Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this conversation, discussion, questions and answers session with Professor Gilbert Asghar from SOAS. I'm Dina Matar. I'm the chair of the Center for Palestine Studies, and I also teach at the Center for Global Media and Communication at SOAS. And this is an event that I think is overdue where we need to talk about 10 years following the Arab uprising and what lessons we have learned and thinking about what is going on. And we really have the best possible academic, can I say, activist, concerned person to talk about this, Professor Asghar. So we're really delighted to have him here to talk about his reflections and also around his, you know, kind of knowledge around what is going on in the Arab world at the moment.  And so we salute them and, you know, we kind of are very proud of their agency in very difficult circumstances. So Professor Asghar is a professor in the Development Studies department. He is the esteemed author of many important books, not the least, two books on the Arab uprisings of 2011. The people want and morbid symptoms. The way we are going to do this is I'm going to pose some kind of opening questions to Gilbert unless he wants to start talking. And then, you know, further questions and so on. So it'll be like a conversation. And kind of, we will try and finish in about 40 minutes for zero minutes, and then we will open to questions. So maybe it'll be less than that. Maybe it'll be 30 minutes, because we would like to have your intervention. So the event hosted by the SOAS Middle East Institute, we thank them for the support for these events. Gilbert, do you want to come in? Yes, Dean, I want to come in to thank you for having organized this event. I mean, you're right that SOAS should be in organizing something like this with our own staff. I remember when I was appointed for the chair at SOAS. And I told that to a French colleague who told me, oh, you're going to the Mecca of Middle East and North Africa studies. I remember the formula he used. And indeed, I mean, we have at SOAS quite a pool of specialists, a unique pool of specialists of the region. And you are one of them, for sure. And most of us, all of us actually, those who work on Middle East and North Africa have been working on various aspects of these big upheaval that started a little more than 10 years ago. So it's very appropriate that we organize this, even though it was done at a very short notice because, yeah, I mean, the decision was taken to organize this evening, the seminar just two weeks ago. So I'm very glad to be here with you and thank you again. Oh, thank you, Gilbert. And also thank you for all the participants who are here and for coming on this Wednesday evening. So we just want to start with a few kind of opening questions. And, you know, it seems that the region, the Middle East and North Africa seems to be kind of almost absent from the international discourse and in the mainstream media discourse. But that doesn't mean nothing is going on. So I just wanted to kind of ask, should we perhaps reflect on the kind of the debate that has become quite negative about the region and about the Arab Spring. There's been a lot of work around the Arab Spring turning to an Arab winter, for example. And try and say, are we, you know, considering that there are popular mobilizations taking place in different parts of the region. Are we waiting for another 2011 moment? Well, you're absolutely right to point to the shifts in the discourses, especially the media, actually, the media coverage of the region, but also some academic publications or academic writings on the region. You can see the shifting mood over the years. And very sharp contrast between the euphoria of 2011, the time of what was called the Arab Spring, especially the very early moment, the, let's say, between the two first month of 2011, when you add in January the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia and then in February, the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. So that brought the euphoria at a very high point at a peak. The spectacle of Tahrir Square in Cairo and all that, that has become, you know, part of a major iconographic history, one could say, because these images are everywhere now. And then this idea that the occupation of the square became so important that we found replicas or movement inspired by it in various places, including Occupy, the Occupy movement in the United States, for instance, Occupy Wall Street, and others in Spain, in Greece, in several countries. So there was a euphoric moment, I would say, in 2011. But that was euphoria based on a lot of illusions about what was happening. At first I would say tending to project on the region, maybe the shape of events that had happened in other places, especially in Eastern Europe, in the early 90s, or late 80s with the fall of Berlin Wall and all that. There was some tendency to believe that this would be something akin to that, or at least to democratization processes that occurred in the 80s in East Asia, in Latin America. And I think this illusion was based on a misunderstanding of the deep roots of that upheaval, this big uprising, and it spread to the whole region actually as we saw at the point. And also probably a lack of understanding of the kind of regimes you have in the region, and the fact that when the people want to overthrow the regime, there is not a nizam, the famous slogan of those uprising, while changing the regime or the system, which is another possible translation of the term, nizam, I mean, is a daunting task when you are facing such repressive machines, and repressive deprived of, I would say any moral sense, that is, you know, the region has seen a lot of massacres in various countries. And therefore, the issue was definitely going to be much tougher and more difficult than what people believed in 2011. Add to that that the key, the core issue was not what the media believed it to be that is just a matter of democratization, although of course democracy and freedom were very central. There is no dispute about that, but they were not the most fundamental cause of the uprising, which was rather social and economic and structural, and the structure there therefore is not only the shape of the regime, whether as a dictatorial, authoritarian or whatever, but also the whole social nature of such states and the whole conditions that created that type of capitalism based on cronism, and such features, which resulted in the fact that that part of the world had the lowest rates of growth among African and Asian regions, and that translated in the highest rates of youth unemployment in the world for many years before 2011, and these rates were actually only increasing. And there was a gap between the rates of youth unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa and those of the rest of the world, a very significant gap. So these were the core reason of the explosion and once one understood that one could only expect that this would be a very long historical process. I use that formula from the beginning the long term revolutionary process that it is that is we have to understand it in terms of process not in terms of a moment in history and that's it. It's a process that will take very long time probably saying maybe decades when we have already we have already one decade of time and then with there will be more. So what what we can say is that that was the beginning of a process that involves inevitably ups and downs, up surges and backlashes, revolutionary moment and counter revolutionary moment. That is the way historical revolutionary processes go. And that's what we had and two years after 2013. That is, I mean, that can be confirmed even with the, with a map or a graph of the intensity of the movements but 2013 is a sharp drop. It's a turning point, turning point from the first, let's say revolutionary phase to a counter revolutionary phase that was that I mean was a signal by the Iran Iran's intervention in Syria to rescue the regime and therefore the counter offensive of the Syrian regime and the coup, the military coup in July 2013 in Egypt that was followed by also the return of old regime men in Tunisia to government. And in the in the year after civil wars in Libya and Yemen, involving partisans of the old regimes and, you know, and the opposition so at the generation if you want, and a violent one of of the, the, the, what happened in the first phase. And then at that point, indeed, as you're saying, you had a lot of gloomy depiction, and, and you know, ironic comments on the Arab winter, autumn, you name it. And we had a return come back with a revenge of the Orientalist trope that Oh, this part of the world, you know, because of their culture. Democracy is not in their DNA, you know, they so they are addicted to despotism. That's part of their culture.  And then, two years later, it was the setback into well, okay, I mean, the culture is prevailing again, which of course is a very silly way of looking at all that. So the, the, and, and then, you know, there was this tendency to bury the movement to to to proclaim that, okay, it failed, that that is the end of it. But again, when you understand the long term perspective, the historical perspective, you understand that that I mean this counter-reversal phase will be followed by new upsurges. And indeed, even during that phase, you, you, I mean, the social protest carry carried on developing at a massive scale in several countries of the region, Morocco, in Sudan, in Tunisia itself, actually, we had a number of social movements developing during those years. Until we reached a new threshold or a new phase, in the year 2018, first we had a large popular movement in Jordan, which was not as radical as radical as what we had in 2011 in the sense that for including I would say for the, for the risk of saying it in a country like Jordan or any monarchy in the region to the risk of calling for the overthrow of the monarchy is terrible. So it was a movement limited to, to, to, to targeting the government and it succeeded in, in that, but then by the end of that year, December 2018, exactly eight years after it all began in Tunisia in December 2010, it began again in Sudan this time, you had a major uprising starting in Sudan in December 2018. And in February 2019, it was followed by an uprising in Nigeria, a huge popular movement. In October of the same year, Iraq, and then Lebanon. Okay, so that made it for countries and you started having in the media game, the second Arab spring that formula emerge in the media. So, so already we had a second Arab spring if you want I could say in reply in response to your initial question that we had already to spring, even though that the second didn't have the same scope as the first. But still you have four countries. We had six in 2011 it was more dramatic in 2011, but it was no less important in 2019. And if you think of it, that means that until now, 10 countries, 10 countries, it's it's, it's absolutely amazing. And most of the world has have gone into uprising mode, major uprising mode and not counting all the other countries, or most of the other countries where you had very important upsurges in the social protest. Speaking of full uprisings, we have 10 countries out of, of, of, I mean, in terms of state you have something like 20 states in the in the region. There are 20 states and actually, you should, one should count out of these 20 states countries and states like the United Arab Emirates or Qatar with very artificial condition where only 10% of the population are citizens, right. And so you can't expect anything there. So that means that over the rest of countries, the majority of the states of the region have until now witnessed major uprisings. And in terms of population, the large majority of the population region because you have the largest country, I mean, in terms of population, Egypt has been involved. Algeria, one of the largest countries have been involved. So it's, it's Syria. Iraq, I mean, we are speaking of, of, of many of the key countries of the region. So definitely, it's far from over. And I would say that what happened to this last wave is different than to from what happened to the first, the first one ended in defeat and counterrevolution backlash. The second one was frozen, if you could say by COVID. The pandemic is what blocked this unfolding of movements in the four countries. Now, with the effects, the political effects, let's say, of the pandemic, starting to fade away, we are seeing a resumption of the movement in Algeria very recently, the movement that had been suspended for a year is resuming. In Sudan, it never actually really stopped. So, but there have been demonstrations, there have been tensions, a lot of tensions in the country and these are going to increase. So, and Lebanon because of the catastrophe is seeing today a new explosion, albeit under much, let's say, much, much worse conditions than what existed in 2019. And so overall, there has been a suspension, not an attermination with with COVID. And, and I will end with this. COVID itself, the economic crisis created by COVID is only worsening the deep roots, the deep causes of the major upheaval. And therefore, that that is a further reason to assert very categorically that we, I mean, this is far from being the end of it. Actually, we are still in a, in some, in some way we are still in an initial phase of this long of this transformation that is absolutely indispensable in this part of the world, and short of which there won't be any new stabilization under this particular regime. That is something that is extremely unlikely. And therefore, the region is entered now 10 years into a long protracted period of instability and all sorts of agitation. Thank you. I remember interviewing you for our channel, Middle East channel of culture and communication which I edit, and we did a special issue on the ad-abab pricing, and I remember you saying then, this is a long process, a longer duration process, so it's kind of almost repetitive if one can use that term. But in terms. I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I think it's just a matter of understanding the deep, because when when you use such terms that would refer to something where you have to guess, you know, I don't think it was a matter of guessing. It's a matter of understanding the what the problem is when you have the correct diagnosis, then the prognosis follows and and and is correct. That is, given the nature of the crisis, this is something that can be sold quickly and rapidly and smoothly. It will be a very long process and unfortunately also one with a lot of violence. And of course we, you know, there are popular mobilizations in Iraq that have been going on for quite a long time as well. Again, you know, trying to ask for various demands, but but this leads me to kind of asking whether these, you know, in a sense, what are the aims? It seems like the aims of these new popular mobilizations are more, you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, are more around economic and social equality, which you mentioned in your first book on the advertising. So, presumably, these are the key concerns and and there are concerns around human rights and around freedom of expression, etc. But it seems to me like, particularly in the case of Lebanon, social and economic inequalities that have been endemic for and corruption that have been endemic for a long time. And now being, you know, people are demanding a way of dealing with them. I mean, I think from the start you have had a variety of, let's say, focuses in the movements, depending on the countries. And that, of course, reflects the nature of the political regime, the nature of the conditions in the country. That is, in some countries the movement started on social issues, or actually in Tunisia. That was the beginning was on the, let's say, the whole period preceding the uprising in Tunisia had seen a rise in social struggles and also some political struggles to be sure. But when it exploded and became a massive nationwide or statewide popular movement, it inevitably became, of course, political and a shabby leader's cotton is on, it became a matter of wanting to change the system or the regime. I mean, when we look at the second wave, we can see also that in Sudan it was triggered by the economic issue with the implementation of IMF inspired measures by the dictatorial government of Hamar al-Bashir. We see that in Lebanon also it was triggered by an economic issue and the attempt of the government to impose attacks on voice over internet communications. In Iraq it was a lot of grievance on social economic but also political issues. So, I mean, whereas in Algeria it was directly on a political issue that is the trigger was not economic, the trigger was political that is the attempt of the military to renew the for the fifth time, the presidential mandate of Abdul Aziz Bouteflika. And that's what let people to pour into the streets. So, the trigger is different. It can be social, it can be economic, it can be very directly political. But the key point is that the underlying cause of all that is the social economic blockage of the region. And of course, this social economic blockage create a lot of resentment against the whole system. I mean, when you have we have the region has had dictator popular dictatorships, one should say, for instance in the 60s. I mean, Nasser's Egypt was certainly not a democratic state that was definitely also a military police kind of dictatorship, but it was undeniably popular, because it was because of its social economic achievements, the major social economic reforms and also the national the confrontation with Israel with with Western powers with the United States all that made the regime undeniably popular. So, so even the protests against dictatorships is something that is related to social economic conditions, which create this content. They can be in the of also of different orientation. Sometimes, you may have protests against dictatorships out of of. I mean, as a result of the development of a country, the modernization of a country, the development of, of, let's say some kind of modern middle class and the rest, the, the, the development in size of the working class. I mean, such democratization happening in countries like Brazil, or South Korea to just to name but to here. Yes. But what we have in the region is the other side is the other pipe is not democratize it not democratization process. There is a historical period of development and economic growth and modernization. No, what we had is is a blockage, and this blockage is what led to the explosion. In a sense, this is closer to what you had in Eastern Europe where you had also economic blockage within the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, except that there. The future of the regimes, we was very special. No property classes bureaucrats running, and those were not, or did not engage into any very violent confrontation with the mass movements, believing each one of them that they could recycle their own, know how in in a market economy. Whereas, in, in the part of the world we are discussing. You have not only property classes, as you may have elsewhere that is capitalist land owners, but, etc. But you have also a number of countries in the region, which in which the state itself is owned by family. The rule of the state itself and that's is not only the case of the monarchies, but also the, the so called the republican monarchies or monarchical republics that we had in the region like Syria, the Assad regime in Syria like the Qaddafi regime in Libya or the, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, even though that one was overthrown by the US state occupation in 2003. You know, when we were thinking about what, you know, one of the issues around the first wave, let us say, 2011 was the question of the surprise that people were very surprised that, or commentators were very surprised that popular mobilisations were so huge, and that they had happened in such conditions. At the moment when we are looking at the popular mobilisations and uprisings that are taking place in different parts of the Arab world, I myself as someone looking at, you know, the media space as a space where all these mobilisations are also taking place. It is really very difficult to come up with a consensus on what, you know, on the different triggers for these mobilisations. But I really appreciate your point around the fact that, well, it's not about one thing, but they're all linked to the question of socioeconomic positions and properties issues and issues related to who holds the power, you know, sort of these, these are family owned, you know, kind of regimes that have continued. But I want to ask another question, which is, in a sense, so for me, looking at the media, at the media scene, and it's very confusing. It's because you cannot concentrate on everything, because you have women taking part in different forms of popular mobilisations, young youth people. But the interesting thing is the multiplication and so many and numerous numbers of uprisings or maybe demands that are coming through social media, you know, in this new, in these continuous waves of uprisings. But I wanted to ask a question related to whether you think, or whether it is, you know, whether you think that these new popular mobilisations have learned some lessons from the first one. So is that any kind of change in the ways they are, or in the ways that they are organising or in the ways that they are, you know, trying to respond to power in different ways? Oh, I mean, yeah, absolutely. This is a very important issue that you're raising. Well, you started speaking of media. I don't know if at that level there is much difference. I would presume that there is not much difference in the sense that there hasn't been a technological change. Maybe some applications are more used today than they were in 2011. That may very well be the case. I presume the WhatsApp, for instance, like that, just to give an example. But other than that, already in 2011 we were in this era of the new information and communication technology. And that was very much used to the point that it was described that, well, that was exaggerated, but not devoid of any truth. It was described as a Facebook revolution that we all remember. Right, so maybe at this level there hasn't been much change, but the differences between 2019 and 2011 are quite visible. There are a number of them. There are the political differences, which are a result of the fact that historical processes of revolution are in terms of experience, in terms of knowledge, are cumulative. That is, they are learning curves. So people don't repeat the same mistakes if they have been made just a few years before. They have them in memory, in the historical memory. And for instance, in this case probably the most blatant difference is the way the people behave towards the military in Sudan and in Algeria compared to Egypt in 2011 and 2013. So whereas in Egypt, the popular movement had a lot of illusions about the military, both in 2011 and then in 2013, we see that in Sudan and Algeria, these illusions were not repeated. And these three countries together represent the three countries where the armed forces are the central institution in the political system. This is the peculiarity of the three countries in the region, and we see how strikingly similar the scenario has been in each of them, where the armed forces end up removing the president. The armed forces removed Mubarak, and then Mursi, 2011, 2013, and the armed forces removed Al-Bashir and removed Bouteflika. Also in Sudan and Algeria, or Algeria and Sudan, chronologically. So, but the popular movement had a very different reaction, which was, you know, full defiance and against the military, not at all cheering up for the military for what they've done and you know, and praising them, because they removed the president as the military expected. I'm sure in both Sudan and Algeria, they expected to behave for what they've done, and what they found is a popular movement saying, well, that's one step forward, but what we want is a civilian democracy and the military out of politics. And that's a very important difference, and here I think there is the learning curve is quite clear that because people saw what Egypt had become in 2014, 15, 16, when in 2016 the CC regime started the most radical implementation of the IMF advocated the reforms, which led to a huge rise in the cost of living and the cost of food and the rest. I mean, it had devastating effect, and also the devaluation of the currency, really devastating effect on the population, but that you had this very repressive regime, which actually is much more repressive than what the Mubarak regime was. So people understood that lesson in both Sudan and Algeria and are carrying on the struggle, never stopped it for one thing, kept demanding a civilian government. We have also a difference, I would say, in the political configuration. And that's here in that regard, it's also, I mean it's a result also of let's say historical changes, but also of the specific kind of situation that you have in at least three, but actually in the four countries in the sense that the Islamic fundamentalist forces, the Muslim Brotherhood and the like, that managed to jump on the wagon, the bandwagon in 2011 to hijack the movement and steer it in their own preferred direction, because they were by far the most organized, the most important component of the opposition, and they had television backing with Al Jazeera, this is an issue that you know better than I know, that's your field. And we know how much this is important in politics, of course, it's hugely important, even if you have now internet and the rest, and money, of course, funding and all that. And also Turkey jumped in and also supporting them. So they managed with all the support and all that, they managed to come to the, to get hold of the helm, you know, to be at the wheel of the first phase. But then they suffered very heavy defeat in Egypt with the coup in Indonesia where it wasn't fortunately, it wasn't, it was much smoother but they were politically defeated. And then in Libya and Yemen where the governments in which they participated were faced civil war and, you know, and other complications. So that was the first phase now in the first in the same way, we see a very different picture, because, as I said also of the nature of the governments Sudan's military dictatorship, unlike the one in Egypt has been very closely work collaborating with the Islamic fundamentalist. Now it's true that even in Egypt and people forget that the Muslim Brotherhood have been very severely suppressed, but the Salafis are there and our supporters of the regime of season. Now in, in Sudan, the whole spectrum of Islamic fundamentalist forces was supporting the regime was involved in the regime. And therefore, they were not in the popular movement. And there was no way they could, they could steal that movement or hijack that was strictly impossible. The movement is very much against them to that's for Sudan. In Nigeria, the, the, you have had 10 years of terrible civil war in the 90s with extremist fraction of Islamic fundamentalist forces. And we're going into details because there were there are huge suspicion about the role of the military intelligence itself in in in creating maybe that situation but never the key point is that it discredited these forces and then the more moderate, which are to the Muslim Brotherhood, actually, where participants in the government of what they think they, they, they participated at, I mean, intermittently in the government. So they were not in a position to, to, to be, you know, here again in the, in the mass movement in even less to, to, to, to, to ambition to, to, to, to steer it to hijack it or whatever. And then if you look at Iraq and Lebanon. Well, here we, again, we have governments in which Islamic fundamentalist forces are the, the, the, actually the, the key force. In Hezbollah in Lebanon, and several organizations, armed groups in Iraq that have in common, they're very close relations to Iran to the Iranian regime. And these are the key forces in government in both countries and that's why the pricings in these countries, where, against these forces, as well as the rest. And these forces took part or played a key role in trying to repress the appraisals more even than the official repressive forces of the government. So, so this is another difference major difference. And finally, last but not least, you have seen a more important role of women in this second wave. Sudan, especially where the women were even a majority in the popular movement, even though when it came to representation in, in governing bodies and the rest. This was not reflected and the feminist very rightly protested against the situation, but still the role of women has been very important we have seen an important role of feminist organization in Tunisia in 2011. We have seen an important role of participation of women even in Yemen 2011, but in 2019 that was even bigger in Algeria also in Lebanon, the women were more visible at the forefront of the uprising than men. And that even influence Iraq, which traditionally has been a country where the condition of women was much more difficult, but this led to an increased participation of young women student in the movement so this is also a difference so we see differences there are differences. And I would say that the three differences that I mentioned are steps forward, right, where we still have the big problem in the region is in terms of the organization of the popular movement around the kind of aspirations that are shared and common to all these movements. And in that regard, I see one exception, which is Sudan, which has been until now in all the 10 appraisings that we have seen in the region. The most advanced in terms of organizational structures is Sudan, where the movement is led by two kind of organizations, one which has the role of representing the movement or leading official movement and which is, well, it was something called the professional association, but it now involves much more than the professionals to involves labor unions of all kinds. It has become a leadership of the working movement, the labor movement, the popular movement, all this together. And we have a grassroots organization of the youth, called the resistant committees which is completely impressive, which uses a lot the media by the way. It uses very much, it uses very much in their expression, their communicates and all that are not website are Facebook pages, right, and they post their, their position and you have several such resistance committees involving hundreds of participants each one and you have hundreds of such committees involving hundreds so that gives you an idea of the very big size of that. There is no central leadership, they are, and that is a general, I would say feature of the new generation, not only in the region, but even globally, there is some strong reservation towards anything like centralism party leadership and something like that. And this is understandable given the very poor balance sheet of the 20th century forms of organization. And so, but, but nevertheless thanks to these ways of communication, they managed to coordinate their positions in an impressive. Very advanced, we haven't seen anything like this in the region in Syria at the very beginning you had the local coordination committees, which approach that kind of thing but due to the very repressive conditions from the start. They were nowhere near the size of what we have today in Sudan. So that's a very interesting development. But here, that points to a key problem, a key issue for the future of this long term revolutionary process, the condition without which this won't lead to any positive outcome, which is this ability to find ways to have organization and representations that have the legitimacy of real popular support and consent that is very crucial. I think there's a very interesting, I have one of my students who's shooting this program. Moving on, I'm really pleased that you mentioned the woman one one issue around woman in Iraq at the mobilization of the, you know, what is called digital harassment. And that, you know, that is the problem of kind of opening, the open media spaces is that they are threatened. And just to make I've asked that some of them are unable to go out for this. But I want to have a last question for the open session, which is in relation to the apparent kind of. largely indifferent international community, or attention by what is happening in to what is happening in the region. So we don't see, we, you know, we don't see a lot of engagement with that so perhaps you know if you could comment on that before I take questions from the audience. To be frank, I'm not sure. It is, it was the case because if you remember 2019. There has been a lot of attention actually. And most of the global media started speaking of the global revolt. Because the events in the Arab, or the Middle East and North Africa coincided with other upsurges of social protest from Latin America, Chile, Ecuador and other countries to Hong Kong. You know, through the, the Europe, the gilet jaune in France, major movement. And that's what we had in Mina. Iran had also important upsurges. So this look very much like a global, you know, wave of protest. The local, the second wave of the long term process in the region was or happened to to to to to partake. So no, I think that there was quite a lot of attention paid actually. Well, of course it's proportional to countries. What it is when you have Egypt and Tahrir Square, the attention of the world is different from what you have in when it is in Tunisia, or country like Lebanon. And yet, there has been quite quite that I mean a lot of attention about Algeria, for instance, then it depends on the country. In French speaking countries, France, Belgium, the rest attention on what was going on in Algeria was higher than Britain, or, or even more so the United States, but still that was also in the news so we can't say. No, I don't think that these mean that the movements were ignored. Because I think, I mean this this part of the world. Understandably for everyone is such a strategic and important. And, and you have so many foreign powers and that's, I mean related to what to do the same reason, you have so many foreign powers interfering here that that there is, there is quite a lot of attention. That's fantastic. I, if it's okay to stop taking questions from the audience is that you're absolutely is post your questions in the question and answer.  So one question for you the future prospects for Libya. Oh, the future prospects for Libya. Well, I would reply to that first by by trying to to sketch very briefly how I see things that things developed in Libya. Just a reminder. We've had a popular uprising, and bolded by the Tunisian and Egyptian examples. You know, to both countries are adjacent to Libya so so I mean, Libya could only be taken into the surprising mode that the two neighbors, Egypt and Tunisia had gone through. And, and of course, different. I mean, with the difference in the nature of the regime which is one, you know, a regime family owned very centralized dictatorship, very peculiar also kind of autocracy with the family control of the and tribal control of the armed forces and the rest. The uprising was met with violence very quickly and all that. And then that led to foreign intervention in an attempt to, or the, with the proclaimed desire to prevent the massacre that was missed by Kedafi to Ben-Razi the second city of the country in the east of the country. But then this intervention turned into an attempt at controlling the move with intensive efforts to steer it politically, which failed completely when it, it, the, the uprising occurred in the capital city itself and led to the collapse of the whole state. So the result was that Libya is the only country in the region where the people really overthrew the regime in the deepest sense of the regime that's the whole state collapsed. But then that led into a, you know, an anarchic situation with no, no real center of power but multiple groups and the rest and nevertheless the year 2012. So real elections with a high participation under conditions of real freedom of people to participate or not. And that was the moment, a democratic moment, but it did not last for the reasons mentioned that you had various groupings of forces and then the political clash became a military one and that the country fell into a war, even though it's a low intensity war if we compare it to Syria or Yemen, where there you have much more tragic wars, even for demographic reasons in Libya it's much less you know that it's a country with very large stretches of in uninhabited land between the cities and all that. So, and it led to a division between one side represented by Haftar involving forces that were part of the previous regime involving also Salafist by the way, and backed by the CC regime in Egypt by the UAE by Russia. Through so called mercenaries who are actually how to say semi-official troops of the Russian government in fact. So this, these forces are on the side and France shipped in also in with some hesitation in supporting Haftar. On the other side you had a coalition of forces with the Muslim Brotherhood at the center backed by Qatar and Turkey. And you have this international record internationally recognized government with UN attempts at, you know, achieving some kind of compromise. And I would say that in the region. The worst scenario in the region are those clashes between Islamic fundamentalist forces and old regime forces, because they can they become also very bloody as we see in Syria, etc. And, and that's not going to advance the popular the progressive popular movement. So, I mean, it's better for everyone if they can reach some kind of coalition agreement to stop wars. That's already something, and therefore recreate conditions under which a popular movement can can progress. So now there's a new attempt at achieving this kind of compromise, which won't solve any of the economic social problems and all that in the country but at least if it stops the war and leads to two conditions under which social struggles could develop that that would be that would be a positive outcome in my view. That's what I can say. Now, what will happen. It's everybody's guess you know it's just impossible when you have such a number of forces, such a number of foreign sponsors. These foreign sponsors is likely to change their positions depending on their, the, the, the, the, the connections between them. And sometimes you have you know a change of president in the United States can change completely the condition. You have so many changing factors in the equation that any attempt at predicting an outcome anywhere is doomed to fail. And if, if, if ever a prediction proves right, it's more like you know the, the, the clock that is not working but which is twice a day gives the right time twice a day because because it's so that's that's exactly the point. And that's what I can say about Libya. And everything will will, I think will. Or it depends on on all these, these conditions that I mentioned. So so much that no prediction is possible, except that for the whole region. There is no real stability inside that is even if they get compromised and all that that won't solve the social problem and then you will have a continuous social protest as you can see today if you look at Syria. Even in the, although the regime appears as having won the battle except for the region of Idlib. But now you see in the areas controlled by the regime like suede and the rest we have seen a flare up of social protest. It's, it's, it's, it will carry on. Thank you. And this seems to answer questions because there's a few questions around for an intervention and questions around, you know, do, but perhaps you could speak a bit more around the situation in Lebanon. And a couple of questions wanted to say, what are your reflections on Lebanon currently and whether you see there is some new way that the protesters or the people engaged in the popular mobilizations perhaps they are moving or understanding in a different way and responding to it in a different way. So I wonder whether you could comment on the Lebanese situation. Yeah. Well, I'm afraid I don't have any optimistic or, you know, positive appraiser assessment of what's going on now. There was a huge, hugely important moment in 2019 in October 2019 that the initial appraiser, which was amazing in managing to cross to develop across sectarian cleavages in the, and regional cleavages in the country and encompassing practically all parts of the country, and all, and people of all sects. And that was also, I mean, the, the, the, the condition for that was also that the movement was against members of the ruling class of whatever whichever sect they you find in the country, all of them means all of them was the, the, the central slogan of that appraising moment, right. However, there is a much less homogeneity or agreement in the movement in Lebanon on what people are standing for, then on what people are standing against. All of them, all of them means all of them. But when it comes to the conception of what should be replacing them here you have very different views, because the movement is very heterogeneous, socially, class wise if you think about it in any way, you know, politically, ideologically, in any sense. And so it, there were attempts at creating structures and all that, but they were not successful, and therefore, that facilitated the role of the various sectarian constituents of the ruling class to, we, I mean, to take back control, at least in part of their constituencies. And so that that's, that's one point and there has also been a sense of despair or in the face of me when you see that one of the key stumbling block is represented by Hasballah which is an armed force which is stronger than the government and can be more repressive than the official government. And that is also a major, major concern. However, and at least I want to end on this with with some more positive comments. In the very recent weeks we have seen the development of a very promising student movement across universities, private universities and then moving to the public universities. The name is the, the secular clubs. I mean, in the, in the Lebanese context that means rejection of sectarianism, basically. And, and they have really progressive aspirations they're expressing them we have been some political expression of that. There have been some movements that started building up in, in 2019, like the happy movement of that kind, young involving essentially young people with the progressive aspirations. So there are attempts, they are promising, but for the time being for the, for the wave if you want that started in 2019. You can see that leading to in itself to any change the change in Lebanon for now is depends here more than Libya. I would say, on international players, you know, basically, the Iran US relation, the state of the relation between Washington and Tehran is what has the. What has the most important consequences on the situation in Lebanon. Thank you. So there's a question around. There's a question saying that the first phase of the Arab uprising, where perhaps the same sometimes an Arabism. And that was why that there was this idea of a pan Arab movement. And then a related question whether this is also, you know, coming through in the current way sport in the second. So, question related to pan Arab identity or pan Arabism. No, I mean, pan Arabism in in Arabic. It's Arab nationalism. I think it is an ideology that has made its time it's, you know, it, it, it, it lost it completely lost impetus in the, in the 70s. And when the regime that resulted from this shifted to the right. All of them, basically, through the 70s and 80s all of them shifted to the right. And so, and since all these regimes had in common their dictatorial character. I mean, this, this legacy has become very much discredited. And, and no, it didn't play any, any significant role. I mean, you had Nasserist here and there. But this identity if you take Egypt, for instance, there was a very, very significant and I mean vote in 2012 for a candidate that is Nasserist. But that was not because of the pan Arab is the side of his ideologies was more the nostalgia of what Egypt was under Nasser, the nostalgia of the social economic conditions under Nasser. The nostalgia of the national dignity of the of Egypt and its role, not only in the region but worldwide as a leader of the non-aligned movement and the rest. So this is what plays more in that case it's not the, the pan arabist idea it's in. Now, the fact that we are speaking of movement that is developing in Arabic speaking countries and all of that that led to renewed awareness of the belonging to a geopolitical culture and also, and for some they would call that national it's no time and space here for for such debates. But the key point is that, yes, I mean in the sense of the conscience of a belonging to a region with a lot of things in common is there has been enhanced with what what we're seeing that doesn't mean that there is any role for pan Arabism in that except very marginal groups here and there participating. Now, for the region if one has to think of, of unity for the future that would be more in, in the sense of what you have in the European Union, you know, that is a confederal kind of organization of the states of the region, and any of the, all the dreams of, of the, the unification a la Bismarck or Victor Emmanuel or I mean like the unification of Germany or, or Italy, and that won't happen. And what we may see are more democratic forms that would be for the future but for that before that you need a positive outcome for what is going on into a real democratization of the whole region to have therefore the possibility of a really democratic state. There's a good question about Sudan, asking whether you could tell us more about the labor movement in in in the Sudanese complex and whether this new, you know, movement. I think you mentioned it's, it's a professionals, but does it is the established labor force, or is it union centered is the other unions involved in it for other parties involved in this organization. I'll be brief and refer you to the article I wrote for Le Monde Diplomatique which is in open access in English on Sudan. That was in June, maybe last year, 2020. May or June the country member something like that I visited, I went on a can say field work visit to Sudan in February. Last year, and yes, and so the, I mean the, the labor unions, like in other dictatorial countries in the region were under state control. But what you had is a movement that was created was built underground by started by professional associations involving.  So anyway, you had the movement they organize underground, and when the time came, they in December 2018 they came to the fore and they became the organizing body, and also the spokes. They spoke persons of the whole movement and their website and all that their Facebook their social media became the center the focus of what was happening. And with the with the unfolding of the uprising, the fall of the dictators, you have a number of new unions being created the labor movement was resuscitated and new forms and dependent forms. There was an adoption of a new labor law union law in the country, which had been the center of a debate over the period since the uprising. So, so now the, what is called the Sudanese professional association is in fact the, the epicenter of the whole labor working people movement in the country. And, and yeah, that's what we can say about it. But this article I mentioned is available easily. It's easy to find it. So, a couple of questions around the persistence of authoritarianism in the region. And a question on what you think about Russia's law going forward for right now. Right authoritarianism. I mean, you know to overthrow authoritarianism you need an organized civil society. Let's put it in those terms, that is a popular movement and all that able to impose democracy. There is one country of the first wave where this existed and that was Tunisia with the, which had this particularity of being the only country in the region at that time, which had a powerful organized labor movement legal. That is not an underground one. And at the same time autonomous towards the government, especially at the levels of the rank and file and intermediary level, but even not all its leadership was under state control. And this organization is actually the crucial reason that explains why it started. I mean, in Tunisia that is why Tunisia was the first country to get rid of its head of state. That's thanks to the role that this organization played in transforming what was a local protest into a national uprising. It had a key role in that regard. And their existence is the key reason why, of all the six uprisings and other movements that we had 2011, the only one that led to real democratization is Tunisia. Right. And we can say today Tunisia is the most democratic state in the region. It's a perfect democracy far from it, but compared to all the rest is definitely the most democratic. The one in which you don't know in advance the result of elections and elections are really free and they bring a lot of surprises. And this has been there for, for, for 10 years. It's not that you have two years and then it's over. So that's the key point. Now Sudan is another country where this could be possible, except that they are facing a much tougher obstacle than Tunisia. Tunisia for historical reason, never had a strong military. The army was never central in Tunisian politics. In Sudan, that has been for the last decades, you've had military dictatorships and the military are entrenched in the government in power in the control of all that and they have a huge privileges that they need to, that they want to serve, like in Egypt, like in Nigeria. So it's much tougher, but so the struggle will carry on. And for the rest, that's the point that is, again, we get back to what I said the condition for a positive outcome of all this historical process is the power of organization of the popular movement. That's what will be decisive at the end of the day. And I think with this you answered the question by Helen where she was asking about, you know, the need for organization. One question, what about prospects for Kuwait and Yemen, you know, big questions, and I don't know whether you want to answer them. And again, because you've got the Lebanese elections coming, you know, those two questions around Lebanon, Lebanese elections in 2022, what kind of opportunities would these bring or maybe not opportunities in many ways. Yeah, well, you know, any question about prospects for the MENA region should be solved by the local well known means to find out about prospects, which is a coffee, you know, you turn the top of coffee, and then you read you read in it the future. But to be frank, because anyone pretending that they can predict the future would be, you know, I mean, that's a pretense that doesn't make any sense for the reasons I explained there are too many factors involved. It's not a simple equation where you can find the unknowns very, I mean, relatively easily here. No, they are changing. It's an equation was changing factors, and they change for so many reasons, global local regional everything. So it's not possible to predict. And the only thing, as I said, the only safe prediction one can do for the whole region is the fact that what start in 2011, this destabilization of the region will carry on for very long. That's for sure. No stability in any foreseeable future. Right. That's for sure. That's the only thing. Aside from that, no one can take it, right. Except maybe for even for the very short term, it's very difficult to make predictions actually in the region because it's so much changing so many states involved and the rest. Lebanese elections. I don't know if there will be elections. And I mean, many Lebanese are wondering if there will still be 11 on 22. I mean, it's really tragic what you want to do. The just to give you an example, an indicator before the crisis in 2019, the dollar was exchanged for 1500 liras. Okay. Now it has done over 15,000. So from 2019 to now, it has lost 90% more of its value. It's collapsing. And except for those who have dollars and fresh dollars as they call them in Lebanon that is will get their dollars from abroad. And for the rest, it's, it's, I mean, a completely unbearable situation. It's absolutely unbearable. And so it's, it's, I mean, to think of elections and all that would, would, would mean that you have had some kind of stabilization of some kind of of the economy crisis and the rest. I mean, no one can predict that again. It's the same issue. As I explained, it depends on international factors more than it depends on what is going on in Lebanon itself. And therefore, who knows what will happen from now until 2022. But I think we should end here. We're coming to the end of time that were a few other questions, but they kind of repeating repeating the other ones. And what I wanted to say here is obviously, you know, there are all these external factors, but we also have the pandemic factor as well, which is, you know, kind of brings its own specificities for the country, you know, for the globe in the region, but also for the region. But thank you all for all your questions and thank you to the bear because very stimulating discussion as always with you. And yeah, there was a question about Al Jazeera and so on. There's been a lot of stuff written about Al Jazeera's role in the appraisings. And there's a question about Iranian movement. And again, there's, if you look up the Middle East general of culture and communication, the, you know, there is a discussion around the movement. And the appraisings, we want to look at that. But obviously, you know, in terms of the talk, I think we've had a very rich discussion. Thank you all for coming. And have a good evening. Thank you very much and thank you to a key. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye.


In this episode, we're going to talk about the physical attributes that you can train to get better at any sport. All right. Are you qualified? Yeah, just a good tag. I got you guys with me. Absolutely. We got you back. Yeah, this is good. No, you know, I think, uh, first thing's first, I think, um, because people are listening to this episode, I made this mistake, uh, when I did, when I was a wrestler, did you jitsu or judo is I would look at physical attributes and I'll put them above learning the skill or technique. Uh, that's always at the top. So I just want to say that, right? Like, especially if you were, if you're, you know, getting started or you're a teenage athlete or college athlete, um, you practicing the sport is always going to be one of the best ways to get better at your sport. Uh, but there are physical attributes you could train outside of training for your sport that contribute, tend to contribute to pretty much any athletic endeavor. Now, you didn't put these in any specific works. I'm looking at it going like I probably would place number three, number one. Sure. Right. Yeah. So if we can, I think we should try and work. Cause here's a, like, I wish I understood this. Um, I did understand that playing my sport would get me better at my sport. And so I, that's what I did mostly, but I put little to no emphasis around training. And I think that in one where I grew up small town, there wasn't like an athletic trainer that had any sort of serious background or knowledge. Like the coach, I remember like the, the exercises and stuff that he had us doing inside the weight room were like terrible. They were not exercises that we're going to translate into the bodybuilder focused, they were like calf exercises. Do like, cause we were basketball players. So back then, back then it was like strength shoe, you know, era. And so it was like just lots of calf raises. If you want to jump higher and run faster, calf raises, like that was the stuff that we were doing. Calf raises and leg press and like BS stuff like that. It wasn't until I was in my, I'd say early 20s, like 22 long gun playing sports, like at least like with a, like a team or whatever. I still played like rec ball and I had actually kind of taken a break from playing a lot of basketball and was now on my like bodybuilder type of kick I was building to look good, like build muscle. And I, in fact, I used to say like all show no go, but yet I come out to play basketball one day and I had to play in a long time.  And I remember like after we're landing, going like, Oh my God, like I haven't played basketball in like a year. Where did that come from? What came from all the squatting training? Yeah, all the squatting that I was doing that I hadn't done previously. Had I known that, I would have been a lot further. It's really taken the strength community a long time to establish that thought because there was still a lot of like muscle bound theory out there. If you were to weight train, it was going to make you slower. It's going to restrict movement. It was going to do all these things that were actually limiting with your sport. And so for programs to actually adopt real solid strength training and build that foundation with their athletes. It's actually like only fairly recently where coaches are incorporating that, making that a big priority. I think what also perpetuated that, Justin, you correct me if you think otherwise is that we always tend to do the extreme of everything too. So it's like you would think strength training, you don't think like adding a few pounds of muscle or just focusing on your strength. You think of like gaining 10, 20 pounds of muscle.  And also when you slap on, you know, 30 pounds of muscle and you're just focused on building muscle, like, OK, it might hinder my game, but there's a much more methodical approach to building strength and muscle to that athletic frame that could actually enhance my game. The other thing too is in the past, people would look at bodybuilders and they would judge the bodybuilders on their athletic performance. So they'd say, oh, look, there's that 240 pound bodybuilder. Let's watch him play basketball. And maybe the guy never played basketball. He never practices a kid. It's not a sport he enjoys. So they'd watch him play and they'd be like, oh, it's he's big and muscle bound. He's not fast. Well, the guy never plays basketball. And they're doing half reps in the gym as well. Like the training is completely different. Right. Right. Something also to consider here is whenever you're training outside of your sport, you always have to balance out your training volume, meaning if you're practice and let's say you're going five days a week to practice and you're like, you're recovering, but you know, you're at the limit. Like you're pushing it and you're going hard. Don't think that it's a good idea than to add three additional days of strength training based off of this episode, because all you're going to do is compromise your body's ability to recover and you'll reduce your performance. There's always a balance of volume of training. So this, what we're about to talk about has to improve your ability to practice, not take away from your ability to practice and you have to balance. So you can't do everything all at once because the body doesn't, doesn't, you know, react that way. Speaking of that, not to get off subject, but you just reminded me of something that I asked a long time ago for you. Did you guys ever watch the documentary on the Balco trainer? Yes. Did you watch that? That was one of the most impressive things about that documentary for me was the way he scheduled and trained the volume, like how scientific he was about the approach of recovery and volume and like putting that like, I know, like obviously you know, his name got drugged through the mud because of the scandal with Barry Bonds and all this stuff with the steroids and like that. And I'm sure a lot of people just immediately discredited him. But as a trainer, looking at his programming and the the scientific approach, I put more on the programming than the steroids. So OK. So my buddies and I got in this big old controversial. Oh, yeah, they're like all all drugs. They weren't impressed at all. And I'm like, you guys have no idea. Like you guys see what he was tracking and what he was paying attention to. That detail was incredible. And like he was going to improve those athletes no matter what drugs or no drugs. Balancing volume for athletes is so important because this is what athletes tend to do. OK, athletes will they'll they're practicing four or five days a week. Then they'll hear an episode like this. They'll say, oh, cool. Mobility, strength, speed, power, whatever. On top of everything. Yes, I'm going to train for all that now. So now they'll they'll stay past practice for an hour and a half and they'll also work out on Saturday and Sundays. And they'll wonder why their performance is decreasing, why they feel stiff or sore or injuries continue to pop up. So everything that we're about to talk about has to be balanced appropriately. And your best approach is to focus on one at a time. Not to throw everything but the kitchen sink at yourself because the body doesn't adapt well that way. So as we go through these, I think it's important. And we'll describe them all and explain, you know, how they contribute. But as we go through them, pick the one that you think is going to give you the most bang for your buck. And there's going to be one here that I know is most is probably most applicable for most people, but not for everybody. Pick that one and then work on it.  If you're already training close to your limit, you have to take something away in order to add more to get your body to respond. Today's YouTube giveaway is the Super Bundle. Here's how you can win that. Leave a comment below this video on the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Also, these are the final hours for the MAPS Performance Advanced Launch right now because it's a brand new launch. And if you're catching this one, we drop it. You can get it for $80 off, plus you can get the two free eBooks included, the Grip Strength Reference Guide and Eat for Performance. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. So the first attribute, and this one is almost never considered among athletes. And that's why I put this one at the top. Not because it's the most important, because it's one that people just don't tend to consider it, and that's to improve mobility. If you improve your mobility, so mobility is defined as your joints' ability to express itself fully through its fullest range of motion with control and strength, okay? So mobility does not mean you're flexible. Flexibility is a component of mobility. Mobility means you are not only flexible, but you own the entire range of motion. So not only can you do the splits, but if you need to jump out of the splits, you could. Or if somebody jumped on top of you while you're in the splits, you wouldn't hurt yourself, for example. Mobility is what will allow you to perform better on the field or on the court, because now whatever strength you have, you have now extended its range of motion. So however far you reach or rotate or throw or punch or whatever, you've now increased the capacity to do so by improving mobility. This is a very simple way, especially with older athletes, a very specific way and effective way to improve athletic performance. Yeah, another way to say is like end range strength. And so it's not just that main range of motion that you're strongest in, which a lot of athletes, they stay there. They stay in that comfortable range whether they're lifting weights or they're practicing specific movements. They're practicing just what they feel strong and capable. Well, this is extending that and really broadening your base in terms of if you're in a position with your body, can I conjure up strength and stability and support in order for me to move out or sustain this position? And so that's a huge component to all aspects of sport. Have you ever seen, I know you guys have, but you look at pictures of high level basketball players or tennis players when they're changing directions and you look at the angle of their ankle, when they're going sideways. Your shin. I mean, they're foot. I mean, they're foot.  I would roll my ankle. Paul Fabris does cool videos. I've shot him out before on the show many times of that exact, the shin angle of some of these. That's mobility. He's got examples of like some of these NBA players where he's frozen the camera and their ankles is flat like this and their shin is literally like almost parallel like it's snapping to the floor. It's unbelievable. I mean, that's mobility. They have the flexibility to move that way, but they also have the strength to prevent themselves.  Yeah, they're not hurting themselves. It reminds me of if you ever watched like motorcycle racing and you're watching them go around a turn and the guys laying the bike sideways and the tires are still keeping contact and they're able to make those turns.  So mobility is a, and the great thing about mobility is training mobility doesn't hammer the body that much. This is, of all the stuff we're gonna talk about, mobility is the one that you could probably add to your training and out over training. Just to reinforce that. So when I did that reunion football game and this was something I was like, you know, 40 years old already, all the guys out there as well and had a limited time to train for it. Had like two weeks. And of course, the other team, they took a full year, but you know, we're not gonna tell you about that. So what do we do? I'm like conditioning. That's a big consideration because I'm gonna get tired and I'm gonna be dogging it out there. But I put most of my focus into mobility and to really, you know, get the guys on board in terms of like, if I'm moving out there, the biggest thing is to be able to create and generate force and power in those, in those different positions, but also to be protected and stable. So we weren't getting hurt. And it was the best thing we could have done. It just, it allowed guys to move and still like remain, keep their athleticism because their body was able to respond in those different angles. The time that you noticed, I guess the most is when you're not athletic is when you're in an unfamiliar position. Yes. And so your body actually, you know, you feel weak. Like honestly, you do that shaky feeling sometimes when you're doing something you're unfamiliar with. And that's really like, what I noticed was that as long as we were kind of training and rotating and moving laterally and reinforcing a lot of these positions, when we went full speed out on the field, there was no problem. You know, even though I wouldn't list this as the first and the foundational, you know, of the five, I do like talking about it first because I think this is, of all the ones that we're gonna talk about, I think the, we knew the least about this, right? Or we were learning still so much more. For example, we were talking about basketball and it wasn't that long ago that we used to, on our NBA players, wear high-top shoes and restrict the ankle mobility in order to try and protect the ankles. The logic and the theory back then was- The ankle is for injuries. Yes, you wanted these high-top shoes and you wanted to tighten them like that to help brace them. But there actually was more ankle injuries than they are now and now a lot of the guys most here and you remember seeing this like Kobe was one of the first shoes that were low-top shoes. Now almost every NBA player will normally wear that unless he's nursing an injury for the most part will wear low-top shoes because you want that ankle mobility. But we didn't train that. We didn't think to like stretch those limits so that they could handle that. And now when you look at the game, like look at these movements, how much more dynamic these athletes are able to do it today versus just say 20 years ago. So how would you work on mobility, right? Mobility would be moving through ranges of motion that challenge you while staying connected to that range of motion by creating tension. Or contracting your muscle. Here's an example. This is not a mobility, what I'm about to say is not a mobility movement, but it's an example of what I'm trying to say. So the difference between flexibility and mobility here would be, flexibility would be I'm going down to touch my toes and I relax and wait for my hamstrings to stretch. That's flexibility.  So what I'm doing is I'm strengthening the hamstring throughout its full range of motion and challenging that range of motion. Now, I wouldn't consider a Romanian deadlift a classic mobility exercise, but it's just to illustrate what I'm talking about.  These are all movements we've had. We've, we can put links here that we filmed on our other YouTube channel, but it's about staying connected through these ranges of motion so that you own longer and greater ranges of motion and thus improve your mobility, which reduces risk of injury, but also improves performance. Well, I'm glad you use that even though maybe it's not a classic example of a mobility exercise. It's still, the point you're trying to make that I think is so important here is a lot of people hear the word mobility and they think flexibility. And so then they go, oh, I do, I take yoga three times a week or I always stretch before practice or I always stretch after practice or I'm pretty limber. I can touch my toes. It's like there's a difference between having flexibility and then having mobility and having mobility is having strength and control through those full range of motion. And that, and a lot of strength and control. That's like those athletes, like it's not like they just stretch the ankles out to where they can get to that angle. They're getting strong in those. A good example that our other good friend, Corey Slesinger, remember his, his, what do you call his ramp? I should give him a shout out for that. Oh, yeah, angled ramp. Yeah, it's angled ramp. But that was, I mean, I love seeing that. That was new. Like that, we weren't doing that 15 years ago. Like we weren't doing that with pro athletes with that. And so now you have these, these coat, or these trainers that are training these pro athletes that understand that it's not just them having this flexibility or their ankles, the ability for the ankle to roll or move that way, but actually good control and strength and that. So we're going to train it. We're going to load it. We're going to do explosive movements off of it. So it's not just being flexible and able to touch toes and stuff like that. Almost every sport I can think of is dynamic. It's not stationary flat, you know, maybe powerlifting, right? No, the sport, like every other sport includes a dynamic component. This next one is about becoming more stable. So stability in particular, and I'm speaking more specifically, but this really relates to all the joints. But let's, I want to speak more specifically to the spine. Creating stability around the spine allows my limbs and my body to move and exert power while my spine, which is just, there's a ton of joints along your spine.  Each one of those is a joint. Each one of those can rotate, flex and extend. And you want to be able to have them do that, but you want them to also be so stable so that you don't move to an end range of motion that injures you while you're throwing or punching or kicking or running or turning. So developing stability means being strong and stable. It means doing exercises like counter rotation type movements where you're not just trying to move in a direction, you're actually resisting moving in a direction. And you want to have that kind of stability that whether I'm rotated, twist, what I'm jumping, I can keep my spine in a position where it's strong and stable. You can own your space. You can create that kind of control. I look at it as like creating more torque and power, more force production. So look at somebody who's on roller skates trying to do a golf swing versus somebody who's like super grounded and anchored to the ground, allowing rotation, but can generate more power and force because they have that ability to really stabilize their entire body when they need to. Well, this highlights the importance of the core. I mean, this takes me all the way back to my original days as a trainer. So my first introduction to becoming a trainer and learning something that I didn't know ahead of time was core and the value of core. And I used to have this whole presentation of I would show people, I'd have a pen and I'd have the pen sitting in my hand like this, right? And I'd be like, this is most people, that your core wraps around your spine like this and most people have a very unstable, weak core. And so I'd show the demonstrate the pen, being able to move all the way around. It's like, look how unstable, weak you are. You're open for injury like this. You're not gonna be very strong like this. Now imagine if we strengthen these muscles and then I would tighten it up to where the now the spine is nice and stable. The amount of force that you can generate come protected and safe you are, how quick you can move, how quick you can react. And I said, and this is the most important muscle in your body beside your heart. Obviously your heart without it, you're dead, but the next most important muscle in your body is these core muscles that wrap around the spine. And that's the foundation to this. If you do not have this stable core that you can hold that foundation on that spine and then you're asking these limbs to do all this dynamic stuff.  You'll lose power. No, try to take- Power will leak out. Try to take off while being in sand versus being on asphalt. Like you're gonna take off way faster with that stable surface versus sand, which is not very stable. So core stability and stability in general. By the way, the best way to train this is isometrics. Isometrics are incredible at developing stability. Now here's the thing with isometrics. People tend to forget two things.  Isometrics training. By the way, I talked about how mobility could probably be added to your routine without really compromising your recovery. Isometrics. Isometrics will compromise your recovery more so than mobility, but still not a ton. So isometrics is another thing you can add.  Here's what's beautiful about isometrics. Huge carryover. Is that in a four-week period of time you could dramatically improve your stability through isometrics. It's of all the muscle contractions. This one produces strength gains the fastest in that particular avenue. So isometrics are phenomenal. Here's the mistake that a lot of people make. Is they'll train an isometric in one position. Don't train the other positions. So in other words, a common isometric would be like a overhead hold. That's a good isometric hold, but I can also train it where I'm holding down here, halfway or down here at the very bottom. You wanna train different positions to build stability in different positions. And this is true for the core or for the shoulders or for the hips, all these dynamic joints. And it'll just improve your performance. Next up, this one's, I think, I don't think we need to make this argument, but just get stronger. This is the foundation. Yes. This is like if you... If anybody gets stronger, they're gonna be better. Just across the board. And it contributes to any physical pursuit. The only, and I'll say this, and I'm saying this carefully because I don't wanna send the wrong message, but the only time getting stronger would be a problem is if you got so much stronger that you no longer were used to your own body. And the reason why I'm saying that is I've seen kids, this is not common as you get older, but I've seen kids play a sport in the summer, gain tons of strength, go back to playing a sport. All of a sudden can't throw the same accuracy you can't. That was my point. I was bringing up to Justin earlier. It was like, I think the reason why there's that, I think that's been perpetuated for so many years is because we tend to go with the extremes. Somebody hears that, oh, getting stronger is, they take the whole off season to pack on 30 pounds. And they didn't maintain the actual mechanics, the skills, they weren't disciplined with the practice of that particular movement for the sport on top of training. So it's like, they just dismissed that and just went all in on building mass and strength. I mean, it's very much so the opposite of bodybuilding. We do not care about size. Like, in fact, I just want to get stronger. If I can keep the scale the same or barely go up. That would be the best. Yes, if I can get an athlete to get stronger in the gym, lifting more weight and we don't really go up on the scale or very minimally we go up on the scale, that's a huge win. I'm not looking for 20 pounds added to the scale over a summer break. Like then they're most likely not going to be moving the same. You know a classic example of this and my favorite sport to watch is the NBA, which is watching the growth of Stephen Curry over the last 14 years of his career. Like to the average eye, he probably looks very similar to what he looked like, say, 10 years ago. But I mean, I've been watching him play. Like he's just barely put on a little bit of muscle. And the difference of how he can play the game today versus what he was, like he used to be known as this player that everybody, the whole, that they would scheme against him because he couldn't guard anyone because he was physically weak. Yes, he could shoot the lights out. He just could hit on the ball, but defensively, anybody could bully ball and where you can't do that to him anymore. And that's because he's gotten stronger over all these years, but he didn't put on this crazy amount of size where the next year, but he went like, oh my God, he put on all his weight, all his size. Strength to weight ratio matters a lot. And there are some sports where weight matters as well. Football being an example, right? If you're hitting someone and there's more kinetic energy because you're heavier, it's better. But if your strength to weight ratio gets really thrown off, now you're just a weight on the field.  So you still need to consider strength to weight ratio. What does that mean? Okay, so if you gained 30 pounds of muscle, you're gonna wanna at least be as strong as you are now, but in relation to the 30 pounds in terms of the ratio, meaning it needs to match. Or better, you have a better strength to weight ratio is what you're looking for. Otherwise it'll slow you down. But strength ultimately at the end, especially the beginning by the way, especially for younger athletes, this is the foundation. If you take a young athlete, a high school athlete, and you just make them stronger, they'll get better. If you're an adult athlete and you do no strength training whatsoever and you play on the weekends and you add one day a week of squats or dead lifts or overhead presses, you watch your performance. They're more resilient to sharing forces. They have more longevity in their gameplay. There's just so many more benefits to getting stronger for these younger athletes that I think a lot of coaches dismiss some of these huge facts. It's like we need more emphasis on strength training in order to build better athletes.  There's a way to do that.  Yeah, I think it's important to kind of illustrate what you just said because I think this is so important. So for example, if you had a 150 pound kid who could squat 300 pounds, if they got up to 200 pounds, they better be doing north of 400 pounds squat for it to make even close to sense. Because even if it was just 400 pounds and it's exactly the same ratio and you just got heavier, you're not going to be a better athlete. You're going to have to improve your strength to weight ratio, especially if you went up in weight like that. You can control that too with nutrition. I mean, a lot of the massive gains, like you can taper that a bit and still receive a lot of strength gains but not gain so much mass. Yeah, the best exercises for this are your conventional dead lift, squat, overhead press, bench press, row, your split stance exercises, like your lunges, your Bulgarian split stance squats, hip thrusts in some cases will have some good carryover. Just your conventional strength training exercises, barbell and dumbbell, will give you the strength that you're looking for. I love things like Bulgarians for like your athletes. Just, you know, one of the things too when you talk about mobility is the ability to flex and extend the hips is so important. So you're training that mobility in there. You're training the strength in there. There's stability involved. Yeah, there's stability that's involved in there. Which is why people like who is a Mike Boyle, who's the one who always talks about never doing bilateral, yeah, all unilateral work. That's why I think that's why he makes such a good case for training that way as an athlete because you're hitting three of those components that we always talk about right now. Next up is to get more powerful. All right, what's the difference between power and strength? Strength is your ability to lift something heavy. Power is your ability to lift things quickly to contract your muscles fast. This is explosivity, right? So this is the difference between an Olympic lifter and a power lifter. The power lifter has got a lot of strength, not as much power, an Olympic lifter has got lots of power. In fact, have you guys ever seen Olympic lifters jump? Because the name is power lifter. So it's like it's... It should be strength lifter. No, it should be. Like, because you think power lifter and you think that's like, that would be the default answer to like who generates the most power. A max strength lifter or something. Yeah, it should be. It's rebranded. Now power is the way strength looks in a sport. Like power is at the end of the day what matters. Now you can't have a lot of power if you don't have a lot of strength. So somebody listening is like, I'm just gonna train for power. You wanna have a foundation of strength. And stability. And stability. Otherwise you're not gonna be able to move quickly at all. The way we explain all of it, power is the greatest expression of all the others, right? It's like all the others come first and then power is the greatest expression, all that.  Now the difference in training for strength and power, obviously with power, you're lifting things quickly, but fatigue should play zero role in power training. Whereas in strength training, fatigue plays somewhat of a role. Like if I'm bench pressing for six reps, that sixth rep is gonna be pretty hard. I'm gonna feel like maybe I could do seven or eight and I'll stop at six, but there's some fatigue there. With power training, each time I do a jump box, each time I do a sprint or a clean, I should feel fully fresh and rested with every rep. I need to be able to do it as hard and fast as possible each time. Not do it and have fatigue step in. Otherwise it turns into stamina or at the best strength training and not power training. Yeah, it's more beneficial to structure power exercises with less reps, obviously. And this is one of those things so you can be very hyper focused. It requires a lot more moving parts all to work simultaneously, instantaneously. And so as opposed to strength, where you can kinda gradually bring everything together to pull the movement off, this is explosively immediate. And so it requires just a lot of output which you need to recover from. Maybe one of my biggest pet peeves as a trainer. I think that power exercises have been bastardized the most by trainers. 100%. You never see them when you're called. It's always a key indicator for me if I've got myself a really good experience knowledgeable trainer in my gym or in the gym that I'm at. Observing someone training a kid or an athlete in power and doing it correctly. Rarely ever do you ever see it. You see it done in circuits all the time.  You see it with lots of repetitions, five, six, 10, 15 repetitions, doing these explosive type movements. It's like a steps of Robespark. It's exhausting. This is where it's gotten bastardized is because certain coaches out there realized that they could exhaust their athletes really quickly by combining power movements with fatigue and conditioning. And it becomes something else. It becomes something else. But again, back to my point of like what power is is the greatest expression of all these other things. And so if that's the point of that then you would want to completely gather all that before you would express all that. And so this idea of doing it to fatigue is so ridiculous because stability goes out, mobility starts to go out, strength starts to go out because of fatigue starts to set in. In fact, I'll add this. One of the biggest mistakes with people with power training is that they'll do a workout and then do power exercises at the end. No, your power training, if you're gonna do a full workout of other stuff is at the beginning. Yeah, when you're fresh. Not at the end. Do not train power at the end of your strength training workout when you're tired. Now I'm gonna go do some box jumps. No, no, start that way. Then you can move on to strength or mobility or whatever. But you don't want to do this under fatigue. Otherwise you're not training the ability to contract quickly. You're just training the ability to contract repeatedly over time, which is stamina. Nothing wrong with that. But if we're trying to develop power that's not the way to do it. Lastly is agility or speed. Now agility really is about being able to be fast and stable and strong and have power but also be comfortable applying it through your skill or technique. This is when you have put everything together and now you're on the field and you move quick or slow.  And that's speed training. Maybe the greatest equalizer in all sports, wouldn't you say? Oh, speed kills. Right, so speed makes up for the lack of everything else I feel like. You can not be the strongest guy. The cream rises to the top. It's always the fastest. You may not be the most powerful. You may not be the most athletic. You may not be the most skilled. But boy, if you have lightning speed, you just, you separate yourself. I mean, Tyreek is an example of this, right? Like that's somebody who plays for the Dolphins. You just play for the Chiefs. Like seeing him play at that speed. I don't know, Sal, you probably don't know this. I don't even know if you know this. Justin, right now they're talking about changing this rule in the NFL about allowing him to be in motion. And this rule is on the table because of him because they put him in motion. He's the fastest guy in the NFL, right? So he's already gaining. So they put him in motion, which has always been a part of football. You know, your motion, the quarterback drops, does a stomp and then sends a wide receiver to the other side. And it's a strategy for the quarterback to see, are they in a zone or man to man? Cause they'll see if the guy moves across. And, but what they found is like then they hacked into this with Tyreek is that he's so fast. It's already so hard to defend him. Then if you give him a little bit of a head start and then they hike the ball as he's getting ready to go back into position. So he's already in half speed already when they hike. So then he's in full speed almost instantaneously and he just blows by everybody. And it's like, it's becoming, he's become so dominant because of that that they like they're up, they're trying to decide like, is this going to be like a rule that we have to put in place that they have to like get stationary again before you can hike the ball because of how fast, how much of a different speed you can make. Well, look, if you want ideas on how to program this kind of stuff into your workouts in combination with practice or not, if you're off season, we have a program called Maps Performance Advanced. This is specifically designed, this program specifically designed to develop these attributes and more. There's also a customizable section in there to help people need to develop grip strength, to develop rotational speed and power, general power to develop stamina or conditioning. Lots of different skills that you can put in and customize into this program. And if you're listening to this episode when we drop it, these are the final hours of the new launch of this program and its sale.  There's a grip strength reference guide and eat for performance guide that will include. So if you go to mapsp2.com, use the code PALaunch, you'll get the $80 off plus the two free eBooks. You can also find all of us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.