Mostly, I’m an advocate for as full a range of motion as possible, whatever movement we’re talking.
So why only go to parallel? Research (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24662234/) repeatedly shows that the heavier load which can be managed at a shallower-depth-squat improves the rate of strength and size development IN CONJUNCTION WITH full ROM squats. As long as we pair this with full ROM days, I believe we curtail the risks involved in exclusively training partial ROM (competitive female volley ball players had a 20 year trend toward very high ACL injury incidence when they were training only partial squats, even though they were increasingly stronger). Have a rock bottom day. Have a parallel-ish day at about 25% heavier. The strength curve is better AND we gain skill, ability, and readiness in extreme ranges as well. In the video (https://www.instagram.com/p/BupG9CrnSBl/ ) I'm squatting to a 14 inch box with this Hatfield variant. So far, I'm unclear what weight I'll be unable to move (perhaps in excess of 600lbs), since the safety-squat/yoke bar allows for a very different experience. I'm still testing it out. Contrast this against my freestanding rock bottom squat (4 inch box), which I would never take to a single rep maximal effort, and have never gone beyond 405lbs. The research aside for a moment, I have always trained both extreme depth and partial depth. In my mass-gaining days, using both modalities throughout a week or month certainly appeared to expedite the growth of size and strength. With regard to the Hatfield variant, I have high hopes for it. There are always real physical barriers to progress. As such, the progressive overload principle can sometimes be fleeting as far as implementation is concerned. The psychological barriers are tightly intertwined. That is, do you actually train to your true potential if you know the effort to do so could land you buried underneath a bar? Even hardcore lifters give up as the stakes rise. The Hatfield variant address this interestingly. First, simply reaching out and holding onto an external brace is psychologically less stressful than the sense of swimming in an unsupported sea with 500lbs sitting on your spine. Second, you could, in fact, pull on the bar, lending a little assist when the legs begin to "fail," giving yourself a sort of forced negative experience without a spotter. You are the spotter. You know precisely what he'll do and when. That is a big deal. As such, I have to recommend this one for the compromised populace on one end of the spectrum and the advanced athlete on the other. I could see it as valuable to absolute novices needing corrective exercise application, intermediates for technique, and elites to squeeze out that next 0.01% improvement. It's no wonder this variant, Hatfield, hails to one of the greatest contributors to modern sports training, and who himself set a world record squat over 1,000lbs at the age of 45 years old.
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We have this word for a certain kind of excitement which we feel for a few seconds here and there. It often seems connected to subsequently performing some action or behavior. We call that “motivation.”
I hear about it a lot in the fitness industry. People talk about getting motivated, staying motivated, losing motivation. There are motivational speakers and motivations speeches. Although, if you examine the people who’ve listened to some of the best speeches, on average they’re entirely unchanged 5 years later. The thing is, I don’t know if I buy it. The greatest accomplishments in history are generally borne out of a pretty demotivated and defeated feeling. The greatest successes I’ve ever had, known, seen, or heard of, grew out of the depths, not the heights. So seeking “motivation” as an explanatory tool or a catalytic starter hits me as illusory. People have purpose, or they don’t. People are honest with themselves, or they aren’t. Purpose and honesty supersede "motivation." The most wonderful achievements occur precisely when there is no motivation, when someone grinds through the mud with purpose, keeps his word when it's almost impossible to do so and when he doesn't want to. People trend toward the familiar, the same patterns, thoughts, behaviors. If we always trend toward the familiar, how does motivation really fit philosophically? It's just this flitting emotion. That little flit of nothingness cannot overcome obstacles. Purpose and honesty DO. Motivation CAN'T. Moreover, how can we honestly believe "motivation" should play a role in the pretext of our efforts or the explanation for our downfall? If you closely examine the motivators in your life, the greatest number and loudest signals of motivation are pushing you in the opposite direction from where you want to go. So why in the hell would you latch your success in life, your capacity to follow-through, to some airy gossamer make-believe momentary high? Your primary motivations are convenience, familiarity, ego-substantiation, and self-identity reinforcement. They always were. They always will be. Those are your motivators. They don't have anything to do with change. Some new millisecond of another "motivation" isn't sufficient to climb the wall over these permanent motivators. Motivation isn't connected to change. Motivation is tied into the definition of staying the same. We already know whatever this made-up thing is, this “motivation,” that the most real and palpable it ever will be is temporary. Does that make it reliable? Does that make it important? Does the fact that it comes and goes make it a smart investment tool? Really, I don’t care about motivation. The most motivated you ever felt didn’t stay. The most motivated you’ll ever get will vanish. Find something real, something steady, something bigger. Or get stuck in the illusion. This is not a contradiction. It’s easy in the sense that you throw a stimulus at someone and composition changes. It’s hard in the sense that there are physical and psychological/emotional limitations to the stimulus any individual can or should manage.
The first obstacle we face is sampling bias. A program only showcases positive testimonials. So we don’t know if we’re looking at survivors of really crappy training programs or if we’re gaining an insight to a solid methodology. This is no small problem. Large stats can help you see why the sample bias stats are unhelpful and possibly intentionally dishonest. In the US, about 15% of the adult population has some sort of gym membership or regular fitness practice. Among them, around 1% keep this up for more than 12 consecutive weeks at any given time. Right away you can see how we don’t even get a glimpse of what works for most of the populace. Because nothing is working for most of the populace. The second obstacle is that wildly successful and popular programs magnify the sample bias. I mean, it’s really cool that thousands of people succeeded, if that’s even true. But, that still likely represents a 99% fail rate. We’re leaving out the hundreds of thousands of tries, the millions of exposures, and that for none of those people was this methodology a fit. Now these are just the distractions. But inherently, there is a real difficulty in body composition beyond all of this marketing noise that convinces you that you should be doing the wrong thing. There is a difficulty in real physical and emotional limitations for most people. You see, as a business, if your model of fitness is very simple, emphasizing hard and frequent workouts and sacrificial nutrition, it’s a mythology, but self-reinforcing. Only a small percent of the populace can do this. Even fewer can do it safely. But when they do, they “succeed.” Voila. You are vindicated. Your devotees are now a walking billboard. Never mind that it cannot be a fit for over 90% of the population. Instead of us viewing the method as being garbage, we shame each other and ourselves for not living up to the phony sample bias method. This is where is gets real hard. We now have incredibly unrealistic expectations of ourselves. But I want to make it clear that improving fitness is as simple as taking one single step any given day to progress from where you are currently. There is nothing amazing or singularly fantastic about my approach. But it is unique. Sometimes I have clients begin with a 1-5 minute daily physical practice. Yes. ONE MINUTE. Oftentimes we start with extraordinarily rudimentary beginnings, because I’m constantly thinking about that other 99% of people who haven’t made it work. And I don’t think there is damn thing wrong with any of them. The only people I think are wrong are those propagating the sample bias myths, and therefore concluding with some sort of judgement on others or fat-shaming in general. Listen. I get it. I have faced terrible challenges. And sometimes, when you’ve been in a bad place, the simple act of standing up is exhausting. Do I think someone like that needs to be ashamed of not getting in all their steps, their calories low enough, their frequency of workouts high enough? Hell no. We have to restore them first. We have to empower them first. We have to embolden them first. Then, there’s legitimate troubleshooting which must occur to figure out a sensible program for people with injuries, health concerns, time limitations, emotional hang ups. Just “go hard” is not a strategy or a program. Taking a step in the right direction is where it begins and where we often must return. You can ignore all the brief transformation testimonials out there. It’s sample bias. Outside of their inspirational effect, they have nothing to offer you. Just be you. Just do your thing. Focus on your steps. Place one foot in front of the other. Skinny people aren’t necessarily healthy. Fat people aren’t necessarily unhealthy. None of those is fitness. Elite athletes aren’t necessarily rounded in their fitness, and oftentimes ARE NOT healthy. This is unsurprising to those of us who are in the field. But the general population is clueless and needs to know.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of performing a gait analysis at the Biomechanics Lab at Northwestern Health Sciences University (keep an eye out for the forthcoming article). It’s pretty involved. You have motion cameras, the reflector pads which they use for big movie actors and video games, etc. The computers are pulling billions of metrics. Afterward, as I and the researchers chatted, they showed me some findings with Olympic athletes they’ve measured. I asked what corrective protocols they use for such high level athletes once the specific imbalances are uncovered. You see, even the most elite athletes have MALadaptations. Unsurprisingly, the director told me that these OLYMPIC athletes fail at even some very basic core exercises. This is unsurprising to me, because I’ve been assessing movement patterns professionally for 15 years. Ask anyone with a serious background in movement and biomechanics and they can give you ample examples of people who have superhuman performance in a few domains but fails completely at being a well-rounded fit person. This is important for the public to understand. Marvel at high level physical prowess. But don’t get confused. That doesn’t mean they’re totally fit. Usually it means they AREN’T. And that’s just one distinction. Another which is critical is the fact that physical fitness can have 5 big headings: - Strength (force production) - Muscular Endurance (capacity to repeat moderate-to-high force efforts) - Cardiorespiratory Capacity (O2 to CO2 exchange, peak VO2, average VO2, spectrum of bpm, resting bpm, HRV, anaerobic threshold, lactate threshold, aerobic base, etc.) - Mobility (how close active muscular range of motion aligns with theoretical skeletal ranges) - Composition (bone density, lean mass, body fat percentage, overall mass, hydration percentages) Even this is an oversimplification. However, often people see skinniness or small body mass as equating to fitness. I want you to look closely at those five categories. PART of the last one people are equating with ALL of all five. That’s not smart. That’s not right. Furthermore, these categories are intended as fitness in a strict sense of the word “fit,” meaning CAPABLE of doing a task. Thus, your body mass has no objective value to fitness. If your task at hand is pushing a car, your total mass can make you more fit for the task. If you have incredibly high body mass accompanied by incredibly high lean mass, you are more fit for a lot of activities. If I wanted friends to help with landscaping, I am not going to elect waify, little, light, skinny people. They aren’t FIT for the job. Can you pickup a Boulder? You’re pretty fit, regardless of your waistline. If we are referencing the capacity to hang from a bar, low lean mass with high body mass means you’re less fit. These are relative statements. I didn’t mention emotional fitness, or psychological well-being, or mental acuity. They, along with physical fitness, can inform health to be better OR worse. You can starve yourself, be addicted to narcissism, and take amphetamines, and you will appear more fit. Are you more fit? No. Are you healthy? Absolutely not. Are you better at one piece of something we may put under the headings of physical fitness? Yes. And so this is a substantial problem. Extreme unhealthiness can purport to be fitness. And if we conflate fitness with healthiness, we reinforce that people ought to risk health to showcase “fitness.” If, instead, we can keep a clear mind, remembering that these are all very different things, we can appreciate an overweight runner, an underweight yogi, a muscular athlete. Appreciate must be where it ends. The next step, the step of connecting that appreciation with “SHOULD” is misleading. Connecting a small mode of physical ability with an overarching theme of health is wrong. It is dead wrong. It is not even close to being not-wrong. I’ve heard the statement, “the picture of health and fitness,” and people apply that statement to a photo of a single person by himself or herself posing. Think the cover of Sports Illustrated. Think the cover of a New York Times Best Selling book on health or fitness. Now, stop. Think about this. To me, the picture of health and fitness is an unposed picture with my kids, my friends, my family. The picture of health and fitness is a candid shot of people gathering together. The picture of health and fitness is not a single idol standing alone showcasing one piece of composition at most likely the cost to deep human connection to others. Just acknowledge a different way to live, shame yourself when you fail, and pile on the guilt for not following through, right?
Obviously wrong. So obviously so wrong. Yet, that’s what most people do over and over again. Listen: I’ve seen tens of thousands of gym members and worked with hundreds of health and fitness professionals who’ve coached and treated thousands and thousands of patients and clients. I’m going to tell you what I’ve seen that is 100% successful and what tactic is 100% unsuccessful. It is 100% counterproductive to talk about what you should and shouldn’t do, what you can and can’t do, and have the scale or some other “accountability” device to make you feel bad. NEVER EVER WORKS. What does? Identity. The secret is it’s all about the self-image identity and its accompanying narrative we’ve written in our minds and/or the identity we’ve allowed others to place on us. You are who you say you are to yourself. And sadly, you are who you’ve perceived others to say you are. Then, you do what the person you think you are must do. It’s that simple. You can convince yourself that the RIGHT thing to do is not eat that cookie; but if the self-image you have is “cookie eater,” you will behave like the internal narrative. Smokers smoke. Drinkers drink. Cookie-eaters eat cookies. And so on. Vilifying a behavior, therefore, is pointless. Calling something “bad” and calling ourselves “weak” accomplishes ZERO benefit. It doesn’t matter how bad or wrong we convince ourselves that something is, as long as it remains part of our self-image, we will continue. As long as we box other people into an identity, they will generally continue the accompanying behavior. To change, there must be a shift in narrative. There is a critical question attached: “Does the person I am becoming do this?” It’s no longer about should or shouldn’t, can or can’t. If you desire change, all that matters is the narrative shift. Avoid saying things like “I should go to the gym,” “I can’t eat that,” “I need to start,” “I hope I won’t be too overwhelmed,” and so on. These statements actually reinforce an unmoved self-image and essentially restate that your identity is at odds with the intended behavior or response. Instead, shift the language. The person I am becoming practices this new language every day. The person I am doesn’t eat that. Who I am will encounter stress and persevere through no matter how difficult it is. The “should”s and “if”s and “can”s are all well-intentioned; but they don’t get it done. In tens of thousands of examples, I’m telling you they just don’t get it done. And it’s not just me saying this. Reference all of behavioral psychology. We don’t do a darn thing because it’s a good idea. We do it because we’re convinced it’s part of our identity and we are reinforcing the narrative. Word choice isn’t splitting hairs. Our minds are very good storytellers and obedient to the script. We will play out our role for good or for bad. It’s no small thing, then, to rewrite the lines so we may act our new part. IF THE SPINE AIN’T BENDIN’, YOU’RE JUST PRETENDIN’ continued...
We’re continuing to teach how to actually work the abdomen instead of faking it. In this video I show one way to perform a cable crunch effectively in the first four reps. Then I try show how NOT TO in the last two reps: https://www.instagram.com/p/BulrJf8jW49/ You’ll notice how in the “how to” reps I am making a clear distinction between open/stretched abdomen at the top and closed/shortened abdomen at the bottom. If anything, I try to tuck my butt under (posterior pelvic tilt) at the bottom of the movement. Notice how I’m tall through the hip and not just sitting back/bowing forward. Contrast against the “how not to” reps. Unfortunately, my version here is somewhat sensible (I was supposed to show you how everyone never flexes the spine at all) since it’s now quite difficult for my nervous system to do a “bad” rep. But you get the idea. I drop the hips back, flex at the hip, and throw the weight of the torso down. I’m exerting almost no energy from the rectus abdominis. If you watch closely at the gym or videos from influencers with millions of followers, they may not even flex the trunk at all. Usually, it’s just a lot of hip action and little to no spine movement. If it ain’t bendin, they’re just pretendin. IF THE SPINE AIN’T BENDIN’, YOU’RE JUST PRETENDIN’.
Reference our Instagram for how-to videos: https://www.instagram.com/jonathan.watters/?hl=en I’m expounding on this concept here and on IG. If you think your core is strong, you’ll benefit. If your core is actually strong, you’ll still benefit. If your core is weak, you’ll benefit. If you don’t know what a core is, you’ll benefit. In the abs videos provided, I have some simple variants to just check your control. Notice I don’t even bother with the “lowing cow” position. That can become a real distraction for people in the developed world, as it just reinforces hip flexion (which we all do too much already). Thoracic and cervical extension, sure, we need more. But for this, just focus on the “cat back” and rest. I go neutral in the “rest.” Then extreme flexion in the “active” portion. Again, that the abs work trunk flexion is not my singular opinion in a sea of fakery. Check a physiology textbook. I get the sense that a lot of “experts” don’t own a single one, nor seem to have ever glanced at one, since they absolutely never reference defined muscle action. In this series I am going to continue showing some common core exercises which people think are hard or advanced, but are actually incredibly easy/wrong. I’ll provide the variant which is actually effective. Stay tuned. One of the first on the chopping block is toes-to-bar, perhaps the easiest "core" exercise on the planet once you're beyond the absolute beginner stage. It's nonsense for most people performed the way it typical is performed. Throwing your feet at the bar is indeed a credit to your quads, hip flexors, and hamstring flexibility. Abs? Doubtful. That said, you can perform an actually effective exercise reaching your shins or any portion of the lower limb toward the bar, as long as the distance between the rib cage and pelvis is the focus and you're REDUCING that distance. Generally, I've seen people perform this one wherein the hips travel backward, increasing the stretch of the abdomen, and kicking the feet to the bar. Great (heavy sarcastic tone). You went A to B. Big thumbs down. Try contracting the appropriate muscles. 1.) visible abdominal muscles are the product of only one spot-reducing exercise:
Push-aways - you must practice this exercise daily with high reps and sets. Push away the food. Push away from the dining table. Push away treats and non-nutritious “food”. 2.) training the ABILITY of abs appropriately comes down to understanding one single thing: The action of the abdomen is to flex the trunk, bringing the pelvis closer to the rib cage. This is not my opinion. This is physiology. If you feel your back when working abs, you don’t understand this. If your hips hurt when training abs, you don’t understand this. Primarily, people flex at the hip and think they’re working “core.” For simplicity’s sake, reference the “cat back.” Learn to control spinal flexion. Do not train “core” or abs until you grasp this. Once you do grasp this, only perform exercises in which you are moving into trunk flexion with no back strain, hip pain, or momentum. 3.) progressing ab strength/core development returns to a single principle: Can you produce more force with the abdomen and with greater control? If you don’t understand #2, the answer is “no” regardless if you can do a 3 hour plank or 10,000 sit-ups. In fact, people who perform crazy long planks and tons of sit-ups generally have incredibly terrible control of the abdomen, are frozen through the trunk (which is a bad thing), and simply developed outrageously rigid hip flexors with fair to moderate muscular endurance in the psoas major, minor, ileacus, sartorius and quads. Watch these two videos (https://www.instagram.com/p/BudscSOHqEi/) of high level abdominal force production exercises. Watch the spine bend. That’s the abdomen working. How to work up to these? Here's how: 1.) Practice cat backs - this is essential. You must gain a solid understanding of trunk flexion, both in the feel, and the look, and the bifurcation between it and hip flexion. You should be able to extend at the hip and flex at the trunk simultaneously. Don't misunderstand me. You CAN flex at both simultaneously. But you should understand and learn to control them both independently and dependently. As such, you want to widen your knees in the kneeling position while practicing cat backs. That spacing provides the ability to better rotate at the hip joints. And you want to think about contracting the glutes (as if you were going to extend at the hip), while tucking the pelvis "under" (posterior pelvic tilt). The end position will have your hip joint lower than your shoulder joint, and your knee joint behind (not directly under or ahead of) the hip joint. I'll provide additional video examples on IG. 2.) Practice trunk flexion while standing, lying face up, against a load, etc. Starting with the first step is essential. But then you must take this newfound skill and progress it somewhere. Before you have gained mastery of the first, this second step is not simply jumping ahead. You WILL NOT BE ABLE to do it. Specifically, I have people perform planks in a knees-down position with extreme trunk flexion. Advanced athletes will fail in under 30 seconds. If you can hold it for minutes, you are performing it incorrectly. I have had Division I athletes who cannot do this at the beginning. People are so incredibly out of touch and weak through the specific action of the abdomen (even most people with visible abs) that it will be shocking to the layperson reading this. But I have seen this literally tens of thousands of times. Check back to Instagram for more video examples. 3.) Keep reminding yourself of what specifically we're trying to do here. It's going to be very easy to fall back into your old patterns even after you have gained mastery of step 1, and proficiency in step 2. But as soon as you attempt to raise the bar, your body is going to attempt to rely on momentum and hip flexion to get the job done. Thus, whether you are choosing a lying hip peel or a weighted ab crunch, you must be outrageously strict and mindful that it is trunk flexion ALONE we're after. I know you can hinge at the hip. Everyone can hinge at the hip. Every single darn person at the gym is flipping their legs around while they think they're training abs. NO. Flex the trunk. Every influencer I've seen does this incorrectly. In fact, just before writing this I saw an article about some lady with 1.4 million followers who has specific programs she's selling for ab training programs, and NONE of her videos have her in a flexed trunk/shortened abdomen position. She is not even at Step 1 and she's selling ab training programs to hundreds of thousands of people. 4.) Endeavor toward advanced core exercises. The most advanced abdominal movements are extremely high load with the hip assist removed or mitigated such that it wouldn't matter if you tried to call upon them anyway. The front lever, hanging wipers, weighted floor wipers, flags and such in gymnastics/calisthenics are among the top in difficulty, but they begin to get distracting for people as there is more going on with upper body strength, lever lengths, etc. I featured the lying hip raise (called the "dragon flag", sometimes referred to as Rocky Hip Raise) and ab wheel, because there is a clear way to do an intermediate/beginner version which can progress to the versions I showed or even beyond. Dragon Flag - first, we must be able to lie face-up on the ground and without momentum peel the hips and lower body off the ground. I prefer a decline bench with hands anchored firmly. Little by little we are aiming to peel the spine (via flexion) until we one day achieve a reverse shoulder stand. If you can use momentum to hike yourself into the reverse shoulder stand, then you can interface with this exercise by starting there. From the reverse shoulder stand, you will do partial descent reps and/or forced negatives as slowly and strictly as possible. Ultimately, you will achieve a position with the body mostly parallel to the ground, yet only your shoulders and hands will be in contact with anything. Don't do more than 8 reps. And usually you should probably think more like 3. Your time under tension is a lot even for single rep efforts. And it's a lot of focus. So don't do many reps. Don't do many sets. Once you've progressed through the first three steps, we're mostly interested in developing more force production. Long training sessions will drain you and you'll find you can't outdo your performance the following week. Every single time you return to this exercise, you want to increase the range of motion, the length of the lever, and eliminate hip action or momentum. Those are the standards by which you should be measuring progress. Ab Wheel - first, you want to make sure you can nail the flexed-spine plank both kneeling and non-kneeling. Again, going back to step 3, your body will want to just move at the hip and shoulder. You understand those better and may still be more powerful there; so it's the natural default. Instead, think about it like your torso is an accordion. You are lengthening the torso from the start position (like pulling an accordion apart) and then compressing the torso together via trunk flexion (like pushing the accordion closed). The only thing that happens when you go to your feet, versus knees, is the lever lengthens, and the hip tries a little harder to be involved. Like with the Dragon Flag, every singly time you return to this exercise, you want to increase the range of motion, the length of the lever, and eliminate (or in this case minimize) hip action and momentum. As such, rep and set schemes likewise need to be minimal. |
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