Positioning for Improving Exercise Execution: Part 1 | ETP#3

00:00:00  Your friends Aaron here. I just wanted to share that this episode is going to be part one of a two-part series on improving execution in performance of specific exercises on this first episode. We are going to focus on the lower body and the next week. We're going to come back and hit the rest with upper body. So I hope you enjoy the show.

00:00:17  Welcome to the F train Prosper podcast. We provide you sustainable training principles for strength and building muscle effective nutrition practices for improving and maintaining a lean physique and practical lifestyle habits for becoming a champion of your own health both Inside and Out hosted by Aaron straker and Bryan boorstein.

00:00:41  Welcome to episode 3 of the E train at Prosper podcast today Brian and I are talking about some tips and tricks that we've kind of discovered over are lifting careers that improve kind of exercise execution and performance of specific exercises within the context of what you were performing them for. So an example would be for hypertrophy versus power or output for strength. So, how is the last couple days been going for you since the New Year hit?

00:01:09  Everything's good. Man. Training is going well reaching a point where I'm training just as hard with just as many sets and I'm just not really getting sore anymore. So I think that that's an interesting development and probably speaks to a few different things potentially the need for a deload as well. So, you know more updates to come on that. I think my next cycle here after deload is going to be a specialization phase of sorts with priority on hamstrings and maybe some quads and not sure I got to talk to my coach but everything is going well. I got my hack press leg machine fixed. It was user error. I thought it was the fault of the machine in and after many back-and-forth emails. I took the machine apart put it back together realized that I inserted a attachment piece and tightened it when they

00:02:09  Pacifically said do not tighten Until the End never had an issue with that before but now I understand why you are not supposed to tighten things until the end. It's always kind of funny when when you figure that out and help the end of the day. It's what you do for me last 7 days have been pretty good, you know scheduling into the the New Year. I'm wrapping up a lunch. So that's always really busy time Janine. I got away for a couple days to celebrate some accomplishments in 2020. So I was pretty cool too. So I kept out for like two days and walk around eat some seafood, which is really really cool, but I'm excited now just to get back into my routine ever really really thrive on routine. So I really like I'm training Zone really really. Well. I'm now two weeks into the I'm on a leg specialization. So training legs 3 times per week. And I was really pleasantly surprised around that third day going into the third day last week. I had a little bit of soreness don't like my BMO but after the training session just getting like so much blood in there. I felt better after then when I went in so that's always kind of an interesting perspective how that can happen.

00:03:09  And then I just crushed like a shit ton of rice the rest of the day, as we are walking around an outside a lot of sweating a lot. So that really helped and then I have tomorrow will be that Saturday again and I feel my legs already feel pretty good. So I'm excited about that training is going well we and upside, you know ready for the new year ready to get back to work and keep hammering.

00:03:33  Nice and then one of the things that you got to do during your little getaway trip to was it Isla Mujeres use that superdope leverage squat machine that you love that. Let's U Hammer your quads so well, so why is that machine so good for you? So it's perfect for this conversation. We're going to have It just fits my like leverages or my my levers I should say which is interesting cuz a couple ever squat like perfectly. So the amount of the angle that the footplate is in allows me to get in like a fool, you know, ankle dorsiflexion position without it being like too much like some of the old school hack squats where it will like should limit your range of motion the way that the machine kind of goes over your like trapped under your back allows you to really like lean back into it, which removes that like balancing portion are you can just and you can go you can swing angle, you know, so you get super super

00:04:33  I can keep my entire foot flat on the pad perfectly fine without any weird positioning and it's just like a really good resistance pattern through the entire curve. So it's really no challenging in the bottom and it's still really challenging like seventy 80% of the concentric portion of the movement. So it's I mean, it's great on my joint everything about it. I love so I was super super pumped to find it in this little black hole in the wall gym on an island and we actually we're going to head down to Tulum in like the last weekend of the month. We have a couple really big work weekends. We can't do anything for and I understand one there too. And it's like something another little hole-in-the-wall jam and they I guess they just it's like one of the things that they just put them in the gym see when people create gems, which is very cool.

00:05:19  Very cool. Do you feel like it's similar it to a pendulum squat machine. It is very very similar. It's a little bit more the pendulum squat kind of pushes you more back to visit like as opposed to like up so that the curve is a little bit different the pendulum squat requires a more more equipment space, you know, it's a little bit longer. This one is a little bit more compact, but it's a very very similar stimulus but not quite 100% as like the other pendulum.

00:05:52  Copia nice for that mean up. Awesome. I obviously started looking at leverage squat machines after you sent me that and I found a few for under $1,000. So maybe I'll try and like an iguana Jim and Chris is $1,000. Same thing. It's not that big. It's like seems kind of reasonable to have in a home gym, and I wanted to see what the price was. My cats are pretty decent deal. The size is really a huge factor to like the hack press machine I have is Compact and a pendulum squat is huge. But this thinks it's more vertically. So I think that you know, they're there is a possibility that it did it could fit at some point you what's really cool. Is that going to come to lead us right into our first kind of body part that you're talking about with this episode today. So Brian tell us a little bit more about like quadriceps and then any kind of specific move.

00:06:52  Haven't you really like for it or movements that you like to Target your quads? I think what's important to provide with the context of this podcast is we are talking primarily about hypertrophy unless we will kind of save for a strength pattern or the power output pattern. But in terms of the majority of this conversation will be in regards to hypertrophy.

00:07:15  For sure yet and then with the context of hypertrophy, I think.

00:07:19  Dr. Ezra tells stimulus to fatigue ratios and important thing to keep in mind because that that is something that I think is intuitive for most people that focus on physique and that you kind of just know that you're not supposed to choose movement that destroy your body and you know that you're supposed to pay a little bit more attention to the way that your muscles are feeling through the movement. So I think even intuitively if you don't have a stimulus speed ratio specifically you make decisions in your programming or you should be making decisions in your programming partially based off of movements that are providing a stimulus to the Target muscle and not to the muscles that you're not targeting kind of just wasting energy at that point or recovery resources. So with that in mind any squat pattern movement is going to involve both knee extension and hip extension to think about when you sit down and do a squat

00:08:13  Your knees Bend and then you're also folding over slightly at the Torso and your hips going to bend as well. Even if you keep a maintain a perfectly erect torso position it still changes your hip angle. So that's important to keep in mind here that when you squat you cannot avoid the combination of both hip extension and knee extension the degree by which a movement prioritises. The quads is going to be how much the movement biases knee extension vs. Hip extension. So if you can picture in your mind, what a low bar squat would look like in general format when practiced, you know by powerlifters, you see them kind of fold in half at the hip and really created minimal knee extension as necessary to get them to parallel, which is the requirement for them to then turn around and come back up and call it a good rap.

00:09:03  In that type of squat, they're purposefully trying to take the quad out of the movement because the quad is significantly weaker than the force that your glutes and your rector's can put into the movement. So

00:09:18  intern a bodybuilder or a physique athlete would want to do the exact opposite of that. What they would want to do is take this movement and bias it for the quad because this then require you to use less weight.

00:09:32  Which in turn means that you can get more more similar to the quad with less debt cause into recovery. So I kind of like a basic background on contacts. That's what we're looking at. When we're talking about quad hypertrophy specifically the ways that we can kind of go to increase knee flexion and decrease hip extension is number one elevating the heels. So this in itself is not magic. You can still mess a squad up and lean too far forward at the Torso with the heel elevation does is it increases the ability of your ankles to flex forward to create ankle dorsiflexion this then allows the quad to stretch. However, I've seen this butchered so many times right? So there's something that happens when you descend down into a squat if the priority is quads and it's not just a matter of taking the rep from top position.

00:10:32  To the bottom of the squat and then coming back up again. You actively want to try and feel your quad stretching as you descend. This requires you to do it in a very controlled manner. You're not just dropping your butt down. You're actively trying to send the knees forward so that as the knees drive forward over the toes you feel this immense stretch occur in your quad and when you get to the bottom of the movement, you're not just sitting there with no tension just to be like, okay, I hit the bottom of the movement. Let's turn around and come back up. You're actually feeling that stretching gauge so deep in the bottom of a squat that when you change direction and turn back around the quad is just like a dripping in pain and this takes practice over many years to be able to get this this feeling of building this tension in your quad as you descend to feel it increasing the stretching deeper and deeper. So kind of the kick this

00:11:32  To you real quick. And then I have more to say on the quad topic but talk a little bit about kind of your experience with with this positioning and the things that helped you so for me, it's been a sweep goal-driven, right? So I kind of got another Point through Justino lifting and you know my career I guess and in the weight room where I become a very very top if you see the amount of muscle that I had on my upper body like was orders of magnitude more than my lower body and I had always, you know at some point in my lifting career when I was younger I bought into that kind of ego thing is all you need is heavy squats like squat heavy often in that's what you need. So I did that a lot but I think it's it's really interesting because I'm sure you've kind of felt that same way we have similar levers and in nobody sizes. I'm not built to squat very well very very long femur. And even though I have a good ankle dorsiflexion my

00:12:32  I could so much stronger than my quads it would always take over. So when I hit the bottom of that squat, the first thing would happen is my hips my hips would shift back put me in a more mechanically advantageous position for me to move a Capri weight. So even though I did all this like my back would get stronger, you know what I mean? But my legs would never really grow and then whenever we do like Heather higher reps, my back would get smoke in my glutes will be on fire but I never have that like that feeling of like a custom aeolus in my closet. My legs would never get that pump because I just wasn't putting myself in a good position for that to occur. So as I kind of like moved in thin really got serious about My Hero Squad goals. I kind of left that yo of located all I need to do a squat because I did that for years and I never really produced any kind of fruits of the labor from it and moved into more of like a bodybuilding style. So I would start you know using like the leg press or the Smith machine squat so I can put myself in a position where my back would be kind of rigid.

00:13:32  So I couldn't you know overpower the movement with my back because the machine or whatever will hold you in that position and that something's really started to change and I quickly found out like how we know untrained I guess it to a certain degree of my quads were because they could just like tap out really really faster. They it would the that that that buildup of that burning feeling would really kind of hit quickly and it was just but at the same time I would from they're finally starting to grow. So I think what was really really important fighting positions that allowed me to like get to that full range of motion in a position where my knees were felt really safe and comfortable and I wasn't like letting the machine, you know, put me in a weird spot where I was putting all that twisting kind of force on my knee or anything like that and moving through a full range of motion keeping my foot completely flat weather that's on the ground be the plate on the leg, press to the hack squat or something like that and then things really really started the change by, you know, using equipment that would

00:14:32  Kind of force me to not let my back over power the movement and let my legs and quads do the work and it's been it sucks. You know, they're hard those days are really really hard, you know pushing quads for heavier higher reps, but the stimulus is there. I'm getting like that really really good quad pump and hamstring pump in the Target muscles in them. Finally, you know starting to produce Republic Returns on that process.

00:14:58  Call fairy quotes. I think the biggest kind of.

00:15:05  Response I get from people at least people, you know, that that aren't experience with this type of squat tends to be that. Oh, well, if your knees are going that far forward isn't just going to be really bad on your knees. And I think that the first thing to say is that if you have knee problems, you probably won't get those fixed before you put your knees in this position. But after that, I think that once you figure out how to load the muscle 3 that position and not the joint that it really is it's it's no it's no worse for you than squatting any other way. And in fact, I would say that the fact that you learn how to load the muscle is going to benefit your knees in the long term because you finally figured out how to take that stress off the joints and put it into the muscles in being able to feel a muscle stretch and lengthen as you lower is really the first step. So people always you know that they Rush The Eccentric always whether it's quiet there been threats or any movement people Rush The Eccentric and then they just try to get the way back.

00:16:05  But if you just drop the weight and you don't actually build tension in the muscle as you're lowering the way down then he's putting a lot of that tension on to the joint and causing stress their versus loading the muscle where the muscle can then change direction use that stretch and come back up with tons and tons of tension. So one little caveat there but I did ditional topic kind of regarding quad training is a single leg movements and there's definitely a very obvious and easy way to bias the glute or the quad in single leg movements. So the first I think it's super simple and that if you want the quad you create ankle dorsiflexion, so your knee goes forward it very much emulating the exact same position that we're talking about in the squad or the slot machines or anything like that where the knee gets sent super far forward over the toes.

00:17:03  Another thing that helps that is a slightly shorter stance. So when you're doing a single leg movement, if you're a little bit shorter, it allows you to leverage over the knee a little bit more effectively in contrast. If you're looking for more of a glute specific single leg movement, then you want to make sure that front Shin is going to be vertical. So keep that nice stacked over the ankle. Don't let any ankle dorsiflexion occur. Make sure that all of your pressure is pushing through the heel and specifically the outside of the heel that aligns directly with the outside of the glute your stance should be a bit wider or longer rather wider and maybe definitely longer possibly wider because the point of the movement is to stretch the glute at the bottom. It is the complete antithesis of what we're trying to do when we're doing quad work right at the bottom of the rap instead of thinking about sending the knee forward and feeling the Deep stretch in the quad. We want to send the Torso forward and feel it deep stretch in the glutes and then when we

00:18:03  Back up out of the bottom detention is coming through the heel which is going to drive directly into the glute. So just kind of some some interesting tidbits there and then finally final thoughts here on quad movements is a lot when

00:18:23  shelter-in-place started in March when all this covid-19

00:18:28  one of the biggest problems that physique athletes were having is how do we hit the quad specifically in absence of hip extension. So this is going back to the beginning of our discussion about how Everytime You squat there is hip extension and knee extension. How do we create knee extension without hip extension in a gym? It's really easy because we have a leg extension machine. We just been to the nearest flex we band reflex in the quad gets worked. The reason this is necessary. Like why can't we just squat all the time? Right cuz squats do work all portions of the Quad the difference. Is that a isolation quad movement where you're creating the extension without hip extension is going to better Target the rectus femoris and movement that extends the hip and the need to gather it spans both joints and it won't allow as much specific rectus for Morris Focus. So when quarantine started here ever and was struggling to figure

00:19:28  Ways to take a train isolation style quad movements and we found five pretty solid variations Thursday a banded leg extension. So you'll just be sitting on a on a bench with a band connected under the bench and you can do leg extensions. This way bands have their their drawbacks. So that isn't my favorite movement. Mostly that there's no tension at the bottom of the movement. Where did it decreases tension significantly at the bottom of the movement. There's an inverted leg extensions is actually a pretty cool movement where you're almost in a plank position with your feet elevated on a riser like the bench and you're creating a leg extension movement like that. You can totally Google that to get an image there and then you cannot dance to that and make it harder.

00:20:13  A dumbbell leg extension not my favorite movement. I think it's really awkward to get into the dumbbell and secure it on your feet. And I feel like you spend as much time bracing and trying to hold that dumbbell in steady position as you are trying to actually move your legs and I think that it's just create a pretty shity stimulus of Tigre show the body weight leg extension or the reverse Nordic was my Jam at the beginning of a quarantine here. If you haven't seen this movement, you essentially start kneeling on the ground with your torso completely straight up and down and you lean back with the objective of trying to stretch the quad and get your butt to touch your your your heels the caveat there is that your torso has to remain in a completely straight line with your hip or with your legs creating a completely straight and open hip angle. These are significantly harder than you think so they can be assisted with bands and with a pole or with using your hand.

00:21:13  You can use your hand to kind of hold a wall or something like that and kind of provide assistance there. The band assistance is probably my favorite so you can Google all these things too. And then finally the sissy squat variations are really legit. So these kind of creepy exact same idea, but you're starting standing you get on your toes and then you try to drive your knees toward the ground. This has the same contacts has the body weight leg extensions where you need to remain in a completely open-angle. So I don't want to spend too much time there. But you know, these are some at-home variations in ways that you can prioritize your quad in absence of hip extension and if total quad hypertrophy is your goal at least in the long-term then including these movements is going to be important.

00:22:06  If you're just at home for three weeks and you're waiting for Jim to open back up. I don't think it's a huge deal. If you just squatted in two different kind of squat variation movements. But anyway, just kind of some food for thought in case you are working at home and don't have a lady sentient machine. So anyway, I can get back to you about a couple things for people who might not have their Anatomy kapu dump at the rectus femoris. Can you give us kind of a low-level explanation of which muscle that is in the quad?

00:22:33  Yes, that's going to be the the big one that runs from the knee up and toward the hip. Yeah, there's an outside right in the middle on the inside.

00:22:44  I believe it's the middle. That's what I thought. You liked that the mean one like right in the top. Yeah, the main one that runs through the middle in so you'll just get a little bit more of a stimulus by being able to create an extension in absence of hip extension are one thing I wanted to add then you were talking about right before we got into the single leg movements, especially with the kind of the knees going over the toes of theirs.

00:23:08  Like an age-old, you know wives tale about it being bad for your knees and you're going to create problems, you know going full range of motion of the Bride a little personal inside there. So back in like 20 2016. I ruptured my patella tendon and had to have that surgically repaired and was a big concern about like that. Am I going to be able to like what's the quality of its going to be you know, cuz it bothered me for so long before that. It feels brand new, you know, and I'm not super young anymore. I will be turning 33 in a couple weeks and my left knee is As Good As It Ever Was and I think a big for a brief Epona that reason why is because I kind of moved away from Mike, you know squatting for power and force output and stuff and sit and moved into more hypertrophy. I'm always using as much range of motion as I can and keeping my foot flat on the ground and then using kind of different tools and elevating my heels or something like that to help me get in that full range of motion in always, you know, moving my trying to get my hamstring to cut to touch my calf.

00:24:08  On any kind of movement or the the machine or whatever equipment I'm using all will allow me that death and it feels great. I mean, it feels better than they had any other through the years leading up to when I did have that injury. So I think it's again it's that's all really relative to how you recover and the the kind of loads in the quality of the loads intention you put on your joints and muscles. So it's not like it's just it's been proven, you know the incorrect time overtime, but it's one of those things that kind of refuses to die a little bit.

00:24:40  Yeah, for sure. And then the other thing you've you alluded to is just that you know, when you spot in this manner, you don't need as much weight and I think that that was a huge factor. I know it was for me and I think it was for you in that he kind of took you go out of squatting for me a little bit and hip hinges and squatting or two movements that I always have had you go kind of attached to and I completely changing the way in which we Squat and understanding that's why I'm this way is going to require less wait to get the stimulus that we're after they really made that whole process of kind of transitioning to that spot Style.

00:25:19  A friendlier more effective and just you know, it isn't as much stress on your joints when the way is lower. So instead of putting yourself in these positions to maximize loading, you're putting yourself in positions to maximize muscular stimulus, which in fact is going to take stress off the joints. So just kind of reiterate that

00:25:41  Let's move in hamstrings next a little bit. So you want to give us a little bit of an overview on this one?

00:25:48  Yeah, totally. So hamstrings really have two types of movements that will Target them. You have your hip hinges. These are your good mornings or stiff-legged deadlifts your deadlifts, I guess but we don't really dead let the whole time seamless fatigue ratio stuff. So stiff leg deadlift already all variations needs to be done single leg double leg good mornings, and then you have your isolation hamstring movements. So you have your leg curls and a leg curls like there's so many different variations of leg curls. You can do them seated you can do them lying you can do them knowing that they have these cool machine where you put your knee up against the pad and then your other leg is hanging off and you can crawl that way. You can do them with a cable where the the ankle cuff is on your leg and you're pretty much just standing against the cable machine and flexing backwards leaving your your quad stable and only flexing from the back of the knee. So

00:26:48  A lot of different kind of variations of leg curls that you can Institute into the program, but you know, it's really simple in that your hamstring training really should just have a dedicated hip hinge movement something for the hip hinge and then something isolation for the leg curl. And if you have those mm movements in your program your covering all the bases that you need for hamstring development kind of getting into hip hinges specifically to focus on that.

00:27:20  It's been a couple years that I've really been focusing on hip hinges in the amount of care that I put into my technique has increased probably every month. It's like every month or two I I get to away and I'm like, I'm not sure that I'm performing that's how I want and I'll have to like review video and go back and you know really be honest with myself and and hold myself accountable to perfect movement and then I'll lower the weight 10 or 15% and I'll refine form again and then I'll lower it another 10 to 15% refined form. And this isn't the way that I necessarily think that you should approach this. I think that the better way if I would have known better, we just have been that I should have chosen a much lighter weight to begin with and hold myself accountable and never increased wait until I was so happy with the movement.

00:28:14  That there was no other option, but to increase weight this is kind of how I describe Progressive overload to is that you're not forcing progression where you shouldn't be forcing progression every week like especially with a hip hinge if I try to just go every week. I'm in at 5 or 10 lb eventually, I'm just going to be pulling the movie with my back and my hamstrings are going to be doing anything. So I think that Progressive overload needs to be thought of as a necessity or else the way it is too easy. So if I started my rtl's at 275 + 4 tens and then one week maybe five weeks later. I was like, oh man this to 75 by 10 is way too easy. It's not really providing a challenge anymore. I better go had some weight to this movement and then I stick with that way for a while and then that becomes too easy and then I had to wait again. So it's a more reactive way of loading movements instead of a proactive way and I really think with all movements you can get in trouble with proactive Progressive overload, but especially with hip hinges you can so that's kind of been my biggest blessing.

00:29:13  These and you know back flexion in a hip hinge back flexion is essentially the rounding of the back. I don't do it terribly. I would say the degree of back flexion that I have when I do hip hinges is maybe 3 to 5% and it's for the end of the set but I don't want any back flexion. So it's difficult for me at times because I even struggle to understand what proximity to failure is with a hip hinge and I know this is something other people have struggled with to self to expand on that what I mean is that

00:29:52  If I was deadlifting in the CrossFit days and functional fitness days failure in a deadlift is literally the inability to lift the weight off the ground without tearing your back or at least, you know, excessive rounding to the point where you can feel in your life. That was too much.

00:30:10  even in a stiff-legged deadlift

00:30:13  It's really easy to continue feeling your hamstrings, but also feel your back and if the example this would be like say I'm doing a set of 8, I might have perfect flatback neutral spine for wraps 1 through 5 and then wrap six. I get like a degree of back flexion, but I'm like, you know, I still feel my hamstrings really hard. So then the next rep it's like two or three degrees of back flexion, but I still feel my hamstrings, you know, and then it's like five degrees of flexion. And at what point is it that the back flexion is too much and suddenly you can't do it anymore because the truth is I could be in 5% for five years the back left him and then I could do another rap and being 7 degrees and then another rapping to be in 9° in another app and being 12 degrees and my back is just continually taking more of the load. My hamstrings are still taking some of the load to the back of taking incrementally more.

00:31:03  And I could just keep doing that. So where exactly is failure and that's I think I still haven't mastered this but I think knowledge and awareness around this is really important for me. So I film every single set of every hip hinge that I do especially the heavy sets and I literally sit there and I analyze my movement and I make sure that when the bar is stopped at the ground or below my knee that the first thing that moves is that my chest Rises that we don't see my back go like this and then my chest rise, but that were in this position and then the chest Rises, right? So anyways, whether just kind of random thoughts that I have on hip hinging but I think they're things that that everybody deals with so any bad love your thoughts on that and then I want to Circle back and talk about like royalty. So I agreed the

00:31:54  And I ran through the same issues, you know who you just covered with, you know kind of when ego and putting more weight on the bar was kind of the same like hip hinging especially in like an RDL right or a stiff-legged deadlift is rdls Romanian deadlift for anyone who's not familiar.

00:32:12  It's easy for that to happen in so some things that I have done over time to make that a little bit different is when I now I don't do as much are DLC or if I am doing them it is I'll be like a single leg with like my rear foot support or something like that, which makes it much much easier to be more hamstring or glute dominant. And then if I'm like a standard RDL or stiff leg deadlift, I use a snatch grip which makes it harder in that regard to do have to use that lighter weight and I've really just spend time like finding the movement really really well and figuring out okay this bar Tap is going to work best for me my arm length because all these things are going to be these little kind of nuance changes that will make things either more appropriate or less appropriate given, you know, the context of an individual in there any kind of anatomical position. So for me like just being able to finally okay if I put my feet at this angle and maybe I I move my toes out a little bit I can get

00:33:12  Philip murrin like that kind of hamstring a doctor area and that's going to give me a really really good stimulus and just kind of playing around and searching for this position gives me really really like the best and personally, I really like the stiff leg deadlifts because you can kind of find that position before you pull the weight off the ground. So like you can set up your tension feel it in your hamstrings and then go from there and then if you know what I know, I kind of lose my my my set or I hit my technical failure when I lose it trying to pull it off the ground, right? So when I'm like I kind of the way to snow on the ground I find that position and if the first thing that happens is I lose the position as a try and lift the weight. I know that I've lost technical iFit technical failure. So that is kind of my thought there one movement that I did kind of want to bring up before we get into straight hamstring curls is the

00:34:09  The GTA cars phrases. So this is something that you're going to be able to find more, you know, obviously much more common than to CrossFit or functional fitness style gym and less so in like a like a traditional Global gym, but I would save all movements for hamstrings. These are probably my favorite. It's a very interesting combination where you do get a little bit of you have like an isometric type hip hinge position, but then you get that curl as well. They're very very challenging, but I really really do like them.

00:34:45  I'm curious to your thoughts there.

00:34:48  Yeah, I like them too. I don't have a machine. So I've been having to to modify with nordics which are basically the same idea but you kind of wedge your feet underneath a barbell for anyone that doesn't know you have a barbell in the ground. It's loaded really heavy you wager your feet under and then you had a lower your body and lift your body from the ground really really hard. I actually much for the ghr because I feel like you can drive your knees into the paddle a little bit and it provides a little bit of bracing which makes the movement quite a little bit less drastic maybe Nordic Sword Art off.

00:35:27  I struggle with movements that require a ton of set up. I've realize that about myself over the last like you're too is that if movements require like five or ten minutes of set up in a bunch of like plates carrying and stuff like that on Mike find me something else to do cuz that shit is so time-consuming. But no, I love the ghr. I think the cool thing about the ghr to is that it's not an isolation leg curl movement and it's also not appear hip extension movement. So it's kind of got a little bit of components of both which is which is pretty young.

00:35:59  And you'll get really really sore from doing like two sets of 5 can't do much volume. It's it's just that challenging a movement.

00:36:08  So real quick on leg curls there was a recent study that just came out. I think it was October 2020. It looks like sumiyaki and colleagues and they compared a seated leg curl to a lying leg curl and found that the seated leg curl was more effective because it allows the stretch at the top and this fits in line with a lot of other science that talks about even aside from the contracted position it there is benefit to hypertrophy in the stress position. So this is super cool. Right like you can think about this in relation to a dumbbell fly to is like if you do your dumbbell fly and you stop that thing shy of stretch than you're actually missing out on potential hypertrophy stimulus. So I believe that this was why they found what did they believe that this is why they the other the seated leg curl is more effective than the lying leg curl men in the last thing to touch on regarding leg curls.

00:37:08  Is that you can really butcher this Movement by trying to explode up to begin the contraction if you explode too hard and engages the calf. So the gastrocnemius which is the the big calf muscle it is active for about the first 30% of the range of motion of a leg curl. It might be less in the seated leg curl, but I know it's about 30% of the movement for lying leg curl. And so if you dynamically explode up out of the bottom of that leg curl, your calf will contribute to the movement. So you want to be a little bit more controlled and I found it really helps if you flex your foot down so put down like this instead of basically pointing your toes to your shin so that you're creating a lengthen calf position before you leg curl David and I can help take their propensity to use the cap out of the moving equation. So just just to make sure I understand it. So you're saying if you were to like Point your toes down like towards the floor.

00:38:08  It can you can help your hamster in a little bit with your calf. But then if you would to say pull your toes back towards your shin that will remove the calf from the movement.

00:38:19  Yeah, exactly. So if you put the cap into a pre stretched position and you don't let it Flex then it will isolate the hamstring more. Where is if you put the calf into a flex position or if you allow yourself to move from stretch position to flex position mid rep. Then you're going to engage the calf interesting by nature always have my toes kind of pulled back towards my shins whenever I'm doing hamstring curls seated or lying. So interesting. I think it's pretty intuitive if you if you've done it for a while.

00:38:57  4in if you have access to like a traditional Jam, right most people are going to use the I feel like it's more historically people use the lying hamstring curl as opposed to the seated. I have always had a preference for two seated and I think I just kind of maybe got lucky there but I could just feel it so much better. If you like such a more full range of range of motion and it's something I saw. I think I think you posted this movie on Instagram a week or two ago about if you lean forward, it will even increase like the like the full contraction amount of a full contraction you can get in it makes the movement like order. What am I in a good way and I really I just always had that propensity to lean forward in them. And it's so much better than if I was to likes it all the way back into the chair and keep my torso is upright as possible that the seated leg curls especially if you kind of slow down The Eccentric, you know, and kind of dauntless Let It Slam back up to its to the extension date. I mean it is it

00:39:57  Find credible I mean it like in the most negative term is incredible in your hamstring. It feels awful when you get off.

00:40:06  Yeah, for sure. The I agree. I mean it's terrible. I find myself grunting in the basement so much that sometimes Kim coming out. She's like are you okay if it's going on but yeah, so bleeding forward gifttree stretches the hamstring. So it's like the old sit and reach test that you would do Indian School where you would sit and reach your toes, right you're leaning forward and it's free stretching the hamstring. So what you're allowing by leaning forward you're allowing your hamstring to achieve a deeper and more tension producing stretch at the at the end range of the movement.

00:40:40  I agree. Let's that quickly talk about Cassie. I know since it's a smaller muscle group. There isn't like as much detail and he wants to go into but I think it's important to cover cuz we both have strong feelings about certain parts of it.

00:40:52  Yeah, for sure. So I think the biggest thing that I've learned in that kind of has come out in the industry in the last couple years has just been the importance of the stretch position in a cap rates and it makes sense intuitively. So when you think about it, we walk all day on our caps like all day long were flexing are calves. We're walking on their toes by father. They're extending their flexing. It's the one thing that we never do in our life is actually take the calf into a contracted position from a deep stretch position. So the way that I have begun doing calf raises in prescribing calf raises is with a 223 second stretch position pause and this isn't just a comfortable stretch. This is like literally stretch your calves as low as you possibly can at the bottom of every rep loaded so you can think about this by extending on the edge of a stair with one leg and your other leg is is not providing any assistance.

00:41:52  Just take that calf with your toes on the edge of the stair take it all the way down to his deep of a stretches. You can handle and hold it there for two to three seconds and then explode up into a contraction.

00:42:06  And hold that contraction at the top for 1 to 2 seconds. And then every single rap is about a 6-second rap because you have about 3 seconds at the bottom exploding off and then a 2-second pause at the Top If you can do that and hold it down Bell in your hand in the hand of the working leg then use the other hand kind of for support on the railway or a wall or something like that. That is just absolutely wretched and you don't need to do a ton of wraps because because the refs are so long as 6 second trap, right you do a traps are already under tension for 48 seconds. So so I'd like the, you know 8 to 10 rep range for those and man you don't need a lot of weight at all have found it with really focusing on it. I can do a set of 10 with each leg and literally have my calf cramping up. I can also do it with weight but much less weight than if I'm just kind of going through raps fast and you know, not even fast but like, you know a controlled Tempo without pausing at the top or the bottom, you know, I can do a 78

00:43:06  Dumbbell for those with the pause at the top and the bottom 628 quality raps with a 50 pound dumbbell in my hand is more than enough. So yeah, that's my jam when it comes to Cavs. What about you? Angry? One thing I wanted to ask you about quick is like what do you think about the like straining your cats from a seated position? Like there's that, you know, what that traditional seated calf raise Machine versus like a different thing like but you said standing off the top of the stair or somewhere where your legs are completely straight over your knee is not then I guess I should say

00:43:39  Yeah, I mean you need both. So the standing one is going to train almost exclusively the gastrocnemius gastroc, which is the big muscle that runs up the calf and you will get a little bit of Soleus when you do that, which is the lower calf muscle but when you bend the knee like a seated calf raise you get the you get almost exclusively Soleus with a little bit of gas truck. So I think very much like the quad conversation with the importance of having isolated knee extension movements.

00:44:13  It's similar in the calf in that you can probably get some decent calf development just doing standing calf raise variations, but if you really want, you know, the last two three four percent development in your calves and get it all out there. You got to do a seated radiation to interesting take yeah, I'd personally really do not like anything where my knee is bent with it with the with the calf training. It just puts me in a weird but it feels like a confined position or I'm not moving freely. Right? And I think one of those things a cap is what Capital One of those things like a lot of people don't even try them to begin with I think you do have to have to draw your Line in the Sand and Sea. Okay. Do I really want that extra 3% Like if you're not competing or something like that, you know my take is I if I don't like it if it puts me in a weird position where I don't feel like completely safe or if he was ever really natural type thing. I'm not going to do it. But you know, what's with everyone that's going to you're the only one to make that decision for yourself.

00:45:13  But I really like your Tri the tried to seated one single leg cuz I think it does kind of put you in an awkward position when you have both legs, but crammed in there in that pad is on on top of your legs, but if you can kind of turn your body to a more comfortable position and do them single leg, you might find that that works for using perspective or the quads the hamstrings and the Cavs come back next week when we are going to talk about all things everybody. Thank you so much for listening to eat train Prosper. If you found this episode. Evil, Please Subscribe for shares with your friends, you can find more from Aaron at straker nutrition co.com and more from Brian at evolved Training Systems. Com. Talk to you guys next time.