 Now they are closer to the person who's under anesthesia because the person who's under anesthesia has not trained for years to be able to tolerate the stretch.
48:07 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I understand.
48:09 Speaker 01 So with the gymnast, if you want to think about their nervous system allows them to go there because they've trained it so often and, you know, over the course of many, many years that the nervous system is saying, okay, this must be okay. We are not threatened in this position.
48:24 Chris Williamson? Hmm. Yeah, because even if, as you say, some of these approaches have a very marginal or negligible gain, when you multiply that five times a week over 15 years,
48:37 Speaker 01 Exactly.
48:37 Chris Williamson? marginal gain actually becomes quite pronounced.
48:40 Speaker 01 Exactly right. And then, okay, somebody who wants to do a snatch is like, oh, then you're, no, I need to do that. Like, no, you don't need that extreme.
48:50 Speaker 01 You know, they look at the dream situations and they think that's what they need. You don't have to be a gymnast to do an overhead squat. I promise you. In fact, the muscles are not even that stretched. Your knee, the hamstring's not stretched because your knee is bent.
49:04 Chris Williamson? Yep.
49:04 Speaker 01 You know, your hip flexor is slacked because your hip is in flexion.
49:08 Chris Williamson? Yep.
49:08 Speaker 01 Your quads, your only quad that crosses two muscles is your rectus femoris and that's bent at the hip. So that's slacked. There's really no muscle that is extremely stretched from a lower body position. From an upper body position, it's your lat, to some extent in your pecs, but that wide grip and the snatch, usually not a limiting factor. And if you can do a push, you know, behind the neck, push press with a snatch grip or a power snatch, then you have the shoulders. It's about integrating it. So I think people have this misunderstanding that you need to be, you have to have flexibility of a gymnast.
49:43 Chris Williamson? Yep.
49:43 Speaker 01 In order to get into these positions, you simply don't. Now with a yogi, that's another example. That's interesting. I think that there's some selection bias there. You are not gonna, I'm not wired to be bendy like that. Like I hate stretching. Yeah, obviously I have a bias here. I've hated stretching since kindergarten. Because it's for me, I don't, I'm like wired to be, to resist that crap. Like my body doesn't like it. And I get these weird like nervous system tension type things when I'm trying to.
50:13 Chris Williamson? As a doctor of physical therapy, I'm sure is probably, well, maybe for a doctor, but there's certainly going to be a lot of physiotherapists who wouldn't, who probably wouldn't put themselves in that camp. I'm aware of a lot of them that would, that would love the mobility, that would love spending time doing the static stretching and the soft tissue work. And it would appear that you're not, you're not happy stretching at all.
50:36 Speaker 01 I mean, I'd rather, I like to train qualities that are, that have some type of functionality and that provide athletic. See, I don't really care about stretching. I want the range of motion for the tasks. So.
50:51 Chris Williamson? Not for its own sake.
50:53 Speaker 01 Not for its own sake. That's, that's correct. So I think that people are drawn to certain tasks that they're better at naturally. So I think that a lot of yoga instructors prop their bodies, probably lend themselves for whatever reason.
51:11 Speaker 01 Too relatively bendy.
51:14 Chris Williamson? Well, you're not going to pursue a career as the owner of a yoga studio and yoga teacher if you look shit doing yoga.
51:25 Speaker 01 That's all I'm saying, or if it's uncomfortable. I'm not going to teach four yoga classes today where I fucking suck.
51:30 Chris Williamson? Sweat and shake and swear at myself and I'm panting at the front of the class.
51:34 Speaker 01 Exactly. And I think that, also think of a gymnast. Like, do you really think the people who suck at gymnastics and whose bodies are continually playing tug of war with themselves are going to stick with gymnastics for 15 years? Probably not.
51:49 Chris Williamson? Probably not.
51:49 Speaker 01 They're going to go find something that lends itself better with their attributes. So I think that there is some selection bias that people are not accounting for.
51:59 Chris Williamson? Okay.
51:59 Speaker 01 And that is consistent with the literature showing that, you know, there's limitation with these passive modalities.
52:07 Chris Williamson? Okay. Dynamic stretching up next.
52:11 Speaker 01 Sure. Can you give me an example? Because to me, dynamic stretching is like, you could just do the movement could be considered dynamic stretching.
52:18 Chris Williamson? That was something I was going to say. Exactly. Again, you've spoiled, we've spoiled each other's films. Spoilers are out there. It's like Avengers all over again on Facebook. So dynamic stretching for me would be something like a pendulum swing with your foot. So swinging your foot forwards and back, standing on one leg and allowing your foot to swing forward and back, stretching your hamstring, and then I guess your hip flexor and quad at the back. That would typically be, I think, what I would consider dynamic stretching. Is that anything? Is that just swinging my leg around?
52:51 Speaker 01 It is definitely swinging your leg around.
52:56 Speaker 01 So I'm just, you know, first of all, I'm a little grumpy because I'm doing sets of 10 in the back squat and I just got done maybe half an hour after we called. So that, just to kind of give the listeners some context.
53:08 Chris Williamson? That's absolutely fine. Swathing through the bullshit is the exact reason that I wanted to have you on.
53:13 Speaker 01 I have taken a, I have evolved quite a bit over the past, I'd say, eight years on these topics. And dynamic stretching, I guess, is the lesser of two evils. If you're going to choose one or the other, I'm going to just lay on my back and try to tug on my hamstrings, or I'm going to do a standing leg swing like you described. I would pick the standing leg swing.
53:35 Chris Williamson? Why?
53:36 Speaker 01 Because it is act because there there's evidence to show that dynamic stretching can give you the short term ranges of motion changes that and without the power decrease of static stretching.
53:49 Chris Williamson? Oh, that's something we didn't even touch on. Can you can you briefly explain about that?
53:53 Speaker 01 Sure. So there's there was a few studies showing that bouts of static stretching, like 30 to 60 second bouts can decrease in the short term for a short period of time can decrease your top end power output. So the way that they set up these studies were like they did a hamstring stretch or like a hip flexor stretch or a calf stretch and then they had the people immediately go onto a force plate and do a vertical jump.
54:16 Chris Williamson? Okay.
54:17 Speaker 01 And static stretching affected that. But since they have come out with literature showing that if you do static stretching and then followed up with some type of dynamic stretch or movement, like they were doing like a skips, you know, like walking lunges, these types of like that then mitigates the power loss from static stretching.
54:38 Chris Williamson? Okay.
54:39 Speaker 01 Which which is more real life, like most people don't do a static stretch and then just go right to max F something.
54:45 Chris Williamson? They don't they don't do like a a single leg quad stretch and then immediately go do a single leg leg extension.
54:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. So in that respect, I think that it's pretty benign, like the power loss.
54:56 Chris Williamson? Yeah. But was there was there a time window of when that starts to tail off?
55:00 Speaker 01 It's like an hour.
55:01 Chris Williamson? Oh, wow. So it's actually quite quite significant if you're doing it within your within the same training session, it's likely to definitely affect it.
55:08 Speaker 01 But at the same time, you know, what is 1 to 3% is what they found, which there's probably some measurement error there as well, like 1 to 3% decreases in power. But also that matters for like a few amount of people and it also matters if you plan on doing max effort training. So if I know that my training today is only going to be like 70 to 80% for reps.
55:33 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
55:34 Speaker 01 It's probably not a big deal. And I know also know that if I'm gonna I'll do some if I'm gonna do some static stretching, I'm probably gonna go and do the empty bar for a bunch and I'm gonna do a bunch of warm up sets. That probably doubles as my dynamic warm up.
55:45 Chris Williamson? I was going to say, yeah.
55:47 Speaker 01 It's about potentiation. So I think what happens is it almost relaxes the body.
55:53 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
55:54 Speaker 01 So like I think that static stretching, it's the same as kind of foam rolling. It almost tells your body, oh, it's time to chill. And so like that is not synonymous with doing something max effort very explosively.
56:05 Chris Williamson? Yep.
56:06 Speaker 01 So you gotta potentiate that effect. So if you're gonna static stretch, start to work back into like doing dynamic stuff, which is, you know, leg swings could be one of those things because your, your body is, it's that, that's that fast stretch, contract, stretch, contracts, stretch, contract. I think that potentiates the nervous system to prepare itself for movement better than static stretching.
56:27 Chris Williamson? Okay, so I think we've moved through what I would consider the three main areas that most people would use towards this Zenith term of mobility. Have you got a more optimal approach that people can use? You've alluded to it a couple of times about doing the movement.
56:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:48 Chris Williamson? Is it, is it just progressive overload? Is progressive overload just king of everything?
56:52 Speaker 01 Um, I mean, ultimately, yes, but if we're overloading, overload assumes that you're like, we're talking about weight on the bar, but really, if we're talking about skill acquisition, weight on the bar will naturally come with time. So it's more, getting into the position is kind of a different conversation, but you have to practice. So you mentioned three things that I think people spend way too much time doing and not enough time doing the actual movement. Like, they freak out because they're not happy with the position that they're hitting for like two reps. And they're like, ah, I gotta go do this non-specific thing for half an hour now. And then you come back to the, to the training movement, you have to reorient yourself. It's just so much wasted time.
57:35 Speaker 01 So those three things, soft tissue, passive, dynamic, I think a priority dynamic is probably better, but it's all kind of the same recommendation in that do it kind of in between the actual movement so that you. You have time efficiency and you also you get that short term change in range of motion, but you get to use it right away.
57:55 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I think we definitely haven't concluded here that soft tissue, static or dynamic stretching don't elicit a short term improvement in someone's range of motion. It's the pathway that that works on, which has been erroneously classified. Is that, is that correct to say?
58:13 Speaker 01 That's exactly right. And so then that dictates how you implement it. So if you, if, if you do 10 minutes, let's say you do 15 minutes, I think it's probably pretty standard for people, like 15 minutes of foam rolling, maybe even another 10 of static stretching. Like, it's not unreasonable to think that people spend 25, 30 minutes doing these things. You, you've probably lost some of the short term benefit from the first five minutes.
58:36 Chris Williamson? You're already off the other end.
58:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, think about it. If you do a total body thing and you hit your, your, you know, calves first, and then you hit your shoulders last, you're probably need to do your calves again.
58:47 Chris Williamson? It's gonna be like the fourth bridge, you're just constantly painting it, yeah.
58:51 Speaker 01 So it's much better to pick one spot and then go use it right away. Go load it right away. And the load will, will further allow you to get into a new range of motion. It will further desensitize some of the feelings of restriction and, you know, apprehension to the movement. So that's, I think, the best way to implement it. And also just, you've got to trust the process. If you want real changes in your structure and your movement, you've got to put your head down and commit to coming to the gym for months on end.
59:19 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
59:20 Speaker 01 You know, I always say like, talk to me in six months and let's see if there's a change. Like, don't worry about tomorrow. Uh, and also think about like, don't panic when the movement doesn't feel its best, because that's pretty much life. Well, the example is like, you, and I'm sure that you can attest to this, I can, you walk into the gym, it's like, alright, I got squats there, I got snatches. You do that first air squat and you're like, oh god.
59:42 Chris Williamson? Life hurts today. Gravity feels so heavy.
59:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, and then what happens is people are like, oh man, I gotta go warm up. And so they do the 20 or 30 minutes of the non-specific thing, but what if, what if you were like, alright, that squat felt like shit. I'm gonna take that 20 or 30 minutes that I was gonna do this nonspecific thing.
1:00:00 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:00:01 Speaker 01 And I'm just gonna do 20 or 30 more minutes of like squatting.
1:00:03 Chris Williamson? I was gonna say, we could, we could try and do an experiment with the listeners right now.
1:00:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:09 Chris Williamson? And the next time that someone goes into the gym and a particular movement, let's say that it's squat, because this would be applicable to a front squat, a back squat, or an overhead squat. Instead of them going away, or instead of them beginning a session before going and doing this movement with foam rolling and the static stretching and the dynamic stretching, what would you have them do instead? Work up from a PVC bar, get themselves warm, and then start to put a little bit of weight on the bar and move around for that half an hour instead, focusing on movement quality?
1:00:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't even think it has to be a half an hour. I think that's overkill.
1:00:48 Chris Williamson? Yes, well, you'd be, you'd definitely be knackered by the end of that.
1:00:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, now, the, the, it's hard, the exact way that I would tweak the movement for their specific parameters, because there are ways. You can elevate your heels a little bit. You can use a little bit of weight, like just enough weight till you can feel the movement to get you down there. Uh, but it's hard to say on that general thing, because everybody's a little different. But what I would recommend is that you slow the tempo down. You find a little bit of load in which you can, you can pause at your end range, what currently is your end range, and that you can go slow in both directions and really feel the movement. And I bet that over the course of five, 10, 15 minutes, your body, for lack of a better term, starts to melt into position,
1:01:35 Speaker 01 just like it would if you were static stretching, but in this case, you're practicing the movement, and you would hit that inflection point of feeling warm. You know that feeling where you're like, something inside of you just clicks and you're like, okay, I'm ready.
1:01:46 Chris Williamson? My body's, it's like, um, it's kind of like body lucidity, right? It's like everything's moving, the, the central nervous system's firing. We haven't mentioned CNS yet, or too much yet, but.
1:01:59 Speaker 01 Well, it's all CNN related. It's all CNN mediated.
1:02:01 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:02:02 Speaker 01 And I don't know what that inflection point is. I don't know what we could call it, but it's that moment where you're like, all right, I'm ready to, I got, I'm greasing the groove. Like mentally, I'm there. My body feels good. Let's add some weight.
1:02:12 Chris Williamson? Like it's weird. It's weird, isn't it? It's going from, it's going from getting out of the car and shit, I need to let the dog out later on to I'm here to train. And there is, you're right. Cause it's, at what point do you go from being that guy to the guy that's ready to PR is scot clean or whatever it might be?
1:02:32 Speaker 01 And, and I would argue that the fastest point from the, the time that you walk in to the time that you get to that point is a straight line. And that straight line is doing the movement, doing more of the movement, doing the movement, doing more of the movement.
1:02:45 Chris Williamson? Yep.
1:02:45 Speaker 01 With pauses, with tempos. Now, again, again, over the course of that experiment, you may, you might find that, you know what? This gives me 80%. All the passive stuff has only given me about 20%. This gives me 80%, but I still want that extra little boost. That's where you can layer on that other stuff in between.
1:03:03 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:03:04 Speaker 01 But I, I would recommend if you can, cut as much of that out as you can in the beginning and focus on more of the movement with light loads and, you know, incrementally smaller jumps than you're used to, and see if your body doesn't hit that sweet spot anyway. Cause, cause aren't you, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you going to have to reorient yourself to the movement regardless? Like, let's say you walk over to the barbell, you do your first overhead squat. You're like, that feels like garbage.
1:03:29 Chris Williamson? Yep.
1:03:30 Speaker 01 Then you go through all your passive stuff. Are you not going to have to go back and do the bar warm up anyway?
1:03:36 Chris Williamson? Re-familiarize yourself with your grip and every position.
1:03:39 Speaker 01 And before you know it, you've been at the gym for an hour and you haven't done anything.
1:03:42 Chris Williamson? The definitely, the definitely to me, that feels like, um, it's just such an arduous, long task, warming up. Yeah, it does suck. It does suck. It sucks an awful lot. Um, yeah, it's, it, and you're right as well, that this time that you could be spending greasing the groove and drilling the movement that you're, that is the end goal, right? It's, it's.
1:04:09 Chris Williamson? Practicing pushing your foot on the pedal instead of actually just driving the car.
1:04:14 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:04:14 Chris Williamson? Like, but you're not pushing your foot on the pedal, you're pushing your foot on a pretend pedal that's outside of the car.
1:04:19 Speaker 01 Exactly. Now, you know what, if the splits are a part of your sport, if you're a gymnast, dancer, competitive cheerleader, these types of things, then you're damn right, you're gonna be doing the splits and you're gonna be doing them a lot. But you're gonna also be holding them isometrically. You know, you're gonna be doing things that require control, that range of motion. It's all about specificity. You mentioned it's progressive overload king. I would say that specificity is king. If overload happens to be the thing that you want, because your specific quality of choice is strength or power, then yes, we have to progressively overload over time, but specificity is king. So the splits is not gonna get you that overhead squat that you want. The overhead squat is gonna give you the overhead squat that you want. You just have to be patient enough with the tediousness of what it takes
1:05:04 Speaker 01 to practice over and over and over and over. And it is tedious and it's not fun.
1:05:10 Chris Williamson? Yeah. Well, nothing, what is it? It's nothing worth having comes easy, right?
1:05:15 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:05:16 Chris Williamson? And this is a reason, this is the reason why I think a lot of the time, certainly for myself, when I started doing Olympic weightlifting and CrossFit and looking at these more complicated movements, we forget just how extreme they are. The fact that being able to do a bar muscle up, because we see the best athletes in the world able to do sets of 10 or 20 and we see people be able to squat clean 300, 300 pounds and do you know what I mean? People who were able to move these large amounts of weight and do them, oh wow, he's done it under fatigue, he did it after a run bike run, he did it, you know, on, on stage in front of the, the entire YPNF or whatever it might be.
1:05:59 Chris Williamson? You forget just how much of an achievement it is to be able to do them full stop. And I think that it can down-regulate people's, um, people's understanding that it is a challenge in itself. And they can very quickly begin to look past that and, and, um, and believe that they should be moving more or should be moving faster than they are. And I think that definitely leads to, um, A short-termist strategy as opposed to what you were saying, come back to me in six months. Do this consistently and come back to me in six months.
1:06:32 Speaker 01 You're 100% correct. People see the end product. They don't see that that person, all those people that you described, have been busting their ass in the gym, training for probably years.
1:06:42 Chris Williamson? Yeah, 10,000 failed reps to get that one.
1:06:46 Speaker 01 Totally. Sacrificing other things in their life to get there. So it's one of the Chad Wesley Smith of Juggernaut, he describes that in regards to programming, like people will look at Ray Williams program, or look at Chad's program, or like the best of the best and say, oh, well, I just need to be on their program. But they, there's a, there's a process to this thing. You know, those guys, their program now, looked nothing like their program when they were an intermediate lifter. And then that looked nothing like their program when they were a beginner.
1:07:13 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:07:14 Speaker 01 You've got to, this thing, you know, it works in stages. You can't just jump to the end. You can have, you had to have the end in mind. But it's like you said, you gotta, you gotta trust the process a little bit and it, it takes time. So it was very freeing for me because I've been on that side of the spectrum. When I was warming up, when I first started physical therapy school at the beginning of my weightlifting careers, it was like nine, 10 years ago.
1:07:37 Speaker 01 I was hooking a band up to every joint in my body. I was.
1:07:42 Chris Williamson? Suspended from the rig.
1:07:45 Speaker 01 Thousand percent.
1:07:46 Chris Williamson? Kind of like a, like a sex swing in the middle of a weightlifting club.
1:07:49 Speaker 01 No, I wouldn't even go into the gym yet because I had too much, too much gear to throw around. Like I had to go into the, like the, indoor track because I had to spread out all my bands and all my foam rollers and all in the balls.
1:08:03 Chris Williamson? It's like an, like an obstacle course of mobility tools.
1:08:07 Speaker 01 And I, and it was an hour, easily an hour of spending time doing that. And then I was, then I would have to spend 30 minutes trying to get into the positions because that stuff just didn't really have that big of an effect. But when I started to forget that and started to pay more attention to the positions and stay lighter for longer, like not like empty bar, because sometimes you need a little bit of weight to feel the positions.
1:08:30 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:08:30 Speaker 01 But I wouldn't, I started to not to increase load, I started to think about it in a different way. I started to ask myself different questions. Is it too heavy for me to lift or is it too heavy for me to lift the way I want to?
1:08:41 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:08:41 Speaker 01 And some of those thresholds are a little different. So I would stay in the ladder for longer and my body's, lo and behold, started to become more comfortable and consistent with those positions. And so I started to take the approach of raising my minimums instead of trying to worry about my top end all the time and my move, yeah.
1:09:00 Chris Williamson? I think that's so, that's so correct.
1:09:03 Speaker 01 My, my movement and mobility, however you want to call those things, all that stuff improved when I started just thinking about training as a process. And it was very liberating when I stopped, it took some time and it wasn't cold turkey, I'll tell you that right now.
1:09:19 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:09:19 Speaker 01 But when I slowly started to cut that stuff out, like, oh, this, this drill or this like band distraction drill isn't quite working for me. I'll just, I'll chop this one. I'll keep everything else, but I'll chop this one and over the course of, it probably took, I mean, honestly, it probably took a couple of years.
1:09:34 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:09:35 Speaker 01 To really where I am now, but it was very, very liberating. It's very liberating to just come into the gym. Like I'll do some, like I call them knee bends. I do like a bunch of quarter squats in my bare feet.
1:09:46 Chris Williamson? Yep.
1:09:46 Speaker 01 Just like dip and drive, dip and drive, dip and drive to like warm up my ankles, to warm up my knees, to just kind of get some blood flow, for lack of a better term or whatever.
1:09:54 Chris Williamson? Yep.
1:09:55 Speaker 01 And I, I put my shoes on and I'm, I play with the empty barbell until I hit that first inflection point.
1:10:02 Chris Williamson? Yep.
1:10:03 Speaker 01 And then I play with forty kilos until I hit that first inflection point and then I, and I just build from there and it's, it's freeing, man, I tell you.
1:10:11 Chris Williamson? Bet it is. I mean, how many times, a couple of things, I, I know that you're on a tight schedule, so I'm going to fit a couple of bits in here. How many times do people say that they don't have, they don't have enough time in training to work their technique? But that they are spending twenty minutes on the foam roller or doing the, the static stretching or the dynamic stretching or whatever and.
1:10:33 Chris Williamson? You know, hopefully here, people will be able to see, am I right in saying, I think, I think I know your answer to this. Would you see there being no difference between the sort of strength and conditioning side of something and the mobility training? That it would be a paradigm or a scale or a spectrum, should I say, of load intensity and training intensity?
1:10:55 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:10:56 Chris Williamson? So viewing it as viewing it as two separate things is a an erroneous way to look at it. And I think hopefully, I certainly know that I'm going to very, very gingerly try and um. I'm going to try and dial back my mobility, my traditional mobility addiction. And like you say, begin to down regulate just how much of that I believe I need. But I do think that one of the things that I really liked about what you've what you've said in in this conversation is that if you feel like it works for you and if you enjoy the process, that that in itself is a therapeutic and beneficial addition to your training.
1:11:38 Chris Williamson? That if you enjoy Yin yoga, because you find that it gives you a sense of mindfulness and it zeroes you in for the day, then crack on, but to understand the pathway that this is working on.
1:11:54 Speaker 01 Hundred percent. I don't want to, I'm trying to spit and everybody's Cheerios. And also, if your training is going really well and you're doing all of these things also and you like it and everything's going well, like, don't change a thing.
1:12:08 Chris Williamson? Yeah, just stick to the program. We've just said it. Stick to the fucking program.
1:12:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, this conversation is for the people who feel like they're at a dead end and they've been doing things that have not have simply not been working. If it's been months and it ain't working, it probably not going to.
1:12:22 Chris Williamson? I understand. So where can the listeners find you online?
1:12:27 Speaker 01 Uh, so the, yeah, so the cool thing about having a weird name is that you can just search my name and pretty much every social media platform will pop right up. So Instagram, I think it's Quinn.hennigdpt, uh, similar on Twitter and then on Facebook, I have two, just Quinn Hennig is my personal and then I have a business one, that's Quinn Hennigdpt, but I pretty much just post the same shit on both. I don't know why I have two. And then Clinical Athlete is our, our baby that we're trying to help to bridge the knowledge gap for all this stuff, strength and conditioning, healthcare. So Clinical Athlete on all of the common social media channels also.
1:13:05 Chris Williamson? Clinical Athlete is a, a directory of accredited physiotherapists that you've vetted, right?
1:13:14 Speaker 01 Exactly. It's a forum as well.
1:13:15 Chris Williamson? Okay, so it's also a community on top of that?
1:13:18 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And we do, uh, yeah, continuing education courses and, and it's trying to connect athletes with healthcare providers who understand their goals.
1:13:27 Chris Williamson? Who know what's going on.
1:13:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. And I've done a lot of the things that we've talked about, you know, I do, we do exercises and drills and different exercise movement variations that help with motor skill acquisition. A lot of those are on my YouTube channel and on, I've done several videos on the Juggernaut YouTube channel.
1:13:46 Chris Williamson? People need to check those out. I absolutely loved, I loved all of the series that, that we've touched on here. I thought they were really, really good.
1:13:53 Speaker 01 We've done, yeah, and I've done a ton with those. They, they're very grateful for them allowing me to use that, that platform. And then, uh, yeah, and then I have a book. I also have a book. It's called Weightlifting, I'm looking at the title because it's so, Weightlifting Movement Assessment and Optimization.
1:14:12 Chris Williamson? If you search Quinn Hennig Weightlifting Optimization, it'll come up on Amazon, right?
1:14:16 Speaker 01 Yes, on Amazon, exactly. And it's essentially breaking down the snatch and the clean and jerk by phase. So each phase of the lift, what are?
1:14:28 Speaker 01 For our terms that we've used today, what are the mobility and stability demands of each phase? And then how do you develop those phases with uses of the lifts, variations of the lifts, and then different kind of positional drills and exercises that can help you better create comfort and proficiency within those positions? So it's pretty much exactly what we've talked about today.
1:14:52 Chris Williamson? But at length. Quinn, I couldn't thank you enough for this. I think, hopefully, we will have opened some people's eyes. I think that going by what the science says is something that we're prepared to take when it comes to medicine. A lot of people are very skeptical of esoteric new wave solutions, holistic solutions, because of the disinformation and because of the lack of clarity when it comes to stuff like mobility and physical training. People are prepared to take whatever's in front of them or whatever everyone else does. And I think that going by what the science says, which is what you've presented us with today, is definitely giving people all of the facts and then, I suppose, what they choose
1:15:37 Chris Williamson? to do with it. Whether they're able to relinquish their stretching routine from here is a decision of theirs.
1:15:42 Speaker 01 Well, that's the thing too. I fall into the same camp. We've all got to question our biases a little bit and be open to changing our ideas if evidence is presented to us, or don't. But at least acknowledge that it's there. And again, that goes for me too. And so these are the ideas and thoughts as I'm interpreting the current literature. And if we do another show in three years, maybe my student has changed and maybe I'm more affirmed in these ideas.
1:16:16 Chris Williamson? Maybe you sat there dual wielding theraguns and...
1:16:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, maybe I'm a real estate agent. I switched gears completely and you interviewed me on why my life changed. So who knows?
1:16:28 Chris Williamson? Quinn, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
1:16:32 Speaker 01 Thank you, Chris. It was a blast.
1:16:34 Chris Williamson? Cheers, man. Bye-bye.
Previous Creating The Mindfulness Gap, The Fundamentals Of Meditation and How To Deepen Your Practise - Cory Allen - #012 Next Life Hacks 101 Page updated September 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
