Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The Mad Scientist's Guide to Strength Training After 40 (Chris Duffin) | Ep 456
Transcript
- 0:00Philip Pape: Most training advice treats your body like a simple machine.
- 0:03Philip Pape: More input, more output, add some weight, follow the program, repeat.
- 0:08Philip Pape: And that works fine until you're 45 and your shoulder is clicking, your low back is always sore, and you're spending more time warming up than actually lifting.
- 0:16Philip Pape: Is this just your age?
- 0:18Philip Pape: Are you lifting too heavy?
- 0:19Philip Pape: Or what if the problem is your feet or how you breathe?
- 0:23Philip Pape: Or that pain in one area might be connected to other points on your body?
- 0:28Philip Pape: Today's guest has over 20 years of applied expertise across engineering, biomechanics, and elite strength performance.
- 0:35Philip Pape: And he applies this knowledge to the human body.
- 0:37Philip Pape: Oh, and he's also a world record-holding strength athlete who squatted over a thousand pounds at age 42.
- 0:43Philip Pape: You are going to learn how to engineer your body so it doesn't break down, why the fix starts in the places you'd never expect, and why the interconnectedness of your biomechanics is far more important than the program you're running.
- 0:58Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does.
- 1:12Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we are talking about your shoulders, your low back, your hips.
- 1:18Philip Pape: They're not supposed to hurt every year you train, but for many lifters over 40, we get pain, we get injuries, and we are trying to train for longevity.
- 1:27Philip Pape: My guest today is the Chris Duffin, the mad scientist of strength.
- 1:32Philip Pape: He was everything from a manufacturing engineer who spent years diagnosing complex systems and why they fail to later becoming a world record-holding strength athlete.
- 1:42Philip Pape: He's the only person to have squatted and deadlifted over a thousand pounds for reps in his late 30s and early 40s.
- 1:48Philip Pape: He just turned 49.
- 1:50Philip Pape: He's still training heavy, still applies principles from engineering and biomechanics and cellular health and all of that we're going to get into today to the human body to help you find that bottleneck and fix the constraint that's limiting your performance.
- 2:04Philip Pape: So today we're going to get into training longevity and resilience, the interconnectedness of your body, neurocentric biomechanics, even some surprising things that you need to know about your feet, your breathing, and more to improve how you feel and perform.
- 2:19Philip Pape: Plus, maybe a little bit about what Chris does in his own training to keep lifting heavy.
- 2:22Philip Pape: Chris, it's an honor to have you on Wits and Weights.
- 2:25Philip Pape: Welcome.
- 2:26Chris Duffin: Yeah, thanks.
- 2:27Chris Duffin: Uh thanks for having me.
- 2:28Chris Duffin: I've been looking forward to this conversation.
- 2:30Chris Duffin: And the way you did that opening is exactly why I've been looking forward to it because it's a really great way to frame what we need to discuss.
- 2:38Chris Duffin: So yeah, I'm looking forward to this.
- 2:40Philip Pape: Good.
- 2:40Philip Pape: I'm glad we hit the mark, at least as a starting point.
- 2:42Philip Pape: And it's funny because just the timing of this, a client of mine recently said, you know, I asked him, what do you want to see more in the fitness industry?
- 2:49Philip Pape: And he said, I want to see more people talking about how not to get hurt.
- 2:52Philip Pape: I mean, that's the way he put it.
- 2:54Philip Pape: He's like, he's 45, I'm 45.
- 2:56Philip Pape: And he came up in the world of like starting strength and five by fives and the big compounds and this almost epidemic of older guys now who are into lifting but getting hurt.
- 3:08Philip Pape: They're breaking down.
- 3:09Philip Pape: Maybe there's aspects of their life that compound that, like executives and busy professionals who have a lot of stress and they feel like their training is maybe too limited or dogmatic, or they're not sure what to do.
- 3:21Philip Pape: Yeah.
- 3:22Philip Pape: So, like, what's the trend or the culture you're seeing?
- 3:25Chris Duffin: There's a lot of pieces to dissect within that.
- 3:28Chris Duffin: And hopefully we can simplify that because this industry always goes in cycles or waves.
- 3:33Chris Duffin: And there was a big push for a long time around movement quality and cleaning that up.
- 3:40Chris Duffin: And I was part of that.
- 3:40Chris Duffin: And now there's a lot of shift more around like the pain science of this and going, you know, we develop, we acclimate, that's the wrong word, adapt to stress.
- 3:50Chris Duffin: And so whatever movement that you move in is totally fine.
- 3:54Chris Duffin: And I think that might be causing some issues, even though that messaging is really on point.
- 4:00Chris Duffin: We don't want people to be fearful of movement.
- 4:03Chris Duffin: So being afraid, like I'm gonna do squat, I'm gonna hurt my back, or if if I don't do it exactly perfectly, means that I'm gonna hurt myself.
- 4:12Chris Duffin: Well, that creates fear, and then people are not pushing themselves, which then means they're not adapting, not growing stronger.
- 4:18Chris Duffin: And a better word for adaptation.
- 4:20Chris Duffin: It's just getting stronger, more resilient, right?
- 4:22Chris Duffin: But this is where context comes in, that little magic word, right?
- 4:27Chris Duffin: Because if we're not trying to improve the quality of our movement, there's an interesting thing that happens here because we adapt nearly any movement or stress that's imposed upon us, but not all of that adaptation is at the same rate.
- 4:46Chris Duffin: And we can take the back, for example.
- 4:49Chris Duffin: Like there's a lot of folks getting into lifting, maybe later in life, and they get strong maybe fairly quick, and then all of a sudden their back starts hurting.
- 4:57Chris Duffin: And it's like, hey, I read X program, and it says I should be able to train, you know, four days a week doing this.
- 5:04Chris Duffin: And it's like the research, all these science-based influencers are going through this over and over and over again, like scale back, and like, yes, but that's adaptation to muscular tissue and not the adaptation that needs to happen at a skeletal level for your disc to be able to support that load.
- 5:24Chris Duffin: Which, if you haven't had years of history of training, that adaptation hasn't happened.
- 5:30Chris Duffin: In this getting complex into the science of things, this piezoelectric, basically bone welding process that happens.
- 5:38Chris Duffin: That literally is it.
- 5:39Chris Duffin: That's how bone forms.
- 5:40Chris Duffin: That takes about a week.
- 5:42Chris Duffin: So if you haven't trained heavy in the past for you know decades, you may not have those adaptations and you might need to take it a little bit slower.
- 5:53Chris Duffin: We see this a lot in like female populations where if somebody gets into a strength sport, they don't have a history, and all of a sudden they're close to world-class levels in a few years and then they're gone because they actually didn't have the time that takes longer to develop that.
- 6:05Chris Duffin: And it might take longer to do that.
- 6:07Chris Duffin: Now, that's differences between you know processes in our body and how they adapt.
- 6:14Chris Duffin: We're talking, you know, skeletal adaptation versus skeletal muscle.
- 6:18Chris Duffin: But we also have our training reserves.
- 6:22Chris Duffin: If we think about this, if I move in a poor form, let's say I'm really rounded over while I'm squatting, again, you can adapt to that, but it's going to take you longer to recover from that.
- 6:37Chris Duffin: So you would not be able to, let's say, move as much load.
- 6:42Chris Duffin: So if we think about the total cumulative experience of your training over a week, for example, the total amount of repetition and load and all of this that adds up.
- 6:52Chris Duffin: If I work on improving my quality of movement in that, I'm going to be able to handle more volume, more frequency, and more weight, and still recover because I'm more efficient with the use of the tissues moving that load.
- 7:11Chris Duffin: Which means the more load that I handle within a given period of time stacked up means I get stronger.
- 7:20Chris Duffin: So you would get more resilient and develop more strength if you improve the quality of your movement.
- 7:28Chris Duffin: So don't be afraid of movement.
- 7:30Chris Duffin: If your technique isn't perfect, you go train.
- 7:33Chris Duffin: But also at the same time, try to make it a little bit better over time as well.
- 7:39Chris Duffin: And that's going to help you.
- 7:41Chris Duffin: And then there's some other things that kind of happen in this process too.
- 7:44Chris Duffin: Why is it?
- 7:45Chris Duffin: Why don't we recover as well when we're not using, you know, the materials, our biological materials as efficiently?
- 7:53Chris Duffin: Like our body responds to these, I call it peripheral inputs, where that load is at in space and where your joint is in relation to it actually sends a signal to the brain.
- 8:04Chris Duffin: So this soreness that you're feeling from squatting, it's like, oh, I have to do more to fix this because I'm I'm getting tight from all this squatting.
- 8:16Chris Duffin: My hips are getting tight, my back's getting tight.
- 8:18Chris Duffin: So I gotta add yoga, I gotta add stretching, I gotta add my foam rolling, I gotta add, add, add, add all this stuff.
- 8:25Chris Duffin: The body is trying to protect you because it's going, hey, we've got a loss of stability.
- 8:31Chris Duffin: Maybe our foot is unstable and it's shifting around on the ground because we're on an unstable shoe or an unstable surface, or we've just kind of lacked some motor stability issues and the knees wavering around.
- 8:43Chris Duffin: The body's response to that is to detune you.
- 8:46Chris Duffin: And so detuning you, one, it actually makes you weaker immediately.
- 8:50Chris Duffin: So you're not moving as much load as you really are capable of doing.
- 8:54Chris Duffin: It's literally how you move like thousands of pounds, for example, is to like really refine those patterns.
- 8:58Chris Duffin: So you're reducing the detuning that's happening in your system.
- 9:02Chris Duffin: So like all of a sudden, somebody's like way stronger.
- 9:05Chris Duffin: And it's like, how did that happen?
- 9:07Chris Duffin: We didn't add strength in 15 minutes, but we clean this stuff up and the signals are clear, and the body goes, You're safe to move now because we've got that in the right position.
- 9:16Chris Duffin: But on another level, that's why your hips are tightening up.
- 9:21Chris Duffin: It's not tightening up because you're squatting, it's tightening up because you're squatting like shit.
- 9:27Chris Duffin: The body's gonna start protecting that joint, and it's gonna start protecting that joint by tightening the muscles around it and starting to restrict the movement.
- 9:34Chris Duffin: And so I see this as a classic issue in strength training world is like everything is additive.
- 9:42Chris Duffin: That's not working.
- 9:42Chris Duffin: So we got to add because I lift, I have to balance that with doing this other thing, and I have to balance it with doing the other.
- 9:49Chris Duffin: And it's like, well, let's let's look at what we're doing and seeing what's actually driving that.
- 9:54Chris Duffin: And it might be that you're training too much, like you have too much load and that too much volume, frequency, all the other stuff.
- 10:00Chris Duffin: But these are all those variables that create that.
- 10:03Chris Duffin: And if it's a specific area that's starting to lose mobility, it means something with your training or your movement is amiss there.
- 10:11Chris Duffin: And if you correct that, that shouldn't happen.
- 10:14Chris Duffin: But being a thousand-pound squatter on deadlifter without stretching my hips, I can come close to doing the splits as, and that was as a 280-pound, you know, five foot ten male, because my movement through my hips was really clean.
- 10:30Philip Pape: If you want to be strong and be able to do this a long time, and you mentioned it, quality of movement equals strength, you know, avoiding this detuning because you've become weaker due to the peripheral inputs.
- 10:40Philip Pape: But ultimately, what I'm hearing is the quality of movement and your ability to do this and listen to the signals which are telling you something's off, and fix those things.
- 10:50Philip Pape: That's how we simplify this to don't add more, fix that.
- 10:54Philip Pape: It'll then lead to you being able to lift more.
- 10:56Philip Pape: I guess my next question is when you say quality of movement, uh, we need to define that.
- 11:01Philip Pape: And then what do you mean?
- 11:02Philip Pape: And go on on all the different branches uh very specifically of what that means.
- 11:06Chris Duffin: So listen to the signals that they're sending to you, going, hey, there is a gap here, and there's some areas where I can get more efficient.
- 11:13Chris Duffin: And the more efficient I get, the stronger and more resilient I can get, because then I can handle more load.
- 11:19Chris Duffin: But with that, spend some time training in some of those other ranges.
- 11:23Chris Duffin: Now, there is to some level a definition of good quality movement, and that is having the right balance of length tension relationship of the muscles around a joint.
- 11:36Chris Duffin: So that is joints that are you know balancing that hip, where if I'm popping my chest way up, like all the muscles that are connected to the front of the spine are in a stretch position, and the ones in the back are in a shortened position.
- 11:52Chris Duffin: If they're constantly like that, the ones in the back are going to be overworked.
- 11:58Chris Duffin: They're gonna hold a lot of tension and they're going to be less able to get nutrients in, so substrate material in and waste products out.
- 12:08Chris Duffin: So you're restricting their ability to recover and they're overfatiguing because they are working all the time.
- 12:19Chris Duffin: So they have a, you know, a chronic level of fatigue that now when I get capacity, so someone that has overactive, you know, erectors because they're trying to uh compensate for something typically has those fail during a movement because they don't have the resilience because they're already working.
- 12:37Chris Duffin: Uh again, I've got a lack, uh, a little bit of laxity in the muscles in the front that are in this stretched position all the time.
- 12:45Chris Duffin: They're not turned on in that balance.
- 12:49Chris Duffin: And this becomes important when we talk about what we call prime movers, which are the main like drivers of force as versus stabilizing muscles, ones that are kind of creating that balance.
- 13:02Chris Duffin: So I think of this in a global perspective.
- 13:06Chris Duffin: So the biggest impact to me is the impact of I hate calling it the core because people misapply that to like tight, you know, rigid abs.
- 13:17Chris Duffin: And it's not what I'm talking about.
- 13:19Chris Duffin: It's this ability to manage, well, that region of the body, the diaphragm, it's the area between the diaphragm, so your upper rib cage and your pelvis, and having good alignment with that and being able to balance the processes within that, which is happens from it's cued from the diaphragm.
- 13:38Chris Duffin: There's a lot of other muscles that happen, but we'll talk about that, which has three essential functions respiration, stabilization, and the sphincter.
- 13:48Chris Duffin: It's why you can't brace 100% if you're running a marathon.
- 13:51Chris Duffin: You're still braced, otherwise, you'd flop over.
- 13:54Chris Duffin: So it's this balance, and it's always somewhere on a continuum.
- 13:58Chris Duffin: So you can think about this, you know, knob that goes to 10 one direction and 10 the other, and you you can choose.
- 14:04Chris Duffin: Like you go dial it one way, it's less, you know, as you start dialing more towards respiration, you're having less stabilization as you're dialing the other way.
- 14:13Chris Duffin: And it's it's always a balance in there of what do you need from a respiratory versus stabilization.
- 14:19Chris Duffin: But that process right there, that alignment and using those resources and getting everything to stabilize the spine has this huge effect throughout the entire system.
- 14:30Chris Duffin: So number one is the ability to control and manage the breathing and breathing complex.
- 14:37Chris Duffin: All right.
- 14:38Chris Duffin: Number two is the foot and ankle complex.
- 14:41Chris Duffin: Then number three is the big power generation joints, the shoulder complex and the hip complex.
- 14:48Chris Duffin: All right, then you can get out into the peripheral.
- 14:50Chris Duffin: And if you think about things in that sequence of like trying to diagnose what's going wrong, it may be counterintuitive.
- 14:59Chris Duffin: I'm gonna start with that breathing embracing and that alignment uh component.
- 15:04Chris Duffin: That may sound weird, but if you are lacking that stable base to fire from, that lat that holds that internal rotation of that shoulder while you're benching doesn't have a stable base and it might be flaring out.
- 15:18Chris Duffin: Fixing this can fix that.
- 15:19Chris Duffin: Same thing.
- 15:20Chris Duffin: That lack of mobility, that protection could be happening because, again, a lack there in that area.
- 15:27Chris Duffin: And so just focusing on that first, like that's the global perspective.
- 15:31Chris Duffin: I'm not saying the problem's there, but that's the thought process.
- 15:34Chris Duffin: We go there first.
- 15:35Chris Duffin: So it's it's about having a good relationship there.
- 15:38Chris Duffin: And it doesn't mean you can't like be in another area and space, but when I'm trying to maximize my force output, when I'm trying to get more efficient with some base motor patterns, I'm going to try to make sure that I've got that and I know how to be able to inflate my core 360 degrees.
- 15:59Chris Duffin: So I should have some expansion in my lower abdominals, in my lower obliques just below the belt line, in my low back just below the rib cage.
- 16:09Chris Duffin: Like I should be able to just sit there and expand all of that while keeping that diaphragm, so that space at the base of the rib cage in parallel to my pelvis, right?
- 16:21Chris Duffin: Keeping those two in that same frame, being able to expand there, the equality and ability to control that does a lot of things.
- 16:29Chris Duffin: And then you can move in different ways in different spaces, as long as you can kind of control that.
- 16:34Chris Duffin: The ability that diaphragm descending down creates pressure on those organs.
- 16:38Chris Duffin: And that pressure pushes out all the way around, including down in the pelvis, which causes a co-contraction of all those muscles, which is the thoraciolumbar musculature, the pelvic floor, like all these other things that you could think about doing.
- 16:50Chris Duffin: The I need to do the valsalva move over, I need to do all these things.
- 16:54Chris Duffin: It's the real simple way to just focus on one thing and get like those processes, the body to say, it is safe for me to be in this position and elicit force without restriction.
- 17:08Chris Duffin: That's the signal that you are sending to the body when you do that.
- 17:11Chris Duffin: So being able to learn to do that without breath, because guess what?
- 17:14Chris Duffin: There's no actual air in your down there.
- 17:18Chris Duffin: That's organs.
- 17:19Chris Duffin: It's just the diaphragm is descending down, making space in the lungs.
- 17:23Chris Duffin: So doing it through the lungs is a compensatory pattern.
- 17:28Chris Duffin: You could add a little bit more over the top, um, and you can kind of pulse the diaphragm.
- 17:34Chris Duffin: So you may hear like people doing kettlebells or other things with this like little burst, like that is they already have good stability and they've got right at the peak of contraction, they're hitting that, which causes this micropulse of intense pressure, more intense pressure.
- 17:49Chris Duffin: Good posture, and then being able to expand all of that all the way around, checking those points.
- 17:56Chris Duffin: Boom, that's first step in the process.
- 18:00Philip Pape: So I really like this breathing bracing nuance that you're gonna get into because we do simplify it often to the Valsal remover, um, just taking one big breath, holding it.
- 18:10Philip Pape: There's no spectrum of how big of a breath, the pulsing or anything like that, from a max one RM to just like doing something for reps, people don't distinguish.
- 18:20Philip Pape: And I think there's got to be different ways to approach this across that spectrum.
- 18:25Philip Pape: So, some of my questions are now gonna be about like the pressure versus the load, about how does this apply to the actual lift mechanics, you know, and then and then things like lifting belts, which we can add tech on afterward.
- 18:38Chris Duffin: So you'll notice in there that discussion, I didn't talk about like the contracting of the muscles.
- 18:44Chris Duffin: Like if you're gonna put a weight on your back or in your hands or throw a punch or do these sorts of things, that outer contraction is gonna happen over the top of it.
- 18:52Chris Duffin: So you don't have to like consciously do that, or again, consciously think about like the Valsava maneuver.
- 18:57Chris Duffin: If we just initiate, I try to simplify things down into all right, I'm gonna have that outward expansion in those areas, a few touch points and be in good posture.
- 19:05Chris Duffin: That's it.
- 19:06Chris Duffin: Bunch of stuff happens.
- 19:07Chris Duffin: Now, what is the intensity?
- 19:09Chris Duffin: What is that very one rep max, three rep max, five rep?
- 19:12Chris Duffin: Uh, I'm doing kettlebell snatches, you know, for time.
- 19:15Chris Duffin: How do I manage this?
- 19:17Chris Duffin: And that's why I mentioned that continuum dial.
- 19:20Chris Duffin: There is no necessarily perfect answer because it's gonna vary on your particular respiratory needs, but it's going to be that balance.
- 19:30Chris Duffin: And again, like what is your level of strength in those muscles that are creating that stabilization too?
- 19:35Chris Duffin: So there's gonna be a balance there, and it is a give and take.
- 19:39Chris Duffin: So with a max true one max rep, there is no breathing during that process.
- 19:45Chris Duffin: Everything is stabilization, all right.
- 19:48Chris Duffin: And let's say I'm doing a five rep max, I'm probably pausing in there somewhere to take a reset and take a breath.
- 19:58Chris Duffin: Maybe it's after the second rep or the third rep.
- 20:01Chris Duffin: I'm gonna stop at the top where I'm in a good posture, release, another breath in so I don't pass out from last lack of air.
- 20:08Chris Duffin: All right.
- 20:09Chris Duffin: But let's say I'm doing a kettlebell snatch.
- 20:12Chris Duffin: That's for time.
- 20:15Chris Duffin: That's gonna be pretty continuous, but it's got some peak forces in there where I'm gonna need to be stable, but I'm probably not doing the breath between reps because there's no time.
- 20:24Chris Duffin: So I'm doing I'm timing that with it, right?
- 20:27Chris Duffin: So in a non-contractile phase, you know, I'm letting that air out, then I'm bringing it in, and then I've got a period where I'm not uh taking a breath, and it's in that movement.
- 20:37Chris Duffin: So it's within that continuum and just understanding all right, where's that balance at with this?
- 20:44Chris Duffin: Right.
- 20:45Chris Duffin: And so there's no fixed answer.
- 20:48Chris Duffin: If I'm doing a 20-rep squat, you know, it's gonna be very different and might start becoming part within the movement, but the stabilization demands are a little less as well.
- 20:58Chris Duffin: But this is also if we go all the way back to the beginning and you talked about how do I not injure myself.
- 21:06Chris Duffin: This is problematic in this arena when we're dealing with these core compound movements that people don't think about when they're talking about all right, movement quality doesn't matter.
- 21:17Chris Duffin: That whole initial discussion, let's tie back to this.
- 21:19Chris Duffin: We are now using the same process for respiration and stabilization.
- 21:26Chris Duffin: And if we start fatiguing out because of respiration, and now we don't have the strength to handle the stabilization, and I'm doing a CrossFit circuit with wall balls and squats and all of this, and I've got a core movement in there, and I have fatigued my capacity from an endurance respiratory standpoint.
- 21:47Chris Duffin: And now I've got 200 pounds on my back, but I'm a 400 pound squatter, but you just can't stabilize enough to protect yourself, and you end up hurting yourself.
- 21:57Chris Duffin: This is good reason to take.
- 21:59Chris Duffin: Make movements like that and separate those from they shouldn't be part of a metabolic conditioning program because of the failure mode.
- 22:10Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah.
- 22:11Philip Pape: I'm laughing because I did I did CrossFit for like eight years and I have the injuries to show for it, the long-term issues that are slowly getting resolved from separating the two.
- 22:20Philip Pape: You're right.
- 22:20Philip Pape: Because you just you get wiped and you're going for you know grace or what are these wads for reps on deadlifts and you're just killing yourself.
- 22:28Chris Duffin: You just you got nothing and you got to the end.
- 22:30Chris Duffin: And that's not a knock-on CrossFit.
- 22:31Chris Duffin: You can do CrossFit and program it highly intelligently.
- 22:35Chris Duffin: Um, and you can do like and you can get strong too, like hit boom.
- 22:38Chris Duffin: But you're gonna come in and you're gonna like, all right, let's hit a squat session, boom, let's roll up.
- 22:41Chris Duffin: All right, let's now do a metabolic conditioning piece and just not have a movement like that with load that has that potential within that wild.
- 22:51Chris Duffin: Like it's that simple.
- 22:53Philip Pape: So if you were coaching somebody and they're you're coaching them on the deadlift, people are trying to do a set of five, let's say, or even a set of three.
- 22:59Philip Pape: Is there a standard default that you'd recommend in terms of like, do you breathe at the top or bottom?
- 23:04Philip Pape: And also how do you do it and when do you take a breath?
- 23:06Philip Pape: Like if you said, yeah, it's a pretty good protocol, let's say, for a set of three deadlifts.
- 23:12Chris Duffin: So it's not one or the other.
- 23:13Chris Duffin: That's where the continuum, because they can mix and you can be doing the breathing.
- 23:17Chris Duffin: It's just a so just quick clarification there.
- 23:20Chris Duffin: But typically on a squat or deadlift or a base movement like that, I'm gonna do it in a position where I'm not holding the weight.
- 23:26Chris Duffin: And that it does that sounds funny.
- 23:28Chris Duffin: I'm like, I'm holding the weight with a squat or deadlift all the time.
- 23:31Chris Duffin: But you can stand with a weight for a really long time because the postures and everything, you're not actually loading and holding that spinal position uh unless you're leaning slightly forward or back or in the corner.
- 23:43Philip Pape: Right, you're totally balanced over midfoot in a vertical line.
- 23:46Philip Pape: Yeah, exactly.
- 23:47Chris Duffin: That's the time to do that if you're doing one of those movements.
- 23:50Chris Duffin: Reset.
- 23:52Philip Pape: Okay, okay, interesting.
- 23:52Philip Pape: So on the deadlift, see that that's a good one, right?
- 23:55Philip Pape: Because a lot of people breathe at the bottom of the rep or they take a breath at the bottom.
- 23:59Chris Duffin: Yes, do not do not do that.
- 24:01Philip Pape: Okay, yeah.
- 24:02Philip Pape: See, that's yeah, exactly.
- 24:04Philip Pape: That's why I'm bringing it up, right?
- 24:05Philip Pape: Because I taught I have my lifting buddies and I would are we sometimes argue about this stuff, and a lot of people come to their own conclusion when they realize doing it at the top seems to be more helpful.
- 24:15Chris Duffin: A caveat with that, like if you're doing low load and you're doing repetition based stuff, that may make sense because it doesn't require as much to get that off the floor.
- 24:26Chris Duffin: But you if you are setting the tension and you're already in that down position, you're literally trying to force like how to explain that.
- 24:35Chris Duffin: Like, you need to create, if you're moving a heavier load, you need to force that level of tension into the bar.
- 24:42Chris Duffin: And if you start with no tension whatsoever, because if you've let a breath go, your body is completely relaxed and you don't have tension on the bar.
- 24:51Chris Duffin: That is it, right?
- 24:52Chris Duffin: So now I'm gonna rebuild that and I'm rebuilding it all just through that and that slacks in that bar.
- 24:57Chris Duffin: There's some sort of acceleratory thing to get that bar moving and to get that bar moving without some give in the body, it needs to be really light, or you're compromising position.
- 25:08Chris Duffin: You've got a little bit of loss in position as you're getting into position.
- 25:12Chris Duffin: So, like for me, I would set that brace before I went down into the deadlift, and I'm driving my hips into position, and the bar is literally bending up to be able to match to give my hips the highest position possible.
- 25:28Chris Duffin: Because the higher hip position possible gives me the best diaphragm uh to pelvis relationship and the best strength I can elicit from my hips.
- 25:38Chris Duffin: If I'm loose, if I've let loose that brace, let loose that tension on that bar, the hips are thus lower.
- 25:46Chris Duffin: And thus I don't have the same efficient power, like just from a mechanical standpoint, as an engineer, you get this like literally change the lever points, and I have less strength.
- 25:56Chris Duffin: And I'm going to end up compromising position as I let those hips rise and get into position to where I optimize those strengths, but I've done that by compromising the other positions.
- 26:08Chris Duffin: So you have to have that rigidness, and that rigidness can be created as you're driving into, but it's got to be done before.
- 26:15Chris Duffin: So, like for me to set up for a deadlift, there used to have to be 500 pounds on the bar.
- 26:22Chris Duffin: Because if it was less than 500 pounds, the weight would come off the ground during my setup because I knew where my hip position had to be for that to break off and the bar would be bending so much, I owned that position and I wouldn't start from a lower position because it's a different movement.
- 26:40Philip Pape: Another thought that goes through my head is if you just bend over right now, if you're listening to this into a deadlift position and then try to take a big breath, it just feels unnatural.
- 26:50Chris Duffin: You're not in a good position for the for all that activity to happen.
- 26:53Chris Duffin: You're in a poor position.
- 26:55Chris Duffin: You want to be in good position to set that.
- 26:57Chris Duffin: You can't do that when you're in that position.
- 27:00Chris Duffin: I mean, that is it is that is a known fact.
- 27:03Philip Pape: Like so, when it comes to the respiration versus stabilization, like when we think of lifting belts and people talking about intra-abdominal pressure and all this stuff, like what's your thought on a belt?
- 27:14Chris Duffin: Yeah.
- 27:15Chris Duffin: So a belt can be a really valuable tool for a couple of reasons, but usually it's completely misapplied.
- 27:20Chris Duffin: All right.
- 27:21Chris Duffin: So people are using the belt for support.
- 27:24Chris Duffin: And so they're cranking this belt on.
- 27:27Chris Duffin: And in fact, what we want the belt to be, and we need to be able to expand to actually get that contraction to happen the way that we want.
- 27:37Chris Duffin: So you have to be able to expand out into the belt, but then you reach a point of like, all right, once we've written that, I don't want to, I need a rigid force to expand against.
- 27:46Chris Duffin: And that's actually that co-contraction of that the thoraciolum bar musculature, the abdominals, like all this stuff is your internal belt, but it's not a hundred percent wholly rigid.
- 27:56Chris Duffin: So it does have some give to it.
- 27:58Chris Duffin: And so a belt can be valuable by creating that more rigid for handling that maximum load.
- 28:04Chris Duffin: And it can also be really valuable for you to just from a cueing mechanism to have the tactile feedback.
- 28:11Chris Duffin: Like, am I pushing out in all these spaces?
- 28:14Chris Duffin: And just tactily having that.
- 28:16Chris Duffin: So I found a lot of effect of just having like an expandable kind of belt that allows you to breathe out into it, uh, but has some restriction because it's creating that reactive neuromuscular training, is the technical term for it.
- 28:30Chris Duffin: But it's like it teaches you to push into it, like a like a nylon instead of a leather.
- 28:37Chris Duffin: Yes, exactly.
- 28:38Chris Duffin: So that's another if I'm using from a tactile, if I'm like trying to, um, so if I'm working with an audience that is, you know, not a maximum performance audience, I would use a rigid belt for them, right?
- 28:50Chris Duffin: But uh, but if I'm teaching, I really like uh that it is that it's got a few pockets where you can put like uh you know balls in massage balls so you can target like specific areas for people to like, hmm, okay, I'm pushing out into that.
- 29:06Chris Duffin: So I find that really, really valuable.
- 29:09Chris Duffin: And that's actually what I use today because I don't train for maximal strength.
- 29:13Chris Duffin: And I just like that little bit of extra resistance, but not too much.
- 29:16Chris Duffin: So the way to use a belt properly is to have be able to slide at least two fingers between your belly and the belt before you you're expanded.
- 29:25Chris Duffin: But it's to have it relatively, but like loose enough that you can still slide those in there.
- 29:30Chris Duffin: So if you've got it too tight, you're actually sucking that in and you can't expand out into it anymore.
- 29:36Chris Duffin: So that's where the misapplication that I see over and over again is people are looking, they're cranking, and they're they're using it as a passive structure.
- 29:43Chris Duffin: It needs to be used in an active manner.
- 29:47Philip Pape: Okay, and two more questions about breath.
- 29:49Philip Pape: One is can you take too many breaths?
- 29:51Philip Pape: And and I say that because again, you alluded to holding your breath for multiple reps, and there's different schools of thought on that as well.
- 29:58Philip Pape: So if you're doing like a set of five squats, you know, is there a disadvantage to taking a breath for each rep because of now the respiration overcomes the stabilization in some way or tires you out?
- 30:09Philip Pape: Or is it like that's too short of a period for it to matter?
- 30:12Chris Duffin: That's too short of a period.
- 30:13Chris Duffin: Uh, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.
- 30:15Chris Duffin: So, what does this allow?
- 30:17Chris Duffin: It allows us to move greater load, right?
- 30:20Chris Duffin: But it also then allows us to push.
- 30:23Chris Duffin: If we can maintain our technique and we're not stopping because of respiration, I'm not stopping because my low back's fatiguing.
- 30:32Chris Duffin: Like it is just pure, like my movement's just freaking maximal solid.
- 30:38Chris Duffin: And I and I'm failing because my quads just can't give anymore, right?
- 30:42Chris Duffin: That triggers something at a cellular level.
- 30:45Chris Duffin: So when you're able to push into a deeper state of fatigue, the deeper you go, it pushes further oxygen desaturation of the muscles, it pushes uh changes lactic threshold, it does a number of things at that level.
- 31:05Chris Duffin: And that's like if anybody ever gets around uh looking at like blood flow restriction or things like that, that kind of forces that mechanism via a whole different pathway by just depriving the body and putting it in that deeper state uh without the load.
- 31:20Chris Duffin: But the further you actually improve that, so like changing the load in space got people with a squat bar, it was called the transformer bar, put the diaphragm and the pelvis like perfectly aligned and got people in these amazing squat patterns.
- 31:34Chris Duffin: And all of a sudden, you could go to that level.
- 31:37Chris Duffin: So it's another way of tapping into this cellular level biology because when that happens, those triggers things like uh PGC one alpha, it's basically this cellular level response triggering uh adaptation at that muscular at that level.
- 31:54Chris Duffin: And it's truly, truly fascinating.
- 31:57Chris Duffin: And that's a lot of my thought process through the years was underlying what is the cellular signaling pathways, which is why you saw me dealing with products that like a flywheel, so the Kratos flywheel, like the load starts dropping as you first push into it, like a dumbbell that changed weights as like you could change the leverage as you went because you could just keep pushing.
- 32:19Chris Duffin: BFR, I was a big proponent of it.
- 32:21Chris Duffin: I still am uh education around that same thing.
- 32:25Chris Duffin: It's another pathway into that same modality.
- 32:28Chris Duffin: And these are actually triggering those responses at the cell level so we can actually grow stronger, more resilient, drive metabolic changes at that tissue.
- 32:41Chris Duffin: So it's it's really fascinating stuff.
- 32:44Philip Pape: Is it just a function of putting you into more variations that then can reach the deeper and more muscle fibers, just like the conjugate method tries to do with rotation through different lifts?
- 32:54Philip Pape: Or when you when you say set cellular signaling, is it really just that, or is there some other mechanism you're you're alluding to?
- 33:01Chris Duffin: Uh well, what I was talking about was just truly in that context was cellular, uh cellular signaling.
- 33:07Chris Duffin: But it has an effect.
- 33:08Chris Duffin: I mean, your grip position plays a role in that, for example.
- 33:11Chris Duffin: Like a lot of people grab super, super tight because it creates all this tightness of the upper back, but there's a disconnect where that upper back isn't tied into this really strong, rigid, stable core.
- 33:22Chris Duffin: So it feels tight and it's great and it's a great shelf.
- 33:26Chris Duffin: But once we get closer to fatigue, we'll see that at the thoracic lumbar junction, they'll end up rounding out and failing, right?
- 33:35Chris Duffin: Does that mean a wider grip's better?
- 33:37Chris Duffin: No, because they lose that strength.
- 33:39Chris Duffin: But somewhere in there, there's a grip that allows you to stabilize and now use the lats to connect the shoulder into the core.
- 33:47Chris Duffin: So actually, the best grip is your pull down grip, but you have to pull down.
- 33:53Chris Duffin: So when you've got that squat bar on your back, you need to have the shoulder mobility to be able to get into that position and then pretend to be bending that bar over your back and into your core.
- 34:04Chris Duffin: And now you won't feel as tight in the, you know, the upper area, but that's tied to the core, and now you've got this rigid, solid member, and that won't give out when you're going to squat.
- 34:16Chris Duffin: But sequence is important here too, because if I tighten those lats beforehand, the lats are gonna throw you into extension, and then you won't be able to get.
- 34:25Chris Duffin: So you have to set this first, then draw the bar over you.
- 34:29Philip Pape: Okay.
- 34:29Philip Pape: Well, I also want to get into the other aspects, right?
- 34:31Philip Pape: Foot, ankle, as well as shoulder, hips.
- 34:33Philip Pape: Is that a logical next?
- 34:35Philip Pape: So feet and ankle.
- 34:36Philip Pape: And I know you're a big barefoot guy, like guys that you can check out other podcasts that Chris has been on, and he goes all into the foot for like hours.
- 34:43Philip Pape: It's it's fantastic content.
- 34:45Philip Pape: But like footstands, feet, footwear, ankles, all that stuff definitely is another.
- 34:50Philip Pape: I mean, you're contacting the ground there, so that's super important.
- 34:53Chris Duffin: Yeah, the biggest point here, and and I don't have to argue this anymore because people used to go, where's the science?
- 34:59Chris Duffin: Where's the science behind what you're saying?
- 35:01Chris Duffin: And I went, have you ever heard of exercise science?
- 35:04Chris Duffin: Because the exercise science is about the specific adaptation to imposed demand.
- 35:08Chris Duffin: And you're telling me that the foot doesn't respond the way the rest of the body responds and doesn't respond to the specific adaptation to imposed demand.
- 35:19Chris Duffin: So all I'm saying is you need to use and train your foot.
- 35:23Chris Duffin: And if you don't, the foot is going to get weak.
- 35:29Chris Duffin: And if the foot gets weak, it's going to have a loss of blood flow, it's going to have mobility uh restriction issues, and then you're on a weak base, and the body is going to compensate and try to protect around that.
- 35:43Chris Duffin: So that is just fundamentally my position and has been for a long time.
- 35:51Chris Duffin: And it was most of our footwear today, and it's not a sizing problem.
- 35:56Chris Duffin: If you've been wearing traditional footwear your whole life, your foot has been deformed to fit the shoe.
- 36:01Chris Duffin: So it's not going out today and finding the shoe that fits.
- 36:04Chris Duffin: But that immediately grab your hand in front of you, grab the four fingers and pull them in.
- 36:10Chris Duffin: Okay.
- 36:10Chris Duffin: And immediately you can start seeing them turn a little white.
- 36:14Chris Duffin: All right.
- 36:14Chris Duffin: The front of your foot is in the front of that shoe, and you're creating a loss of blood flow with that.
- 36:20Chris Duffin: It's near immediate.
- 36:21Chris Duffin: Okay.
- 36:22Chris Duffin: Some certain things happen if we pull that big toe in immediately, which happens in that shoe, versus pulling it out, as far as their ability to engage the upstream musculature.
- 36:31Chris Duffin: So simple stuff, and I'll base this off of known research right now.
- 36:36Chris Duffin: And this is with MRIs, it is with uh X-ray, and I haven't seen the research, but I've talked to the doctors that have done the biopsies.
- 36:46Chris Duffin: And it is around plantar fasciitis.
- 36:50Chris Duffin: All right.
- 36:50Chris Duffin: So, but we'll extrapolate this out.
- 36:52Chris Duffin: Most everyone thinks that plantar fasciitis is an overuse condition.
- 36:58Chris Duffin: I've overused the plantar fascia.
- 37:00Chris Duffin: It's sore, it needs uh a passive support and needs rest.
- 37:04Chris Duffin: All right.
- 37:05Chris Duffin: All imaging shows it's at least 96% of all cases are an actual atrophy of muscle tissue due to lack of blood flow and the tendon and ligament tissue basically uh degrading in that process as well.
- 37:22Chris Duffin: It is weakness, it is atrophy of tissue, it's lack of blood flow like from underuse because you haven't been using your foot because you've learned to passively sit on top of this foot, just like stand on this stump of your foot.
- 37:38Philip Pape: Just like a block, just a block in a shape.
- 37:40Philip Pape: Just like a block.
- 37:41Chris Duffin: Okay.
- 37:41Chris Duffin: And so that's like the essence of my argument right there is the problem is we have our feet stuffed in these shoes that is allowing our foot not to be used, and it is becoming weak and creating a lot of dysfunction.
- 37:56Chris Duffin: It happens to be the base of nearly all sports, other than like, you know, any ground-based sport.
- 38:02Chris Duffin: Um, not swimming, you know, for example, although we could probably argue that too.
- 38:06Chris Duffin: But power is generated from that force and then applied to a distal end.
- 38:10Chris Duffin: And we've got weakness there to start with.
- 38:12Chris Duffin: And I'm just like, you gotta spend some time using that, right?
- 38:15Chris Duffin: So having the minimalist level of protection from the environment, right?
- 38:23Chris Duffin: From heat, like the hot pavement, uh, from germs, you know, that's what you want.
- 38:28Chris Duffin: The minimalist level that still allows your foot to move and then learn to actively stand, actively build your arch and control that.
- 38:37Chris Duffin: And then it's just with time.
- 38:38Chris Duffin: And people are like, Well, I do that, and my foot hurts.
- 38:40Chris Duffin: Yeah.
- 38:41Chris Duffin: Do you remember the first time you went to the gym and did a squat?
- 38:43Chris Duffin: It hurt.
- 38:45Chris Duffin: What do you do?
- 38:46Chris Duffin: And this is a well the argument.
- 38:48Chris Duffin: Well, people put um, yeah, there was the big barefoot running craze, and the company that put those shoes out there got sued because so many people got hurt.
- 38:56Chris Duffin: Like, do you remember the first time you squatted?
- 38:58Chris Duffin: Did you go into the gym and taught 220 squat 225 for 50 reps?
- 39:02Chris Duffin: What would have happened if you tried?
- 39:04Chris Duffin: Because that's what happened, is they said those shoes are better, and all these runners that run 10, 20 miles a day, you started putting them on and just going out and running that.
- 39:12Chris Duffin: Guess what?
- 39:13Chris Duffin: If they had weak feet, detrained feet, well, how do I well what what's the progression?
- 39:18Chris Duffin: I don't know.
- 39:20Chris Duffin: I can't tell you what the progression for your squat is.
- 39:22Chris Duffin: What do you do?
- 39:24Chris Duffin: Oh, you go to the gym, you do some squats, and if it was a little too much, you don't recover as well, do a little less, then you'll find you can build a little bit more and then build a little bit more.
- 39:35Chris Duffin: It's the same as the rest of your body.
- 39:38Chris Duffin: And all I'm suggesting is use it and train it and use the same thought process as the rest of how you would train your bench press.
- 39:47Chris Duffin: Now, the research has come out because the foot is just like fundamentally used all the time.
- 39:51Chris Duffin: If you switch to a minimalist style footwear, it does as much as a dedicated foot and ankle strengthening program.
- 39:58Philip Pape: Just because of how much you use it, right?
- 39:59Philip Pape: Yeah, and everything exactly.
- 40:01Philip Pape: You don't even have to like try to like get a foot dumbbell or something, right?
- 40:04Philip Pape: Like people are thinking of that.
- 40:06Chris Duffin: I used to tell people do both, like because I didn't want to be like pitching, like, oh, just go buy the shoes, but yeah, it is the like just do that.
- 40:14Chris Duffin: Like, and if you do that, then go try lift, squat some and dead lift some weights, do some stuff.
- 40:19Chris Duffin: Like uh, if you want to build it further, hey, do some lunges or some split legs with uh half of your foot off of a off of a block.
- 40:26Chris Duffin: Like do some calf raises without shoes on.
- 40:30Philip Pape: It makes sense.
- 40:31Philip Pape: I mean, the foot has like um the feet and hands have half your bones and muscles of your body, or at least half your bones.
- 40:36Philip Pape: I forgot.
- 40:36Philip Pape: I don't know about muscles, but yeah, right.
- 40:38Philip Pape: They're so complex.
- 40:40Chris Duffin: 37, I think.
- 40:43Chris Duffin: It yeah, it's insane.
- 40:44Chris Duffin: Your foot is an engineering marvel, so it's got the whole windless uh system built in there where with your stride, we've got this uh, you know, basically really flexible like movement of the foot.
- 40:58Chris Duffin: But as soon as we go to stride, as that big toe raises up, it winds up this windless mechanism that winds up and creates the stiffness of the arch.
- 41:06Chris Duffin: So all of a sudden, this structure that is like really pliable and can walk over stuff.
- 41:10Chris Duffin: As soon as you go to sprint or run or take off, becomes this powerful medium that propels you forward and multiplies your force.
- 41:19Chris Duffin: Like it just the foot is a beautiful engineering marvel, and it's the base of everything that we do from movement.
- 41:27Chris Duffin: That's why it is.
- 41:28Chris Duffin: We're not gonna design something better than what it is.
- 41:31Philip Pape: That's interesting, right?
- 41:32Philip Pape: Because I talk to people about sprinting all the time.
- 41:34Philip Pape: I'm like, get the most minimalist footwear you can, and it's gonna feel amazing.
- 41:38Philip Pape: Like, you got to adapt into it.
- 41:39Philip Pape: So the controversy, of course, is always squat shoes versus flat shoes versus no shoes, and like, oh, you don't want to drop something on your foot, so there's a safety issue.
- 41:47Philip Pape: Is it a function of us, you know, some percentage of certain lifts?
- 41:51Philip Pape: Go ahead and do barefoot, and then maybe the rest wear what you want, you know, squat shoes, or you're like just go all out barefoot.
- 41:57Chris Duffin: Yeah, you got to think about shoes as a tool.
- 42:00Chris Duffin: Like it's protect from our environment.
- 42:02Chris Duffin: Like, if you're a logger, am I gonna tell you to wear a minimalist shoe?
- 42:05Chris Duffin: No, but I'm gonna tell you to find the most flexible one that allows the best that's gonna support you, like in whatever environment that you're in.
- 42:13Chris Duffin: So it is a balance of trade-offs.
- 42:15Chris Duffin: That's what it is.
- 42:16Chris Duffin: I think it's a crux, and maybe it's a mental crux, but it's in the right tool for the job.
- 42:21Chris Duffin: If you're gonna do an overhead, you know, movement, like that's a weird lift, a an Olympic lift, uh, you know, the Olympic snatch.
- 42:30Chris Duffin: That is a sport, and you're going to need to be able to get in position to do the sport.
- 42:34Chris Duffin: And that is an unnatural to be sitting on your heels with weight overhead for us to be in that type of position.
- 42:40Chris Duffin: So those ones, yes, that shoe makes sense.
- 42:44Chris Duffin: For basic squatting and deadlifting, it doesn't make sense.
- 42:47Chris Duffin: There's no need to do it.
- 42:48Chris Duffin: But if you're competing and you lift more that way, go ahead and do that.
- 42:52Chris Duffin: But trust me, you will perform better if you do the majority of your training outside of that shoe and get a stronger foot and then put it into that.
- 43:01Chris Duffin: But the stronger foot and ankle complex you have within that is going to perform better.
- 43:08Philip Pape: Train your foot, enhance it with tools as needed, go back and forth and kind of one works with the other.
- 43:13Philip Pape: And I know you yourself, I believe, improved your deadlift barefoot, right?
- 43:18Philip Pape: Is that right?
- 43:18Philip Pape: Yes.
- 43:19Chris Duffin: So if you go watch my videos of my squat and deadlift, and at the time it was such a this was such an unusual controversy thing.
- 43:26Chris Duffin: Like if you read through the comments, you'll see people like comments in there.
- 43:29Chris Duffin: Oh my god, Andy did it with no shoes.
- 43:31Chris Duffin: Can you believe what he would do with them?
- 43:33Chris Duffin: And it's like, no, that was actually a performance enhancement, but you know, it's the other way around, is what you're saying.
- 43:39Chris Duffin: You're implying.
- 43:39Chris Duffin: But so people did not get that at that time.
- 43:42Chris Duffin: It was 2016.
- 43:43Chris Duffin: I did that.
- 43:44Chris Duffin: Yeah.
- 43:45Philip Pape: Okay, so shoulders and hips, I think, is worth some discussion there because I'm really curious to hear about that.
- 43:50Philip Pape: I personally have two rotator cuff surgeries.
- 43:53Chris Duffin: So those are the power generating units, and it's just like we don't need to look at those until we've checked the box.
- 43:59Chris Duffin: On those other things.
- 44:02Chris Duffin: And if you've got, you know, issues at your elbow or your knee, rarely is it that.
- 44:08Chris Duffin: It's somewhere, you know, in that train.
- 44:10Chris Duffin: So at that point, you know, if I've checked those boxes, I'm be looking at the hip and the foot to further down figure out what's going on with the knee or the elbow.
- 44:19Chris Duffin: I'm going to be looking, you know, at the shoulder.
- 44:22Chris Duffin: And if you've got those signals correct and you can, you know, put that power forth, it is going to change a lot of that.
- 44:29Chris Duffin: And then it becomes down to, you know, managing those complexes correctly.
- 44:34Philip Pape: All the talk of impingement and overhead work and people's anatomies and all that, there's a lot of misunderstanding there.
- 44:41Philip Pape: Like what's your general thought?
- 44:42Philip Pape: Yeah.
- 44:43Chris Duffin: So yeah, I mean, if we're in poor position and uh we're destabilized, there's three muscles that get tight around that hip and they'll pull that hip board in its capsule and create an you know an impingement and it's there.
- 44:56Chris Duffin: Uh, I've seen it over and over in the shoulder, and I'm not saying all cases, but if we've got lack of tension where it doesn't need to be around that joint, that joint is going to be in a different position.
- 45:09Chris Duffin: It's not this fixed thing.
- 45:11Chris Duffin: And because you've got a lack of space now doesn't mean that there is a lack of space.
- 45:15Philip Pape: And is there a bias of pulling versus pushing that you have, or is that an irrelevant variable in terms of your overall volume?
- 45:23Chris Duffin: I guess that's a good question.
- 45:25Chris Duffin: And I would say, yes, it does matter.
- 45:28Chris Duffin: I don't know I've ever put it in that terms just when building training plans and looking at the overall volume and stuff.
- 45:34Chris Duffin: Uh yeah, that definitely is applied.
- 45:37Chris Duffin: So context.
- 45:39Chris Duffin: Generally, yes, there's more muscles on the back.
- 45:41Chris Duffin: So there's likely if we're developing that all correctly, but you could end up with somebody with a really underdeveloped front.
- 45:50Chris Duffin: And you so where what's the developmental need as well?
- 45:53Chris Duffin: So so there's not a ratio that's absolutely perfect.
- 45:57Chris Duffin: And I think that you're gonna discover that in the training process and just understanding where the gaps are with your movement.
- 46:02Chris Duffin: But generally, yes, the lats and the rear delts and the traps and all that add up to a significantly more chunk of space than your pecs and your front delts, right?
- 46:14Chris Duffin: So, but there's some level of variability.
- 46:17Chris Duffin: But you could say, yes, roughly that thought process is is correct.
- 46:21Philip Pape: Cool, cool.
- 46:21Philip Pape: You know, I feel like we barely scratched the surface, but there's a lot of practical stuff in there that I think a lot of lifters listening are not thinking about and now are, and that's hugely beneficial for their health.
- 46:32Philip Pape: And I want everybody to just really like take notes again if you if you just like were binging this, like people tend to do when they listen to podcasts and take notes.
- 46:39Philip Pape: You know, we didn't get into a whole bunch of other awesome stuff you're doing with like, you know, regenerative protocols and peptides and all that.
- 46:45Philip Pape: But is there anything we didn't that I didn't ask you, like one thing you're like, this is worth mentioning that that we didn't cover?
- 46:52Chris Duffin: Um, yeah.
- 46:52Chris Duffin: From a general thought process, understanding the larger perspective of so I think about things in this kind of regenerative, I call it the regenerative amplification uh method or framework.
- 47:05Chris Duffin: We need to think about this, like we need to be able to have a clean space to send those neurological signals, uh component of that.
- 47:12Chris Duffin: We talked about cleaning that up from a movement perspective.
- 47:15Chris Duffin: If we get into a broader health perspective, that might be cleaning up inflammatory signaling like in your diet and other stuff, because that's going to inhibit that mechanisms, right?
- 47:26Chris Duffin: Once you've cleaned up and have a clean terrain to send those signals on, which comes from, again, diet, light exposure, sleep, like all these kinds of uh supplementation.
- 47:38Chris Duffin: There's a lot of things that you can do to manage that.
- 47:40Chris Duffin: But we're talking about cardiovascular disease, diabetes, uh, how you're physically like recovering uh tendons, arthritis development, like all of that, right?
- 47:51Chris Duffin: Like that's all cellular signaling.
- 47:54Chris Duffin: Then you can move into you know modalities that actually send those signals.
- 47:59Chris Duffin: And so we'll get to the training, but that would be uh the use of like uh peptides or other therapies.
- 48:06Chris Duffin: If you do that, we can actually enhance some of that with like alternative modalities.
- 48:11Chris Duffin: Where does that fit in?
- 48:12Chris Duffin: You know, red light therapy, shockwave therapy, things like that.
- 48:16Chris Duffin: Then there's having making sure you have the right like substrate material to work with.
- 48:21Chris Duffin: Like, hey, I'm sending a signal to repair collagen, joint tissues, things like that.
- 48:28Chris Duffin: Like, hey, I'm probably gonna want to have some glycine in there for, you know, like what are the raw materials, like protein, the substrate material.
- 48:36Chris Duffin: And then we've got to reinforce that with the loading and mechanical signals to build and lock in the resilience and adaptations uh piece of that.
- 48:46Chris Duffin: And so that was a piece of like improving that, and that's a lot of what I'm known for in that work.
- 48:51Chris Duffin: So, yeah, people want to know more, check out uh Enhanced Executive.
- 48:55Chris Duffin: That's where I'm at.
- 48:56Chris Duffin: And I've got a free forum uh for people if they want to join, tons of articles, all my movement videos, stuff like that is uh on there as well.
- 49:04Chris Duffin: So you can find that on my website.
- 49:07Chris Duffin: But it's uh absolutely free, amazing resource uh for folks.
- 49:12Chris Duffin: And check out my YouTube.
- 49:13Chris Duffin: I'm producing a lot of content there, and I have tons of lectures and videos on all the things that we talked about.
- 49:20Philip Pape: Based on the evidence, uh, there's a lot of you know, quacks out there, especially in some of these newer therapeutic areas.
- 49:26Philip Pape: Um, and I love your stuff.
- 49:27Philip Pape: We're gonna send people to the forum and your YouTube and your other resources.
- 49:31Philip Pape: Um, but definitely check Chris out, follow him, listen to him.
- 49:34Philip Pape: Like even myocines and inflammatory signals and like what you can see in lab work and machine learning and AI now, looking at all that stuff is it's just amazing.
- 49:42Philip Pape: It's incredible.
- 49:43Chris Duffin: Great, yeah, story.
- 49:44Chris Duffin: So I've been just for the audience, like, yeah, be wary of that space because there is a lot of quacks, a lot of information, a lot of people trying to make a fast buck.
- 49:52Chris Duffin: It is where I my profession is right now, but you will not find anybody that has 23 years of experience with those regenerative modalities.
- 50:02Chris Duffin: And I'm the guy behind the scenes that does the consulting for some of the top stem cell therapy clinics and regenerative medicine people in the world.
- 50:09Chris Duffin: And that's so.
- 50:11Philip Pape: And if that's not enough, he's one of the strongest, if not the strongest, doing it.
- 50:14Philip Pape: So all right, all right, Chris.
- 50:17Philip Pape: It's been a pleasure having you on Wits and Waits.
- 50:18Philip Pape: Uh, a lot of fun talking to you.
- 50:20Philip Pape: I learned a lot.
- 50:20Philip Pape: So thanks again, Chris, for coming on.
- 50:22Chris Duffin: Check out barefoot, B E A R.
- 50:24Chris Duffin: That's uh the shoe and boot brand.
- 50:27Philip Pape: Sounds good.
- 50:28Philip Pape: Thanks, Chris.
- 50:28Philip Pape: Talk soon,