I opened up my talk with the Kobe Bryant Skills Academy back in 2007. What I didn't share with you was one of the college counselors there was Stephen Curry. Visualize where you want to be and what you want to accomplish. You kind of get lost in the process of day-to-day, you know, grinding it out, working, pulling on ours if you have to. You know, it's just about not losing vision and not losing sight of what you're trying to accomplish no matter what hurdles you have to go through. So, I think that kind of relates to whatever you're doing. Stephen's on that level now as a global icon that I think most people have heard of who he was. If you do the math in 2007, this was after his freshman year at Davidson. This was before he blew up on the scene. This was before anyone knew who he was. In fact, he was so unknown at this camp that the coaches didn't even call him by his name. They called him Dell's son because his dad played in the NBA for a dozen years and was a great long-distance shooter. Yeah, that's Dell's son over there. That's Dell's kid. But what he lacked in physical stature and what he lacked in resume, he more than made up for in a few different ways. But the most impressive of which was at the end of the first workout. This was a mini-camp. This was two three-hour workouts a day for four straight days and they were incredibly intense. At the end of the very first workout, just based on proximity, we had never formally met or been introduced. He said to me, Coach, will you rebound for me? Because I don't leave the gym until I swish five free throws in a row. Swish five free throws in a row. For those of you that have never personally shot a basketball before, let me tell you that is an incredibly high standard. A swish by definition is a perfect shot. It does not touch the rim. It does not touch the backboard. It gets its name for the sound it makes by going nothing but net. It is the standard of perfection. And he would not leave the gym until he swished five in a row, which means he could swish four in a row, hit a little bit of the rim on the fifth one. It still goes in. He's still mathematically perfect. He's still five for five, but that was not good enough for Steph. He would start over. And if memory serves, it never took him longer than 12 to 15 minutes to swish five in a row. Steph and Curry will go down in history as the greatest shooter that the NBA has ever seen. And it's not by accident and it's not by luck and it's not because his dad played in the NBA. It's because he's willing to hold himself to an unparalleled standard. And that is the thought that I'll leave you all with, that the standards that you set today, they'll determine who and where you'll be tomorrow. It's about visualizing whether you write it down, put it on the wall, do something with what your goals are and get lost in the process of day-to-day grind, day-to-day getting better every single day, asking questions, aligning yourself with people that have been through it before, that are experienced and leaning on that advice and just trying to outwork the next person. And that's the biggest thing. The first time I met Kobe Bryant, my life changed forever. See, back in 2007, Nike flew me out to Los Angeles to work the first ever Kobe Bryant Skills Academy. Nike brought in the top high school and college players from around the country for an intense three-day mini-camp. With the best player in the world, and for any of you that don't follow basketball as closely as I do, just know that in 2007, Kobe was the best player in the game. Well, an important fact about me is basketball was my first identifiable passion. I fell in love with the game at five years old, and here, 40 years later, basketball is still a major pillar of my life. And having grown up in this basketball bubble, I had always heard the urban legend of how insanely intense Kobe's individual workouts were. Well, when I found myself on his camp staff, I figured this is my chance. This is my shot, so at my earliest opportunity, I walked up to Kobe and asked if I could watch one of his private workouts. He was incredibly gracious and smiled and said, sure, man, no problem, I'm going tomorrow at four. Well, I got a little bit confused, because I had just got done looking through the camp schedule, and the camp schedule clearly said that the first workout with the players was the following day at 3.30. Well, Kobe recognized that confused look on my face and clarified that with, yeah, that's four AM. Well, I couldn't think of a reason on why I couldn't be somewhere at four in the morning, so I'd committed myself to being there, and I figured if I'm going to be there anyway, I may as well show Kobe how serious of a trainer I was. I may as well leave my mark. So I came up with the idea to beat him to the gym. So I set my alarm for three AM. The next morning the alarm goes off, I jump up, I get myself dressed, I hop in a cab, and I head to the gym. Now when I arrive, it is 3.30 in the morning, so it is pitch black outside, and yet the moment I step out of the cab, I can see the gym lights already on. From the parking lot, I could faintly hear a ball bouncing and sneakers squeaking. I walk in the side door. Kobe's already in a full sweat. See, he was going through an intense warm-up before his formal workout with his trainer started at four.  I just sat down to watch, and for the first 45 minutes, I was shocked. For the first 45 minutes, I watched the best player on the planet do the most basic footwork in offensive moves. Kobe was doing stuff that I had routinely taught to middle school-aged players. Now don't get it twisted, this was Kobe Bryant. He was doing everything in an unparalleled level of intensity. He was doing everything with surgical precision, but the stuff he was doing was incredibly basic. When his workout went on for a couple more hours, and when it was over once again, I did not say anything to Kobe, I did not say anything to his trainer, and I just quietly left. But my curiosity kept nipping away, and it eventually overwhelmed me to the point that I had to know. So later that day at camp, I went up to Kobe again and said, Kobe, I don't understand. You're the best player in the world. Why are you doing such basic drills? And he flashed that million-dollar smile and he gave me a very friendly wink, but he said in a serious tone, why do you think I'm the best player in the world? Because I never get bored with the basics. Kobe Bryant, the best player on the planet, and someone that has truly mastered his craft, said that his secret is that he never gets bored with the basics. And as obvious as that may be to you all right now, that was a life-changing moment for me. See, in that moment, I realized that just because I'm the best player on the planet, it doesn't mean that it's easy. Those are not synonyms, and yet people often use those words interchangeably. Just because something's basic, it doesn't mean that it's easy. If it was easy, everyone else would be doing it. And you all know that we live in a world that tells us it's okay to skip steps. Tells us we should always be looking for a shortcut or a hack. Tells us we should always be looking for a shortcut or a hack. Tells us we should be chasing what's new and what's shiny and what's flashy and what's sexy and just ignore what's basic. But I'm here to tell you, if you do those things, you are making a huge mistake. That's because the basics work. They always have, and they always will. And the very first step to you improving performance in any area of your life, whether it's personal or professional, whether it's individual or original, individual or organizational, the very first step is to admit that the basics work. But it's also having the humility to acknowledge that implementing the basics every single day is never ever easy. One of the things that made Kevin unique is he had incredible vision. I think he could envision himself being an NBA player one day, which is why he was thinking to himself, this is what I need to do. You know, I started working with Kevin when he was 15 years old. Kevin taught me every bit as much as I ever taught him. I mean, the lessons, and I look back on some of the stories and things that I remember from him, he didn't know that he was teaching me something. So the first time I saw Kevin play, he was playing for Oak Hill at the time. I watched him play for about five minutes, and it became crystal clear a few things. One, this kid loves to play the game of basketball. He was playing his tail off, but he was smiling the entire time. Two, he's fundamentally sound. His footwork and his shooting mechanics are pristine.  Three, he has a really, really high basketball IQ. He understands the cerebral nature of the game to the level that most coaches do, and this is when he's 15. So it was clear to me that the only thing that would prevent him from being a great college player and then eventually an NBA player was lack of strength and power. Well, that's exactly what I wanted. That's what I did. I helped players get stronger and gain weight. So I started reaching out to Kevin and his wonderful mom, Wanda, and starting to say, look, you need to let your son come in for some workouts. And very understandably, they were cautious. It took about three months of convincing before she finally said, Kevin can come in for a workout. And we went to, it used to be called the run and shoot.  I mean, this was a potential McDonald's All-American coming in for a workout. This is everything that I'd ever wanted as a coach. And I absolutely hammered him. I mean, within 30 minutes, Kevin was laying in a pile on the floor and he was sweating profusely and his muscles were twitching. So he didn't say two words the entire workout. So I didn't know whether or not he even liked it. And I just asked him, and I just remember as serious as can be, he looked up and said, no coach, I didn't, but I know this is the stuff I need to do to make it to the NBA. So when can I see you again? And I remember being blown away that a 15-year-old had the maturity to realize that he was going to have to make a change and that that change was going to come with a tremendous amount of mental, physical, and emotional discomfort. But he was willing to make that sacrifice because what he wanted to play in the NBA, he wanted so badly that he was willing to do that. I think he could envision himself being an NBA player one day, which is why he was thinking to himself, this is what I need to do, that yes, I'm better than most high school kids now, but that's not good enough for me. Because next year when I go to college and then if I go to the NBA after that, I won't be heads and shoulders above everyone else. I won't be naturally more athletic or more skilled because everyone at those levels is athletic and skilled. So I think he was able to see down the line that this was an investment that he needed to make. Thankfully, I had a one in a million type player that said, yeah, I need a butt kicking like this often. So that began a nice relationship between Kevin and I for the next couple of years of working him out. And I think that he realized that I love this game so much that coming in a few times a week and being severely uncomfortable is a small price to pay if that's the ticket that's required to get me where I want to go. Most kids are looking for the shortcut. Most kids are saying, how can I sidestep coming in and lifting weights and still get where I want to go? And Kevin understood that he had to go through it. The fact that Kevin was like, no, I didn't like that workout was some humble pie that I needed to eat because then I was much more strategic in our future workouts to say, okay, I need to meet him in the middle. Never to push him over. I pushed him over that first day. And you know, you don't come back from that. Thankfully, he did. But it's take him to the edge of where they're severely uncomfortable and then start to build from that because the edge will start to get further and further away each time as they build up this tolerance for discomfort. I met Allen when I was a junior at Oak Hill Academy. I met him one day. He just told me that I need to work out with him. He'll be good for me. And you know, I did it one day. It was tough. It was tough. But I continued to do it and continued to get bigger and got better. I gained a lot of weight. You know, he was a very influential person in my life for those two or three years. You know, he helped me out on and off the court. Are you providing the types of touches that a Steve Nash does and on that type of frequency? How could I possibly know that Steve Nash led the NBA in high fives, fist bumps and pats on the butt? Funny enough, there was a research team from UC Berkeley that was conducting an official study and they wanted to see if showing signs of enthusiasm actually correlated to winning more games. So their research team watched every minute of every NBA game and made a tally mark every time a player gave a high five a fist bump or a pat on the butt. Well, the Phoenix Suns were so enamored with this study that they hired a full-time intern to do the same thing just for Steve Nash. Now, just by show of hands, how many of you have had a crappy entry-level job before? Yeah, can you imagine if that was your first job? Yeah, you see that guy over there? Every time he touches one of these big, tall, sweaty guys, we need you to make a tally mark. The very first game that the intern recorded for Steve Nash, he delivered 239 high fives, fist bumps, and pat on the butt. Steve Nash was a furnace of human connection. Now, when we're talking about sport, when we're talking about physicality, it's been physiologically proven that you can actually transfer energy through human touch. You can actually raise someone's game through physical touch. Now, hopefully you realize in the vast majority of your settings that's not what I'm asking you all to do. I'm not telling you to go back to the offices and start doing this. Some of you may, but I don't want to get in trouble with your HR departments. So what we're talking about now as we translate it, we're talking about emotional touches. We're talking about mental touches. Are there emotional and mental and digital high fives and fist bumps and pats on the backside that you can be giving the two most important groups when it comes to your business, which is your colleagues and your coworkers and your clients and your customers. Are you providing the types of touches that a Steve Nash does and on that type of frequency?


We talked about MAPS Prime quite a bit in this upcoming episode. We actually had one of our favorite guests, Dr. Justin Brink, on talking about mobility and control. We talked a lot about the squat, one of the most fundamental movements. But MAPS Prime is our program that includes a compass test, which is a self-assessment tool. It allows you to identify certain issues with how your body moves, and it helps direct you to exercise sequences that you can use for your particular body. It's individualized. For your particular body to prime your workouts better. And priming your workouts better makes them much, much more effective. It's a fact. If you prime your squat better when you get in your first set, you're going to get deeper, you're going to be more connected to it, muscles are going to fire better, and in the long term, of course, build more muscle, burn more body fat, get all those great results that you're looking for. You can find MAPS Prime at mindpumpmedia.com. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. When you sit next to Sal, you have to rub his leg a little bit. No, no, no. Just rub it. I don't know. I don't know. Play with you. What state am I thinking of, Dave? I don't know. He had to cross his leg. I get uncomfortable. You do.  You don't like that. A little sketchy? Yeah, he does. I don't know. I thought you were open-minded. I'm comfortable. You're open-minded. Damn. That's what he says, so you don't do it. You don't believe me.  I'll still rub your leg. It's okay. Yeah, yeah.  No, I don't care about the shoulders. The ears is weird. He freaks out. It's just weird. You know what I mean? Yeah, it is. It's endearing. I've never had anybody come up and rub my ears. Hey, man. At first for everything. He's like, I know you exist. A little rubby rub. I agree. Ears are a little bit different. Right? It is a little bit different. It's just... It would be like... Well, I'm a little bit different, so that's how that works. If you're a little different, you do a little different thing. I still think the weirdest thing would be like interlaced toes. How weird are they? He'd be all over that with Justin Bieber. No, for sure. Katrina hates that. That was the worst.  I'll lay in bed and I'll spread my toes around hers and she gets all grossed out. Weird to her, so I'd love to mess with her with that. No, you can't do that with... Feed me grapes with your toes.  He'd claw you. He'd hammer you.  He'd cut you. Yeah. We got Brinkster in the house today. We brought... Dr. Brink. We came down to Dr. Business and showed that we just put him right to work. Hey, bro. Brinky in the brain. Brinky in the brain. Get on the mic. Let's talk to people. Let's help some motherfuckers out there. That's what we decided to do. We're going to talk about the squat. It's crazy. Let's go into depth. That's the thing. It's crazy how many people still do this incredibly amazing exercise wrong, but it's not... There's two things. There's a technique part. Or they avoid it. Or they avoid it. There's the technique part that people get wrong, but then they learn the technique part, but then they don't have the recruitment patterns and the mobility and the control to really do it right. So they understand the technique, but they just can't do it. I would venture to say, Dr. Brink, you're on our forum. Yep. You must get a lot of... I see them. People tag you all the time on their squat. Yeah. Like, watch my squat. How am I doing? All the time. It's far more complex than we think. We just did a huge video series on YouTube. How many videos did we end up doing? 10 part series. Was it 10 part series? Yeah, 10 part series, how to squat like a pro. Like a pro. And what we tried to do in the series is go through in more detail, more specific.  Exactly. Less about the mechanics of the squat and more about addressing mobility issues that most people have. So for example, you know, there's many areas that could be limiting your squat, but the most common areas that are limiting people's squat, I would have to say, and Brink, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is ankle mobility, hip mobility, and thoracic mobility. Oh yeah. For sure. Right? Yeah. Would you say those are the most? I think biggest one is definitely the feet, the ankles. Yeah.  They lower their head. Yeah. Right?  I've noticed that you tend to like, that you zone in right away on people's feet and their ankles first. Has that always been your go-to to look as somebody squats, like you really peer into what's going on in their feet and their ankles? At first, no, it wasn't at first, it was, you know, looking at the hips. And then I think once I started realizing that, man, this pattern keeps coming up that they keep doing the same exact stuff over and over and over again.  So I'm always asking myself, okay, why is this motion the way that it is, you know, and now looking down the chain, well, what's the first point of contact to the ground?  I'm doing what I should be doing. Yeah, but we need to go the other way. So starting from bottom to top, which makes perfect sense. Like you said, that's the part that's in contact with the ground. That's what you're driving off. One thing that was pretty mind blowing for me when we started working with you was really understanding how when you identify an imbalance or a recruitment pattern issue, when you finally identify it, it's never, it never occurs in a vacuum by itself. Never. It's always, of course, everything moves together.  So, I mean, some of the videos we did on Mind Pump TV on YouTube, we looked at the ankle, we did show some stuff with the ankle, we did like the wall ankle and combat position and stuff like that. We did a toe squat. So, we addressed some, you know, ankle mobility and foot strength because I think that's the next piece, right? So, first, like the ankle mobility, but then even like just the strength in your feet. And I think what was huge, I remember when you assessed me and that was, we kind of had talked about my feet and then I, when I started addressing, I realized, whoa, how weak my feet were and how disconnected I was. Like, you know, when we were trying to do like short foot and if I was just trying to pick something up. Can you do short foot now? I can. Not as, I have one side that it's better than the other, but Were you able to do it right off the bat? No, no. How weird was that? Yeah, it's very weird.  Well, it's frustrating.  It literally felt like to me like, you know, when you fall asleep on your arm and it's like totally dead and you cannot summon it. Yeah. I was trying to do foot and this is no joke. Staring back at you. This is no joke. Brink was telling me to do short foot and he was explaining it to me. I'm like, what are you talking about? That's not, that's not even a movement. That was in my mind. Like you can't do that. And so he takes a shoe off and he shows me and I'm like, what? So I tried doing it. It just didn't, it just didn't work. Yeah. Nothing fired. The hard part. How weird is that? I think the hard part is, is learning how to, and I feel like this is something that I'm, I'm continuing to go through myself and, and challenge my, myself and clients and people that I help out with is incorporating it into your, your already normal routine because I find that the foot is kind of boring. You know, it's not very boring. It is, right? It's just not ugly. Wednesday's foot day. Yeah. It's just, it's just not a sexy, sexy area to have to develop or work on. Like nobody ever tells you like, man, you got great looking feet, bro. What do you do? What exercises do you do for them? Hit them feet. Yeah. There's a whole, I don't know, Adam, there's a whole market online. People who are in the head, bro. You would, you would know for sure. No, like so. Step on my face. You know, how do you, how do you do this?  Now, how do I incorporate that with everything else into my lifestyle? And so, you know, I found that doing it sporadically through the day or like while I'm here on the podcast or, you know, taking my shoes off and going barefoot at home. Like there, I found that I had, and I'm curious to hear all you guys and especially bring talk about this. Like when I, when he first told me, it was like, okay, great. This is a problem I have. I need dresses. And just like anything else, the first week or two, you're like, oh, I learned something new. I want to apply it. So like, I was all about it. I was like, you know, working on it, working on it, working on it. Then over time it gets boring and it gets tedious. And then you start to kind of lay off a little bit of it.  Like if I lay off, now all of a sudden it starts to come back again and ankle starts pronating again. I started seeing these, my feet started externally rotating. I'm like, motherfucker, I can't just do it for a week and fix it. It's not like that. You know, it's something that you need to continually incorporate into your lifestyle. So I had to regress all the way back. I came out the gates gung-ho. Like I think probably a lot of people do when they first learn this. And then I thought, okay, well, that didn't work very well for me. So now what are some simple things I can do? And then how do I progress that within my routine?  I just don't. I don't walk around barefoot enough. Like you have. Now I have a question about that because we've been talking about that for a while, but I've been meaning to ask you, Dr. Brink, is it enough to walk barefoot or should you walk barefoot with intention at first? Because and the reason why I'm asking this is because I know when I tell people to do movements, like, okay, just squat more or just they'll just strengthen their imbalance and moving in their in their default pattern. So should you when you walk, is it enough to just walk barefoot or should you walk with intention or change your, I guess, the way your foot hits the ground or whatever? I think the first part is, is we had to stand before we had to walk. Yes. Right. So teach them how to stand first. Right.  So just walk barefoot first. Well, yeah, you're going to walk barefoot, but teach them how to stand barefoot. Oh, I see. Get that connectivity when they're just standing first. And then once they know how to stand, then say, OK, this is how we want you to walk, you know, own the position of each of you know, of your foot and then progress from there. So would you say then just standing if I'm standing at work or I'm saying just focused, you know, throughout the day while I'm standing to activate those those patterns? Yeah, simple.  Oh, well, you want to have well, let's talk about that for a second. Hold on. So you want to do what with the with the heel?   So if you draw a line between those three, it creates a triangle. If you can center your weight over all three points, then you know that your body is probably going to be pretty much centered, you know. And if your body is centered over your feet, there's where your mass is going to be able to accept weight better. You're more centred, if you will. And you can identify to like where like, let's say they've they've added more calluses or like more bunions and, you know, like, yeah. So that's an obvious sign of where you need to focus a little bit more on, say, like bringing your big toe into the into the grounding process standing up. Yeah. Well, not even not even bringing the big toe into it, but, you know, because a lot of them are using the big toe, right? So using the big toe and you see a lot of grippers, you know, and so that big toe is really hooking into the ground, right? So if they're hooking into the ground, then that's the last point of contact. And they have that callus on the inside of that big toe, right? You know that that's the point that's leaving the ground last all the time, you know. So it's like calluses on your hand. Why do you have a callus on your hand? Because that's the point that you're using when you're gripping a bar, you know, where your foot's doing the same exact thing. So just pay attention to that. Yeah, pay attention.  So so now you make me feel a lot better about this this whole idea that how I regressed this and then I started to progress.  You know, we walk around. So I said, OK, I'm going to start with just being barefoot more.  And so that was the start. Then then I progressed to kind of like where Sal was going, where it was like, OK, now let's be more aware of how I'm standing on that tripod and then how I'm walking in another little area, which I for all my men that are listening, pay attention to when you stand up and you pee at the urinal. So I actually will when I'm standing at every time I piss. So I pee a lot throughout the day because I drink a lot of water. So I thought, OK, here's another easy way that I can be with your prostate getting getting reconnected here and paying attention to how I stand. OK, I'm going to every time I'm standing at this urinal, I'm going to pay attention to right away my feet and it's surprising. But right away when you go to do something else, right? So I'm being here. You you'll see your feet will, you know, if you have a pronate or externally rotated with that, all of a sudden we'll get into that position because you're focused on your back into the comfort. Yeah, you are. Because it takes priority. It does.   You guys know that, right? So they put that for a reason, right? We just naturally are like targeting. So all of a sudden you're worried about your pee target and you forget about your feet. So for me, I've just don't pee on your feet. Yeah, yeah, keep the hose in line. So yeah. So and even if you're not Ironman, I'm not saying to go to the episode. Let me back up here because I know something always. So you say that you go to the public restroom without your shoes. No, I'm not going to the public restroom without my shoes on you. But I'm thinking about your shoes inside of my shoes. I'm paying attention to that tripod that Brink is talking about. And I'm just trying to make sure that I'm aware that that actually took some practice because you'll be mindful of it the first few times. And then there'll be a lot of times where you walk over the urinal and you've got other things on your mind and right away. And so just training myself to every time I pee, make sure I'm standing on that tripod every single day, spending 20 to 30 minutes with my shoes off being connected to the ground and then how my feature that right there. I'm telling you right now, I've seen a huge progression already from that. And it's simple. It's easy. It's it's something that I can build upon too. So I think that's a mistake that I've made at first when I found this this new knowledge that Brink brought to us, which was, dude, look at your feet, address that then work your way up. And so I was like all excited with this new information that I'm like applying all these exercises and then what happens, they all start to fall off because I everything else becomes a priority. Another bit of shaver knowledge there.  Yes, that's right. Not after the rest of it. But yeah, I think also going going back to what you had mentioned before is you just taking your shoes off for some people that in itself is like mind blowing because they wear shoes all the time, right? And they don't understand the connectivity to their feet to the ground. And what they don't understand is I want to like the feet have like something like 400,000 receptors on the bottom of them.   Sure. Yeah, how do you feel about insoles saying that? So again, some people do need insoles.  I want you to get your feet to work for you.  And so it's to create stimulus on your feet, you know, and that in itself is pretty amazing. You know, if you can create that stimulus inside your shoe all day long, yeah, it's definitely going to help you out. Well, here's one thing I noticed for myself because I was I used to wear socks to bed for God's sake, I used to wear shoes and socks all the time. And one thing I noticed about myself is I've always been extremely, extremely ticklish on the bottom of my feet, like extremely ticklish. And I realized one day while Justin was playing with my toes. I'm just kidding. I realized that the reason why the reason why I may be super ticklish on the bottom of my feet is because the parts of my brain that process that sensor, the sensation from the bottom of my feet is then developed. So it's there's no desensitization. So it's too much. Yeah, it would be like it would be like always wearing really dark sunglasses all the time, always, always, always your whole life. And then taking them off of this all, all light is too bright. That's a great analogy because it's not like you can't see anymore.  I'm perceiving the bottom of my feet as being too sensitive. So it's like when I walk on like gravel, it's like, oh, I can't, I can't walk. It hurts too much. Whereas I see little kids and, you know, people who are always barefoot just run around all the time. I realized for myself, I can't. It's just too sensitive. And so that's one of the other advantages of going barefoot is you develop your parts of your brain that work with that. And so and that's got to contribute to other things, you know, it's got to I'm sure there's some carry over, right? Oh, for sure. I mean, think about the, you know, what would happen to you if you again, if you lost use of when your arms or when your legs, right? Yeah, you start to lose the those connections in the brain. So going back to the squat, you know, with your feet, you know, is where now you can root your feet to the ground, right? And where people just don't know me think that right? That's not the first thing, you know, with you guys as being trainers is you're not sitting and saying root your feet to the ground first. It's like, no, butt back, right? Well, no, let's how about we root your feet first. So we get that connectivity, you know, it's that ground force reaction, I'm pushing on the ground, ground's pushing back. What's that going to do? That's going to connect your hip. Your hip is now turned on. You have now your deep pelvic floor that's turned on, you get your glutes that are now working how they're supposed to. And now put your butt back. And now let's see what type of connectivity you have in that, in that proper squat. So let's talk about like step one, step one when someone doesn't have any, you could be anywhere, right? Feet, hips, knee, whatever, when they don't have connectivity to the point where you tell them to activate a movement or a muscle, and it just doesn't even happen.  What's the first step that that person can take to get some connections that they can finally start doing exercises for that particular area? I see it a lot when I'm doing like some ACL reconstruction, you know, we're not reconstruction, but the rehab post, you know, surgery, and like the VML, you know, Vastus Miaus just doesn't fire. You know, so they look at it and they can contract one side and the other side just does nothing. Wow. You know, so it's like, all right, stare at that thing and I want you to do quad sets. You know, I really want you. So what's a quad set? Quad sets is just contracting your quad. Just flexing it. Yeah, just flexing it. How long can you hold it for? One second, two seconds, 10 seconds, you wait till you see some stimulus. And then over time, as you keep trying to rebuild that connectivity, right, they're going to start to fire a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Pretty soon, now we can start to load them. Other than that, if there's no firing, there's no connectivity, there's no reason to do an exercise.  Now, do you ever do a couple of questions? Just do STEM machines help with that at that point? Help them get connection? Or is that not help at all? So STEM machines, there's a lot of STEM machines that are out there.  Russian STEM is the one that has been shown to actually create or prevent atrophy. And Russian STEM, it came from, I think, like the 60s when the Russians were in the Olympics and that's what they were using to try and help with their with their muscle building techniques.  Microcurrent is going after more maybe an inflammatory marker. Now, does it help? Do they help get a connection though? Like, let's say I have trouble retracting my shoulders because I got a poor connection to my rhomboids and metropesias. Would putting STEM on those areas help me to feel and connect to those muscles that so that I feel like you're bypassing the brain and you're creating an artificial brain. So you're really well, that's what that's all my that's all my question is. It's a temporary connection that you're making through an outside stimulus. So and you're really trying to work on the brain muscle well, I'm so here's what I'm thinking, right? I'm thinking that's why I'm asking that question because I know that part. But I'm wondering if using the stem will help you feel what it feels like to flex it. You know, after that, you could kind of like reproduce. Yeah, because yeah, it's almost like you can't find, you know, obviously need like stimulus to Oh, I can I can tap in. I'm using myself as an example with short foot. I can't even find the muscles to do it. I couldn't even find them. Like I know what I can see them with my eyes, but I can't even find them. And it reminds me of like when I would train clients and I would tell them to contract a particular area. And it would always help if I just touched it with my finger. So they had the external stimulus and then they could be like, oh, right there. And then they could kind of identify, you know, identify where they need to squeeze. Does that make sense? So I think I think with you touching it, right, then they can say, OK, this is where I need to go to because it's that stimulus where I think and this is just all anecdotal on my end because I don't know, you know.  OK, right. So now is the brain telling it or is it that electrical impulse that is firing, you know, at that spot? And then once you take it off, you still don't know what that is. You just know where those hands are. Yeah, effective to just literally use your phone fingers and just poke at it. Just touch it and you just try and get it to fire.  And that's where, again, we go back in like a taping, you know, where you can take, you know, taping is going to help out because it's a better communication to the brain. It's something that's on the skin itself, which is a huge, you know, sensor receptor just in itself. And if we're touching that area and now it's telling the brain, there's something there. Let's get that spot to fire. Where would you use? Where would you find East Tim useful then? More recovery after fear, right? Well, again, I think it depends on where you're at when I first started 10 years ago.  It was like, here, I'm going to put you down here.  So I've been to somebody who still does that. Oh, yeah. So that's why that's why I left. You know, I just didn't agree with that. You know, I saw everyone come through and they got cooked for 10 or 15 minutes and we rubbed on them and then we adjust them and I don't see it. I don't see it in two days. You nailed it.  Now what was the theory behind that? What did they think they were really doing? Well, I don't know what their theory is. I think it's more of a billing purpose on my end. Oh, wow. But, you know, it is, they feel good because they get to... I like people mad at you right now. Well, they get to come in and they get to lay down for 10 or 15 minutes and feel good. It's relaxing. You know, yeah, they get to relax. So it's more like a massage like parlor than it is anything else. Well, yeah. You're not really correcting much.  Well, I think temporary... Well, there is. There is benefits, you know, let's say acute issues. Let's say an ankle issue. You know, someone comes in, they roll their ankle. Yeah, it's going to help sort of pump some of the swelling out of there. That's good. You know, does it help decrease some of the pain? Sure it is, but I could kick you in your other shin and you're going to figure out the pain that you have anyways. Right? So I think it's just we're trying to bypass that pain point, you know, so they feel better once they leave. You know, what's the long-term studies? I really don't think there's really long-term studies. Here's how I look at some of that kind of stuff. The way I look at it is like massage, for example, if you look at a good massage therapist, without any other, you know, additions in terms of techniques or exercise or whatever, can massage alone help in the long term? Now, I think it can. I think by itself, it's not nearly as effective when you combine it with other things. But on its own, maybe it would help the person move differently now, which then will change the recruitment pattern. And I think that may be what chiropractors of old were doing, was let's adjust you, let's massage you. Now you're moving differently and some people, that may help them long term because now that they're moving differently, they create different recruitment patterns. But it was incomplete, right? Because you didn't have them showing them the right exercises, how to connect, how to correct those recruitment patterns. Because when you combine all of that, man, now you've got. Yeah, there was no intent post-treatment, right? It was treatment was here, you got it, you feel better, you leave. We see you in two more days, right? So the intent for them to move better was never there because they were never educated how to move better. Their body dictated how they moved based on their muscles being either tight or relaxed. So if they're relaxed, they're moving a little bit different than they did before. So yes, they are going to move different, sometimes worse than what they did before. Well, this is where I see a big gap too with physical therapy. You're going into training in the gym, right? There's that whole process. I think there's a gap between all of healthcare. Yeah, yeah. And all of healthcare is missing the movement components to it. And they're missing the part of, here, let's teach you to do something better for yourself.  Well, this is a good topic because I feel like this is a big step that people just skip right over in general as far as trying to get muscles to fire first, right? Like learning that process of connectivity and learning how to feel your body and feel the response you're supposed to get. That's the key, feel your body. No one understands their own body. I mean, you said it, Sal, about your foot.  So you're highly connected to your body. You're just missing a large component to what's going on and that's the foot. We talk about gut health, how many people actually pay attention to what's going on in their gut or in their brain, or I mean, there's so many different avenues that we can take on that. We want to go to someone and let them fix our problem. And that's one of the biggest things I tell people, I'm not here to fix you. You will fix you. Well, that's why it's so frustrating when people come to see you, right? Yeah, and if they don't like what I say, they never come back. You know, it's funny because you're right. I mean, Western medicine does that, right? You get very specialized in one area and then that becomes your scope. And you forget about all those other areas. I actually had a conversation the other day.  You know, like they break out or whatever and so I was talking to them and then boom, a dermatologist gets on there. There's no evidence to show that avoiding certain foods will make acne get better and blah, blah, blah. Food, it really has no impact on your skin. And I mean, I know that they believe that but how can they believe that?  How can what you eat every single day not impact everything? Yeah, everything in your body.  Are you gonna say that? It literally makes up your mass. Like your body's matter. It's just insane and we actually had this conversation yesterday about movement and how people don't think that movement can affect how you feel emotionally or mentally. Of course it does. There's a whole feedback loop going on there. I think yoga is supposed to be doing. Or Pilates or any of that type of stuff that's out there. Why do kids feel amazing all the time for the most part these days they don't?  They're out moving. How many of us actually go move? If we went to go move and we just did something for an hour besides get off, sit on the couch and be like, oh, I'm too tired, I can't do it. You'd feel freaking better. So let me add, so on that particular topic, let's talk about the squat since we're on that topic of the squat.  Well, it's a fundamental process. You should be able to squat. Every single kid does it. Every, you look at populations, Asian population, African, Hispanic. You look at a lot of these pop, that's what they do. Whether they're sitting in the fields or sitting by a campfire, Western society, we don't squat anymore. We sit 90 degrees and we wonder why we can't go.  Like my best friends, dude, that we grew up since childhood together. And I see this happening where, and I know they're the majority where people just, because they can't, and that kind of almost feels like it happens overnight because you don't really pay attention, right? Like, if you're young, you're playing sports, you're doing all that, then all of a sudden, like life hits, right?  Then all of a sudden, you know, 30s roll around or whenever, it doesn't matter, right?  Then all of a sudden they realize- It's like makeup process.  You know, I just got a post or an inbox from somebody saying that, you know, they're following maps at a ball, if they're like 50 years old and their knees hurt, what are their movements can I do instead of the squats and the dead lifts? Squat more. Right, and so this is hard for us virtually. This has been one of, this is part of what motivated us to do the podcast where we can explain ourselves more because I know that if I gave that, like the old trainer to me, the 22 year old version of me would give them some fucking easy exercise to do in replace of the squat so that that could build their legs still or work their hamstrings- Feed to the comfort versus what they need. Exactly, but then the older me knows that, oh my God, I'm doing more of a disservice to them by just answering that question the way they want me to answer it. What I need to tell them is like, no, that's a big flag for you that this is an area we need to approve upon. To put the brakes on, let's address this and work on this specifically now. But what I think though is people don't want to think, right, they don't wanna think about what they should be doing. You know, my knees hurt when I squat.   I mean, it's not rocket science, but they wanna do that like, oh, my knees hurt. Well, why? Why do your knees hurt? What's going wrong, you know?  And so then they hire a trainer or they buy a program and then the program has movements in there that they can't do and then they want a replacement for those movements. Instead of going like, whoa, this is a big deal.  Or something's torn or whatever. Yeah, yeah, there's exceptions to the rule. But for the majority, they go to do these movements, they can't or it hurts or it bothers them. And then they look for a replacement right away just so they can just keep trucking towards this goal.  Look at the squatty potty. You guys know what that is, right?  And it works, it actually works. There's studies to show that using a squatty potty, we should put that in the show notes at the end of this one. I'm selling it. YouTube video. Using a squatty potty helps people have better bowel movements but it's not the invention of the squatty potty. It's because it's sitting in a squat, puts you in the right pelvic tilt, relaxes the muscles that open the colon and allow you to use the bathroom. That's how we pooped for most of the human civilization.  So there's this big argument in the fitness world right now with squatting that when you go below 90, that the pelvic starts to tilt forward. For some people. Well, for most. Most people, if you sit all the way down. It depends on where, what angle you're at, right? We'll have this kind of natural tuck when you get to the bottom, which is that's what allows you to poop better, right? That's what opens that up.  But you saying that, it's funny because I do have clients, I'm Indian clients, right? That I, and when we show them how to squat like, oh yeah, that's what we used to do.  Oh, all right, well there you go. You need to think about that next time you squat. Right, now don't let it out. Well, so there's a debate, right? There's a debate.  It's a structural thing.  And I'm guessing, Brink, you're gonna say there's both sides, right? I think there's both sides, right? You know, you can look at, do you have tension in that upper hamstring? That right, when you're getting to that lower point, is it tugging, sort of pulling, you under at some angle that you're finding that? Do you have a lumbar instability?   Is it your quads? You know, yada, yada, yada. You know, do you have control over the movement? So, what are some simple tests or things that you do when you see that? So let's say I drop down into a squat, I hit below 90, and I have what might look like a butt wink, but maybe it's right on that borderline where it doesn't look excessive, you're not too sure what would be the first, like go-to test or way you would assess me. Borderline butt wing. To figure out. I'm gonna go make sure that you have control of your lumbar spine first. Do you, can we go into that cat camel and then create more of that like a segmental spine? Can you get the intrinsic muscles to work?  Ooh, that's a good one.  So that's a good point there. That's what I wanted to ask you. There's a good point there. It's about owning the movement versus the movement owning you. Correct.  And really it's about owning that particular position. I'm not falling in that position, you know what I mean? I'm not letting my ligaments support me. It's my muscles that are supporting me. So that's basically what you're saying. So what about like the upper thoracic area? Cause I feel like you could have good control in the lumbar and the hips, good mobility. And maybe you don't have a butt-wink, but because your thoracic curves, could that contribute to a butt-wink as well? I wouldn't see why it could not, you know? But now you're working up the chain, you know? So maybe it can, you're probably gonna be not even worried about the butt-wink at that point cause you're so far leading forward, it doesn't make a difference. Cause you don't have the extension necessary to sit as upright as you need. Yeah, cause with like a resistance training barbell squat, we've now added another component, right? We're not just squatting body weight, we're actually supporting a barbell behind our back. And in that case, you want good scapular mobility and good thoracic mobility. And I see a lot of guys, you know, especially like on the Facebook and stuff where, you know, they're posting their squat and they're wanting me to look at like their hips and I'm gonna comment on their shoulder. I see one, you know, one hand that, you know, the wrist is straight and the other one is cocked. So again, it leads me to believe that, well, maybe their shoulder mobility on that left-hand side, right-hand side, you know, is just not what it should be. So can they squat with their wrist sort of in that parallel position all the way up, all the way down? And they'll notice if they can't, you know, they go, I'll take them as low as they can go until they start losing the wrist and then just hold that spot, you know, and squeeze harder, pull harder, try and put themselves in that corrective position. You know, we recently were asked on the podcast, we just did a Q&A and somebody asked like the things that we are focusing on, each of us individually. And I was kind of vague about what I've been doing, but the more I think about it, this has really been like the major goal for me over the last year has been just like perfecting my squat. And why I did it that way, because this is just how my brain works, right? Like I tend to have to have like some sort of a goal. It's like when I competed, it's like that was easy, right? It's like I had to get in the best shape of my life and get down to body fat. So, you know, I just go, go, go, go till I reach that point. Well, now for me, my workout and my programming is completely centered around getting better at my squat.  Like I still don't have the shoulder mobility. My wrists are still breaking, you know? Sure, I'm getting, I got away from my ankle pronating. I have good connection now with my feet. I have great hip mobility, so I'm getting good depth. The tracking of my knees lined over my, you know, so these things are starting to come together, but as one thing comes together really well for me, and then I start to realize another area that has to be addressed. So I think instead of being frustrated, I think the reason why I'm sharing this is to have people be okay with, hey, you can't squat very well right now, but instead of just chalking it up as you can't do it and avoiding it and going to something else, maybe treating that as a goal in itself and a way to program, and that's really like how we designed Prime. Was Prime was designed so people could see areas where there's dysfunction and say, okay, these are your fortification sessions, these are your mobility drills, these are these things that you need to integrate into your workout and potentially become mainly your workout. So, you know- Sometimes the test or the exercise. Right, and that's kind of, that came from you, that was something that you really tattooed. I remember when you were first showing me all the stuff that had going on, and right away my trainer brain goes, okay, it'll show me all the movements that I need to do to get better so I can pass this test. That's the competitive side of me. And then you're like, well, sometimes you just need to just keep doing the test. Keep doing that and that's part of it. And I think about like, wow, that's so true. You don't have to over complicate it sometimes. Sometimes just putting in a barbell and getting it in that position and then like doing squats with no weight on there and then addressing each one of those areas we're talking about.  I'm slightly rounding forward. My left ankle is kind of pronating. Okay, so boom, barbell gets re-racked. Now I go down. I start priming some movements, doing some of my drills, go back, do it again. Oh, look, this is still happening. These movements, this, go back, do it. You know what I'm saying? Right, it's just going through the checkpoints. And then as you go through the checkpoints, you see what stands out the most. And then that's where you can kind of go, spin off of that and work directly on, say it's a shoulder mobility issue. Let's really address that a bit deeper. And that's why sometimes it's hard for people to just slow down and to notice all those things. They just want to rip through the reps and get through the workout. There's too much noise going on. Yeah. Again, they're not paying attention to them. So they're not listening to what their body's actually telling them. They bypass that. I've been told I got to do this. And that's all I have to do. And I can't do this, so I'm going to do X, Y, Z. Hold on here. Just back up a little bit. Just try this and show me that you own that first. And let's go to B. And then let's go to C. And then let's go to D. But they get so frustrated because they can't pass A, they just give up. Right. And I think that's a lot of what, so if you don't have Prime, obviously Prime was designed, the program was designed for this. But if you didn't have Prime, we did this YouTube series. And this was kind of the direction we were trying to go with it was, okay. Which by the way, if you haven't subscribed to the YouTube channel, I mean we do a new video every single day. So this was a whole series that we did on this particular topic, but we went into things and details that you don't see for almost anywhere else. I mean, these are videos that we saw nobody was making. So it's a lot of the stuff we've learned with Dr. Brink and things that are not like your typical, you know, sit back when you squat and you know, do your box squats and that kind of stuff. It's not typical at all. No, and we wanted to give things, you know, practical things that you could take, you know. So you do your squat and you realize that here's an area that you don't have good mobility or you can't perform the squat without these things happening. So here are some simple movements that we'll address. And we just, we honed in on like three of the major areas like we've been talking about the whole thoracic mobility, the ankle mobility and the hip mobility. That's not to say other issues could, and you know, we have plenty of more YouTube videos that we can do, but I thought, you know, we came together and said, hey, we talked about all the different clients that we trained over the years and the issues that they have. And like one of the most common things that we have to fix and address, let's pick a handful of movements that we give to these people so they can start to help this or get reconnected to these areas that are disconnected. And so that's what the YouTube series was all about.  What do you mean exactly by that? Like what, let's say I'm getting into a position and I'm trying to become more connected within that position. What am I focusing on? What am I doing? Like how do you explain that? Well, I know for that person, if it's a wrist issue, shoulder issue, elbow issue, they're not thinking about that anyways. They're just, they're thinking about how low can I get into my squat? For me, I'm like, no, no. I want every part of your squat to work for you at 100% through every range of motion that you're trying to achieve. So if I know you can get down, then hey, let's get you down into that position, but let's make sure everything is correct in that entire position. You know, let's make sure your head is retracted. You're not turtling through the neck. You know, let's make sure your shoulders are retracted. Let's make sure you've got good movement through your elbows, through your wrist.  So the slower you go, the harder it is. We don't like to go slow.  Like if I'm sitting at the bottom of a squat, I'm doing the checklist. This is what I do at least. I'm doing a checklist.  Use it at the bottom of the squat though. It's too late. Cause if you already failed and you've already failed at the bottom, I'm going to work top down. So go, so go down until you're, okay. Yeah. So feel your body. You know, when you are squatting, where do you feel some asymmetries at? Can you see yourself in a video? Do you have someone that's watching you? Watch you from the front, watch you from the side, watch you from, you know, from the back. Where do they see that, you know, an elbow is tucking, you know, on the left side, the right side, where do they see you rotating out? Where do you see your feet starting to rotate out a little bit more? Slow yourself down and start to work those movements and try and prevent that, that, you know, abnormal mechanic and try and work on correcting that mechanic. Now something that was cool for me to kind of learn from you was the difference between range of motion and control. Yeah. Would you mind explaining that a little bit? I mean, we all have range of motion, you know, do you have control over that range of motion though is what I ask, you know, majority of all my clients. So like I used the example, my fighters have great strength, but they don't have a lot of range of motion because their muscles are so tight, you know, until they're warmed up and then they get into their certain positions, right? Then they're good in a butterfly or whatever, you know, position they put themselves into. My dancers on the other end, highly flexible, no strength. Right? So my dancers now, they have, you know, a lot of flexibility, but they don't have control over their end range of flexibility. So I have a kid right now, high level dancer, stretching his right leg over his head, left knee just buckles, towards patella tendon, fractured femur, and all he was doing was doing a natural little stretch, but it was like he was doing the splits with his right leg up above his head, you know? Well, what happened? He lost control over that knee and the knee just buckled. Well, how many thousands of times had he had done that in the past, you know? And now this one time just boom, see you later. So now we're teaching him control. As we're teaching him control, he's struggling because he's still highly flexible, you know, as his dancer, but he doesn't have control over those end ranges that most strengthen it, right? So this reminds me of, I actually think we did a, we did, we did do a YouTube video on this, the 90 90 foot and heel lift. Yeah, yeah. That particular video. I think it was like number six or whatever, seven. This was a trip. We had actually gone off to write some programming with Dr. Brink, and he put me in a 90 90 position. Now 90 90 is when you're sitting on the floor, one leg is out in front of you, one leg is out behind you, and they're both bent at 90 degrees. So if you can kind of imagine that. One's in the external, one's in the internal. Yeah, so one foot's behind me, one foot's in front of me. And he told me to rotate my back leg so that my foot comes off the floor while keeping my knee into contact with the floor. And I was able to lift my foot off the floor, maybe a half an inch or an inch, like barely hover it.  I'm getting, you're getting an inch and you're not getting any more, there's nothing else.  And I said, well, I don't have that range of motion. And he goes, actually you do have that range of motion. And he says, go get back in 90 90. So I get back into 90 90, he takes my foot, and he rotates, internally rotates my hip.   It was weird to see my leg up there because it looked like it was almost scary. Like, am I hurt? There was no pain. Did you rip it off? Yeah, there was no, it was very eerie to see that. But what he had proved to me was that I have that range of motion. I just can't do it. I just don't have the control within it. So one of the things that Brink showed us was, first work within the range of motion that you have. So I did, I would lift my foot up an inch off the floor and I'd really just focus on trying to get it even higher and higher and I couldn't, but just to try, right? That's part of connection to try. Then the second thing I would do is I would use a pillow or something to lift my foot up just a little bit higher. So now I'm outside of my control, right? Like I have the range of motion.  Now I'm in that position and then what I do is I try to hold my foot there while pulling the pillow out from underneath it. And the first few times I did it, like my foot would just drop every single time, but little by little, I was able to support my foot within that new range of motion. So is that then, I mean, that's a great technique. I guess you can apply it to pretty much anything, right? It's to get in a new range of motion supported by someone or something, like the wall or the floor or somebody holding your arm or leg out and then try to connect to it. So then when they let go, you can do it on your own. Sure, yeah, yeah. So, okay, so I was, yeah. I've gained quite a bit of range of motion there. I couldn't barely even get my, like Sal, I couldn't barely get my foot up there. I can actually get my foot a good solid, probably foot and a half, two feet off the ground now. It's weird. It's such a weird feeling to feel your body become connected in a new way. You know, it's the same muscle, same muscle, same movement, everything's the same. You have connection. And that's the thing about muscles that I think people need to realize that I didn't realize. I didn't realize this either. It's such a revolutionary concept. I think it's, I mean, it's been around. It's just like, we're coming back to it because we're realizing like- We understand it better. Yeah, we understand it better and a better way to teach it. And also like, if you think of sports injuries and just like different ranges of motion, like on that level, there's techniques like this that you can actually prevent a lot of these injuries or like build strength in positions where you're not just in a fixed kind of squat position. Like you're expressing your width of your feet a little bit further. Like there's just more you can do to kind of pre-prevent and prep your body better to handle like different forces and different ways of adjusting and operating optimally. Well, and I think like Sal was just saying is, he had great range of motion through his hip. He just didn't have the connectivity to his hip to be able to allow his foot to go into that range of motion because he's never trained there, right? You do jiu-jitsu or you've done it in the past, right? It's all external. Your body was always into external rotation. So it never had to go into internal rotation. So you look at kids, kids that own, for the most part, all their range of motion. They're out there playing and doing all kinds of stuff all day long. Free form. Yeah, yeah. So their hips are always moving into internal and external range of motion. So when they do sit in a squat position, it doesn't hurt them. I just read an article, I actually just posted it on our forum this morning on, I Googled Hunter Gatherer, did you see it? That's on the bone, yeah. So I, there's two, yeah, those two articles I posted.  Not, well, you know what's funny, dude?   And so we think their feet are ugly. When in reality, when in reality, It's a trip. I don't even have to see it. I haven't seen it before. They have their feet are all spread. Their toes are all spread apart. Their toes are spread. Their feet are muscular looking. You can tell that their feet are functional. Then when you look at a foot like ours, we have atrophied, weak, deformed feet, toes going off to the left and the right because of the shoes that we wear, like all this crazy stuff. All smashed together. So I looked it up and I'm looking at all these pictures. So I was gonna do a post. I was gonna rip one of these off the internet and do a post about it. And I saw this article where I guess there was a study with some anthropologists who went and studied some of these hunter gatherer societies and they were looking at their abilities to move, how they moved and how different it was from the way that we could move as modern humans. And in this one particular tribe, the people were tree climbers. So they could climb trees and they would get honey and fruit. And during the rainy season, this is kind of cool too, little side fact. In the rainy season, this particular group of people got up to 80% of the calories from honey. So that's what they did during certain seasons because it was plentiful they go up there. It's a lot of bee stings. But they were showing, but they climbed these trees which are, I don't know, they're not like palm trees, but they're kind of not a huge tree trunk but where they kind of reach around it. But they climb it like a chimp does where it's almost like they're walking up the tree with their feet, with what their hands are on the back of it. And they were demonstrating a dorsiflexion, is that flexion or extension? Am I going to ask? That's extension there. Sorry, what the foot? That's dorsi. There you go. So they were demonstrating a flexion at the ankle that was at a degree that would break most people's ankles. Well, think about that. If you're climbing up a tree and you need your foot here, my knees are gonna be pretty close to the tree. That's what they were able to do. They were able to get their knees really close to the tree. And have most of their foot was on the tree. And they're just popping up climbing all the way. Yeah, because you'd think it was just like their toes and they're getting most of their foot on there. Well, it's what a chimp looks like when you climb it.  And it wasn't because they had some genetic advantage. It's because this is what they did. In fact, the young- Well, I was just gonna say, do you think they adapted that way? No, because that's what this question that they asked. And they showed that because the younger generation within this tribe stopped climbing trees so much because I think they were starting to get some of these foods from other areas. And so the best climbers in the tribe were the old men because they were the last generation to really climb that way.  So tell me what happened then. What happened to their gastroc and soleus? Did the fibers shorten or did they actually change? No, the reason why they had longer fibers was because they had been climbing trees since they were children and their bodies had adapted to that. Had learned how to do it. That's what I'm saying. So the other generate, the other, more normal. More like the average person, although they all had great, I'm sure they all had feet. You're talking about the feet. I mean, think of a sports car, right? The faster the car is the more narrow the tire or the thicker the tire, right? Same thing. If we wanna run faster, we want more surface area. If you were to do a handstand on the ground, do you put your fingers together? Do you open up your hands? Right? But in society, we want these nice, narrow, slender feet and we wonder why our feet suck. Well, so here's an interesting one for me even is I did yoga for a very short period of time but one of the things that happened to me when doing yoga is because there was all these downward positions was that my wrist, my left one in particular would hurt at the top of the wrist where the back of my hand meets my arm and it would hurt and I couldn't figure it out so I started using my fist and I grabbed something and I tried all these props and then I noticed one day when I was in downward dog that if I pulled my fingers up, like I was trying to get my fingers off the floor, I'll actually put my wrist into extension even more, the pain would go away. Like I activated some of the muscles that were there and then I started realizing like, oh shit, I just gotta like don't relax in that position. Like learn how to be active. So like the trip with the combat position where you had us pulling those toes up. I wish I would have known that. That's video of mine. Well, yeah, like, I mean, as far as addressing things like that constant pounding on the ground, like having like shin splints and having all these different things that I'm not connected to, it becomes inflammatory almost. So what is happening, Brink, on a neurological level or like that, you know what I put together? Same thing with my hips.   You prime it ahead of time? Exactly. So I'll be doing all this internal external, internal and external rotation of my hips and I'll take it to the ends of extreme and just intensify it as hard as I can and then internally, and intensify as hard as I can.  What is happening? Well, remember, you're changing tissue tension. You're changing the loads, right? You just sat for an hour. Your hip didn't move. It sat on the gas pedal in the break, gas pedal break, right?  And so now whether it's in a good position or bad position, your body's letting you know. Which is probably in a bag, because I'm sitting in a car. So that's not, I mean, that's everyone. I mean, my job is to tell all the desk jockeys, move.  You know, just, whether it's for 10 seconds or 30 seconds, I don't care what it is, just shake your body out. So then what am I doing then when I, if I actually take the time to prime my body like I do and then go on the car ride and it doesn't bother me? What am I doing by doing that? You're just probably sending a better signal to your hip saying, hey, we're gonna turn on, we're gonna activate. We're working, you know, working how we're supposed to versus not doing anything and it's just hanging out.  And that makes a big difference. Well, that's kind of what I'm doing before and after and during is like when I'm aware of it and I'm trying to stay on top of it, no problem. But if I just get in my car. Is it your right hip or left hip? It's my right. So think about that, right? We talk about the foot exercises, which you create a short foot, which creates connectivity to your hip, right? When you're doing any other movement that you choose. Now all of a sudden you're sitting in a car and what's the movement that you're doing? Gas pedal. Gas pedal, but you're now working your foot. So now you're creating a fascial line tension, right? On an anterior fascial line or a posterior fascial line that's now causing tension up in your hip that you're causing pressure in because you're sitting and if you have a gangster lean or whatever as well, right now you're putting a little more tension into that hip. So why, because your left hip is doing the same thing as your right one, it's just not doing gas. Your shoes is getting sideways. So now all of a sudden that right hip is taking the breath. So it's the tension line that's happening. So you're probably creating a lot more fascial tension right through there, which is sending all that signal to your hip. Which now that makes more sense why me doing the priming is really helping it. Because now you're unwinding that fascial tension. Waking it all up, stretching it out and then I'm going in there and then I'm doing that. So it's not causing that tension. Makes a lot of sense now. It's interesting, right? Because I think we're coming together like butt cheeks, you know? Sometimes they come apart. You've been healed. I think it's interesting because we're taking exercise and we're taking it back to what it really is, which is fundamental movement. It's movement and it's movement, like all movement, you practice it and you get better at it. I think when we, and this is the, of course we're gonna get a little esoteric here, but you know, part of the problem with fitness and exercises is that it's so aesthetically driven that we forget that. All we think about is the what it makes me look like and muscles are there for a reason. Yeah, yeah, you know, exactly. It's not just there for looks. In fact, it's not even there for looks at all. I don't know, it's all in our head. It's there to do something else. But I guarantee those guys climbing the tree. They weren't big muscle bound dudes either. They were long lean, you know? Have you ever looked at pictures? I could Google it right now. There's some old pictures of like hunter-gatherers or aborigines or whatever. And these men are like in their 50s and 60s. They look like me.  I know they've never even seen a weight in their entire life. I mean, it's pretty amazing stuff. I told a buddy of mine, Ricky, you know, the other day cause he was asking about, you know, same sort of stuff. And I said, I want you to go out and just play in a jungle gym for 55 minutes. And I'm like, I bet you're cooked in 10. He's like, but I can do a wad. I'm like, I know you can. I'm like, but you can't do anything that's truly functional. I was like, I think fitness has.  Oh, I mean, what's awesome is he's taken that to the next level and he is now definitely working on all of his mobility functionality stuff. And he's now trying to work out and do that, which is amazing to see, you know, and just sort of watch that transformation. But it's like, you look at us as a fitness driven society. Like Sal was saying is we're so aesthetically driven.   You still have back pain. You have a neck issue. You have a bad shoulder. You still don't do what you're supposed to do. Well, I'll be the first one to admit that.  It didn't matter to me how. You didn't pay attention anyway. Yeah, I wasn't paying attention to it. I was too busy weighing and measuring and counting calories and making sure I'm burning X amount and building X amount that I wasn't paying attention to how well I was performing anything. And then, and now you look at my physique now, my physique now compared to what I looked in to the average guy who's looking at it would think, oh my God, the other guy looks so much better but I'm way better shape as far as functional, no pain, moving better. I'll tell you what, training with just aesthetics in mind creates a disconnect between the mind and the body. And we forget that there is a very strong connection between the mind and the body. In fact, it's all one and the same.  Your gut has a tremendous amount.  By the way, there's another place you have a lots of these other types of neuronal receptors, your heart.   And we sever the two and we think that they're different. And when we just focus on aesthetics where we just train the body to look a particular way, we're actually creating problems with everything else, not just the way we move, but even the way we think.  Did you know that when they give people Botox treatments on their frown lines that their rates of depression go down because they can't frown as much. But there's also the side effect of they also lose their ability to empathize. They can't smile either. This is actually, this is a real thing. They're actually studying this that where people will get like plastic surgery and stuff like that. What's the effect on the psyche independent of the fact that you look different?  Everything's connected. It's all connected. And so when we view exercise just for aesthetics, what you're doing, and I know this because I was this way as well, you are training, you're actually strengthening a disconnect between the two because what you're doing with your body. Oh God, think about that, right?  They're just completely unaware. The guy who lifts, the guy and girl who just... Dane sees a wear. Yeah, they're just working out to look a particular way and that may involve using anabolic hormones or supplements, it may involve for the woman implants and other kinds of things. You are creating this separate entity of this body that just looks a particular way. But don't think that Netflix, the physique or something like that show on that, which is that realm of things. And you're disconnecting from it. This is what I got.  And I was talking about that you have, we have no business competing at an elite level or doing a sport if you haven't like done the fundamentals first. Like otherwise, and I love, I think that's why I brought this up because what Sal is saying, this is where it's so true. You're actually creating more dysfunction, bigger issue, more problems because you think you're aware or you think you're doing the things that are right, but you're really not, you're getting further away from the truth on how the body should move and what you should be doing. And it's like, you first should learn that. You need to understand and understand your body and what you're not doing, the functional things that you're not like, if you can't sit down in a squat like that right there should be like, let's figure that out. And I post that on the forum quite often. A lot of the same stuff. I have my movement prerequisites that I throw up there. Someone asked me something, it's like, something's wrong here. Check A, B, and C first. Does that make sense?   For the vast majority of people listening right now, if you viewed movement and exercise in the ways that they should be viewed in which you're trying to get your body to move optimally in these fundamental ways and patterns and different planes of motion, the awesome side effect of that is, you're gonna look incredible. It's hard to find someone that can move in all these amazing ways with good connectivity in all these different ranges of motion who doesn't look like they really work out. So that's one of the side effects of it. Now on the flip side, if I train just for aesthetics, I can get an aesthetic physique, but the side effect of that is disconnection to my body. It's severing the mind-to-body link. It's actually putting a wedge between the two and causing lots and lots of problems, not just physical problems, but like I said, they're now showing that there's mental issues that can arise from not being able to move a particular way. I see these bodybuilders in the gym who move like they're full of cement because they're so stiff and their shoulders are rounded forward.  I'm telling you that will have an effect on their mood, on their personality and the way they think. And science has confirmed this. Power postures, look up at the science for power postures. When they put people in particular positions, they can measure in real time like certain hormones are going down, other ones are going up and we've got these feel-good chemicals coming out and to the point now where you got Fortune 500 companies that are investing money in some of these positions so that they can get their employees to perform better. Well, here's the deal, this is why we did this. So here's your takeaways, here's what you do right now. Right now, you go over to YouTube, you subscribe to the Mind Pump TV. If you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel yet, something's wrong with you, seriously. Well. A new video every day and they're awesome. But this is what we're trying to- What the hell, man? Something we've always promised when we created this business is it'll always be evolving, always be changing and we're always trying to get better, we're always trying to provide more for you guys. And so we started to put together series that kind of coincide with some of the podcasts that we talk about. So, we wanted to address the squat, we wanted to also give people things that they can actually take and go apply to help improve that. So if you are not able to sit down in a squat all the way down like a baby, go on there, follow this series, please comment, tell us things that helped out. That's what you like or yeah, or what we can improve on for sure, like we'll respond to that. That's right, so that's what we're trying to do. If it helped, if it's something that helped you, share it, share it with somebody else, keep it going. This is something that will continue to evolve and will continue to be doing more podcast episodes where we can give and help you guys out. It's totally free. Go to the Mind Pump TV YouTube and subscribe. That's it. Also, if you wanna ask us questions that we can answer in our squat episodes, the place to do it is on our Instagram page. You can find us at Mind Pump Media. Now we also have personal pages where we provide information and sometimes we offer some pretty cool coupon codes and stuff like that. My personal page is at Mind Pump South, Adam is at Mind Pump Atom and Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maths Anabolic, Maths Performance and Maths Aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. 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What is that? I'm gonna eat.