The Jordan Syatt Podcast

COACH vs. COACH DEBATE: Is Mobility Training a Waste of Time?

In this episode of the Jordan Syatt Mini Podcast I have a friendly debate with my dear friend and extraordinary coach, Jordan Lips (IG: @jordanlipsfitness), about mobility. Specifically, we debate whether or not training for mobility is necessary, important, or even helpful?

I hope you enjoy this episode and, if you do, please leave a review on iTunes (huge thank you to everyone who has written one so far).

Finally, if you've been thinking about joining The Inner Circle but haven't yet... we have hundreds of home and bodyweight workouts for you and you can get them all HERE: https://www.sfinnercircle.com/

-J

Duration:: 1h 11m
Broadcast on:: 12 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: aac

- What's up, dude? - Oh, what's up, Jordan Lips, we're live, brother. How are you, man? - Oh, what's going on? I didn't know we were already live. At things are good, man. How are you doing? - We're live, we're recording. I don't like doing the talking and then recording. You miss so much good stuff. How are you? - Yeah, true, that's fair. I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. I mean, you know, normal new dad life stuff, yeah. - How's the baby? She's doing well? - She's good, you know, we are transitioning out of the swaddle and so, yeah, she went from being a plus sleeper to just absolutely fucking hate sleeping. And so last night, we just literally did not sleep one minute 'cause she's in like, she has her arms out now. So she's like, all hyped up. She's like, oh, sick, I can like disco dance all night. Just she would like rock her to sleep and then put her down like one minute later. She's like ready to roll again. And so it's all good, it's just part of it, I guess. - It's devastatingly tough. How old is she now? - She's 14 weeks. - 14 weeks, man, that's crazy. - Yeah, three and a half months. - Yeah. - Yeah, man. - I don't want to be there. I don't know how long you do like the weeks thing. Like how is she like 118 weeks at some point, you know? You gotta like, we have to break it down into months. So yeah. - I stopped doing that at, I think I stopped doing that around like two months. I was like, I just, I can't be doing the weeks thing anymore. I was like, I'm just gonna go months. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Some people are like, yeah, yeah. All right, so here's the deal. Oh, you know what? First of all, I'll say this. If anyone doesn't know who Jordan is, and I know this is confusing 'cause we're both named Jordan, Jordan, can you just tell people where they can follow you? - Sure, Instagram is a good spot. I also have a podcast where Optum needs practical shameless hat plug going on right now. You can't see it, but-- - Oh, I was wondering what that was. Womp, got it, okay. - Yeah, so Instagram is a good spot. Shoot me DM if you want to connect. I got all links to it. - What's your Instagram? - Jordan Luke's fitness. - All right, I will put that in the show notes. Jordan's awesome. Him and I are very good friends. The whole reason we're having this podcast, so yesterday I do a live Q&A in my inner circle every week, every Monday through PM Eastern. And there's a member who's there basically every week. His awesome, his name is Stephen. Stephen, if you're listening, you're the best. I freaking love you. And one of the things I love about Stephen is he not only is he there every week, but he asks really great questions. Very insightful questions. So he asked a question, I'm just gonna read it. Stephen wrote in yesterday's live Q&A. He said, "Would you consider having Jordan lips on your podcast to have a friendly debate discussion about mobility training? Generally, I've seen his stance as, quote, "You get enough mobility just by getting a good range of motion through traditional weightlifting," end quote. And more or less, it's fairly low ROI and not necessarily worth the time. I saw that, I thought it was a wonderful question. I don't think that he knew you and I were friends, but I was like, "Yeah, absolutely." So I shot you a text with that picture. I was like, "You wanna come on?" You're like, "A hundred percent, man, let's do it." Before we get into the discussion around mobility, do you just wanna tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do and your area of expertise in the industry? And I'll look at that. - Yeah, sure, we'll keep it light. I'm working with people one-on-one on a wide range of health-related goals. I do the coaching thing. I'm a certified M&U nutritionist. I am certified in biomechanics and anatomy and all that fancy shit to help you lift weights and do it without getting hurt and build muscle and get stronger. Used to be super passionate about getting as jacked as possible, now a slightly more passionate about how to be relatively fit and not get winded up, winded going up the stairs in as little time as possible. So more on the efficiency side of things. I have a group coaching program, which is like more of a cheaper option, which is like my bread and butter, my baby right now, absolutely love doing it. That is geared around training for muscle growth and strength, but with an air to being efficient, spending is a little time in the gym or at least no longer than you'd have to to get really solid results. Actually, really liked, that's a decent segue to what Stephen said about the ROI side of things. Like definitely more of where we'll talk about today is like, that's where my heart is, I think just from a time efficiency standpoint. And so that really is a thread that runs through everything I do. Makes total sense. Now, I'm glad that you gave that introduction because I would have just immediately went towards muscle growth. That's like, I hear Jordan Lips, I think muscle growth. Is that still a big part of what you do? Is that something you're transitioning away from? 'Cause for so long, I've seen you being one of the leaders in the industry around muscle growth. So it talks me about that. - Yeah, I think that's, I appreciate that in some ways for sure. - And I think I was a, I'm pretty lazy at heart. I know that that's like people, which I, Jordan works hard or whatever. I mean, Jonathan Jordan's like, oh, you work hard. But like, at heart, I will spend, you know, 75% of the time trying to figure out how to do something more efficiently. Or I'd rather get like a B in school and never study than get an A and work, I wasn't that kid. You know, I was trying to find a way to work less hard and get it done. And so what I find pretty cool about learning more about muscle growth is when you find out what the most effective way to do something is, you almost simultaneously figure out how to get both maximal results and, you know, along the line more and more efficient results. So like I care a ton about how to optimize for hypertrophy and build as much muscle as possible and all of this length of position stuff and all this nerdy, like how much of all and even all that care, I care a ton. I care a ton so that I can do as little as possible and get the best results where I feel like a lot of people are like, well, I want to kind of put all these factors together so I can get the absolute greatest gains. And I'm like, yeah, I got 90 minutes a week. So let me, I care a lot about all these amazing optimizing principles, but I care about it in so far as I can use them to spend as little time in the gym. And I, you, I know, worked with Alex or still work with Alex, but I've been working with Alex for the last like 18 months now. And, you know, very cliche in art, you know, right now in the space of hybrid trainings, like the super cool thing, but like, yeah, certainly have the bug. I have, I have asthma, I have had asthma and like completely have the bug of like, I, yeah. Just, I said this on pockets of the day and I know that you have said this once before where like it hit me the other day that like, if I, let's say I have a two a day schedule and I'm like, I'm supposed to do a lift and a zone two or a lift and whatever some other run workout or something, I kind of feel like I'm falling on the side of doing my cardio session as like a priority. And so that's like my own personal passion right now. But, but as far as like what I do on from a business standpoint, my group has some cardio in it, whatever. But I really do, like you said, all right, Jordan's like maybe this muscle building guy, but I certainly am looking at it through a lens of like, you know, I care mostly about these principles. And so far as they let me spend less time in the gym and more time doing other stuff. - Do you think that this is a relatively new revelation or a relatively new approach? Because like maybe I'm completely off base, but for a long time when I saw your content, it was just muscle, muscle, muscle, muscle. So is this like, do you think working with Alex has almost been like a catalyst for you seeing training from a different perspective and wanting to incorporate new things? Maybe having your daughter is another reason why things have changed for you are all these contributing factors to more of like, it seems like you've always been about efficiency, but before it was mainly muscle growth and now it seems to be a little bit more all encompassing. - Yeah, definitely. I think the efficiency was always there. It was always on the lazier side of things. I think there was a point where I just decided I didn't care about being as jacked as humanly possible. I realized that for me personally, there was a little bit more that I cared about in life. And so immediately pivoted to like, you know, instead of getting fascinated with how much muscle I could grow fascinated with how little I could do and still maintain or grow a little bit. And then yeah, I mean, you could probably scroll back and find like the first week I started doing more in dedicated cardio work. And all of a sudden some tones have changed just on how I might speak about it's funny. There's probably also somewhere somebody has asked, somebody to have me on the podcast to pull apart the idea of like, well, you could just lift and not have too much body fat and walk and be perfectly healthy. You don't need to do extra cardio on top of that to be healthy. And in not such an abrupt tone, I probably said something to the effect of that of like, that's covering a ton of bases. And I mostly agree with that still, but I have certainly, I probably wouldn't say that at all now. I'd say, no, I think you are missing a relatively notable sized chunk of not doing cardio as well. And so that's a tone that's certainly changed. And it's almost like an identity crisis because you're right. Like for a long time, I was like hypertrophy, you know, muscle, like I can't even say the word hypertrophy anymore about like sweating a little bit. It's like I just don't necessarily want, I almost feel like that use of that word is like gatekeeping almost for like a person who doesn't even know what that means. It's like, so I definitely looking at it a little bit more holistically, not to like use that word too much, but a little bit more all encompassing, a little bit more overall health. And that could come from being just older. Honestly, there's a cynical part of me that says it could come from just reaching a point of diminishing returns in something and realizing that. - Yes, that yeah, I talked about this in front of mine, Brian Borstein on the podcast. Like I might be like a cereal, a cereal newbie gainer. I really love the idea of like, of like getting really low hanging fruit. And then once I come up against like, you know, I really'd have to stretch to do more to get less. I kind of say, okay, that's cool. I'm not interested in like being the absolute greatest at the biggest, the most muscular, whatever. I got to a point where I was like, if I want to get bigger, not only do I need consistent gaining and cutting cycles, but I need, you know, five, five times a week training, maybe, you know, or at least whatever. I have to go to a place that I don't feel like going. And so maybe that's been like, okay, well, what do I do then? And so that definitely opened the door for this, you know, a slightly more holistic style. - That makes sense. I think you and I are very similar in that we don't necessarily want to be the best of the best of the best in one thing. We want to be very knowledgeable and good enough in many things. And I think you and I both, we love the learning process. Like the process of learning something that you don't know, but you are passionate about, that's addicting. And that's like that when people say enjoy the process, that's actually what they're referring to is that process of learning and going through that trial and error and studying is, it's addicting. So I think you and I are very similar in that front. I also think you're explaining exactly why I've loved hiring new coaches every year for many, many, many years now. Because whatever modality you get involved in, whether it was for you for muscle growth or for me, it was powerlifting early in my career, that's what you think is like, this is the end all be all. And then you try something else and you're like, oh wait, it wasn't the end all be all like, you could do both this and that. And then you try something else. It's like, oh my God, you could do all of them and you're going to get better results than if you do only one of them. And eventually you've tried 10 different things and you can incorporate all 10 of them in a progressive, systematic way where you get the benefits of many different training and nutrition modalities without only saying like, I only need one. Because shocker, if we're searching for balance, we need a little bit more balance throughout our life. Now there are times where you can hyper focus on one or two things if you really want to excel. But generally speaking, a balanced approach tends to be best. So I think you and I are very similar for all those things. Let's get into mobility. All right. Now, do you want me to read Steven's message again so we could go from that or where do you want to take it? - Yeah, well, I could still man my position but I think that that doesn't necessarily matter if we don't define what mobility is. And frankly, I'd actually, I think I will reword what Steven said as a steel man in my own position here. But he's not so far off. So I almost would love to hear more about how you might define mobility and what your experience has been because I think it will bring up some really nice questions. I don't mean to just rebound and just send that question back to you. - Totally fine. - But let's maybe, we don't need like a Webster, Mary Webster definition for mobility but like a little bit about what we might be talking about. And then I'm just, I've obviously been watching what you've been doing and how you've been talking about it. And I can sense that similar, exactly what we were just talking about with like my and your introduction to some cardio stuff. It's the same thing where it's like, oh, I learned a lot more about this, got a little bit of a bug. Maybe I take it to the extreme, come back, find something that I really like and I keep, you know, 80% of it or something. So I'd really love to hear a little bit not to throw it, not to be the interviewer on this podcast here, but just hear a little bit about what your experience with it has been. - The way that I would define it in this very basic sense is a pain free range of movement for your range of motion that you have access to on your own, right? So it's a pain free range of motion that you can achieve on your own, not someone else pushing you into that position, not using a weight to get you into that position. It's what is your pain free range of motion that you can access at any point in time? That's how I would define it. Does that make sense to you? - Yeah, yeah, definitely, sure. - So it's funny, like when I really got more into zone two training, cardio training, just like you were saying, I got the bug for it, I started incorporating it more even like way more into the inner circle, all of that stuff. And I've always included basic mobility work within the inner circle programs and within my programs, very basic, but it wasn't unbelievably comprehensive. It was like just what I consider to be enough. And then I was like, you know what? I've wanted to do the splits for a long time. For a pure, dude, the only reason I want to do the splits is because, or the only reason I started want to do the splits is because I wanted to have a picture of me holding my daughter while I was doing the Jean-Claude van Damme side splits. That's literally it. That's why I started. And then I got obsessed because I was like, oh my God, there's so much that I don't know. And I was like, I thought I understood everything about mobility and I understood all this stuff. It's like, there's, bro, it's wild. Like it's really, really, really cool, especially when you combine it with your strength work and you understand there's so many similarities with it. I think so many people talk about strength training and say, yeah, like even Menno Hensleman's recently put up a post about comparing strength with mobility, there were so many issues with what he posted in the study that he posted. He was basically saying that stretching and strength training. Yeah, yeah, he was saying that stretching and strength training you get the same mobility results. The main issue with the study he posted is it was only using static stretching. And that would be like only use it if someone was comparing strength training to something and they only used one rep max strength training. It's like there are so many other types of strength training and so many different modalities you can use. So then to just say like all stretching is, or all mobility work is just static stretching is a gross misrepresentation and doesn't just doesn't cover it at all. Anyway, I've realized there's so much that I don't know. And I realized that I was actually short changing what people could be achieving. I don't think anybody needs the splits at all. I don't think anybody needs that. That's a very high level of controlled mobility and flexibility that is unnecessary for performance in everyday activities unless you are, I don't know, a stuntman or a gymnast or like you're trying not like you're like regularly jumping over long bridges and you don't want to like get fallen between, right? Either way, it's for most everyday people you don't need that level of flexibility or mobility. But I do think that in the same way that you've learned and I learned through doing cardio that there were things that I was missing out on just by me doing it and learning about it. That's what I realized with mobility. That the little bit that I've been included within the inner circle can be improved and slightly added upon to not only improve people's everyday life just through their mobility but also actually improve their strength and improve their performance and improve their perceived pain that they're having and make life much more accessible in the day to day that I literally didn't even realize. You know when people first start working out and they say something or they first start eating well and they're like, I didn't even realize how bad I felt. All right, like I didn't even know how bad I felt until I started doing this and now they feel so much better, bro, that's exactly what this has been like. And same thing with his own two stuff. Like I didn't realize how much it would bring to my life until I started doing it, which is why, again, why I love hiring coaches and trying something out. So I don't know if that answered your question but that's where I'll leave it. - It's a great point that I will make upfront which is I don't know that experience. I don't have that experience. And so if you're like, hey Jordan, are you somebody who's given a year of your life to dedicated mobility training to try for yourself to see if it would make you feel, I have not done that. So I think I hear what you say and I think, yeah. And I align 100% with the cardio side of things 'cause, you know, again, I didn't realize how much of an impact it would make in my life and it absolutely has. And so if someone's out there like, hey, there's this other thing and it might have that effect. It's like, okay, I shrug my shoulders and say you might be right. My position's probably that it's maybe twofold, maybe severalfold. First, mobility absolutely has benefits. This is not like a, you're doing mobility and it is a waste of time for a zero benefit but it's certainly not the case. My position is that I guess in the air of efficiency and working with the everyday person, it's just a box along a checklist that's low enough that you either might never get to it in the pursuit of overall health or you probably wouldn't spend a lot of time on it. And I just mean like, man, if you're in the fitness space right now, you are overwhelmed with the amount of shit that you're supposed to be doing. You're supposed to be lifting, you're supposed to do your zone too, you got to do your VO2 max intervals now, you got to do your sprinting, you got to be meditating, you got to, there's so many things. And I think that mobility, like let's say, I right now, I train, whatever. Let's say you have three to five hours a week to train. I just think that the vast majority of that time should not be spent on mobility. I'm not saying that you're saying that by the way, correct. But I find it challenging to find a lot of time, not no time, a lot of time to dedicate to that when the state of the country we're in terrible metabolic health, mobility has benefits that we're just like, we're super sick and unhealthy and mobility doesn't check that box directly. It's certainly indirectly there are indirect benefits for sure. And I just think that if I'm saying, all right, you got three to five hours to train a week, I kind of want you hitting those general physical activity guidelines first, which is like at least two days of strength training and 150 minutes of cardio or 75 minutes more vigorous. And I just, I'm curious, I struggle to find somebody who is lifting enough, doing their zone too, doing some sort of higher intensity cardio, walking 10,000 steps. Yeah, let's say doing those four and still has extra time to devote to something. And I think that mobility is in there. And I guess if you were to pause there and say, and on top of that, I do think that you get a percentage of the mobility benefits from doing full range of motion lifting. And I think you could do even better than what most people do, which is incorporating the type of lifting that might not be optimal for hypertrophy, but involves training, but ultimately also help. And mobility, I think a lot of people are stuck on my hip flexors are tight, my shoulders are tight, but it's like, when's the last time you trained, your hip flexor directly, when's the last time you trained your adductors and did a Kossak squat or did the adductor machine or did a Y-raise where you really expose your shoulder to a position that it doesn't get it into and loaded appropriately. So I think you could formulate a resistance training program that checks a high percentage of the mobility box and an additional bunch of other really important boxes, bone density, metabolic health from building more muscle, all that stuff, that I just find it hard to get to the point where I'm like, all right, and now you've done all these things, now let's do some specific mobility and I'll stop, I'll shut up for a second, but- - No, keep going. - That's on a population level. I think on an individual level, there might be somebody who has a specific reason with a specific goal for sport or competition or they have a yield deficiency in an area that's not on average, that's unique to them, that they wanna work on. I think in those contexts, totally fine. But yeah, I guess that's generally where I'm coming from. - Dude, I'm very much with you on that. And what I'll say is, I think one of the, I found it very interesting with mobility. Many people have this idea, literally just got a message today. Someone was really inspired by my splits and they messaged me today being like, I'm gonna start stretching every day, so I can do this. And I was like, why are you gonna start stretching every day? It's like, I would never tell you to do sprints every day, I would never tell you to lift weights every day. For some reason, people have this idea of mobility, it's like, well, you do it every day. And there are some types of mobility training that you can do every day. And it's like, you could do a zone two every day, if you could walk every day if you wanted to, but like, you wouldn't walk out like 20 miles every day. Like there's a limit to this. And what's interesting about mobility is, you can treat it in the same way that you treat training for muscle growth, that you treat training for strength, that you treat training for VO2 max, and there's very efficient ways to do it. And this is something that I didn't understand until I started learning about it, which is it doesn't need to take up much time. And I don't know about you, like I'm a huge fan of super sets. I do a lot of super sets within the inner circle. And a simple way that I've been incorporating more mobility work into the inner circle workouts has just been, here's a strength exercise. And here's a mobility exercise. And this mobility exercise might actually help you increase your range in this specific strength exercise we're doing, which could lead to not only better results strength wise, but also better mobility, because with the increased range, you're getting stronger with that increased range, you can now access. So it's one of those things where you could either be doing a super set for a different muscle group, or you could be taking a rest period and not doing anything, or you could do a mobility exercise in this timeframe, that's actually gonna have dramatic improvements for you. And again, this is on a population level, there are individuals who might need something different, but what I've realized is, if you treat mobility training in the same way you treat strength training from an efficiency perspective, you can do both and actually spend, mobility training doesn't even need that much time, you can actually do it in less, but you can do both and accomplish both within the same workout without, actually without adding any extra time relative to it. 'Cause if you're gonna rest for three minutes anyway between sets, you've got a minute and a half to be doing some type of mobility work that isn't just sitting there doing a static stretch. So it's actually, that's been one of the coolest parts because I still do my standard strength training. And I have my own mobility sessions as well because I'm trying to achieve a very high level of mobility, but in the stuff that I program for everyday general population people, it doesn't take any extra time. And that's where I've been very happy and surprised with it. - Yeah, if we're pitching a free lunch here, men, if we're pitching, we're gonna do some mobility, it's not gonna cost you any extra time. You already admitted that there is a net to benefit, then yeah, I'm on board with that, I'm cool with that. I think just, yeah, I'm totally out, if you're like, hey, we're gonna do bicep curls and we're gonna do a mobility exercise, it's like totally non-impeding. And then like you said, even potentiating, it's like, hey, we're gonna do squats and then we might do a hip opening drill and then come back to squats and maybe you get a little deeper, you just feels a little bit better and cool, it improves your experience of doing the squats or even particularly strength and muscle growth and being able to get deeper, cool. I'm on board with that, I'm not against that. I do like that you, like, when I think of that, I think of, but please, before doing that, make sure, you know, if you're interested in improving your ankle and mobility, make sure you're doing full range of motion calf raises with a really, really deep stretch. Train your tibialis, do some tib raises, you know? If you're looking for, my hips are tight, like, train the functions of the hip gets stronger there and expose those hip muscles to a large range of motion. Train a very, very lengthened psoas or your hip flex or whatever, train a really lengthened adductor. If you're looking for, like, oh, my lower back feels tight or, you know, whatever, I don't, I'm not poo pooing people who say that, but sometimes they're like nebulous feelings of like, I'm not really sure what I'm feeling. Like, do, I'd wanna see people, again, whenever you're exposing muscles to like something new with, meet yourself where you're at in terms of load management, all that, like, don't jump into Jefferson Curls with your, like, PR, RDL. Like, I'd rather, if today's conversation gets people to either incorporate some mobility in a way that doesn't take away from what I would say is maybe more fruitful minutes spent, maybe lifting. Again, if you're, if you're like, I'm, should I, should I do a sixth day of strength training or some mobility? You're already in a place where it's like that sixth day is so diminished returns, like maybe do the mobility day. Maybe I'm voting for that too. So, but if we're talking about like a person's like, should I do a second day of strength training or a dedicated mobility day? Like, yeah, I'm gonna say, do the strength training day. If we're talking about, hey, could I incorporate some mobility into my strength training in a way that augments it in person in some way? What doesn't cost me any more time? Fuck yeah, like, you should totally do that. But I do find myself like more leaning into, do your cost sex squats for like a length an adductor, do a Jefferson, let's get a Jefferson Curl. I'm gonna give my group a flexion row, which is just like, you know, a bent over barbell row, but letting your back go into flexion and then coming up into extension as you row. And even just slight deviations from like, this is optimal for hypertrophy, but like for the pursuit of exposing those muscles to something that's just like healthy from a everyday function and lifestyle standpoint. Like, I think that that's where I would start. But I also like the idea like, I just, you can't tell me, I look at my workout from today, which I did not do 'cause we didn't sleep at all last night. It's like, it's like a chest supported row, an inclined press, a bicep curl and tricep extension. Like, could I be doing lower body mobility stuff between that and cost me no extra time and probably a good thing to do? Yeah, I think that that's totally fair. - What also is really interesting is, I very much believe that good mobility training is good strength training and good strength training is good mobility training, right? And you just expressed that perfectly and you're saying like if you're doing, if you want to get your calves loose or like do a full range of motion calf raise, get a nice big stretch, which let's be very clear. Like a nice big stretch, right? We're literally using the word stretching in a strength training movement. That's not a coincidence. It's literally you are stretching and strengthening at the same time. And what I love hearing this about your programming because you're using flexioning and extension, you're using length. I'm sure you use length and exercises. A length and partial is literally a form of mobility training and I know it's a big topic and a strength in the muscle building world, but that's literally a form of mobility training in length and partials. I did it yesterday in a long lunch. I was doing length and partials for my hip flexors. It's like there's so much crossover and it's not like it's one or the other. You do both at the same time and the little nuances, little changes depend on your goal and your individual weakest link. It's just so funny. I knew when Stephen asked the question, I was like, we're gonna agree on basically everything, which is what it's turning out to be. But shocker, the nuance comes down to the individual. Now where I think we can get more specific would be, all right, will we break down individual goals, right? So if I have someone who comes to me, let's say, I don't know, 70-year-old and they can't reach overhead, right? You have someone who's 70-years-old. And this is relatively unfortunately common. If we're going back to the mobility definition you used earlier, which is like they don't have access to a pain-free range of motion overhead. So things like getting bowls out of their, out of the what's it called, out of the cabinet, above like getting the cereal bowl out of the cabinet. They don't have the access to that range. Well, that's a fucking problem. And if we're going to increase that, I think some people would say like, all right, well, let's just stretch. Like, well, we can incorporate stretching, but you can also incorporate strength into a stretch. And for that person, that's what that person needs. They need to incorporate strength within that stretch. So whether they do something like for that person, obviously they don't have the overhead mobility to reach into a cabinet. We're not programming overhead presses, but I think that's where people think of when they think of strength training, right? And when they think of stretching, they think of just like, I don't know, holding their arm over their head while someone puts their arm there and they static stretch for five minutes. We could do like a combination where it's like, okay, well, what if we work to where you, just before you feel pain, so we bring your arm up, we get a nice, we stretch your lat, but then also we work on improving the strength of your low mid traps, wire raises, whatever. We improve your thoracic mobility through the same thing you were talking about, which is like doing the bent over row with thoracic extension and flexion, all the things that you would need to improve the mobility to go overhead, simultaneously strengthening and improving mobility. It's just so funny because when people speak so dogmatically about certain training methodologies or goals, especially when it comes to strength versus mobility, they really are not understanding, they fit together. Like it's a puzzle piece that you do both at the same time. And you do that in a very efficient way by making sure they're doing exercises that incorporate movement-based mobility-based within their strength trainer. I think it's genius. - I think there's, there's a, the loading is probably where an efficiency comes from. So if we're talking about that old, an older gentleman who's like having struggling to reach up high enough, like for him, like just lifting his arm into that place and then lowering it and going to the end of his comfortable range of motion, coming back. Like that is load enough for him, the weight of his own arm. I think mobility gets a bad rap because of the lack of loading and just the loads being so low that it feels not as useful. And I think that there's also an element of people who assume that we're talking about static stretching. And I'd be curious if we were sitting with and you can speak for this person hypothetically, like Mr. Mobility here. Like what percentage of the pursuit of pain-free range of motion actually is static stretching? Because I think if you go the static stretching route, which we have not, you have not. But if somebody was like, yeah, let's talk static stretching, I think you get, you get pummeled in the research against lifting. You get pummeled, it's like 55 plus studies that are like, yeah, lifting does the same thing. And I think that there's, there's still nuance within that, not all of those studies are perfect. Even this maybe each thing was not perfect, but I think it's very easy to argue that one in a way. It gets more complicated when you classify mobility as loading through those ranges and it being more dynamic. I think you get to a more of a gray area between the difference between these two things. And one of the big differences I think that is left is when we admit that, okay, we're doing a lot of dynamic movement, we're getting into end ranges, we're pushing those end ranges. The difference now becomes, okay, well, how much am I loading this? Am I loading this for 50 reps for time? Or, you know, which probably doesn't build much muscle, but maybe has all the benefits? Or, you know, how much am I loading this? How many reps and sets and all this stuff? And what ultimately it becomes of that? Because your mobility exercise can look like a strength in exercise if I hand you heavy dumbbells and we do sets of eight of it, you know, versus like it's not that if we're doing it for sets of whatever. And you can speak to maybe how that looks different. Yeah, how those things look different. - So you bring up an amazing point and this is something that really surprised me 'cause I used to think in the same way, like you're not loading it. If you got into a front split right now, for example, right, I'm assuming, unless you're just a freak, like you don't have that big of a range, right? Like you'd be like, you'd be really tight, right? - Yes. - Okay. When you're, if you were doing a front split right now, and I'm using you as an example, just 'cause it's easy to try and imagine this and anyone listening, you can picture yourself in this position, try, imagine getting in a front split. And if you were getting in a front split, you'd have to put your hands on the ground or on something to hold yourself up, right? Because it would be so tense on your hamstring and your hip flexors that you'd have to reduce the load that is now on you to accommodate and to make sure you don't rip some shit off your bone, right? So what I think is very interesting is, is if you don't have the mobility to get to the bottom of a range of motion, you are loaded. - And are you holding that position, or are you getting in and out of it? - Oh, you're holding that position. And not only are you holding it, you are deliberately applying contractions, maximal effort contractions for certain periods of time, almost like impulses. Have you, do you know the crack method, like, contract, relax, agonist contract? Okay, so one of the, it's one of the more popular methods, but it's where like, you contract the antagonist muscles. So the antagonist muscle in the front leg of a front split would be the hamstrings, that's the antagonist. So you contract that, you essentially press your heel down as hard as you can into the ground and your hamstring lights the fuck up. You're doing a maximal effort hamstring contraction in a lengthened position, right? And you're loaded. In fact, most people, like I couldn't myself do it unload, I couldn't put my hands off when I first started because I didn't have the strength in that lengthened position to hold myself up. Now, I'll use a, I'll show you the picture of myself from yesterday so you can like, also see. So this is from yesterday. I have my hands up, right? But if we use zoom in on my split from yesterday, like, I'm still not sitting on the ground. This is a maximal effort hamstring contraction. Like, I'm smiling, but it fucking hurts. Now, my pain tolerance has improved over time from doing this. So it actually doesn't hurt as much now as it did when I first started. But my hamstring is contracting as hard as it possibly can right there. So this is like the definition, the quintessence of a maximal effort contraction in a lengthened position. It would be a similar to, let's say someone's doing an isometric bench press. They could have no weight on the bar, but they're pressing against an immovable surface, right? They're pressing against the pins. So they're trying to bench as hard as they can. They're holding it for 10 seconds. And we know that isometric max effort training has a carry over to about 10 degrees range of motion, right? So if you're, if you are, your sticking point is off the chest and your bench press, which it is for the vast majority of people, you can do bench press, isometric bench press contractions off your chest. And it can improve your strength up and down about 10 degrees. So we know that that strength training, and we know that that's loaded even though there's no weight on the bar, it's no different when you're doing it with your body weight with stretching. You're putting yourself in a position that your body has an experience before and you are loading it with your body weight and you can actually load it through the contraction of your muscle. So this is where, this is where doing it was that unlock for me, where it was very hard for me to see it and be like, oh yeah, like that's loaded. But when I'm doing it and I'm feeling, oh my dude, like even like doing some hip flexor stretches, if I'm doing crack, the contract relax agonist contract, when I'm doing that for a hip flexor stretch, I'm, it's like a maximal effort fucking deadlift and I'm loading my hip flexor through contracting it against an immovable force, an immovable object, which allows me to strengthen it in that lengthened position. Does that make sense? - No, it totally makes sense. Totally, the only thing that goes in my head is like, that's super great. And I see that there's probably more benefit to it outside of just, oh, I can touch my toes now. Like that is a gross oversimplification reduction. It's not a fair definition of what you would get from mobility. I just hope that the person doing that is doing other stuff too. And my stance would be like, yeah, I love that. I fucking love that. But like, make sure you're walking enough. Make sure that that same person is like, I really want my hip flexor strong. It's like, I would love to see you doing it maybe in a more dynamic way. Maybe a rear foot elevator, let's go ahead. It's all an opportunity cost question. And I think if you get to a point where it's either not costing you more time or you are checking other boxes or you have a specific hindrance that you will need to work on, you're like, I, you know, for my sport or for my life or I'm rehabbing or... If it's one of those scenarios where you have enough time or it's not costing you more time or you have a specific thing that you really either want to do or have to do, then I'm on board with it. I'm not saying you're saying this, but I don't want, I wouldn't say do work on your ankle mobility for a half hour. Nobody's saying to do that, by the way. That's just like a course, no one's saying to do that. But like, if you're like, I have three days to train, I'm not spending minutes on mobility unless there is a specific reason to do so or we're incorporating it in a way that doesn't take more time, which is a super valid point that I will take the heart from today, which is like, well, maybe it doesn't cost you more time. Mr. fucking opportunity cost efficiency guy, you know, like, I'm like, all right, I can get on board with it. No, I can get on board with more benefit per minute, you know? So that I really do not along with you in that regard. - Yeah, yeah, man. I think it really does come down to what the individual needs. Let me ask you this. Where do you think there's a point of diminishing returns? Maybe not even diminishing returns. Where do you think, here's a better way to ask a question. How strong do you think someone needs to be before they've gotten the benefits of traditional strength training? - Yeah. I think, I might even rephrase it, but I think... - Yeah, you couldn't rephrase it. - I think if you're training, if you're resistance training more than three hours a week, you're doing it for advanced aesthetic benefit. I think you've descended into, you know, no more health benefits over that three hour mark, which gets like over the three day per week mark. So, and I'm not pooping that, but people like, do you, you know, like program has a three day option, do you? And I definitely think that if you're like, I'm working on four days a week for health, it's like, well, you're probably working on like two and a half or three days for health and that fourth day is like, 'cause you wanna be jacked and that's cool, that's awesome. So, I think if you're like, if we're gonna sit here and devise like, the ultimate health plan that covered every bit of physical health in a week, I think you wouldn't live more than three days a week. - Let me see, and this is a really tough question, 'cause I don't even know how I would be able to answer it, but I'm interested in your thoughts. Is there like, let's assume some of your favorite lifts for strength are, actually, you know what? What do you think some of the most important lifts are for strength development and for strength, but also for life and fitness? Like just a handful of the most important lifts in your mind. - Sure, a lunge would be up there, some sort of split stance unilateral movement, some bilateral press and pull and maybe a hinge. Okay, so let's use the lunge example. How, at what point, and you could use it as a percentage of body weight if you want, but like at what point is getting stronger in the lunge, not gonna really be beneficial anymore? - After you've been doing it three days a week for 10 years, you know, like, again, I know that we're talking about what we wanna put, but like, I agree, like, once you've been lifting for three days a week, 10 years, there's probably no more health benefit to try, not to continue to do that, but to like add on more. So, yeah, you know, lunging with, you know, your body weight for a set of three, maybe? I don't know. You're probably as strong as you'll ever need to be, you know? - And the thing your body weight is probably as strong as you'll ever need to be for real life, you know? - Correct, exactly. And so that's where I think the strength world of which I'm a part, dude, like, you know, I'm obsessed with strength training. I love it. I think the strength world loves strength training so much that they actually overestimate how strong you actually need to be, which then gets in the way of improving other aspects of their life that they could write. So it's like, oh my God, like, if you're already doing walking lunges with 50 pounds per hand with dumbbells for eight reps per leg, do you, like, from an enjoyment perspective, sure, work up to 55 pounds per hand, that's wonderful. But if your goal is, I just wanna be healthy and live better and I don't know, maybe I've got some tweaks in my back and maybe I've got some like sciatica pain. It's like, okay, maybe we drop you down to 35s per hand and then you take a little bit less rest. You get through this a little bit more quickly and then you can do some mobility work. It's like, at what point is this pursuit of constantly getting stronger, actually preventing you from achieving other equally important things? - Oh my God, 100% agree with that. And in so far as like, if somebody's goal is optimal health, then it's a slightly separate, it's a slightly, actually more contextual question because if someone's like, oh, I wanna be the absolute healthiest I can be. I'm not having you live for more than three days a week and I bet you you have enough time in the week. You probably live twice a week. You'd probably do two full body days if this was like the ultimate health program and you would probably have room for mobility training and you'd probably do it. So that's super fair. That's a super fair like context of like, well, if I wanted to be the most healthy and whatever physical health and everything that encompasses that from cardiovascular, metabolic health, strength, bone density, being able to access range emotions pain free. I mean, there's a little bit, yeah, being able to do all the things you're gonna need to do in life for the longest period of time. Like the guy grabbing the thing out of the cupboard, like getting up from the toilet, like tying your shoes, like getting up from the floor to play with your grandkids. There's mobility in all of that. There's like, there's a mobility thread in all of that for sure. So yes, yeah, not that you're a putting me on a spot in this way, but like certainly if you were like, I only care about optimal health, you lived in strength three, two days a week, you hit your physical activity cardiovascular guidelines, maybe two zone, two days and something faster. And you probably spend the rest of that on, you know, an interesting conversation of what would you spend with the rest of your time, but mobility's on there. And again, like we said, it might not even require extra time if you do it in a logical way. But assuming we're talking about like an isolated mobility session or tacking it on to another day, yeah, in the pursuit of overall health, I mean, I throw a plyometrics right in the mix there. - Yes, dude, yes, 100%. - I throw a plyometrics right on the pile of like from a durability balance, proprioception standpoint, like I don't want to fall when I'm 80 sort of stuff. I think plyometrics to go right in the bucket with mobility and Alex, so we're going to go a little off tangy. But so I started with Alex and I thought that I wanted to run continuously. That was like the thing I was glorifying. I was like, I want to run longer. I've asthma, I can't run fucking five minutes. So I did a half marathon. And then we did the 10K and then we did a 5K. And then we did the mile. And now I'm doing the 800. And all of a sudden there's like so much plyometric work that like, I'm realizing plyometrics is the mobility of cardio training. Like it's bankless, bankless. - You don't get any fucking more jacked or shredded. Like there's none of that. It's no metabolic health. It's like this underlying thing that you'll feel it when you get better at it. - Yes. - And so I can see there being this like analogy of like, so I tell Alex every day, I'm like, you have to program the plyometrics very specifically because I will not to do it otherwise. It is a thankless. - You'll skip it? - Oh, 100% skip it. Unless it's, unless, no, no, I'll skip it unless he puts it in like, you don't need to tell me to lift. I could go down into my basement and lift and make up my own workout every day. Not every single day, but every week. - Yeah. - I could make it up. - You'd love it. - And I'm perfectly happy doing that. But if you don't tell me exactly how many fucking pogo jumps and depth drops and side bounding, if you're not really writing that down, 'cause it's thankless, you don't get jacked, you don't lose fat, you don't feel it right away. It's nebulous, it's vague. But I think mobility might be the strength training, the way plyometrics is to getting faster and becoming a better runner or stuff like that. - Dude, it's so funny to say, I'm literally the exact opposite. Like the exact, like I, the plyometrics, the, like the, that stuff is what I love. And the other stuff, like the getting jacked, whatever, like, bro, I, if that's not written out precisely, I'm not fucking doing it. 'Cause it's like, I'm the, I just, I love the, plyometrics feels like playing to me. It feels like I'm playing. It feels like I'm a child and I'm on the playground. It's the stuff that we did as kids. I remember being a kid and just like, I'd be going down the sidewalk or whatever, and I would be jumping for no reason. I vividly remember, this isn't one of those random memories as a kid, it's actually sad. But like, I remember I was just like a young kid and we were like, as a family walking to go to dinner somewhere. And I was just like jumping up on like light fixtures and all the stuff in my dad was like, can you just fucking stop doing that? Like I was just, I just, it's just, I have that nostalgia feeling of just being a kid. And I think the mobility is similar for that for me. It's like, dude, I'm sure you watch your daughter, the mobility that these little babies have is, it's insane and for obvious reasons. But it's like, even when you're a young kid, you have access to this range, which is just fucking wild. And so I feel like that I love that performance-based stuff. And I feel like you're the other way. You like the other stuff, like the strength training. It's like, you really enjoy that. - Yeah, I think I do the plyometrics and I'm done with the workout and I'm like tired and I don't have that very tangible connection. Like when I'm done with my like run or something, it's easier for me to connect with what I just got out of that. And when I do a strength training session, it's a little bit easier to connect. When I do the plyos, I'm like, I made myself like marginally less likely to fall and marginally like better at like bouncing on the ground. - Yes. - And like, it's like, and I'm hot and I'm tired. It's fatiguing and it's like difficult to connect with. But I told them, I said, let's do the 800 because when you, the faster you run for a shorter distance, it's not a metabolic, it's not a cardiovascular activity anymore. It's like a strength and power exercise. So like reducing ground contact time, all that stuff, forced productions, like we gotta do it now. And I'm like, I just wanna like, I like you. I think there's room for me to just for fun because I don't really care about getting more jacked, take on new pursuits and feel the benefit. But I wanna do that with plyos. I wanna actually get to that point where I'm like, wow, I feel like now I get it. Now I get what? Six months, 12 months of doing plyometrics feels like where I feel like you've seen the light and like look behind on the curtain of like, how does this actually affect my everyday life with the mobility side of the thing? So yeah, definitely. - Have you been doing box jumps at all? - It's funny, I just programmed box jumps. So I, you can sense, my group has done this to me. They know that I'm becoming less, gotta get jacked at all costs and nothing else. I programmed box jumps in the program and it was like fucking box jump gate. It was like, there was just floods of like, what the hell are we doing? Why are we doing this? And I was like, you haven't jumped in 30 years. Like, you haven't jumped since you were a kid. We're gonna fucking jump and you're gonna like it. And that's it. And so yeah. - Is it funny how you're on training and learning? It really impacts like how you program for on a population basis? - Totally, totally, totally. - So we've been doing some box jumps, some depth jumps, some, a lot of bounding, which is like, you look like, unless you do track and field, you look like a moron doing bounding and you're out on the street and you're like, people are like, what the hell is this guy doing? There's like jumping and stuff. But apparently, yeah, that's what you do. You get really good at bounding. - Bro, it's, that's, if you really wanna hate yourself, take a video of yourself bounding and then like-- - Sent it one to Alex all the time. I don't know how he hasn't dropped me as a client. He's training like, high rocks world champion. And then he's got me, I spend like three seconds on the ground. It's like, he's like, did you pause this? Like, oh my God, that's me, man. - That's me continuous. I'm continuously bounding. - That's on full speed. - Oh my God, yeah, I mean, I like the box jumps just because you have the same like, you can progressively overload and you can see the progress. Like, wow, I was jumping 12 inches and now I can get 20 inches, whatever it is. My, one of my favorite speed exercises when I was deadlifting was broad jumps. I think broad jumps are one of like the all time best speed drills for heavy dead lifts ever. - Totally. - Have you been doing those at all or not so much? - Yeah, I haven't, but in that moment where I was thinking about putting some sort of plyometric pre leg day for my group, the only reason I didn't put broad jumps is you look like a little bit more like an idiot doing broad jumps in a full big box gym. And so I like gave it, I gave it to them easy. I was like, we'll do a box jump or even like a standing high jump. You can do a bit in the corner. You know, you're not like jumping through the gym but you have a jumps are fantastic. Yeah, awesome. - Broad jumps also have a much higher risk of injury for someone who hasn't jumped in a long time. You just have a massive amount of eccentric stress. Like knee translation going or like anterior translation going forward. Like there's just much smarter to start with a box jump with that minimal eccentric stress going down. What time, what time did we start this? How long have we been on? - An hour? 40 minutes? - Do you have, are you okay on time? Are you okay? - We're good. Yeah, we're good. - Okay, awesome. I was just like, oh fuck. I remember you said you had like an hour and change. I didn't even remember what time he started. Um, what was I going to say? - Would, all right. So you've been working with Alex. You've got an hour for like 18 months. You think you're going to keep working with him for a long time? - I think I'm, I think I'm the, I'm just like quintessential. Learn absolutely the nerdy. I want to become the biggest cardio nerd but again, only for the pursuit of being able to find the way to get the most from the least. And so we're, I want to, I want to do a bunch of these distances and then I want to go through them again and see if I can just beat them. Just, I'm not even like a big competitive performance person but just to see what it's like to, to try and beat a time and to be instead of like, just do it once and be like, oh, I did great. You're like, what's it like to actually try and improve on it so I can help others who might have that sort of a goal. And, and Alex is a, Alex is a lot of things but one of those things is just a savant, you know, he's just like a savant. Like he's just like brilliant, brilliant human. So yeah, I've been enjoying it a lot but, but I know we're trending into like the 800, the 200, the 200, the 100 and I'm in plyometric. I'm up to my fucking eyeballs and plyometrics. So it's, it's like I'm gonna freeze out, you know. - What's your, what's your best mile? - 622. - Dude, that's really good. That's really good. - Yeah, I was super pumped. Yeah, I was very pumped. I, I was not, I didn't think that that would, I, I did not think I had that in me. And I was like a week after my daughter was born, yeah. - Were you, were you doing it on the treadmill or outside? - I did it on the track. I did the 5K on the track and the one in the mile on the track. - That's awesome. Did you get nervous before you did it? - It was, there was nobody there and I wasn't nervous, but I have found that racing. Yeah, so again, again, from like a lifting perspective, I could go down to my gym and just like walk in and be like, I'll do full body and I'll pick four things I feel like doing and I'll be fine, put some music on. But with cardio, having that, like I'm curious if it's a similar with you with like, I want to get the split. And like, you know that doing a split is arbitrary, but by having that goal or I want to deadlift five pounds at five times body doing it, having that goal is what makes it fun with lifting. I don't feel that way at all. It is, it is the doing it. It's the doing it that's fun. It's not actually the getting more jacked that I'm so worried about right now. But with the cardio, I feel like if you took away the, the pursuit of like, yeah, I have a race coming up and it's not 'cause I'm competitive. It just is the kind of new wants that is goal setting. Like does goal setting add positive pressure or negative pressure? Does it make it more fun or less fun? And with cardio, it's made it unequivocally more fun. But I bet you one day I feel similarly where I might prefer to just air quote, like go out for a run. Yes. And so I know I'm in the thick of it of like fucking, got my chest strap, I got my Garmin hooked up to training piece, I'm looking at, you know, we're watching, I'm watching the Tour de France, like checking people's watts per kilo. And like, you know, like, I know myself by now that I will go in the depths and I'll come out and be like, cool, like, maybe we do a zone two day and a moderate run. Right. Yes. That's, I relate with that. It's when you're new to something and you're seeing all these, these amazing improvements and you're realizing how much you don't know, it's just exciting. It's fun. Like, that's one of the best parts about, about doing all of this is you try something new and you get obsessed with it. I think you and I are similar with that. Like, whatever we try and like, when we find something we really like and we want to get better at, we get obsessed with it. I, you, I need you to make me a promise. I'm going to put you on the spot. At some point, within the next three years, I just want three months of dedicated mobility training with that, I'll give you a program, just three months deal. Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, my contingent was going to be there. You got to write it for me. Yeah, I'll write it for you. I'll write it for you. I just want three months and then we can, we can come back on the podcast and after those three months we'll, we'll get a gauge for how you're feeling, what your thoughts are, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. 'Cause like we've spoken about, it's, man, I was so shocked once I started doing this mobility work. And again, this is like, you know, I've deadlifted well over 500 pounds. I know, I know like maximal loading. It feels like maximal fucking loading with just my body weight and, or less than my body weight 'cause I'm supporting my, it's, it's absolutely insane. And that's just another aspect is it's just one part as one method of stretching. There are many different methods. But at some point in the next few years, three months. I don't even think, yeah, I would be on board with that. I mean, I'm all for an experiment. I'm curious what your week of, what does your week look like in terms of allocating time to which endeavor? So right now I've actually, I only do about one zone two session a week right now. And it's 20 minutes. Like I am not meeting the guidelines from a cardio perspective right now because I have such a huge focus on mobility. Like the majority of my training right now is mobility. I have one day a week for my front splits. I have one day a week for my side splits and I have one day a week for my pancake split. And so the pancake is where your legs are straddled out and like you try and bend forward and your chest touches the ground or belly button touches the ground. Dude, I'm so bad at that. It's unbelievable. Like-- - Oh, you're bad at this not being gummy? Like, yeah, no, but. - Yeah, it's crazy. But those three and then I do the Inner Circle three day week push pull legs program that I have as well. I'll do that. Dude, I do a lot. I also do Jiu Jitsu one or two times a week. I do boxing one or two times a week. So to be fair, even though I only do like one zone two session a week, I'm also boxing and doing Jiu Jitsu which contribute to that. And then every morning my wife and I go on a walk. So I get a lot of activity and I'm doing a lot. But the mobility is taking up a lot. - If you had to cut your workout time in half, where would that time come from? - I would stop. - How would you change it? - And boxing. I would stop Jiu Jitsu and boxing. That would give me four hours a week. I would stop doing all of that. Which is crazy. - If you don't mind me asking. - Right now, those bring me the least amount of joy. Those bring me the least amount of joy out of everything that I'm doing. Which is crazy 'cause you know, I was obsessed with Jiu Jitsu for years. And I love Jiu Jitsu, but in this moment of my life, probably because I have no interest in competing in Jiu Jitsu in the near future. Just because I have my goal right now is so focused on mobility. And I love mobility training so much that Jiu Jitsu is like, not only do I not want to compete, logistically it doesn't make sense. It's almost like I resigned myself to not doing it, just 'cause logistically, Hodler, Newborn on the way, God willing, puppy, like, Curtis. And it's just too much. Curtis is a maniac, it's too much. So I almost, I was like, you know what, screw it. So like I can't do it right now, all right, I could do it, but it's not worth what I would lose in order to make that happen. So cool. So I would cut out Jiu Jitsu, I would cut out boxing, and I would just do my zone, like one zone two, like one zone two, I mean, I would do my walks. And then this, dude, I love push-pull legs split. I've been doing junior circle for a while now. I love a push-pull legs, but like it's for years for, I would say the majority of my lifting career, I did upper lower four days a week. That's the four times the week option we have in the inner circle. And I still love that. But when you're trying to do more with less, like you were talking about, push-pull legs is fucking good, man. I really enjoy that split a lot. - Yeah, yeah. I think I'm at three days a week. I was talking to Jenna the other day, we're just reminiscing, not reminiscing in such a way, but like she obviously pregnant, had a baby, there's a little bit of those feelings of like, here's what I used to look like, you know, and we both were doing that a little bit. And I was like, we were training six days a week, 90 minutes probably. I'm at 90 total minutes a week. I'm like, you know, I'm at 90 total minutes. I'm at three days full body, but those full body aren't evenly distributed. It's probably, if you took your push-pull leg day, but just made them three full body days, it's like maybe like five exercises a day, two of them are legs, one of them is easy, one of them is challenging, and then the rest of the body stuff. But yeah, no, I think that that, I think it's just like, we're sitting here talking about mobility and plant metrics and overall health and you get your stone two in. And I think that a lot of people are like, well, I'm still maybe in the place in my life where I'm like, really focused on getting jacked or getting really fast or getting like really this one thing. And I think that that's, yeah, if you're looking to get really jacked, I feel like we're looking to get like pretty darn muscular, like community pool jacked. You go to your community pool and people are like, oh, that guy's jacked, like you're, and you're like a regular person with a job and kids. Like you're probably putting a 90% of your time into that one thing. And I think that that's where it's just about like how much time you have, what is the goal that you have and where do you want to spend your time? And I think, again, we talked about ways of doing this more efficiently, more effectively without extra time. But I think that that's, I don't know, I don't want to poo poo people having those extreme, I say extreme, but like beyond the point of diminishing returns in a certain field of building muscle or getting stronger, getting faster, whatever. But I do think if you're not in a place of, if you're like, I'm not looking for that, I'm looking for like, I want to maintain a healthy, strong physique, get all the benefit, the health benefit from lifting. And then pile on another benefit from something else, mobility is certainly on the list, plyometrics is on the list, cardios is on the list, meditating is on the list, you know? So much stuff is on the list, for sure. - You know, it's interesting, as I sort of just had a realization, as you were talking about people going for these extremes, which is what I do, like I go for the extreme, like this is what I love, like this is what I'm so, and I feel like you're the same way you go for the extreme end of something. Ironically, when you're going for these extremes, that's when you're most likely to get injured, right? It's like, when you're doing everything like without going to the point of diminishing returns, your risk of injury is so low, right? When you're just getting stronger, when you're just improving mobility, when you're just getting faster, just to the point of which like, how much you would need, it's your risk of, like, you're essentially only getting better. But once you reach a higher level to the point where it's like, all right, this is probably beyond what you need, but we're getting to a point of a little bit more extreme, more rigid focus, that's when the risk of injury, in my opinion, becomes much higher when you really start to, in-depth focus on one modality. - Yeah, I think it's fair. - That's fair. - Is there anything you wanted to talk about today? - Yeah, I just, I catch myself sometimes, projecting where I'm at, in my relationship with fitness, and not ever for one red second, who's putting where somebody else might be. Like, I, and I think that there's a privilege in where I'm coming from, and maybe there's, you can chew this up and spit it back out on your end, but like, I feel like I spent 10 years lifting a lot and getting to a place where I was as muscular as I care to be, and by going to that place, like physiologically speaking, I can do a lot less and maintain it. I didn't build the physique I have, which by the way is, by no means impressive all the scale of like influencers, but I'm fine with it. I didn't build it doing two days a week. So if you have that pursuit of, like if you're in a place in your fitness arc of, like I'm really into this cardio thing, I'm not, I'm in diminishing returns, but I wanna honor that in the knowledge that like maybe that's part of my ultimate journey to finding my best relationship with cardio. So if you're in this, like, if you're like hearing this, you're like, okay, Jordan's talking about, you know, if you're lifting, you're probably getting a notable chunk of the mobility benefits, but not all of them. And you're probably in the diminishing returns in terms of lifting in the pursuit of a greater total amount of muscle growth. Like I don't wanna poo poo that. There's a lot of people like, cool, like I'm good with that. Like I wanna get jacked right now. Maybe later I get to, like if you're on the way to the point where you really have to do a lot to keep pushing and you're enjoying it, it's awesome. I don't wanna poo poo that. Like my group trains four days a week and they are savages and they are really focused on muscle growth and I love that. And some of them train three days a week and that's awesome too. They make aims and some of them are super jacked. And yeah, I just don't, I don't know where I'm going 'cause I don't wanna project or I'm at my relationship with stuff as if that's the utopia and that's where people should try and get to. Like if you're fucking loving four days a week lifting and you feel good and your joints feel good and you're like, I don't, I hate the idea that we are giving people, not you and I, but as a space like just another fucking thing to do and to stress about of like, I gotta be doing my zone too. I gotta be doing this. I gotta be doing that. I added optional cardio and abs to the group after having anxiety about it for like, you know, whatever, maybe it's a slight overstatement, but like I don't want people feeling like, oh, there's all these things that I need to be doing to be healthy and none of them overlap. So I have to do all of them, you know? - Dude, I relate to that a lot in the anxiety. Dude, every time I write the new monthly workouts for the circle, I have anxiety. I mean, when you're writing workouts for that many people, like it's anxiety producing. And so you're trying to think about, oh, what is, how can I benefit these people the most, right? And that was a big portion of, of when we're making the inner circle lab. I was like, all right, do I want to have a calorie tracker with a calorie database tracking their calories, protein fiber? Do I want to have workouts, mobility workouts, strength workouts on included all? Do I want to include cardio? It's like, because the more you include, the more they feel like they might need to do. And so I don't want someone to be like, oh my God, if I'm not taking advantage of every single thing the app offers, then you're, of course not. Like if you only use it for one thing, then that's amazing, just use it for one thing. If it's just strength, awesome. If it's just the mobility, awesome. If it's just my wife's recipe, awesome. But dude, I get the exact same anxiety. It's really difficult. And listen, here's what I think. I very much think that if as a coach, you are not having some level of angst around your programming and what you're offering, you're probably not getting better. And we're always trying to improve. And one thing that you do well and I try and do well is always talk about like fitness, right? Like I'm trying to improve and get better and constantly learn and give myself that white belt mentality as are you. And if I said the same thing from 20 years old to 50 years old in terms of fitness, that would be a really fucking big problem. So as you're following me, you should expect to see things change 'cause if it's not changing, then I'm not improving. That is, by definition, if it's not changing, it's impossible for me to be improving. So I think you're really smart and aware to make sure people know it's like, they don't have to be where we are. But I think just by them hearing us talk about this and talk about where we've been, where we are and where we'd like to go, it might give people feedback and assuredness and knowing it's okay to not fully know where you're going. But if you are really enjoying something right now, go after it, enjoy it. Like it's life is way too short. Even if you're doing the optimal training program and optimal training, life is way too short to not enjoy what you're doing. If you love getting fucking jacked and training four times a week, awesome, do it. If you love doing cardio stuff, yeah, fucking go for it. There's a, you don't have to be optimizing everything. In fact, it's crazy that that just came out of my mouth and they were just talking about that because when I was in college, a kid on my power off the team, Dan, he's a doctor now, Dan Schneider, he made my logo for me, my business logo, which was a quote from Louis Simmons that he said to me, he was like, never minimal, never maximal, always optimal. I had that since 2012, he made that for me in his college dorm room. I just, I kept the same logo but I took the words off, never minimal, never maximal, always optimal because I just reached a point where I'm like, what's optimal? Now I'm having a philosophical discussion I had around like what is optimal? Like did optimal exist? Is the pursuit of optimal even a good pursuit, right? It's like it's that it's, you're pointing to what is the, what does it stand for? - Where optimal meets practical? - Where optimal meets practical is the name of your podcast and it's on your hat. It's like, yeah. So it's, I think that this was a great discussion. I'm hoping that it gives people more assuredness and more calm rather than anxiety about what they should be doing or what they aren't doing. Just and always, you know, focusing on what you can, what you can do with what you have and focusing on things you enjoy and having fun. Jordan, can you just remind people where they can follow you again? - Yeah, Instagram's great, podcast's great. Jordan Lips Fitness or where optimal meets practical. And just to summarize my position, if you even think about stretching a muscle, it immediately atrophies and just, just sucks itself directly off your body and you shrivel up to a teeny tiny muscle is raising. And so yeah, I wanted to make sure that we, people could take something home, you know? - I'm gonna clip that and put that on Instagram. (laughs) - Amazing, everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you could leave a five star view, it would mean the world to me, a written five star view is the best you can do. It really does help the podcast a lot. Make sure you give Jordan a follow, shoot him a message if you like the podcast. Shoot me a message if you like the podcast. Sure as both, both Jordan's, sure as both messages. I love you, I appreciate you. Have a wonderful week, I'll talk to you soon. You

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-J