Latest / Project StrengthCast / Rehab, Pain & Movement Quality for strength athletes | Ashley Lewis

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Rehab, Pain & Movement Quality for strength athletes | Ashley Lewis · Project StrengthCast

• jay: hello everyone. Welcome to episode 10 of Project Strengthcast. today we are joined by Ashley from Polaris Rehab. He's the head of Polaris Rehab. He is an expert in the field of rehab and getting people back in a performance. More than that, he is also a high-level jiu-jitsu practitioner. So we have someone that understands how to make the body like work and understands how to break the body as well. So this man brings a bit of both in terms of the spectrum of performance here. But I think Ashley is very important to kind of have a conversation with because I would argue that he was probably one of my introductions into high level by thinking about biomechanics and resolving pain. He's someone I will always highlight as being like a very influential person in terms of my thought process in fixing individuals. And also kind of getting me to under understand the larger pictures, right? Rather than narrow myself down into one school of thought. And I think throughout this conversation, one of the most important things is we all understand that an athlete can perform well if he stays, if he or she stays healthy for long enough. And keeping them healthy is gonna be paramount for all of us, right? As coaches, as athletes. So throughout this discussion, we're gonna be talking about the ideas of what an injury is, how to kind of approach it, and what are the tools you can actually utilize to get The best outcomes for like a coaching perspective. So, Ashley, thank you for your time. We hope this is a very fruitful discussion for everyone involved. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, thank you. I Tapas: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: I also hope so. Hopefully I'll I'll be able to answer jay: Shit. Ashley Lewis: answer things w in a a somewhat useful way. We'll find out. Tapas: Yeah, definitely. thank you for being on Atleast. Alright, I'm just going to go through today's topics here as everybody can already see. Classic, we have it on screen here. Our first topic is going to be how to approach an injured athlete. A lot of these topics here you will notice are they're not you could say as nuanced because we really want to cover as much as possible here within like the spectrum of topics that we have. So we have topics like how to approach an injured athlete. Can you make somebody injury proof, you know? movement quality, how it's important in strength sports and often overlooked. A topic that I think is really important today is the importance of the rib cage and the pelvis in movements. Why, how they kind of dictate everything when it comes to what we do and the validity of the biopsychosocial model of pain and just a little discussion on the pros and cons regarding it. So if I'm going to start off here, We're going to be starting off with how to actually deal with an injured athlete. So in very obvious basics, obviously when we're looking at an injured athlete, we would assess for physical safety and making sure that we're able to help them communicate properly what's going on, whatever is going wrong. But other than that, there's like another point that a lot of people often add very commonly, especially over here, which is to stop all movement completely until the injury heals. I just wanted to throw this out there and just get all of your thoughts on this. question of year. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, I I think it's tricky, right? The the first caveat, I guess, is like if you've injured something, go and get assessed and blah, blah, blah, right? You don't want to be training on something if you've torn a ligament or something like that. But assuming that's not the case and you've got a pain that's kinda affecting things and or even if you have got a significant injury, but you've been assessed and they've said, Hey, you can keep training. I don't think you ever need to completely rest outside of you know, a a few days post surgery, right? Like outside of that, I don't see a reason you should ever fully rest. now, depending on what's going on, you might not want to train the injured area. If my knee hurts, maybe I'm gonna avoid squatting for a few weeks potentially, right? But I'm I can still train my upper body. If it's my right knee, I can still train my left leg. if it's only when I bend my knee, I can still do calf raises. I could probably still do a hamstring bridge. Like the you can still keep training when you have an issue. You might just have to train around the issue. Obviously you don't want to train around the issue forever because at which point, right, then that's just that's what so many people do where they're like, I I just have a bag back. So I don't deadlift. It's like, well, okay. We we shouldn't go down that route where you train everything else but the injured area. But It's a temporarily, I think it can be fine to avoid something, as long as you get back to it eventually. The point being, if you are avoiding one thing, that doesn't mean you can't do other things, you know, you don't have to stop completely. Tapas: Yeah, but it wouldn't mean that you're stopping movement completely. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, when I was talking about training the other side. I think this is something like super important that a lot of people don't think about. Something that is almost guaranteed to come along with every injury or pain, whatever you want to call it, is you're gonna lose strength. Because one, you're not training that area. And two, pain itself causes inhibition in the muscles around the painful area. It's a you know neurological thing. Your body is not gonna Allow those muscles to produce as much force to protect you. And so both of those things are going to mean that you're going to get very weak, which then increases your likelihood of pain, which then makes you weaker, which increases your likelihood of pain, and you get stuck in this cycle. And sometimes you can't train the injured area. To go back to the knee example, sometimes you can't train your right knee in in ways that are going to strengthen your quads, for example. But you can train the left side, the cross-education Kaushal Sumedh: Yes. Ashley Lewis: effect. There are a couple of different names for it, right? But if you train the unaffected limb, you'll still have strength gains or at least reduced losses, because if you're not training it, you're not going to make gains, right? But you'll have reduced losses in strength by training the unaffected side. I don't know what the percentages are, but there are like loads of studies on it. And it's a it's a really big difference. So I think that in particular is really important. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I think as you said, unless and unless there is there's actual like major s major structural damage, I don't think you'd ever you'll ever face a situation where you have to take a full time off. yeah. otherwise, as you said, since the cross-training effect exists, you can just train the other side and you can still get like if if you have problems in lower body, you can do upper body. If you have problems upper body, you can do lower body, one limb affected, you have like, you know, other three remaining and you can do other things. So there's always ways that you can play around and eventually get back to the thing that you were doing that you always wanted to do or you were doing before. That's the whole point of rehab, right? Like it's it's never about cutting things out of your life, it's about going back to the things that you love doing. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's I mean, I know everyone talks about this, right? This is nothing new to say, but rehab and training is a continuum, right? And if you've Kaushal Sumedh: Yes. Ashley Lewis: only just injured something, if you only just have pain, you're gonna feel more on the rehab side of things of okay, I'm restricting what I'm doing, I'm I'm you know, it might be more gentle mobility stuff, whatever it is, but you're still doing something. And the only thing that changes between rehab and training is training you just have less constraints. Rehab you just have more constraints around. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: how you're moving your body and and what you're using and that sort of thing. Kaushal Sumedh: I I was just about to say that like the way you'd approach like any trainer training client that you get, depending on what goals they have and what they want to achieve. Like you you customize training programs for them based off of what they require, right? Rehab is also very similar to that. It's just like as you said, it just exists along the same thing, like that, that continuum. It's not exactly it's not like black, like it's not that's a different training. That's like a completely different thing, and this is a di different thing. they both even re even good rehab is like some form of training similar to what you're actually doing, right? even if you're injured, there's like always what you always have to assess, see what the person can do and they can't do, and then you kind of just build off of that. You just have like greater exposure towards what you can do, right? Ashley Lewis: Yeah, definitely. It's yeah, like I said, it's the same regardless, right? You take the goal and reverse engineer from the goal. It's it's the exact Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: same for training or rehab. It's just with rehab stuff hurts. With training, stuff still probably hurts just less, right? Like everyone Kaushal Sumedh: Yep, yep. Ashley Lewis: still gets little aches and pains and stuff. So same thing essentially. jay: I I just want to throw out a point here because I I I think this is something I wanna stress out a bit more on is that I I I think a lot of times people kind of assume that training and like rehab are completely different concepts because rehab in India kind of gets associated with like things like cupping, needling and like myofascial like release and just that, right? It it's seen as that realm and completely separated from training. And as like both Kaushul like Ashley's mentioned. We want to view as like what is an entry point we can sustainably get back into, right? Do we have to entirely avoid that limb? Is there like an isometric entrance point for that? Is a low level entrance point for that? Like there are multiple tools that we can, right? Like Sash, I I I do want to kind of just throw this thing out there for people that in I I I want to touch on this simply because that is a narrative here. Is is it just cupping, needling, stuff like that? Is that what rehab should be associated with? Ashley Lewis: Mm-hmm. I don't think there's anything wrong with that stuff. I don't use any of it. you know, but mainly because I mostly work online and so I'm I can't really, you know, massage through a a a video jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: call. but even for my in-person clients, I don't use any of that stuff. Just because ultimately, at least for the purple people I work with and the people kind of people that are gonna be listening to this, you're trying to get back to performance and using your body and moving. And so if that's the end goal. Then the steps to get there should reflect that in some way. And so if I can get the same adaptation that I'm trying to get by massaging your hamstrings, if I can get that with an exercise, I'd rather do it with an exercise because it's gonna lead into doing a deadlift eventually, right? There's there's more crossover. but cupping, massage, joint mobilizations, getting your back cracked by chiropractor, all this stuff can be cool and it can really help. But if it's the only thing you're doing, you're you're just gonna it's it's so good when things are really sensitive and really sore. Someone can give you a massage, stuff can feel great. But then you have to go, Okay, well, I have to prepare my body for the demands of whatever it is that I'm gonna try and ask it to do. if we're talking powerlifting, right? Your your big lifts, that's a lot of force going through your body. Me rubbing your back isn't gonna prepare your body for those forces. And so the that sort of connection of rehab is this like gentle stuff. And then I go back to training. It's like, well, there's a huge gap there that we've missed because like we were saying before, right? The pain's gonna decrease your strength. Depending on how long you've had this issue, you might not have loaded certain tissues, whether it's muscles, tendons, ligaments, a bit of everything. You might not have loaded that for months, years, at least effectively and now someone's gonna crack your back, you feel great for two days. And so you're like, okay, now I'm gonna go and smash some heavy deadlifts. Like, well, your your body's not prepared for that. Pain-wise, you might feel like you're prepared for it, but something's probably gonna go ping when you try and jump back into it. So I There are people who I've started rehab with who it's not a situation where we need to start like from, you know, really foundational stuff and slowly build up build our way up. If I can, as soon as someone works with me, I'll start them on three full-body gym sessions a week jay: Mm. Ashley Lewis: and some mobility stuff on the days in between, maybe. Like it's just like we were saying before, training and rehab are the same thing. jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: So and it gets great results, it works. You don't need to do the nice relaxing hands on stuff. It can be great if you want to, but if it's the only thing, you're just you're setting your body up for failure long term. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, stuff like that is just like how you would like to view supplements as like your your f your nutrition is basically everything that you eat. And then just that that supplementation is just a sprinkle on the top, a little bit of extra. So Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: your rehab and your training are like actually they're both the same thing jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: in a continuum as we just said. Those have to be like those the biggest building blocks of every single thing that you do, along with sleep, your nutrition. And you know, your any other recovery things that you might do, like you know, going for a walk and not not looking at screens all the time and stuff like that. And if eventually you could add on stuff like manual, you know, massages. They they they w one thing I tell people is that they make you feel nice and relaxed. So it's okay. So there's nothing Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: wrong with getting that, but don't think that that's gonna help you fix your back pain and then like if you have a strain or if you have like a tweak. doesn't mean that you get a massage and the next day you're ready to go again. It doesn't work like that. That that's basically what we're trying to say. That you can do it. It feels nice, but it's not gonna fix things you know, entirely. It's it's just like a little bit of sprinkle on the top, a little bit of garnish at the end. Yeah. Tapas: psychological maybe. Ashley Lewis: Yeah. And somebody will hear that and go, but my uncle got his back cracked by the guy down the street Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: and 20 years of back pain disappeared. And now Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: he's amazing. It's like, well, there are there are two parts to that. One is that your uncle got lucky, right? Pain's weird, the bodies are weird, jay: Yep. Yep. Ashley Lewis: stuff like that happens. The second most important one, your uncle's not trying to do high performance stuff with his body. jay: Exactly. Ashley Lewis: Like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: I I don't care who you are. Even if you are one of the really lucky people that I mentioned first of all who got their back cracked and everything felt amazing, if you've not deadlifted for years and you go back into the gym and deadlift after that, assuming that that's fixed your back, you are gonna run into problems. I mean, you know, of course there's always like a you know, one in a thousand person that'll be absolutely fine, but you're putting force through your body. Your body has to be prepared for that force. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. another thing that I just quickly wanted to revert back is the part that you said, you know, your uncle got lucky. That also kinda tie ties back into that like we'll talk about this later, but the biopsychosocial model of things where like if you Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: actually believe something works sometimes, you know, even if it doesn't for most people, you might just feel like it does for you and just getting it done sometimes just eases your mind. Like it just takes that thing, that load of like, I've had back pain, I've had back pain. And the moment you get your back cracked, you're like, that's the reason why. Like that that's the that's the one fix that I can think of. And that's why you might start feeling like there's no more back pain as well. 'Cause there's a lot of, you know, psychological aspect towards pain and like it's very deep rooted than a lot of people wanna give this thing to. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: Yeah. Yeah, jay: And I don't I know go ahead, sorry, actually. Ashley Lewis: it's it it's no good, good, go. jay: I I want to just mention something here and like like just let me know if this is digressing because I I think it's kind of important because I notice in some athletes they believe like these things like these deep tissue massages are very important for recovery and they constantly kind of get it. But I've noticed that some of these guys get super lax. There's like an element of laxity that comes as a result of that stuff. And for example, like I've noticed sometimes after something like that, they get under a bar, their body just doesn't feel right, that that element of a required tension is no longer there in their system. for example, some of the combat sports guys that I go with, I know one guy like in in India you have like these deep tissue massages that they kind of go for and that kind of just like almost like overtly laxes the body. I I still believe you need some degree of tension in the system to kind of like have things happen. And this overlaxity kind of happens. Like, i is that a thing I ask like because I've I've just noticed this in some guys. They kind of get that done and they kind of fry their performance. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, I mean I I actually don't I mean have many clients that get a lot of hands on stuff. so it's not something that I've noticed, but it makes sense, right? If you the whole point of a or not necessarily the whole point, but a large point of a massage is to get everything feeling nice and relaxed and floppy, like I'm sure everyone here's had a massage at some point, right? You have it and jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: you you come out and you're like, Ooh, like you you know, you feel Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: like a like one of those inflatable things jay: Yeah, Tapas: Huh. Ashley Lewis: outside of car sales place, jay: yeah. Ashley Lewis: right? Like it feels really good. But like you said, if you want to do anything, the way that your muscles work is by contracting and creating tension. And so if you've taken all that tension out of your system, if you've taken your nervous system into more of a relatively parasympathetic state, everything's like dialed down and chilled out. And then you're trying to do an activity that requires the complete opposite of that. There's gonna be a period where your body's like it's it's sort of slow to catch up with. What you're trying to ask it to Kaushal Sumedh: I think also a lot of people completely misunderstand the fact that when you have some form of strength training in your you know regular schedule, like regardless of what you're trying to do, there is a certain amount of stiffness that is required at the joint and tendon. Like that's how it, you know, eventually you get stronger, you have stronger connective tissue and muscles also as a result get stronger. So there is an element of some amount of stiffness required. That's that's I think a lot of people have that misconception that muscles make you like like working out or lifting weights makes you very stiff. That only happens if you're just doing like pretty bad range of motion jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: and like your technique's off, right? But for the most part, you'll still be able to have like really good, you know, mobility and flexibility as long as you're doing things well. But there is a certain amount of stiffness that is required. That that's kind of the point that we're trying to make here, where you don't want to get too loose. You don't want to get like too flexible either. Ashley Lewis: Mm-hmm. Tapas: Mm. Ashley Lewis: I I mean, I think like a nice, easy way to think about it is, you know, picture a stereotypical power lifter, someone who's probably pretty stiff. They they don't move through much range of motion, but they can lift a lot of weight. And then Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: think about someone that does yoga. Like you jay: Mm. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: probably you're not gonna envision them lifting heavy weight, right? Because it's just Tapas: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: there's there's always trade-offs with everything. You Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: And not that there has to be, but the but at extreme ends of the scales, there's trade offs. And so what people jay: Yeah, there will be. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: if you're at one end of the scale, you probably need a little bit more of the opposite end. If you're at the other end, Kaushal Sumedh: The opposite room. Ashley Lewis: you need a little bit more of this end, right? And and most people, when they start having issues of tension, it's just because they're going too far this way. And so jay: Exactly. Ashley Lewis: sure, maybe get a massage, or maybe just start moving your body in different ways and and you'll like land in the middle and you'll feel okay. jay: I I think that's where like the modern conversation about movement quality is starting to kind of come up because I I kind of realize Tapas: So. jay: that sometimes individu individuals just can't get into positions. They just can't execute under a certain load. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: Like like we talk about like the perception of effort goes up when you have, for example, like recently a client of mine, she can't get her like arms to kind of get under the bar. So that's the kind of stiffness we want to kind of avoid. You want to kinda ha get into position to kind of create good tension. So you kind of want to design your program around that. And I I think in powerlifting I kind of learned this as specificity and variability, right? Specificity is the performance. We want to kind of maximize variability is the baseline of health that you have access to. You can't build on quicksand. So you need enough of like variable movement quality to kind of get there. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Th these things are a little tricky to talk about because we want people to understand that everything exists on a spectrum, nothing exists on like binaries. So when we say like, jay: Yeah. Yeah. Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: you you are going to get a little stiff, we're not saying like you shouldn't like we're not saying that, you should get so stiff that you can't move. That's not the point we're making. You should be able to get into positions very comfortably, but there is an element of stiffness that is jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: required for you to continue to get stronger so that the connective tissue also gets stronger. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I I hope people understand that and it's it's clear so that. Like you shouldn't be confused and think like, he's saying you should you you can be stiff, it's okay. No, we're not saying that. Yeah, we're not saying Tapas: It's not absolutes. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: like you should be stiff and you can't move. Like Jey said, if you just lack the relative amount of external rotation on the shoulders and you can't get into low bar position, then everything down the chain starts get affecting jay: Exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: because you can't get your shelf properly, you can't get the bar in place properly, you don't have the right amount of like humorous position according to your torso, you can't get your torso in position. Your hips, your knees, your ankles, they're all gonna feel off as just as a result of not having enough jay: Exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: external rotation at the shoulders, right? So so that that's that's the kind of situation we're talking about. jay: Yeah, exactly. That's the kind of Tapas: Yep. jay: thing I want to like because I again absolutes is like one of the biggest things we want to kind of avoid in in in these situations. Because like I I I know like we've talked about on a powerlifting spectrum, but Ash Ash, like you you you you're like a you B BJJ Jiu Jitsu is like a big part of your life as well, right? And a lot of BJJ guys believe in strength and conditioning and having a certain amount of muscle mass on their system as well. Like like I I I've seen like a lot of high level guys get really jacked, but they're still mobile in terms of the degree required. Right. So in general, people need to be on both ends of the spectrum, if I'm not mistaken. Right. Even from a jiu jitsu standpoint. Ashley Lewis: Yeah. and in jujitsu they don't drug tests. That's why everyone's everyone's so big because everyone's on gear. jay: Yeah, yeah, I was gonna Ashley Lewis: yeah, so I mean it's exactly that, right? They get the the stiffness and the strength and like the pure power output and the numbers from being in the gym lifting weights. And then when they go train jujitsu, they're putting themselves in the positions that mean that they're not, you know, losing their flexibility at the hips or the spine or whatever that they need to be good at the sport. And sure, like maybe they need to supplement that as well in the gym by, you know, like Zercher squats and and Jefferson curls and all that are pretty popular in jujitsu SNC because there's a lot of load for a flex spine in the sport. So it makes sense to prepare yourself for it. So there's there's that as well. But generally speaking, it's almost like the two qualities are trained separately, right? Like building stiffness and power in the gym and strength in the gym doesn't take away from the flexibility when you're on the mats and when you're competing and training. And the same is true the other way, right? When you're on the mats folded up and stretching your hamstrings in crazy long positions or whatever, that doesn't suddenly take away from your ability to produce force when you're doing a deadlift. It's like task specific. Your brain is much smarter than you are. It knows, you know, when to create tension, when not to create tension. I think for me, an important or a useful way to think about it. is not that like, okay, I'm either tense or I'm relaxed. It's when I need to be tense, I should be tense. When I jay: Yeah, yeah. Ashley Lewis: need to be relaxed, I should be relaxed. And I need to have the ability to switch that on and off depending on what I'm asking my body to do. jay: I I I am a big believer in that kind of like your ability to create tension rather than be constantly tensed. I I I I really, really think that that is kind of really important because it's something that I've noticed a lot of people kind of lack in terms of and it but I also want to kind of mention the fact that you mentioned this task specific, right? Because we kind of again, we may I may go off on a tangent. Feel free to pull me back, guys. But when you kind of hear things like functional training, right? Like they say, like this is functional training, like jujitsu guys have to do animal flow, right? Or like s something like that. Like 'cause it's i it's something that was is commonly advertised here, like functional training. But I think we all Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: sitting here kind of understand that function is task specific, right? What is a bottleneck for an individual? And how can you define training according to filling that bottleneck, like widening that bottleneck? That's inherently like functional training, if I were to define Ashley Lewis: Yeah, I man, the some of the functional training stuff is gets a little bit crazy, like you say, like the animal flow stuff and and for for a bunch of reasons. But purely from a if you're thinking about sport and trying to make your body move better and feel better and and all this. If we're going with a with with powerlifting as an example, the goal of the sport is to lift as heavy weight as possible. So The function, what would be functional training is training to lift as much weight as possible. Like, I don't care how you lift that weight off the floor, as long as it's, you know, hitting the rules and whatever to count as like the lift that you're actually jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: doing, obviously. But outside of that, round your back, don't round your back, like whatever. However, your body wants to lift weight off the floor, do it. And so there's a a separate conversation between depending on what the what your goal is for. an exercise or a movement or an activity, whatever. Whatever you're trying to do will dictate what becomes functional because function is dependent on the goal of what you're doing. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, again, just just to put a caveat in there, he's not saying don't lift with good technique. He's just saying that the goal is if if you're trying to lift like maximum amount weight, there might be breakdown and that's okay. And like within the rules of the sport, as long as you're getting that weight, it doesn't matter how you got it. Yeah. He's not saying like, Ashley Lewis: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah, you can just lift with the rounded back and like just do yeah, yeah, just keep doing all the time. That's that's not that's not the point here. Tapas: that all the time. jay: Dude, they th they're just gonna they they're gonna take Ashley Lewis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. jay: out of context and use as a justification to Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, that that that's kinda why I was like, Tapas: Good. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, we j we just gotta make Ashley Lewis: Yeah, no. Kaushal Sumedh: that clear. Ashley Lewis: I should have I mean maybe maybe we can go into this more with more detail when we touch on movement quality stuff, jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ashley Lewis: but I think it's really important to to lift with good technique, however we wanna Tapas: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: define that. jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: When when you're training, especially. But if you're going in a competition and your goal is to lift as heavyweight as possible, then you're just gonna do it however and and the technique doesn't matter. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: but yeah, I'm I'm definitely not jay: So Ashley Lewis: saying to just go crazy and and injure yourself. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I'm just making sure like no nobody takes things out of context and nobody like, you know, yeah, yeah. Tapas: Like the talks and conditions, the caveat. Kaushal Sumedh: They just understand like what we're trying to actually say. jay: Okay. Ashley Lewis: Yeah. But I think that's a that's a good point though, actually. Just to to sort of like combine a point that that Jay also just said a second ago, right, is when people are talking about okay, the gym, if we're using the example of SNC and then a sport like jujitsu, and they're like, the gym's just for building the physical qualities and so you just need to squat, bench, deadlift jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: and go really heavy with those and then That means that you're good for your sport. I think then that's going too far to the opposite jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: end of the scale, right? Where now where our only goal is just to push a bunch of heavy weight, it's like, well, how are you pushing that weight? And what do you actually need for your sport? Like, is this relevant for what you need? Of course, generally building capacity is is really, really good and really Kaushal Sumedh: Go yeah. Ashley Lewis: useful. But also we should be somewhat specific with where we're building that capacity and how we're building it and why you're doing it, and not just go. Okay, you want to do a sport, well then bench, squat, deadlift and and you're fine, that's all you need. jay: Yeah. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: It's like, well, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: probably not. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I think within the context of powerlifting as well, like something that I've noticed is people just wanna like you'll see people always going to extremes where they're like, it's time to step max and they'll just like twenty K, thirty K steps and they'll be like, Why does my squat suck today? jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I mean, like, yeah, it's it's common sense, dude. Like you're just eating into your recovery to the point where your powerlifting is getting affected. That's what I keep telling people. Just just try to do the normal stuff. Tapas: I just ran a marathon before primary day, something like that. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, just just don't do like, yeah, yeah, yeah. People do that shit where they're just they just run like ten ten kilometers and then they're like, I I don't know, coach, my shins are like feeling very this thing, and I can't deadlift, I can't squat, I don't know what happened. And I'll I have to keep asking them, like, what do you do? What do you do? Do you sleep? They'll be like, Yeah, I slept. but I ran a ten K. Like, there you go. You've never done that before in in like years. And then suddenly you want to do that, but you also want to do this. There's a little bit of trade-off because everybody has twenty-four hours in a day. There's only so much you can put and recover from and time as well, right? Not just from how much your body can take and how much it can give, but also even the amount of time that you have, you just have 24 hours a day. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: You can't want to do every single thing on the planet. And be extremely good at everything. Like there might be somebody like that. There's jay: Yeah that. Kaushal Sumedh: very few people. Yeah, I mean, there are very few people like that who are like just you know, like excellent at everything they do physically. But it's not like for the general population it's really not something that they should they can do. Y Tapas: Mm. Kaushal Sumedh: you can be good, but y I don't think you can be excellent at everything like that. There's always gonna be trade offs at some end or the other, jay: Yeah, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: to some degree. jay: It's always yeah. Tapas: And yeah, if you just move back to the point we were discussing on pain. So right now we kind of like discussed how we would deal with somebody who's dealing with pain, injuries, rehab and all. So I actually wanted to ask you, Ashley and just the whole group here about the bio-psychosocial model of pain. So to explain to our audience, it's pretty simple. It's as the name suggests, we just look at elements from the biological, psychological and... social spectrums of an individual to kind of assess their pain. biological part is pretty self-explanatory. It can be something like a direct injury, a tear, tissue injury, anything. Psychological factors are like we just discussed in the beginning that somebody can quite literally have a lot of sensations of pain, like factors like stress, anxiety, ineffective coping mechanisms even, things that can affect their perception of pain. and social factors would just be things like support systems, actual access to resources, things like that. So this was just, I just wanted to like give an explanation to what that is. And we're just going to discuss on this model's validity and what its pros and cons would be, especially as a model to viewing pain. So what do you guys think? Ashley Lewis: I think f it's it's Probably one of the most important things in terms of understanding pain. because, you know, traditionally our view of of pain was your knee hurts, it's because you've damaged XYZ muscle or ligament or bone or whatever. Like there has to be some structural damage that's that's caused this. And now we know that that's not the case. And just like you said, you know, psychological, social things can can impact massively. you know, stress is a huge one. If you're stressed at work and home life and, you know, as a result of that, you're getting four hours of sleep a night and you're just constantly feeling bad about everything, it doesn't matter what exercises you do, your body is not going to feel good. So I think it in that regard, it's it's one of the most important things. trying to appreciate that the way that you view and think about your pain. does have an impact on it. It's like you were saying earlier with the placebo effect with massage and all this sort of stuff. I I think placebo gets used as a almost a dirty term, but it's amazing. Placebo's great. Tapas: Go. Ashley Lewis: Like it's it's such a valuable thing. The fact that you can so massively change your sensation and pain experience by what's going on in your brain is crazy. Like they've done all kinds of studies with it. I mean the the easiest ones to just talk through without spending too much time is They've done it with loads of different surgeries, right? Where they do sham surgeries. They a real one where they go in and they'll clean out a joint and, you know, get rid of bits of floaty meniscus and whatever in in the knee, for example. And then another group of people, they'll literally just cut their skin, seal it back up, tell them that they did the operation. And there's not rarely, there is rarely a significant difference in pain between the people that had the actual surgery and people that didn't. So people who literally just had their skin cut open. cut open felt so much better after the surgery than they did before, but they didn't actually have surgery just because they believed that something had been fixed in their joint. So that's an example where playing into the psychological side and the placebo effect of almost manipulating our beliefs about the biological side of it makes things feel better even though nothing biological's taken place. jay: Yep. Ashley Lewis: So it's I think it's really important to understand. Tapas: shows the power of perception Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Tapas: as well. It's just like a question that I had. I mean, obviously scientifically valid, right? The BPS model of pain, right? Do you often see a lot of clinical disconnect when it comes to physiotherapists or even allied health professionals? Like a lot of them still default to pharmacotherapy, which is the usage of medicines. as much as possible instead of other mechanisms like a lot of us try to rescribe rehab. Ashley Lewis: I think it depends which healthcare professionals they've spoken to. I think generally now physios and osteopaths and chiropractors and and you know all these sorts of people are being taught at school about the biosychosocial model and how important it is. So I don't think that's as much of a obviously, you know, there's still the odd person that that might not use it as they should, but generally speaking, I think it's really, really good now. I think there's still in the medical system where you go and see a doctor and they give you a scan and you see a consultant who gives you an injection, I think they are still much more likely to just go straight down the the route Tapas: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: of, there's some sort of physical pathology that we have to pump you with some fluid or take something out or whatever. so I think that's the bigger problem. But within people who actually do rehab, I think now at this point it's Like it's it's really good. And to be honest, sometimes I think it's maybe too far that way. which I don't know if that's a a conversation we we want or need to get into. jay: No, because because I I I I I do I Kaushal Sumedh: Mm, mm. jay: I would wanna kind of go Tapas: Thank you. jay: down that route as well. Right. It it's just like anything Tapas: D'oh. jay: else. Now the pendulums kind of swung a lot the other way at times as well. Right. Kaushal Sumedh: Mm, mm. jay: So I I I I do want to kind of Ashley Lewis: Yeah. Yeah. jay: bring it there. I I did want to th throw up a little question here from a psychological and like in terms of like the the patient or the individual approaching. just out of your experience, Ash. I've personally had one person who I I think a long time ago I messaged you about them like I DMGS said like I I just don't think I can solve this person's issues because I found that their entire identity as an individual was attached to that pain. Right. Like I I've just realized, man, this person, like whatever we do, whatever entry point we try to get to, their identity exists regarding that pain. And I kind of realized I didn't have an option of resolving this because once I asked them, what are we on a pain scale? Because when they came in, they were like eight out of ten, they said they said I'm still in a lot of pain. And I was like, What is it? They like, three out of ten. So I kind of understood that no matter what we did, this person just could not let go of that identity. Is that a thing? Or like just want to touch on that? Ashley Lewis: Yeah, definitely. And it's it's really tricky to deal with. I think that's where having somebody that you could refer out to, like a sports psychologist or something, is is probably helpful, which it it can be it can be tricky to sort of have that conversation with someone 'cause then they're like, great, you think I'm making this all up and w whatever. Like it's Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: it's it's a really tricky conversation to have and to refer them in a way where you don't feel like or where they don't feel like you're invalidating them and saying that They're making it up or which obviously isn't the case. But it goes back to the psychological component of it, right? And even social, actually. So at uni, what you're describing, we got taught it that's a yellow flag, right? So a red flag is something where, okay, if someone has this, you're sending them straight to the hospital. Yellow flag is like, I should keep an eye on this, but it's not something that means we can't go ahead, but it might limit us. And so People can become attached to their problem to the point where it becomes so infused with their identity that then removing that problem removes part of your identity, which you don't want to do. That's that's such a weird thing for a human to get rid of something that you see as you. And it starts off in such a normal way of, my knee hurts. And then it becomes, I've got a bad knee, which eventually becomes I'm the guy with the bad knee. Like I'm just the bad knee guy. And it's like, well, then you're always gonna be the bad knee guy if you've identified yourself with that. And it's really tricky. And where it where it comes into the psychosocial element of it, they might get more empathy from friends and loved ones because of this. So it it weirdly it kind of makes them feel good in that regard. Like they get benefits from it in some way. And I'm not saying this is intentional from them at all, but it's just so I mean, break Tapas: It can be subconscious. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, like exactly brains and humans are so complicated, behaviors so insanely complicated that just in the back of the head this stuff's all feeding into, well, like, sure, I don't want to be in pain. But also, you know, my my girlfriend goes and does the shopping for me every week and you know, she'll massage my legs and like that's pretty nice. And you know, and so these things also impact it as well. And it's tough. I think if it's somebody like that for me now. like I'll refer them to a sports psychologist that I know. And it's tricky to try and have that conversation with jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: them. and I'll still try keep working with them on the physical side of things. So it's not like I'm going, I can't help you go away. But it's like, okay, well we also need to be addressing this stuff. And I won't necessarily say that that's that's why to them, because you know, I don't want to make them have like some some crisis about it. Tapas: you're kind of going to be attacking their identity at that point then. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, exactly. Because it's such a you know, well when it does become so infused with your identity, it's like, yeah, any suggestion of hey, this might not be good is essentially me saying that you're doing something wrong and you're bad and you shouldn't be like this, which obviously isn't the case, but pain's crazy. It makes you do, you know, strange things that that logically from the outside might not make sense, but after months or years of dealing with something, your brain and and behaviour sort of changes in in that jay: And I I just want to say it's kind of scary 'cause like you said, like the guy's called like bad knee guy kind of situation, right? 'Cause th this the person in question was like socially he was just referred to as the Bing scapula guy. Right? Like no like this guy, like amongst his front group, that was his entire identity. So it i it it is like a like a thing I realized. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, and I and like I'm not I'm definitely not saying this from like a judgy place. So when I was younger I played basketball and I had patelatendinopathy for four or five years. I just couldn't get rid of it. all the rehab that I was given was awful. And like I would when Snapchat was still a thing, maybe it is, I don't know. I'm too old now. I'm I'm unk status now, I know. but I'd go home on Snapchat, I would take a picture of me icing my knees and I'd like put a caption like, I ha I hate having bad knees or, you know, something like that. And it's like I it was just such a it was such a big part of my life that obviously I didn't like it. But I was even sharing it on my social media being like, hey, I've got bad knees. And then that starts to become part of who you are. Tapas: Exactly, it's just these little things that you do to reinforce that identity which eventually like you don't realize how many times you've done it to the point where it becomes a part of you. So you kind of need to catch that on earlier like not associate yourself not using those I statements I am the person who does this you I am the person with pain things like that. Ashley Lewis: Yeah. I I think a super Kaushal Sumedh: I think there's much more psychological aspect to this as well, where some people not just attaching the identity to it, but I think they also there are there's there is a certain subsection of people, and and this might like trigger some people the way I say it, but there's a certain subsection of people that love showing these things because they get the attention from it. 'Cause they keep getting these pe these the these like they they keep getting a lot of people to say like, I'm so sorry, and like, I I believe that you'll be you'll get out of this, I believe in you, I believe in you, and things like that. Tapas: Come back. Kaushal Sumedh: So so though yeah, and yeah, yeah, you know that comeback is always stronger than the setback. And you can just make like you can milk the hell out of that on social media nowadays, when it comes to reels. I believe that there is there are like good because I've seen athletes like that, there are good number of people who just love milking this stuff. And it's even if they're actually not in that much of a situation. So like even a little bit of like high performance athletes, they will have some kind of pain. But they keep trying to do that because they keep trying to milk it. And that I think that also plays like a bigger role in how many outside people view the sport as very dangerous after that. Because you're constantly seeing that athlete, like, Tapas: Yeah, that affects public perception. Kaushal Sumedh: I'm in so much pain. I'm in so much, still I get to do this. or or I s I still I'm still doing this. Like despite of all the trials and tribulation that's god God's putting me through, I still I'm still doing this. And then the whole world is watching that. Like people who want to get into it, they're like, that must be really painful. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Whereas they're probably not even in that much pain. Like th this is a certain subsection that does exist. Tapas: Very much so. jay: And and I'm gonna sit Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, as much as as much as like people might not agree with it, but someone who's watching this is probably like that jay: Yeah, and and I and this is a hill I it's not a part of the podcast, but this is a hill I'll kinda die on. the tendency between combat athletes and powerlifters when it comes to dealing with pain is astronomically different. My God, Jesus Christ. My God, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. It's so different. jay: like I have guys who are like fight for like a living, the way they behave, like when pain kinda shows up is so different from the other perspective. Kaushal Sumedh: And there's huge, huge difference between like people who've played some kind of athletics jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: versus people who haven't at all. Because like I always had an athletic background and anytime I had get injured, I'd be like, Yeah, no big deal. I'll I'll come out of it. It's not not not a problem, just a a bit of time. But every time I see somebody else who does remo anything remotely, slightly physically diff difficult, and they're like, I think I'm gonna die. I don't think I can do this. And you're just like, it's not that big of a deal, bro. All I made you do is Bulgarians play squats. jay: Yeah. Tapas: Yeah. jay: Look, this like I like the way I like like actually like in terms of jujitsu, just talking about the psychological toughness required for that stuff. Like I cause first time I went for like a jiu-jitsu like show, like like a a s like an event live, I saw something that I kinda never forget in my life. it was the most frightening thing I ever heard in my life. It's like a baseball bat breaking. but like Ashley Lewis: Mm. jay: I've seen guys in wrestling are like like Do you find that as a thing though, like amongst like combat athletes when they kinda come to you, are they less hesitant to kind of are they more resilient towards the situation? Ashley Lewis: Yeah, definitely. I the thing is, all right, in so at my gym, everyone jokes at my jujitsu gym, everyone jokes like, you you know, you'll be great here making so much money, you you know, everyone's injured all the time. I'm like, Well, no, I'm not making any money from you guys because they don't care that they're injured, you know, like they're Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: in pain and they just keep training. And they're probably too far the other way, right? They probably don't care enough. There jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: are people training through stuff that it's like, you should rehab that. But if I had to pick one or the other, like I'm I'm gonna pick the mentality that allows me to feel some discomfort and still train through it. but yeah, I have I've rehabbed people from my gym and and other gyms that do combat sports, whether it's jujitsu or MMA or whatever. And a good example actually recently is a a friend who tore his meniscus at jujitsu. and we were doing just something on the floor in like a half kneeling position. He was sitting his butt down to his heel and we were trying to get full flexion back. And he was doing he did like a I saw his face, he like winced a little bit. And I was like, does this hurt? He was like, Yeah, it's not too bad though. I'm like, Okay, what is it out of ten? He was like, Seven? I'm like, jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: Okay, well that's that's too bad, you know. Let's let's do something easier. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, that's pretty high. Yeah, that's not good. Tapas: That's not, that's not, that's not true. Ashley Lewis: But like somebody who does jay: And Ashley Lewis: you know, obviously I'm speaking in generalities, there are always exceptions, but somebody that runs or somebody that lifts in the gym, they're never gonna do an exercise and be like, yeah, it's a seven out of ten, but it's okay. Like, you know, there are people going like, this really hurts. I'm like, okay, what is out of ten? Five? Like, sure, I don't want you to do something that's five out of ten, but Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: I wouldn't say, that really hurts. jay: Hun, yeah. Ashley Lewis: I think your body's just not been exposed to anything that's that's difficult, other than muscular fatigue in the gym, which obviously is Kaushal Sumedh: Mm. Mm mm. Ashley Lewis: difficult, but it's like it sort of warps your your perception a a little bit, I think. I think the Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: more variety of using your body in just like you were saying before, it w in in whatever sports and As much variety you can get of that, particularly when you're younger, sets you up for it in jay: Yeah, honestly. Ashley Lewis: the future, not, you know, and obviously Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: if you're an adult, that ship sailed. But I think it's still a valuable experience to do other sports and go, okay, well, this is what it feels like to even if it's just hiking or something, you know, like you're probably going to encounter more little like small niggles and aches and pains and all that sort of stuff than than you win it will in the gym, or at least in a different sort of way. jay: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I I think one of the biggest cons of the biopsychosocial model is just what we discussed here, is that some people can get to that side or this side because it's very subjective from person to person and it can always like you you move away from the actual objectivity because of what you're actually feeling, right? And I like to give the phantom limb pain as an example. Like e sometimes like you you I don't know if you guys know jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: you should just Google it if you don't. I mean, all people here know, but I mean the people who are gonna watch it. But if you don't have a limb, sometimes you might feel pain in that limb. For example, if I don't have a left arm, sometimes I might just feel like my left arm is hurting, even though it just doesn't exist anymore. And that's a completely psychological thing, right? So when we talk about any kind of pain that you've had in the past, like if I have knee pain, if I've had long-term knee pain, but I'm starting to get out of it now, even if I actually don't have knee pain. Mentally, I'm still in that state, but I'm like, it might trigger again. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: And any Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: kind of even a little bit of sensation at that area might start making you feel like it's going to start again. Right? Like if I'm starting to feel better and I do very quad-specific work, any flexion and extension at the knee, and I'm pushing my limits actually, and I start to feel a little bit of muscular muscular fatigue and soreness at the joint and things like that, that's fine. But as a result of set of pushing my limits there and a result of my previous past experiences. There might be a chance of me feeling like, it might trigger it again. Right? That's that's like one con that I can think major con that I can think of when it comes to biopsychosocial models, is that you kind of have to deal with the emotional aspect of things. And humans, when we deal with emotions, there's no real logic behind it. It's it's pretty hard to like find logic there. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, there's I think from a rehab and pain perspective, the where I see this the most, where somebody thinking about, does this hurt? Like, do I have my pain? It's normally something where they get it in day-to-day life. So not just when I'm doing a squat, when I'm, you know, whatever, when I'm bench pressing. I think those things that that can definitely still play a role, 100% it does. but at least If it only happens when you move, it's like, okay, well, there's there's at least a pattern to it of every time I hit 90 degrees of knee flexion, my knee hurts. Like at least there's something there. But when it's like, yeah, when I'm just sat down, my back starts aching when I've been at my desk for a while. One option is maybe you've just not moved very much, right? You need to stand up jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: and walk around. But a lot of these people, it's because you're sat down, not doing anything, and you start thinking, what does my back feel like? And of course, once you start thinking that. Y you the volume knob gets turned up and all the jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: sensations that are there get blown out of proportion. And I have so many people who have those sorts of pains and aches. They go on holiday when they're doing things, jay: That's right, yeah. Ashley Lewis: they're walking around, they're eating, they're relaxed, and they come back and they're like, I had no issues whilst I was on holiday. Well, yeah, because you weren't thinking about it. And that's where it comes into the psychosocial stuff of like, okay, you were also you didn't have stress, you were happy, you were doing things you enjoyed. There was sun, you got enough sleep and All that sort of stuff plays into it as well. But literally just whether you are thinking about it or not can make a huge difference as to how much pain you do or don't feel. jay: And like when when we kind of speak about the cons, right? I I I just want to double check with Ashley. Like i one of the cons that I've seen sometimes practitioners kind of using like the guys I know sometimes they kind of blame everything on the psychological and sociological element. Like I I think like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: like bro, sometimes a person is actually hurt. Like you kinda you you can't psychosocially Ashley Lewis: Yeah, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah. Tapas: you jay: aware of that. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, I I can't stand that trend. Like you said, the the pendulum's gone the other way, right? It used to be that in the nineties we were blaming structure for everything. And now it's like we went, okay, well, it's not always structure. And then we kept going this way, and we were saying, yeah, sometimes it's psychological and social. And we kept going until now we're like, it's never structure. Like the body doesn't matter. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I think that's a very lazy thing. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just like, Okay, what's the what's the trendy model? Tapas: There's a thing we said about the absolutes. jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's going back to absolutes. something that it was Andy Andy Fatichan. He put it in a post three years ago, maybe. It was just like a throwaway thing that he put in the caption, but this has always stuck with me and is my mentality for ninety-nine point nine percent of rehabs is movement problems require movement solutions. jay: Hundred percent. Ashley Lewis: It might be That there is psychological and social things impacting your pain 100%. That stuff plays a huge role. But ultimately, you have a problem with how you are currently doing a squat. So we need to give you a solution to be able to do that squat better from a movement perspective. Now, sometimes that might just mean deload for a couple of weeks, you start squatting again in a couple of weeks and you're fine. Like, yay, that's great. If if that's like that should be the first option. If that doesn't work, that's when it's like, okay, well. How are you squatting? How jay: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ashley Lewis: are you, are you actually, you know, are you loading your quads ever? Or are you basically just doing a hip hinge? And so if you're not doing any other training that loads your quads, then your knees are probably gonna hurt because you're putting a lot of weight on your back and and going down, but your legs don't actually have the capacity to do that. You think they do because you squat, but you're not really using your quads. And again, this this is when it comes into the movement quality side of things. But that's an example where you have an issue with moving. Part of the solution should be moving your body. Kaushal Sumedh: Hmm. jay: No, because that that was the thing that I when we wanted were talking about the topics for this podcast, right? because I Tapas: Do. jay: I do see it as a trend, but my l like experience is not as vast as like some like yours. But I do I do see sometimes people just go too much into the other end of the spectrum now. And and I I think it's kind of an easy cop out at times. And I think all of these are like weapons that you can use, like You kind of want to have an understanding that's psychological and sociological stuff. But like like you guys said, like sometimes when a person hinges, you're like, Man, you your pelvis just doesn't do what it's supposed to be doing. Like you you're just not getting that expansion there that we want, right? We don't get that length there. It's not like a stress from work kind of a thing. It's just maybe it's a competency issue, maybe it's like a whole host of other things. But sometimes it's just movement quality matters. And I think it's on your website, right? Movement problems require movement solutions, if I'm not mistaken. Ashley Lewis: I think so probably, yeah. jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: I I I was talking with someone about this a couple of days ago actually. I wrote my website when I first started my business and now I've just abandoned it. I don't really know what's on there anymore, so I don't know. jay: No, but yeah, that that that was the thing because like the Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: the I think the last three years ago, like BPS model was like i it is still very important. But I think you kinda people kind of miss Yeah. Yeah, people forget Tapas: You want to it strategically, you don't just want to it out there. jay: the biological aspect of it, like the actual thing that sucks. Tapas: Yeah. jay: Right. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I mean the same thing we saw in powerlifting, right? Where people were like, Well, technique ma technique is the end all be all. And then people started shifting away from it jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: and said that technique doesn't matter as much. Like the body kind of self-organizes itself. And then that kind of went to the entire other way. And now you're going back to like, technique matters a lot. And the answer's always like, you know, it depends on the person and it's like it's gonna be somewhere in the middle. Like of course it matters, and then there's a time and place for you to be like, you know, it doesn't matter as much for you to hold back, right? So the same thing applies here, where you you do understand that there's a social element and a psychological element, but you also have to do your job as a rehab you know, physio, whatever you want to call yourself, whatever it is. You want to do that part of like actually identifying what's happening and then figuring out the solution. And it's something that I just wanted to say, like, it's actually something that I wanted to make a post on, but I'll just say it here. one of the most important things that like differentiates A really, really excellent coach or a professional that you work with, which is somebody who's mediocre, is what I like to call as a coach's eye because they're somebody who can figure out the actual bottleneck and the problem that exists. And that's a first step to fixing any issue, right? Like if you don't even know what the problem is, you can't figure out a solution. So you need to be able to find out what the actual problem is. Like you work with somebody, and over time, you can't figure that problem out instantly. But over time, as you work with somebody, jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: you kind of start like seeing like what the actual so problem Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: here is, and then you start finding solutions. We're not saying like by like the social and psychological aspect of things, there's no solution to that at all. There are solutions, but don't become lazy and just tell every single person like it's in your head, it's a mindset, like, just go do go nuts, it's okay. Ashley Lewis: Yeah. I I mean the thing with that is even with the psychosocial side of it, that's all talking about how your brain influences everything, right? Your jay: Yeah. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: nervous system and and and how you process pain. Something else that also influences your nervous system. Like your nervous system has two ends essentially, all the stuff that's in there and then everything else that's in the rest of your body. Kaushal Sumedh: Everything else, yeah. Ashley Lewis: It's like, well, if we're thinking about nervous system from this perspective, why wouldn't we also think about it from this jay: Exactly. Ashley Lewis: perspective of Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, exactly. Yep. Ashley Lewis: How it's interacting with my muscles and and my mechanosensors and and all this stuff that's all this complicated stuff in my body. Like it can absolutely all impact what's going on in here, just like what's going on in here can impact what's going on back down there. I know I'm pointing, which isn't very good if someone's listening. I'm pointing to my brain and then the my arms and legs. jay: Yeah, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. jay: and and I and I think like this is where like if you guys don't mind, I just want to kind of bring up that other topic that we have where about making someone injury proof kind of a situation, right? because th that Tapas: I think it is a good transition to that yeah. jay: is usually sold as like I'm I'm gonna throw them under the bus here and I'm gonna name names. Every time I see a knees over toes kind of post, right? I'm just like that is not the solution for everything. And you I personally believe that the possibility for injury always exists. Right. Smart training just builds like general stress here, like allocating stress efficiently. You can just make the person more like movement quality biased. But Ash, in your like perspective, can you make someone injury proof? Like is that a thing? Ashley Lewis: Not that I've figured out. jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: I think I think if we found a way to make someone injury proof, I wouldn't have a job. Like we'd have figured it out and no one would ever have any injuries ever again. I mean, you know, assuming that Tapas: From what I could add to this, obviously when we refer to injury proofing, just for the audience, refer to reducing the risk of injury. Obviously you can't be 100 % immune, as Ashley said. But I feel Ashley Lewis: Yes. Tapas: like strengthening yourself is, I think that would quite literally be one of the best jay: Exactly. Tapas: ways to go through with this and making yourself injury proof. It seems like obvious to like... all of us and maybe a lot of people in the audience but there's actually people out there who would like genuinely avoid certain exercises like jay: Yeah. Tapas: squats or deadlifts out of fear of injury without knowing that doing that might make them more prone to it. Ashley Lewis: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think the thing around this is it's like a it's it's very much a language thing, right? Do I think that you can make someone injury proof or immune to injury or bulletproof or whatever other trendy thing you want to say, no? but do I think you can massively reduce your chance jay: Exactly. Ashley Lewis: of injury by training well and preparing your body for what you're asking it to do? Absolutely. I think it in a non-contact non contact context specifically, so Something that doesn't involve getting hit by other players, right? Any sport that doesn't involve that. I think you can you can really, really reduce the risk as long as you are actually training in a way that's preparing your tissues for what you're asking it to do. Because the majority of pain and injury that comes from lifting in the gym is really a couple of things. It's you bumped up. You increased intensity or volume or frequency way too quick, or you haven't prepared the the tissues for what you're asking it to do, which which come into the same thing, jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: right? Like your body can't do what you're asking it to do. That's either because you've done too much too soon, or you haven't done enough in the past, which is two sides of the same coin. And then the third aspect is you might just be moving in a way where you're constantly using the same areas in the exact same way. And it's just a there's no physical damage necessarily, it's like a perception and a software issue, if you want to call it that, where your brain is giving you the sensation of pain because you only ever move your hip through a tiny range of motion forwards and backwards, and so the same structures and the same muscles are always getting stressed, jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: and so it just increases the sensitivity in that area. Like those are pretty much the only ways you ever get pain in a in a non-contact situation. So if you Keep moving well so that you're not always moving in the same way in the same areas. And if you prepare your tissues for what you're asking it to do in a sensible way, like you're probably gonna be good. There's not much that could go wrong and catch you by surprise unless, you know, you've just not slept all week and you've been eating bad and you know, all those other factors that also play a role. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I think I wanna give an analogy here that I don't think Ashley can ever relate to. Tapas: you Kaushal Sumedh: injury avoiding injury or becoming injury free or like completely getting rid of an injury like risk is like driving in India. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Like it doesn't matter how careful you are, there's always a risk of you getting into an accident here. jay: Yeah, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: There is like it it can happen for any reason possible. Like you you just have no idea what happens on Indian roads. So it's like you can drive slow, you can be careful. Tapas: Something appears out of nowhere. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, something will just appear out of nowhere. Somebody will just ram into you and be like, yeah, sorry, I'm sorry about that, and just move on. So like, jay: Whoopsies. Kaushal Sumedh: I mean that that's kind of why like, yeah, yeah, that's kind of why like you just don't drive two wheelers in India. You you're you have to be super careful if you are. And even if you're super careful, sometimes you just can't do anything about it. It just happens, accidents happen. That's kind of how injuries happen. even if you're super careful, it can happen. No matter what you do, there is always a risk and l an an element of injury happening. But bottom line, as Ashley just said, the goal is to train smart, smart loading, smart movement, good good recovery management, good sleep, good nutrition. And as long as you're taking care of most of these things as much as you possibly can, you're going to reduce the or minimize the risk of injury as much as you want to. jay: Yeah. Possibly can, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: That that's basically, yeah, possibly can. That's basically the bottom line of things here. You can't just like because at some point of time I think people completely that's the thing, right? Like whenever you talk about anything, like eventually it just goes from one end to the other. There's no understanding that there is a an in-between, right? For people. And like when it comes to powerlifting, you have this thing where we used to have this thing where, every like every block it has to like super hard. And now we've kind of regressed away from that and we've understood like you need to have like multiple training blocks put together that have like good jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: loading strategies. Where you're not pushing your maximum. But at the same time, you need to understand that you're gonna have to push your limits at some time because you are in a sport that is competitive where you need to improve and you are trying to compete against other people, not just yourself, but also other people when you step on the platform. So if you want to win and you want to achieve like national level or international level Yeah, Tapas: Especially at higher levels. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: if you want to achieve like national level or international level feats, you kinda have to push your limits. And that's going to have this risk of injury. Like You'll never see a powerlifter at the top who's never had an injury. There's nobody like that. It doesn't jay: Yeah. In any sport. Kaushal Sumedh: matter what like I'm saying I'm yeah, I'm saying powerlifting because that's usually what we cater to here. But like any sport, Tapas: Yeah, that's... Kaushal Sumedh: it doesn't matter what sport you're talking about. Ashley Lewis: I mean to to go back to your analogy of driving, the only way to not crash is to not drive the car. jay: Exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: Not drive. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Just sit at home. jay: Sit at home, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Don't do anything at all. I mean but like if you're sitting at home there can there can be an accident home also. Like you might just sleep on water and then yeah. I mean that can also have so so maybe you just don't have a home anymore. You jay: Jesus. Tapas: truck rams into the door or something. Kaushal Sumedh: just don't live anymore. jay: No no no but but but that but that's something that like I like honestly, like I I think one one of the first times I was asked to kind of think about like a model, like this load and capacity thing. I kind of viewed like because Kaushul mentioned like a coach's eye thing, and Ash kinda gave the example of squatting without actually getting knee flexion. I think a lot of the times it's like when the load imposed exceeds the capacity, you will have either task failure or task variance in execution. Right. And you'll kind of see like where the bottlenecks kind of fall Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. jay: apart. Like You see something when someone gets into that maximum load range. And that that's when like coaches' eyes kind of come in. Like, okay, what where is this guy's bottleneck like largely showing up? Is it this one pattern that he always kind of replicates? Then we kind of see can we develop local capacity there? Then can we see if things can be cleaned up a bit more there? I th I I always kind of think of like load and capacity. If you kind of improve the amount of capacity you can tolerate, then load becomes a secondary nature. Because like you can walk down the street and the dog can chase you, right? Like you don't even know that thing. Like Life inherently is like rather dynamic in nature. The load imposed is like very dynamic in nature. So when people are more load load load averse, I'm like, you'll never build capacity. So then you become in this eternal vicious cycle of like, well, you avoided something and life presented in the lowest possible way and you just couldn't do it. So like I I kind of think like Tapas: Hmm jay: general capacity building is very important. That's why I I always kind of say these things like, even if you're a powerlifter man, like you gotta have like some amount of cardiovascular base, you gotta have Some amount of like general health foundation, right? Because when you get into movement quality and stuff like Tapas: athletic abilities. jay: that, you you'll program more like a set of six for some guy and he'll be like gassing out like by the fifth threat. And you're like, dude, come on. Like you, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: you, I am asking you to read a paragraph out loud. You cannot gas out of that stuff, right? Like, I am sorry. You are an athlete at some capacity. You need to be athletic in some like element there. So I'm a big believer in like just building general capacity is very helpful. I I mean all of us here when we worked with one guy w knows that he has a very good sporting background and he comes into powerlifting and he just kills it. Like the guy just kills it because why? Like he has a lot of the required physical qualities already established. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I mean like a lot of examples that you can think of. Anthony McNaughton was a previous wrestler before he started. Austin Perkins was like trying to be an NFL guy. yeah, you have like so many of these guys, so many examples like that. You can just keep going on and on and on. Like they're they're guys who've had like a very, very good athletic base. And like you you Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: see that line being blurred nowadays because powerlifting has become more more and more popular among younger p younger kids and there's like there's like age divisions and now sub junior and juniors are Like they're like insanely jay: Healing the seniors. Kaushal Sumedh: strong. Yeah, they're killing it. So like you see a lot more specificity growing in that side of things now. But like most of the guys who've been here for a while, they've always had like a very athletic base to begin with. And they've been like, as Jay said, like they have multiple capacities trained. So and they've they've they're and they've trained it to a decently high level, if not like, you know, the highest level. So they they kind of have like a very good base to build off of that on powerlifting. in fact if if you guys wanna talk about like Indian aspect of things also, like Yash Parab, one of the guys that I coached, who who who's jay: Yeah, that's level. Kaushal Sumedh: like one of the yeah, that guy has a wrestling background himself. so you'll see like there'll there'll be people like that who've been who've had like, you know, different backgrounds like that. jay: Yeah. And those are those free cathes. They just you just need that to give them the skill exposure required. 'Cause I think they already have. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, that yeah. They they'll all they'll they'll do well regardless of like, you know, how much like of course like good coaching does matter, but like for people like that it's a little less about that and more about just keeping them in line and letting them do the things that they're they're meant to be doing. Tapas: I think this is like a good transition point to the next one. About the ribcage and the pelvis. In the beginning I told you guys, the audience, that this is like gonna be an important segment and especially like if you're into strength sports. I just wanted to like put this out there so you actually understand how truly important this is. Your ribcage and your pelvis are like kind of the reason that you're able to create IAP and brace. which is something which is it's quite important when it comes to strength sports. There's a reason you're able to align yourself, have freedom at your shoulders and hips and the reason why we emphasize on them needing to be healthy is what I've just mentioned. So that's kind of why we've dedicated an entire segment to this. So yeah. jay: I and and I wanted to a ask if you could start off with one thing. Could we touch upon like the axial skeleton, apendicular skeleton kind of perspective on this thing? Like is how important is it to kind of distinguish what is each of these guys' roles? Ashley Lewis: I guess within powerlifting specifically, I to me, like you guys might have better thoughts than me on this. so I'll I'll defer to you after I've I've given you my my thoughts. I think the main thing that matters is you're going into extension for all of your movements if you're a power lifter, generally speaking, right? And so that Sends your rib cage and pelvis into that position of being open at the front, closed off at the back. just like you're saying with, you know, that affects your intra-abdominal pressure and it's gonna have an impact on where you can and can't move. If you're being pushed forward all the time, which you are by your back muscles or your setup for the exercise, whatever it is, it affects. what how your hips can move and how your shoulders can move. so I think that's the main thing for for powerlifting is just not even changing that. Because I mean, there's a reason that everyone jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: goes into extension when they're doing these things, right? It helps you produce force, it it it helps you be strong. It you know, for the bench press specifically, it it sort of it decreases how much distance you have to go with the bar path. So like you don't need to get rid of it. It would be stupid to do that. Like why would everyone have Tapas: elements of flexion. Ashley Lewis: gone to this method if it wasn't useful. But I think you need to fill in the gaps that that that leaves, right? If you're always extended, it's like, well, maybe just do some accessories where you're flexing. If you are always moving in the sagittal plane and your legs are always wider than your pelvis, jay: Mm yes, big yes. Ashley Lewis: maybe do some things where you're shifting over onto one leg and rotating your ribcage. Like for me, that's the That's the main thing that I think about when it comes to powerlifting specifically with pelvis and ribcage. jay: Because like one of the things I I I always kind of looked at is how the bench and the deadlift can kind of feed against each other at some points or the other, because the bench is kind of like largely compressive in nature, right? You're trying to create that compression element to this thing. While on a deadlift, you're trying to get the ability to reach. And folks tend to have like higher frequencies when it kind of comes to benching. And I think the more exp because I noticed like one guy's case where it was like he went from three to four times benching and his deadlifts just tank. Like in during the intake, he was like, Man, my deadlift stopped working when and he I kind of looked in the videos and I kind of realized he was no longer able to reach. Like he couldn't get his caps to kind of come around this kind of situation. So the thing was like he was uber compressed, and like you could see in his setup, he was just like his entire system would have to shift down a lot lower because he just lost that ability via like too much specific work in terms of that stuff. So, in all honesty, when we kind of just moved into three times benching, his dead and just some accessory works, like Ashley said. He he kinda like just got felt a lot, lot, lot better in terms of that stuff. Like I I always viewed Benz as like a counter narrative to like a deadlift because just how much frequency you can get into that guy. Tapas: Yeah. Yeah. I was just saying that we already referred to this in one of the earlier episodes except we called it reversal accessories back then so if anybody is remembering it jay: Yeah. Tapas: getting a little bit of... jay: And and and I want to ask all of you guys, like when when you do kind of give a c an exercise to a client, I'm very big on like observing like accessories in terms of how they're kind of executed. Like because I I Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: I realize a lot of the times, like Ash mentions, like you want to kind of have those single leg loading kind of situations, right? Where you kind of get the pelvis over to that leg. the common things that you'll kind of see is like, well, their hips kind of shoot out one day one way, they kind of like start to just shift their center of mass backwards, they can't load that foot. And you kind of understand, like, man, there's like a lot of reasons why this person may kind of have limitations in this. I I don't know, like if like recently I found value for some guys with things like Cossack spots. is just because like I find that their ability of their pelvis to do that kind of stuff is kind of very important, except especially for white stand sumo deadlifters. Because they just kind of feed so much of one pattern. Kind of getting away from that seems to help out a bit. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that kind of stuff. Kaushal Sumedh: No, I agree. I I think a lot of people completely are I th I think even Tapas: That too. Kaushal Sumedh: more so With like a lot of current hypertrophy talk that's going on, like people completely jay: Yes, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah, they just completely cut out the movement aspect of like having more value in like or utility in like single leg work that you're talking about, like from a movement aspect, they just completely cut off like any kind of split squatting because they're like, you're not getting like very good unilateral work and there's not enough stability and things like that. But those things allow you to move better and like feel better at the hips as as we're talking about like, you know, the ribcage and the pelvis and get better movement and and and in turn that allows you to move better at the feet and the knees. So you're over you're overall getting like a much better solid like, you know, top to bottom movement. That's the thing, like again, it goes back to that coach side thing that I was talking about. Like when when you just like copy paste and parent off of stuff, you don't really know what you're doing. past a point. Like it's fine when you're dealing with general people, but when you start dealing with more nuanced cases, you can't figure it out. And that's where like you can't figure out what the bottleneck is for a lifter. Cause like when we talk especially when we're talking about like we'll probably talk about in the next section here, but like when we talk about like movement capacity and movement like movement quality of a lifter. They're the first thing like usually when somebody comes to you from a like a you know powerlifting aspect when they come to you get to get coached by you, your first thing is to try and look at bottlenecks in like technique because repeatable bad technique means that you're not really going anywhere. You're jay: Very true. Kaushal Sumedh: still staying stuck in the same place. Because your bottleneck remains the same when it comes to a technical aspect and your technical efficiency and your movement efficiency is really bad. That's when we want to make those actual changes in technique, and then we can think about loading. jay: Mm. Kaushal Sumedh: 'Cause like load will come, jay: Yeah, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: you know, as you start to adapt to t Tapas: And off Kaushal Sumedh: to the structure. Jaguar? Tapas: No, I was just gonna say like often also once you kind of fix these longer term technique bottlenecks you kind of get like quick wins through that itself. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I mean like the simplest example that I can just give off is like Tapas itself, who's right here, cause I coach Tapas and like he he just he couldn't even do like a body weight squat properly. And that was basically because of how he had like no pronation at the feet. Because he was already Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: so he was always so pronated like into the floor. And due to that when you don't have any more pronation left, you can't pronate any further, right? jay: Yeah, you can't get Kaushal Sumedh: You're already at end range of pronation. Yeah, he was always at end range of pronation from the s like from the very beginning. So when he like he just couldn't hit depth and push off through his feet and legs. So we had to first work that way. And that is what I'm talking about. Like the ability to even figure out that that's the reason why he can't do it is what like differ differentiates between like actually good coaches and bad coaches. Cause like I I can be the same guy who can just be like, yo, shut the fuck up and hit depth. And that does nothing for him. Like jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: it doesn't help. I think a lot of people don't understand that. Like people think like, it's just me yelling at people to get things done. That's not how it works. jay: Yeah. And and and there's a thing I want to like because this is probably one of the two things I I learned from Ashley early on that I think was like very important. I see this now when new guys come. Most people can't hinge. Like most people Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: cannot like find length in their hip. Like Ashley, like w when you talk about hinging, right? Like how often do you see like folks miss the mark on that thing? And I want you to also kind of mention what a hinge is. Because sometimes folks will just like dip their head forward. Ashley Lewis: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: That's the most common thing that I see. I I even so I I there are two I think there are two parts to this. One part is that a lot of people that go to the gym are really good at a bilateral hinge jay: Yeah, yeah. Ashley Lewis: in in that they're good at the rotation element of their pelvis rolling over the top of their femur. Like that bit they've got nailed most of the time. The part that they're not good at. And obviously there has to be some lengthening of the back of the hip for that to happen. jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: But they sort of rotate around without actually opening up the back of the hip a lot of the time, those people. And then there's the other subsection of people who do exactly what you said. They go, Okay, I'm gonna do an RDL or a deadlift or even a bodyweight hinge. That means my head has to go down towards the jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: floor, which should happen, but that should happen as a byproduct of moving at your hips. That's not the goal. But Our perception of us and where we are is our eyes and our brain and our head. So it's like, well, if I'm going down further, that means I'm doing the movement better. It's jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: like, well, no. If Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: your if your pelvis is rolling further over your femurs and your hips are moving back in space, that means that you're hinging better. So I think bilaterally, some people are good enough. In a unilateral, like a kickstand or a B stance hinge, whatever you want to call it, a lot of people suck at that. people that do a lot of powerlifting training definitely suck at that because powerlifting, most of the movements, you're always in between your legs. jay: Yep, yep. Ashley Lewis: The back of your hips is mostly always closed off. Obviously, when you do a deadlift, it's gonna open up a little bit, but but the spine's gonna help out somewhat in that regard and And you have some knee flexion, so you can kind of get away with not having to get into your hips that much. But especially you don't have to shift your pelvis over onto a leg, obviously, because you're on two. But if we think about walking upright on two legs, which is arguably the most human movement, we should be able to do that. And so my ability to shift all of my weight onto one leg, off of that leg onto the other, I should keep that. And if you're always doing bilateral sagittal playing lifts, you don't keep that, you know, use it or lose it. It it applies to everything. And so that specific ability to shift the pelvis over onto a single leg and get length not only in the back of the hip, but the outside of the hip, jay: Yes, that yeah. Ashley Lewis: a lot of people struggle with. jay: No, because 'cause that's one of the things that I kind of want to touch upon here regarding the pelvis as well. like if you kinda can can you get someone on like a single like like a hip airplane or something where you're getting the pelvis to kind of come around that thing and then get that lateral expansion. I have realized that most people like if you ask someone to s jump sideways, like I don't know what they call the ski jumps. I don't know, you you can kind of see. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, like a skater, skater bound. That kind of thing. jay: Yeah, like you sometimes when you kinda see like I I see people that are like really good hips, like when they kinda land on one leg, you'll see that like lateral expansion of their hip kind of happen. And then some guys will just see the knee just shoots out like crazy. I think you had a video back in the day where like if the knee shoots out, like that that thing. I I think like a lot of times when people miss out on lateral like that lateral lengthening, it kind of feeds into long term issues down the line for them. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, it's honestly I think without going too into the weeds, we'll we'll go a little bit into the weeds. So if if first of all, actually I think the jumping thing can be really nice to force some length there, because it's like jay: Yep. I use that. Ashley Lewis: if you struggle to do it slow, then use momentum and your body weight to throw you side to side. I think that could be really nice. so if you're not getting length through the outside of your hip, you're not adducting onto that hip, right? The side that you're shifting onto, that side of the pelvis should hike up a little bit. jay: Exactly. Ashley Lewis: The opposite side should drop. That's what gets jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: you length on the outside of the hip and means that you'll actually have your center of mass over your foot. If you can't do that, exactly what you said, people are going to push their knee out. Because going back to what I was saying before about our perception being our brain, it's like, well, my head's over here. Maybe I'll Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: side bend through my spine. But if someone's told me not to do that, I'm going to be strict. I'm going to get my hips over there. But I can't lengthen the outside of my hip. So I'm going to push my knee out to the side. And that stops me from having to lengthen the outside of my hip. Now, because I've pushed my knee out to the side, I've lost pressure on the inside of my foot, my shins come out and I've rolled to the outside of my foot. So now I don't have any eversion at my heel, which means I'm not getting pronation at my foot, which means that I can't put force down into the floor. So not only can I really not get onto this leg, now I can't produce force when I'm there. And so my body's definitely not gonna hold on to that 'cause if you can't produce force somewhere, why would your body let you go there? And so it's just such a cycle to get stuck in if you never learn how to actually shift onto a leg. jay: Because I I I kinda tell people like again, Ash, just let me know if this line of thought is off. I find like you're gonna when you're loading the system, you're kind of finding length somewhere. Like you're gonna want to find length somewhere. And I find like when you can't find length of the glutes, you kind of find it usually upstream somewhere in the lumbar area. And a lot of the times when we all know like guys who will be Man, I can do RDLs for this much, and you see that they're just finding length of the lumbar. Like and they do not have the ability to kind of get that expansion into the back end of the pelvis. All right. a lot of the times. This is where we'll kind of delve into movement quality wise. I I think when we shift there, but I wanna kind of mention that's how the system usually works, right? If you can't find it somewhere, your system will somehow try to find it elsewhere, right? Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. That's what. Ashley Lewis: Yeah. I I think that ties in nicely with what we were saying earlier about just how like functional training and and your goal from training is task specific. The the way that your body will organize itself is task specific. Just like if my only goal is to lift up really heavy weight, my body will organize itself in a way where it's gonna do that in what whatever way is best suited to lift really heavy weight. If the goal in my head of my task is I need to reach this barbell down to the floor. My body's going to reach the barbell down to the floor. Regardless, maybe I'll get it from my hip, maybe I'll get it from my spine, maybe I'll get it from my knees. My goal needs to be, I'm going to move from my hips or I'm going to move from my knees, whatever the exercise is, whatever train I get. If we're using the RDL for an example, my goal shouldn't be, I need to reach the barbell to the floor, because then that's that has nothing to do with my hips. That just has to do with my arms and touching the barbell on the floor. My goal needs to be I need to hinge at my hips, which people think are the same thing, but it's it's not. And that's honestly, that's the most common, like from a rehab perspective. Most of the time I'll start not loading someone in a hinge because they can't tolerate it yet. And I'll teach them body weight and we'll build up and we'll get onto a kickstand variation or whatever it is. And then eventually we'll load it up. And as soon as we load it up, just by them having dumbbells or a barbell in their hand, they're beautiful, amazing hinge that we spent weeks getting good at suddenly looks awful because they're like, cool, now I'm gonna reach the weight to the floor. It's like, well, no, just let your arms, forget about your arms, do the same movement with your hips and let the weight do whatever it's gonna do. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: No, I think that's where like a fundamental understanding of biomechanics is is a prerequisite for like powerlifting coaches. because like Ash said, you are I I I think even like a high level powerlifting coach, I once sent like a video to Ashley for like, man, isn't this like the opposite of what you want to think? Because the the head coming down is a byproduct of the hi hips going backwards in space. Right? It is not like it's the outcome you want to see because of your creating that length in the back end. and Even when you talk about the pelvis and getting length there along those lines, I also kind of want to like just want to touch upon the ribs, if that's okay with you, like in terms of because how people kind of view them. I personally view the ribs as like I think people kind of view them as one collective entity, when in reality they're like two separate things kind of working together. In in lifting movements, you are kind of creating central pressure to kind of make everything stick together. All right. But I believe like I think Ash was the first one I picked up. Like you, you kind of Through back in the day at me, like those alternative dumbbell presses as like an option for like warming someone's ribs kind of up. I I kind of mentioned these things because this is maybe like flawed thinking, but it's like a thing that I've noticed. I picked it up from Gary Ward's kind of course back in the day. Gary Ward has this one line that says systems flex before they kind of extend. And I think like you want to get into position, you want to come from the opposite end of that kind of position. And like, especially in powerlifting, what I've realized is people are so here. That if you can just get them away from that, getting into that becomes all the more easier for them. Like Ashler, when you think about the ribcage, like you do you view it as one single unit or like two things that can kind of like work as one or and should also be able to work independent of each other? Ashley Lewis: I think the easiest way to think about the ribcage, I think it gets confusing for a lot of people, because one, I don't know, it just kinda seems like a kind of a vague area that people don't really know where it is. And especially with a lot of this the way that people talk about ribcage on the internet, I think it gets very confusing very quickly. The easiest way I think to think about it is it's just it's a an extension of your spine. It's a it's the cylindrical element of your spine, right? So if I want to flex forward, the front of my ribcage has to compress in and get smaller and squish. And the back of my ribcage has to open up and get bigger. If I want to side bend to the left, the left side of the rib cage has to squish down, the right side has to open up. If I want to rotate to the left, my back left rib cage has to move back in space. And my back right ribcage has to move forward in space. And so it is like like you said, these two sort of these two sides. It's like a seesaw, I suppose, depending on where the movement's coming from. Like you said earlier, if you're trying to do a movement, you have to find length somewhere. If I'm closing off one area, another has to open up. And so if I'm, you know, whatever the movement is, if I'm trying to get extension in my spine, I have to close off my back to open the front. If I feel like I'm too much there, then my way of sort of resetting that and and getting in a better position. Maybe I just need to close off the front a little bit and that'll allow me to shift back and open up my back. I know that was not a very specific example, so hopefully that makes sense. jay: Because like I I I I do like to think about the space and the length thing even at the ribs. Cause one thing I kind of realize is when you ask someone who has really bad rib mobility, as from why I've seen, is you're gonna ask them to kind of flex to one side. They seldom can kind of flex and like find length at the ribs, they just shoot their hips out. Right. Because again it comes down, in my opinion, to the head kind of a situation. They're thinking, my head's going down, so I must be doing the task. When in reality there's no movement through the ribs, it's just the whole system just orients to one side kind of a situation. Ashley Lewis: Mm-hmm. Yeah. it's almost like I think a nice visual is, you know, an accordion, those like those that that instrument there they like French guys, I feel like play where it comes in and out like that. It's like your your ribs are that, right? They have to they spread apart from each other and close in on each other depending on what movement you're going for. And this you see it so much in people with back pain because touching on what we were talking about earlier. movement variability and the movement to the ability to move joints in a bunch of different directions rather than just you know my legs are always outside my pelvis and and I move forward and backward. The ability to move in all these different ways helps decrease pain. The first thing in people with back pain that we see go away is variability. Their spine becomes like Michael Keaton Batman where to rotate everything just moves together, right? To sidebend They might sidebend from one part of the lower back right at the bottom. It's like, well, no wonder that area hurts if it's the only thing that's jay: You're overusing it. Ashley Lewis: moving. Yeah, exactly. And so that that ability to go, okay, rather than thinking, I need to get my head down here to sidebend, can I try and feel the whole of my rib cage and go, I want to try and poke each one of these ribs out to the side, and that's what's going to crunch me down on the other side, for example, in a in a side flexion scenario. jay: Sort of w when you do get guys like that, is it sometimes just a general unawareness of how to move through that or is it just like a physical thing? Like they just because movement is a skill, Ashley Lewis: Mm. jay: right? And I th sometimes think people just don't know how to kind of get to that. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, I think that's most of of what it is. I think it's sort of a chicken or the egg situation. Do you have a lack of awareness because you can't get there, or can't you get there because you have a lack of awareness? It's probably that they both like feed into each other, right? but a lot of it is just if you don't train it, you're not gonna have it. You're gonna lose access to it. And then it's gonna be harder to get back. And of course you can get it back, like it's fine, but it's It'll take a little bit of brain brain power to get there. So I think the best thing that a lot of people that lift in the gym don't necessarily want to do is make something really easy and really relaxed. Because if you can't do something in a relaxed way, you you don't really have it's not that you can't do it with a load of heavy weight on your back. Like you can do, sure, but you're not actually going to be doing the thing that you're trying to do. If I can't bend my knee with no weight on it, I'm definitely not going to be able to bend my knee with a load of weight on it. so stripping things back and going, okay, what's the simplest, easiest way I can get this movement, whether it's at the spine or the ankle, whatever it is, can I just actually get there and only move the area that I'm trying to move first without my shoulders doing weird stuff or my hips twisting or anything like this? Then once I've got that, it's like, okay, well, now I'll get strong there and now I'll start to put load on it. And then that's how it. integrates into your strength work rather than going, yeah, I'm I'm squatting in the way that I always do and like I'm trying to push my knees out or forward or whatever. And like it's just not working. It's like, well, it's because you're not actually doing what you think you're doing because you don't have the awareness to feel it. You need to get the awareness first and then put it back into your training. Tapas: I think this is like a good point to move on to movement quality. What do think? Kaushal Sumedh: I think pretty much everything we've talked about actually kind of already ties into movement quality. You know, we've already kind of yeah. We've already we've already kind of discussed Tapas: ties into that that's what I was going to say but like covered it Kaushal Sumedh: about it, but we could go a little bit more, you know, in depth about this. it says is just about having like good technique, whatever that's supposed to mean, like as you said before. Whatever that means, means that you're able to have good technique for the way you for your body, for your leverages. there's gonna be slight mild differences. But at the same time, I want people to understand that the there are general, there are general guidelines for what good movement looks like. And the on a general note, they're gonna look similar. We're all human beings. We all have like the you know, similar bone structure, like n the number of bones and everything, all of that, the way we move, it's very similar. We're all bipedal creatures. So that part is gonna be similar, but there's gonna be a slight differences in the way you move, right? Like somebody's squat can look a little bit different. Somebody's deadlift can look a little di little bit different. And that's The changes in technique that we're looking at, but essentially we're looking for good repeatable movement that doesn't seem to stress you in a in a wrong way or or like you know increase risk of injury is what we're trying to say. because stress is going to still be there because training stress is a stress, right? You just don't want the bad kind of stress, that excessive stress that we talked about before, where like the amount of load or or stress that you're putting on your body or your or or a particular area sh just shouldn't exceed the amount that it can handle. Like that threshold shouldn't be crossed. That's where like injuries can happen. So like you you wanna say something about movement quality here? Ashley Lewis: I mean, I think you nailed it. like you said, the the I think the most important thing for movement quality is whatever your goal of an exercise is, you need to be moving in the way that the exercise actually intends. Right? We could Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: call something, I could say I'm squatting because I'm bending at my knees and my hips. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: I could bend at my knees and my hips, and it actually looks more like a deadlift. jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: Like if I'm doing a squat, I'm trying to be. mostly vertical, move up and down and jay: Hm. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: get similar Kaushal Sumedh: Yes. Ashley Lewis: amounts of knee flexion between hip and knee. Like you said, it like like I've got short femurs. I'm like a an ape. So like I can do a really low asteroid squat and my spine stays straight and I'm all great. Someone with long femurs Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, exactly. Ashley Lewis: is going to be a little bit more hingy. So there's like variance within that. But as long as it's more vertical than it is horizontal, then that makes it a squat, not a hinge. And I I think just Actually thinking about and understanding what's the adaptation you're trying to get from the exercise. Most people don't really think about that. They just go, this is the exercise that should look kind of like this. And so I'm gonna do it. But the more you actually appreciate what the purpose of the exercise is, the more accurate you can be with how you're moving. And then you're you know, you're you're gonna get the adaptation that you want. It's gonna be better and and quicker, and you know, you're gonna get more. power or strength, hypertrophy, whatever it is that you're going for, you're gonna get more than you would if you were just going through the motions, not really knowing what you're doing. jay: Yeah, and and and I'd say like in in these kind of situations, you want to kind of think about the athlete from an individualistic perspective. Like a long like long tall, like short toss or long female guy, you wanna kind of get him they're gonna have that forward lean in terms of their squad, but you still want the knees to bend kind of situation. I sometimes see like your accessory should cover that thing. Like how you're programming the rest of that thing should ensure you still possess the ability. Because over time we'll all see guys who have leverages like this. eventually end up just be getting more and more folded over, folded over kind of situation. Right? Like you you'll eventually get a guy who, like Ash said, his squat and deadlift will just look the same. It's just someone's like torso is dang near parallel to the floor. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I I think like the simplest way to think about it is like also the fact that you know, accessory work or these things are kinda looked down upon when it comes to movement quality. People just kinda wanna flex how much weight they can move. jay: Yeah. Yep. Kaushal Sumedh: so sometimes they'll do something like a hack squad where they're moving like multiple plates, but then like they're not really there's jay: Bendy many Kaushal Sumedh: no control, they're just yeah, there's just no actual knee flexion. there's no actual like controlling the weight wh and you actually using your quads. They're just kinda just Tapas: doesn't have any value Kaushal Sumedh: Bounce out of the bottom. Yeah. And like even if you think even if you think about something as simple as the leg extension, like people just kind of just use the weight, momentum of the weight to let their hips just come off the pad entirely, and then you're just swinging up and down at that point at the hips. You're not actually extending and flexing at the knee. Right? So that that's kind of the like w when we that's where like you might see somebody moving a lot of weight, but they just don't seem to have like good quality muscle mass. And that's because they're not getting any kind of actual local stimulus at that muscle at that at that muscle that you're targeting, right? The target muscle, right? So like as simple as it can get, you can just talk about something like a bicep curl. You'll see people just like, you know, using jay: Keep their systems up. Kaushal Sumedh: a lot of momentum. Yeah, and they just use their back to lift the whole weight and they just don't seem to have like big biceps. I mean, that's because they're just not using the biceps at all. So that's where movement quality comes comes into play, where we're just talking about how to distribute str stress. jay: Two the system properly, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: evenly or through the system properly for your compound movements like squat bench and deadlift. And then when we talk about like more hypertrophy based movements or even movements that are like, you know, like movement like for your health movement-wise, right? so that you can feel better and move better. Even there, you just want to make sure that you're actually le you're stressing the local tissue that's jay: They should yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: that's supposed to be stressed. Like, like, like, like you said, On a squat, we're looking for more even flexion at the knees and the hips on the way down so that you get more of like overall tissue taking or multiple tissues being used. Like of course, squads are your major prime movers in the squat, but you're still trying to use the entire body to move move as much weight as possible, right? that Tapas: Mm-hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: because that's the goal of powerlifting here. So, like even when you're deadlifting. While it is a posterior chain exercise, it's not like you're not using any quads at all, you're not jay: Well TR. Kaushal Sumedh: using anything at all. Yeah, you the like your ability to get those to move as well is what allows you to move the max amount of load. So that's what we're looking for, like movement quality and technique. Like that's what good technique means, is that we're actually allowing tissue stress to to evenly distribute towards jay: To evenly distribute. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: all the tissues that you want to contribute towards that movement. And when we talk about single joint movement, of course that's that's very straightforward. Just keep the movement as strict as possible and load. And jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: load the movement well. Yeah, go on, sorry. jay: No, and I I would say here from a biomechanics standpoint, just understanding concepts like relative motion and orientation, right? you think something like a field sport or something like that, on the field your system is just orienting however it can to complete the task, right? The whole system is just moving to express a thing. But I would look at the gym as a chance to kind of get relative motion between tissue. And like sometimes it can be from a purely hypertrophy standpoint. Some can sometimes it's just to kind of get movement quality thing. But how important is to have a distinction between the two? Ashley Lewis: Yeah. It's I think this is probably one of the most important things when it comes to movement quality and variability that we touched on earlier when we're talking about rib cage and pelvis. And like if you power lift and that's your main thing that you do, you are a beast at orientation because you just need to lock your body in place and lift the weight or push the weight, whatever it is. Which is great for producing a lot of force. Or the same, like you said, for for field sport, same thing, right? If I need to change direction, I don't want like there to be rotation between my shin and my thigh. I want it all to be locked in place so I can just punch into the ground and push off. jay: So Ashley Lewis: And so when I'm producing a lot of force and and trying to do something really intense, like I want everything to stiffen up and lock up. That's cool. But if you do that all the time, I don't work with that many power lifters, but I imagine the issues that they get a lot is probably lower backs, shoulders, and hips, and and jay: Yeah. Yep. Ashley Lewis: probably knees as well, actually. But Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: I know I kind of just listed everything there. But the the the point being specifically for lower backs and shoulders, is because let's let's use lower back. I think that's a much nicer example. You like we were talking about before, right? We're in a lot of extension, we're squeezing, and your lower back's always in the same shape. And your lower back and your hips are kind of moving as a big Chunk, right? You go down, you do your deadlift or your squat, whatever it is, you go into lumbar flexion and your pelvis gets tucked under. So your hips and your lumbar spine are both moving as one thing. Again, not inherently bad, but then if you can train to have relative motion where my hip is moving relative to my spine, my spine does not move and my hips moving, or my hip stays still, and I'm only moving through my spine, whatever, jay: That's fine. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: then. Again, like you're saying before, that's sharing the load across multiple areas. And I'm not just hammering the same thing over and over again. I'm actually using my joints, you know, like walking around all day squeezing your fist, stuff's jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: gonna start to feel tight and not very good all the time. If the only way I'm you know, picking things up is by hooking them over my wrist and carrying them around like this. It's like, well man, imagine if I did this and moved my fingers individually, all of that movement from a muscular perspective and a nervous system perspective just give so many different inputs that I'm not just cranking on the same things, which when you're always giving your brain the same signal over and over and over and over again, that volume gets turned up and up and up. And even if there's nothing wrong, the signal becomes pain because your brain's like, well, there's jay: Ovi Ashley Lewis: something going on there because there's just such a big signal. So there has to be something wrong. So I'm going to tell you it hurts to get you to stop doing whatever that is. jay: Yeah. And and and and that I think is a thing that I I I think people should kind of understand is the fact is that you use one movement strategy, like nothing inherently is dangerous if we kind of agree to this thing. No movement strategy is inherently dangerous. Something super safe, if you just utilize it for too much, it the system just gets overloaded, right, at some point or the other. And I think in powerlifting the danger we kind of see in that is that these kind of issues don't creep up in the beginning of a block. Like a poorly paced block, you're gonna start to see these issues come at the tail end of a block. You'll start to see like mid to tail end kind of situation where you have the highest maximum load. And now all of a sudden you're moving in a way you didn't move prior, but you're also doing it Tapas: Hmm. jay: under the heaviest load kind of situation. Like I notice a lot of guys when they have like poor programming, they just stop bending at their knees and they become more and more and more hip dominant kind of a situation, right? But they never do, they're doing that at the tail end of a block. And that's when you kind of start to see like this this issue kind of creep up. And I would say like this is one very strong reason to have movement variability, not as an option at some point in your program, but at all points throughout the year, just to act as a counter narrative to something like this. Ashley Lewis: I think like like you said, I think accessory work is the easiest way to put that in. Like it it only has to be a couple of exercises, you know, that you just slot in your plan. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: And it's it it might help you be better at your sport, just because if your body moves better, then you know it's gonna help in that regard. But even if it doesn't, forget about that completely. From a pain and injury risk reduction perspective, like the fact that you can move your body in multiple ways is going to massively reduce your chance of getting niggles and aches and pains. Most of what I do for my job is Tapas: It's a bit as a little bit of a... Ashley Lewis: is giving people the movements back that they've lost. So if you never lose them in the first place, then you've got nothing to rehab. Like you're good. You know? Obviously aside from what we said earlier, there's always a chance and blah blah blah. jay: Yeah. And and and and one of the one of the easiest like entry points I think we I th I think I learned from one of your old videos where you're like, Man, if you have shoulder pain, a lot of arm work can kind of help. Right. Like just I I kind of found out the fact that bigger biceps, triceps, and just getting the arms and the scap attached to it to move and get capacity in different ranges. I swear to God, like I've had like middle aged women come in with like a lot of these issues where you just get them s opening up some sprays through some breathing rules and just get them jacked arms. They usually just feel a lot better. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, honestly, it's it's crazy. Shoulder like shoulder stuff's so nice, it's just an excuse to get like a bicep pump, you know? Like just smash some arm work and it helps a lot. jay: And I think that's where like biomechanics again. Like I think when we were doing the podcast with I believe it was Jamie or Anas where we were talking about like a coach in powerlifting can't just be a programming guy anymore. There has to be a ten like yeah, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, but then that's jay: with Anas, right? Yeah. It was just you need to kind of have an understanding of programming. And you also kind of need to understand like biomechanics and pain management. Because when that doesn't because load management, I think Kaushl like was the first one who taught me about this thing where I was like, load management isn't just a reduction in absolute load use. But it can just be like through better accessories, you're just distributing load much better. And that's also a lens you kind of want to w do load management. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I mean like as we just said, right? Even tech good technique is like a way of managing load. Because jay: Well, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: like if you're having if you're having like very localized stress in because your movement is bad, if you fix your technique, you're just you're just actually evenly distributing load even better over the t tissues and then like your risk of injury is automatically lesser because other areas just recover better. Like you can just look at it like that as well. So like that's kind of why I keep saying like I keep emphasizing even the technique trick part that I spoke about, jay: Yeah, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: you know, a while ago. Like when you get when you figure out technique that's like really good for you, of course with the help of your coach and like you guys have a communication like this thing going on where you where you fix it. Once you fix it and once you figure it out, I think you need to work really hard to make sure that it's it's consistently good after that. Because then you just don't you you can just focus on like progression then. You jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: don't have to like you know, try to f fix like, think about that and think about this. You can just try to focus on The actual work that needs to be put in. You know, that that's where like it matters. Like it's kind of like the way I like to think about it is like I like to talk about cricket a lot when it comes to sport because India's crazy about cricket, right? So like it's like if if Virat Kohli just didn't know how to hold a bat, he couldn't scroll runs. Right? The the eventual point of Virat Kohli scoring runs is that he's good at everything when it comes to batting. Like he has very few flaws technically, right? He's technically such a sound guy. And he's a fit guy, all of that put together is what makes him the athlete that he is. And that's the reason why he can continue to do the work that he's supposed to be doing, which is scoring runs and winning games. Right? He's so good technically Tapas: Mm-hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: that he doesn't have to think. Like when when as soon as the ball is released, like I don't know if people know, but like a really good batsman is one that can pick right off the bowler, bowler's arms. Like as before he's even bold, like before he's even actually bowled the ball, they can make that judgment of like what he's trying to do. That's what a really good batsman does. So that that comes with years of practice and experience and having really good technique as well, because they don't have to think over there. They jay: Mm. Kaushal Sumedh: can just do it. And that's what I try to tell when I tell people that the reason why we want to incorporate these technique changes and make sure that they're solidified is just so that we can just hammer away after that. Like we don't jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: have to think about anything. We just have to work. Like just work hard after that. That's jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: it. jay: E even in jujitsu, I'd say like Bash, like you guys like a lot of drill drills, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: right? Like just to make technique almost second nature, right? Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: And those drills aren't overtly Ashley Lewis: Mm-hmm. Yeah. jay: difficult. They're not like always done at a high intensity kind of situation, right? Ashley Lewis: Yeah, it's it's literally kind of what I was saying earlier about like scale it back, make it easy, build it up with, you know, relation to joints and stuff. It's the same thing, right? Let's say you're doing an arm bar or whatever, you'll literally go through the motions, zero resistance with your your partner just being like a a limp dummy, essentially. And then the Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: next time you do it, they'll like start to resist it like a tiny little bit once you know you've got the technique right, and then you'll try it in sparring the next six times and you'll suck at it. And and it's the you know, once you practiced it over and over again at resistance because the resistance changes it so much. But it's the drilling that allows you to know, okay, at least now I know what I need to do jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: when there's resistance involved. And now I can practice and get good at that. But if I don't even know the steps before there's resistance, like I what you know, I'm just gonna be grabbing stuff and hoping for the best. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. And I think a lot of people just undermine the value of something like that. But they're just like, this is too simple, this is too easy, this is so boring, right? But like a lot of actual good work is done in that. Like the simplest example that I can think of, like I like to make things as simple as possible. So I I take examples like that. It's like if you watch the Karate Kid, the recent one with Jackie Chan and like a recent one hasn't like it's been a long time, but you know, Jack with Jackie Chan and What's his name, dude? Will Smith's son? jay: Jen Smith. Kaushal Sumedh: Jaden Smith? Yeah, like th those two. Like, if you watch the movie, the first half of the movie is just him picking up a jacket and then putting it back on, right? Like that's the whole first half. And the guy is just annoyed at one point and he's like, I don't even understand what's the point of it. But then you he starts to understand, like, once he starts seeing the results from it. So you need to understand, like, there are there's a reason why coaches like try to try to hammer that those things into you that seem very mundane and boring, but there's a very good reason behind why. Because if there's a very good foundation of what you're doing, then you can actually build on that and just work hard from there. jay: Build on that. And I I do want to be mindful about like the last ten minutes. Like I I I don't want to be this thing. And if that if it's okay with everyone, I did want to ask one question because probably when I told people that Ashley was gonna come on, they wanted this question answered. a lot of people wanna know. Ashley says something known as perfect posture. Because I I swear to God, like everyone and their mother was like because we we need like we Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Still a big thing here. jay: no, we we need a sound bite. I it's still that it's a tail end, Ashley. But I I still wanted to throw this bomb at you. Ashley Lewis: Yeah, that's a that's a big one. no. Right. So there's there's no such thing as perfect posture. You could you could argue that it's on a spectrum, a continuum, maybe. Like sure, if you're if you're curled up in a ball all the time, maybe that's not great Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: posture. So there's definitely bad posture, but bad posture, again, just like everything we've spoken about already, is just a posture that you're stuck in. If you jay: Spectrum. Yeah. Ashley Lewis: can't move from a position, that's not good. If you're hunched forward, sure, that's not great. If your shoulders back and down and chest puffed up, that's also not great. I would implore everybody that listens to people on Instagram talking about posture to stop listening to those people. Like if somebody is telling you that posture is important, jay: Cloop club that. Ashley Lewis: they're doing it because it gets them views, because all of these postural errors that they talk about. Are so common in everybody. So they talk about it so that you go, I have that. And this guy's saying that's a problem. And they get a load of views because if you're saying something that's normal is a problem, you're gonna get loads of people worried about it. And they succeed, which is why everyone asks if there's something as such as perfect posture. don't worry about it. I I sit like For my online sessions, I'm on my chair. I'm literally sat like this for several hours Tapas: Thanks. Ashley Lewis: a day. I go and do jujitsu where I'm on the floor, curled up in a ball, my spine's rounded. If I like fully relax, naturally I'm a bit depressed through through my jay: Same yeah. Ashley Lewis: chest and I'm rounded through my shoulders. I have zero pain. I'm very mobile. I'm as strong as I need to be for what I do. And my posture's definitely not perfect. So and I'm sure someone will go, well in thirty years you're gonna whatever, but jay: Yeah, that's the argument, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I mean if perfect even exists to begin with. Yeah, exactly. Ashley Lewis: Well exactly, yeah. Like what how would you define it? Kaushal Sumedh: yeah, yeah. Because the movement and positioning is always relative to something jay: Such a spectrum. Yeah, exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: else. Yeah, yeah. It's always relative. Like Ashley Lewis: Mm-hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: as you said, like I think the simplest example, like what you just talked, like if you're always having 'cause this is what good posture is like staying upright and then ch chest out and shoulders back, but that just gonna make your scabs so jammed back, you're gonna have difficulty with like reaching forward. And like actually separating the scabs from the ribcage. So you're gonna have difficulty with that. And that actually might even lead to like most people actually, in fact, power a lot of powerlifters have shoulder pain because jay: Simply from that. Kaushal Sumedh: of that, as a result of that, because they're taught to like pin the scaps back, depress, retract as much as possible for the bench press, and then you're like in this really weird struck-up position all the time. And that's the reason why you just don't have like healthy shoulders. You like you don't have the range of motion to like go through a full like you know, cycle of motion throughout the shoulder and your shoulder is one of the most mobile joints. So if you're consistently just spinning it around and you're not letting jay: Exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: it move, that's that's that's a good place to start off. Like what is considered as traditionally good posture is actually what leads to bad pain for the most part. Ashley Lewis: I mean it's like b everything else we spoke about so far. Postures also task specific. If I jay: Exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: wanna sit down and relax, this is an infinitely better posture to relax because I'm not jay: shit, no. Ashley Lewis: using any muscular tension to be if I'm like this, like, my god, this I would hate to watch T V like this, you know? Like Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Y you you wouldn't even relax happily. Yeah, jay: My th the the this is where Kaushal Sumedh: you'd just be annoyed h you'd just be annoyed like the few hours that you're watching TV and just like you watch a movie and you're always like like this, like I I have to make sure I'm like that. You're just gonna be annoyed for the most part. jay: And I swear to God, like one of the most insane things I've ever heard, like when I was growing up, was I I swear, I wanna say this just for like some shits and giggles. A man once like told me you shouldn't slouch and I like, Why? He's like a man should always be erect. And I was like, I don't think that is how you wanna phrase it, dude. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: no. jay: Hey man. I think it's almost like time up. Like we've we've taken Ashley for like the whole two hours. guys, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, pretty much. jay: Like from my end, I just want to say this thing. I like man, I'm really grateful for the time, the effort, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: everything. I want to personally thank you for the simple fact that 90% of the stuff that I learned, 90% of the way I got started off was from your content. I swear to God, if people just sit down and just watch all of his content, there's immense value. Of course, you'll have to learn how to think to apply this thing, but Ashley is probably one of the most valuable resources on the internet. like just learn a ton from him. Like, really, really appreciate all the efforts, man. Like your content is like gold. Your conversations are absolutely brilliant. Like it w this conversation really meant helped us a lot with understanding a lot of things. And I hope the audience gets like an equal value from this thing. Because Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: co i in Tapas: Yeah. jay: interactions like this, like an understanding that Ashley just brought in. Like my understanding stemmed from that first conversation I had from Ashley when I was still a lawyer. Like he's the guy who kind of shifted me on to like, hey, have you thought about like this bone first model kind of thing? Have you understood like this thing? Have you understood that stuff? But he didn't have to, but like the guy was like j kind enough to just tell me like this is where you should look. You know, I think faces like that are very important in the industry simply because they're not dogmatic. They you view things as tools and they kind of want to have a principle, fundamental understanding. And if there's anything I think people should take away from this conversation, like all the caveats Kauschel gave, is because people should not think in absolutes. They should think in terms of fundamental principles, especially when it comes to movement. Because you can kind of paralyze Tapas: Yeah. jay: people by giving them doctor advice. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah, also I I like not just Jay, but like all three of us actually really wanna thank you and genuinely appreciate the fact that you came here, sat and spoke with us. we a as Jay said, we hope you find a lot of value. And I just kept trying to like simplify things 'cause I know the way people think here. 'Cause every single time you say something, they might just take it very out of context. That's kind of why I kept trying to like bring it back to like being as simple as possible. so that it's digestible for people. Because at the end of the day, that's the whole thing, right? Like, cause the the four the four of us here kind of know what we're talking about. But like the whole point is like we want more and more people to understand so that they can not just learn and do better themselves, but also if they're coaching professionals, they should know these things. Tapas: They can just bring more impact to the space. Yeah. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, and also like eventually they can also like they should learn, know so that they can give a better service to the people that they coach, and also eventually like you know, spread the word and do better. So that more and more people can be better. Like I it's a thing that I said in the in in the podcast with Anas, like all a rising tide lifts all ships, jay: With all ships, yeah. Tapas: ships, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: raises all ships. Like eventually that's the goal. We want like not just our generation or just the two of us or three of us to do well, but like the hope, we want the future generations to start doing better because my goal has always been to bring India up when it comes to like the standard of education and the the basic standard has to be high. If you want to deliver like really good results and really good athletes at a global stage, you need really good coaching at a local stage. jay: Yeah. Yeah yeah, absolutely. And thanks a ton, man Ash. Tapas: to do. jay: This this this really, really was helpful, man. I hope people find value in this thing. before you leave, like where where Ashley Lewis: Then. jay: can people find you? Like if Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: if you can. Ashley Lewis: yeah, just on my Instagram, Ashley.rehab. yeah, I'm trying st I'm trying to post consistently. Kaushal Sumedh: You have a YouTube? Anything? Ashley Lewis: I do have YouTube, but I I I've been slack with it, so I don't post on it much. If if I do post, they'll find it on Instagram anyway. So but yeah, thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it and hopefully it was useful. I jay: So yeah. Ashley Lewis: it's always difficult to talk about movement Tapas: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: without visuals. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, it is it is jay: Yeah. Ashley Lewis: and I also don't work with a lot of powerlifters, so like in some of those sections I didn't say anything. 'Cause I think you guys offer more than me in that in that regard. So I I was enjoying listening to you guys and learn some stuff. definitely so. Tapas: It was really valuable to hear your perspective as well. I think it will actually be pretty valuable to everybody watching us. yeah. Alright. jay: Thanks a lot, guys. As Ashley Lewis: Perfect. jay: usual, if you made it this far, you will have access to Tabas' credit card details. You just have to DM to get access to it. Tapas: Yeah, you got it. Alright, so I... jay: Hay Tapas: Alright guys, so yeah, thanks for watching. Alright, this was episode 10 of Project Strength Cast. We've done 10 episodes already, I think. I don't know, like, I'll put like a cake on the screen or something. And yeah, we'll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching. Hope you found a lot of value in this one. Bye bye.