TMGP Ep 38 with NO-BS strength and fitness coach Cillian O’Connor AKA DYSFUNCTIONALPATTERNS

Woo! Another white boy with a podcast. Pronouns Jim Bro. Another white boy with a podcast. You want to see the video? It went viral. Hi gains gurus and welcome to TMGP, the muscle growth podcast, episode 38. I am your host Rosco and today we are welcoming Kellian Okconor onto the show. Kellian Okconor, known by his Instagram handle, Dysfunctional Patterns, is a coach who combines critical analysis with sharp satire to examine popular fitness methodologies, most notably functional patterns. His content highlights and parodies what he sees as the absurdities, inconsistencies, and questionable practices within these systems, encouraging a more skeptical and evidence-based approach to training. Beyond the satire, Kellian focuses on helping men get stronger, build muscle, and manage pain with no BS practical training methods. In this episode, we dive into the importance of critical thinking in the fitness space, the risks of blindly following trending methodologies and why grounding your training in science and reason is more vital than ever. In today's episode, we dive into a wide range of insights. Some of the topics include why is there so much BS in the fitness industry, the origins of the name dysfunctional patterns, not being a fan of functional patterns, the value of a coach, how to avoid burning out early in lifting, overrated versus underrated recovery protocols, why exercise tier rankings are misguided, consistency being more important than the angle of the cable machine. Overcoming plateaus, beginner gains, effort being key, AMR wrap, the importance of showing up, opinions versus science, for example, Jeff Nipped and Dr. Milo Wolf's so-called best exercises according to science, spinal loading, asymmetries and perfect technique, and so much more. Get ready for a truly informative episode. Quick shameless selfplug. I am starting to upload consistently on Reps with Rosco on YouTube, so check that out for some epic fitness edutainment content. A little disclaimer, this show does not contain medical advice. The views and opinions expressed by guests on the Muscle Growth Podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect my beliefs or the stance of the podcast. While we aim to provide valuable insights and information, it's important to approach all topics with critical thinking. I encourage you to do your own research, consider multiple perspectives, and form your own conclusions. Healthy discussion is always welcome, and I'm happy to engage with listeners in the YouTube comments section to continue the conversation. Lastly, don't forget to follow us on all major social media platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, and X. Find us at the muscle growth podcast and myself at reps with Rosco. Welcome Killian to the Muscle Growth Podcast where we explore the subjects related to muscle science and hypertrophy. I'm thrilled to have you join us for today's conversation. Can you briefly introduce yourself and your journey into the world of coaching? Sure. Yeah, thanks for having me on. So, my name is Killian O'Conor. I'm an online and in-person strength coach slashpersonal trainer. How I got into coaching, I suppose I wasn't really into fitness at all for a large part of my kind of childhood and and an adolescence and then found I suppose CrossFit type training when I was about 15. um was lucky enough to have a great coach in school that introduced myself and a lot of other very non-athletic kids to the gym and and lifting weights and calisthenics and stuff like that. And yeah, just just realized that I had a real passion for it. I initially went into college for something quite different. I did a philosophy in German degree that I lasted in for maybe 3 weeks or something like that and then initially thought that I wanted to work in strength and conditioning. So I went into college for that. did a bachelor's degree in sports science to a master's degree in strength and conditioning. And um you know along the way realized that I actually preferred working with people like me, you know, very averageely athletic people, normal people who just want to get stronger, build a bit of muscle, be healthier. Uh so that led me into personal training. So that's that's what I've been doing full-time for probably the last four years or so now. That's awesome. Well, well done to you on the masters and everything. That's very cool. What was the specialization for the masters? Yeah, I'm very overqualified for a personal trainer. I did a masters in strength and conditioning that was in St. Mary's University. Um, and I did my master's thesis in velocity based training. So, uh, I was looking at being able to prescribe training loads for people based off the testing that we had done on the speed that they move different percentages of their one rep max. what effects that had across different lifts, across men or women, people who were trained and untrained. So, yeah, that that was kind of the main thing that I looked at. That's very interesting. And what were your like kind of conclusions or summaries for that? There was definitely a strong relationship between velocity and the estimated percentage of their one rep max. And I suppose that's not that surprising and it's been confirmed by lots of other research and people using velocity based training devices and powerlifting and stuff like that. But it definitely taught me the importance of simple study design and only looking at one or two variables at once because the statistics for that thesis was an absolute mess and almost sent me into a mental asylum. So um uh it's it's a long time ago now. I can't really remember the specifics of it very much, but uh it never got published or anything like that. I wasn't interested in trying to push for that. No, that's still very cool though. And I guess in terms of the velocity, it's very important for one rep maxes to go quite quickly like on the bench press pressing up. I assume that that was part of what you found. Uh yeah, well, you certainly want maximum intent to move quickly. Um, a one rep max is always going to go slower than a three rep max or a five rep max, but yeah, you want to be pushing it with the intent of moving that weight as fast as it can move. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Speaking of uh lots of weight and stuff, did you see what happened over the weekend uh with what? With the um world record power lift um from Colton Angle? No. No, I didn't at all. Do you want to put a guess on the on the total? Oh, so I I'm not familiar with with who this guy is. Is this um like a super heavyweight or he's the strongest man to ever walk the face of the earth. Colton Angle Breath. Is that what you said his name is? Yeah. The strongest man to ever have walked the earth. 1,200 kg. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very out of the loop with powerlifting. I think the last time I checked in, uh, Ray Williams was the best, maybe. Um, I know he certainly had the bench record, I think, or maybe that's Julius Maddox. I'm very out of the loop with powerlifting. I enjoy powerlifting. I did a few competitions myself, but to be honest, I always found it a little bit boring to watch. I've always I've always preferred sports like, you know, rugby or MMA. I'm pretty out of the loop with those now as well. But uh I always like was amazed as how people could get so into you know watching guys just lifting for a couple seconds on a platform. But having said that if it's world records and stuff like that I definitely usually try to tune in or watch it back on YouTube. Yeah. No, it it it's all over. I definitely recommend giving it a watch. What were your SPD numbers like? Well, I can't remember what I did in meets because I only did like three meetats pretty spread out. But the best that I've done um in any kind of capacity was pretty mediocre my powerlifting standards. I did a 200 kilo squat uh 122 1/2 kilos on the bench. Uh 227 12 kilos on the deadlift. Sounds like you're quite a squat specialist. 200 is a lot. Maybe. I always personally found the deadlift a lot easier to drive up. I think the day that I pulled 227 and a half was like very suboptimal conditions where I had been stuck in a car for like 6 hours in traffic trying to get back from from Gway to Dublin, which if anybody knows that journey in Ireland, that shouldn't take that long. Um, underslept, underfed. So, it was one of those days where I just kind of have to test, but I felt like I probably could have pulled somewhere in the 230s to 240. But like you can say that for any lifter. I remember the day that I benched 120 in a powerlifting competition that flew off my chest after a really shitty feeling um preparation training block before that. And you know, it went so fast that I felt like I could have done 125 or 130 that day, but that's just the nature of strength training. So, yeah. All on the day for sure. So, you consistently make cool memes. Um, why is it so easy to do in the fitness industry and why is there so much BS? Why is it so easy to make good memes in in the fitness industry? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I Well, I I think probably you kind of answered that with your second question because there is so much [ __ ] So much BS. Exactly. Yeah. I don't I I think if you really kind of like take a step back and look at the fitness industry with a wide angle perspective of just everything else that goes on in the world and life and everything, it is kind of ridiculous. You know, I've always been amazed at like the religious type um belief and arguments people get into over things like whether they eat high or lowfat diets or whether they consume night shades or some [ __ ] like that, you know? It's I I think from that perspective to me it's pretty evident why it's so easy to make fun of because it's just like the grand scale of things. It just doesn't matter. most of the stuff that people get wound up about and and and massively engrossed in. So, and for whatever reason, I've always just found making memes quite easy. Um, in terms of like a lot of the the posts that I've put up that might have gotten, you know, multiple thousands of of likes, uh, oftentimes they took like 5 10 minutes max to put together. and I wouldn't have thought for a second that they were going to guess the amount of engagement that they did. Um, so you know, maybe some of the meme making stuff is something that I find naturally somewhat easy to do. And then I think your second question was why is there so much BS in the fitness industry? Yeah, there's like a few different factors there. I guess it is a very young field in terms of it's really only since kind of the 70s 80s that anybody has tried applying any kind of of science to it. And uh I think you know if we're being honest, most of the stuff that people could actually 100% agree on being true in pretty much every single instance is stuff that could be covered in like a few posts on Instagram, a single uh edition of a magazine, a small book, you know. Um just basic stuff like you have to train consistently, you have to eat uh pretty good most of the time like mostly fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, water, you need to get good sleep. Um and you know like if you keep it say like on the magazine thing, look at Men's Health. I don't know how often editions of that come out or how many they've done at this point, but you definitely don't need that many editions of a magazine to figure out what you need to be doing in fitness. So, I think the [ __ ] kind of it pads the the lack of information really needed to to be successful with fitness and training and it kind of helps distract people from doing the hard big stuff. And then I think maybe the third thing that doesn't really get talked about enough is just the sheer lack of of regulation. I think anytime that you have a marketplace where there are no repercussions for lying about stuff and you have a customer base who are really dying for somebody to sell them some magic beans and tell them that they can just take a special shake or do a special exercise to get where they want to go. You know, you're going to have conmen that operate in that area and flourish in it. Like there's a guy in Ireland who I won't name by name cuz this is kind of just here. So, but I believe it. Basically, he became quite popular a few years ago marketing let's say like a special kind of like massaging device um that is fine in isolation, but a lot of the claims that were being attached to it were just ludicrous about it being absolutely essential for high level performance and injury prevention and whatever. And I have it on good authority that that guy in the era before uh smartphones was basically one of these people who was like selling fake knockoffs of proper phones that he was like importing from China. So, and I've heard that about like a lot of people that are conmen in the fitness industry that they're basically conmen by trade. They're not fitness professionals in the sense of wanting to help people. And I think conmen will naturally gravitate wherever they feel is the easiest for them to operate um without any kind of repercussions. So kind of a ramble there, but there's so much stuff involved in the BS in the fitness industry. I do think the lack of regulation is a big problem. Like if you're able to sell [ __ ] to people, if you're able to tell outright lies about health and fitness and there's no repercussions, you can't have a qualification taken away from you, you can't have any kind of fines or anything to to be worried about, then it's no surprise that it's just going to um to flourish basically. Yeah. No, you make a lot of good points and I think like you said, it is rampant because there's no repercussions besides someone calling you out online saying that's not true, but then you got a thousand other people buying your stuff, so you don't really mind and you just delete their their comment anyway. Uh, Men's Health has been a big uh a big name on this podcast. I think it's been mentioned no fewer than by five or six guests about the nonsense that they push and have pushed. Um, I know. Yeah. No, I definitely as well was um influenced by them in a negative fashion. um where I believe all the things that I read in the men's health magazines growing up and I realized later on that rubbish a lot of it even though sometimes they publish really good stuff and I think that's what makes it very difficult for the average person to cut through is because they do also publish some really good scientific things but then they also have a lot of garbage to go with it and you just see the science and then like oh that that's cool that's a top uh professor in the myology or in the muscle science field. Um, but then there's all this other gripe with it on the 30 days to abs and whatnot. You do these exercise, you'll get abs in 30 days, which is I'm still looking for those 30 days, but anyway. Um, yeah. Yeah. You'd be you'd be a billionaire if you figured that one out. No, exactly. Exactly. It's probably there now that they're pushing. Anyway, your name um dysfunctional patterns. What are the origins uh of that? And I assume that you're not a fan of functional patterns. Don't worry, I'm not either. Unless you are. No, I'm glad to hear that. I actually was the last time I was asked that question was on a podcast where it turned out one of the hosts actually the functional pattern was in the process of getting the functional pattern certificate. So, either they were very open-minded or hadn't taken a lot of time to look at the sort of stuff that I post or to look at your name. Yeah. They didn't they didn't click. Yeah. So, I guess it is a little bit of um you know, contrarianism kind of trying to illustrate that I'm I'm hoping to be the antithesis to a lot of what that stuff represents, which to me is actually quite harmful in terms of of what it does to most people's fitness journey, their um interpretation of what their body is capable of, of what pain and injury is. So, that was kind of the origin of of the name. Um, I wanted to rebrand at one point because I thought there wasn't a lot of other Killian Oconors out there, and I haven't encountered many others, but there are uh two other Irish people with that name that clog up the first few pages of Google searches. Um, one of them is a magician who's like 15 or 16 years old, I think, from somewhere in Ireland. Uh, and the other one is a very famous within the the Gaelic football world. I think he's uh the captain of one of the teams. So much I don't know much about Gaelic football, but uh he's um he's popular enough that you know he takes up a lot of my uh my Google search results. So that was that was part of the reason. And yeah, like I said, just kind of trying to illustrate that I suppose a lot of what I stand for is movement optimism, the adaptability of the body, not catastrophizing every little pain and ache and movement asymmetry. Um, and so yeah, I'm not a fan of functional patterns or or any of those systems that, you know, really make very strong claims about things that if anybody is being an honest scientist about if we just don't know. I mean, I think sometimes the stuff that I put up uh and other, you know, similar people in the movement optimism space gets framed as, you know, almost like I'd be saying that, um, you know, lifting really heavy weights with a rounded back can never be dangerous in any way whatsoever. Um, and actually I think anybody who's been honest about things like the relationship between movement and injury would say we actually just don't know. Um, and I am just choosing to go by the basic principles of what seems to work in the vast majority of tissues in the body that they adapt over time. But obviously you have to also um have some level of um individualization and critical thinking about how you apply things to people. But just because we don't know whether or not certain injuries are or not, you know, of higher risk for injury doesn't mean that you get to go around saying that they definitely are. And that's a lot of what dysfunctional or functional patterns does is it makes these very strong claims about what are the right and wrong ways to move, what are the causes of injury, what is supposedly natural or what what way we're meant to move. Uh they cherrypick a lot of stuff. they're very happy to uh, you know, pick out examples of elite athletes that happen to fall into their model of movement, but as soon as those athletes get injured, all of a sudden it's the classic cult thing where it's like, oh, well, that's because they weren't doing the method exactly the way that we say it should be done. And if there's somebody who falls outside their model who's actually performing really well and isn't um suffering with injury, uh all of a sudden it's because oh well that's just because they're elite and they can get away with this. Um so they kind of they they can't have it both ways. They can't say that this is the way to move because elite athletes do it, but then any elite athlete that doesn't fit their model is only getting away with it because they're elite for some reason. And also now the Aguilar just comes across as a really horrible, angry, misogynistic little man who is kind of running this cult that's has this weird undertone of red pill narratives woven in with all of this functional training stuff. So yeah, in short, I guess you could say I'm not a big fan of functional patterns, but more broadly speaking, just the whole functional training thing I think terrifies the [ __ ] out of people for no good reason. um and just isn't a helpful way of thinking about our our bodies and pain and injury and movement. Yeah. I So would you say that it's quite fear-based? The whole functional patterns thing is mostly just making people scared to to move not naturally or whatever. Yeah. And I I I think it's I I certainly have, you know, um cynical views of say like the leader of that whole thing now, the Aguiler, but you know, say for like just regular coaches who subscribe to that that functional thing. Um you know, I I don't really assume an awful lot of malice on their part because there were certain elements of that that I subscribed to as well when I was pretty early in my coaching career. like the idea that there was right and wrong ways to move in terms of um you know avoiding pain and injury and I I had I had strong assumptions about what the scientific basis was for those things without actually having gone and tried to look for the research myself. So I think a lot of coaches who operate in that functional space actually have grace intentions and whether they are aware of it or not, it also tends to be a positive thing from a business standpoint as well. Because if you are saying to people that they have to learn the right way to move and that only you can teach them how to do that, all of a sudden they become an awful lot more reliant on you. And the idea of them being able to do maybe just like a few months of coaching and then go and do it by themselves um becomes a lot less feasible because they might be worried that they haven't perfected their technique yet and they might get hurt. Um, and it just it kind of frames you as an expert of sorts in biomechanics. And I think that also is something that uh is very appealing to a lot of coaches because I think a lot of coaches and physios especially um they kind of have this uh complex about feeling like they're they're not treated like enough of an expert or that they're they're knowledge is underappreciated. And so they love the idea of thinking that they have special insider knowledge and that, you know, the average person couldn't possibly just look at a few YouTube videos, go into a gym, do a six, seven out of 10 job on a squat and a deadlift on day one and then gradually refine it over time. I think it's hard for people who've been practicing like that for 5, 10 years plus to let go of that idea because you also have to accept that look, maybe you didn't do the best job you possibly could have with um all of the people that you've trained. That's okay. I'm sure I'll look back in five years and say the same thing as well. It's all about gradually trying to get better. But um doesn't mean that you should latch on to old ideas just for the sunken cost fallacy of feeling like oh if I admit that I was doing stuff imperfectly before then I'm a terrible person or something you know. Yeah. No, taking accountability is uh rare these days but I'm glad for the coaches who do. And um have you seen the new study about technique about how it doesn't uh having good or bad technique doesn't increase u kind of injury risk apparing to this study um as well as um muscle gain. I don't know if you you've seen that new study. Uh I saw one recently. Yeah. That was about um the I think this was looking at was this bicep curls or something? Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. Um, yes, I wasn't aware about anything to do with injury in that study, but I know they were definitely looking at um, muscle hypertrophy anyway. Um, yeah. So, an interesting study. I mean, I think there always needs to be caveats put on studies in terms of who were the population they were working with. Um, what exercises were they doing? So, for example, it could be the case that I I think what that study definitely showed us that if you're an absolute beginner, and I would say very likely for a good while after that as well, um having what is often touted as perfect form probably doesn't matter an awful lot as long as you're training hard. And the other thing as well, though, I might be wrong, but I think that study was just looking at isolation exercises like bicep curls. So, I think it would be fair to assume that keeping technique maybe a little bit stricter might matter more for a compound exercise where you know if if your form deviates drastically on something like say a barbell row, you could find that all of a sudden you're not hitting your lats or your upper back as much as you could be because now it's mostly your lower back doing most of the work. Whereas, you know, if you're taking a bicep curl to failure and even beyond the point where um uh you know, you're kind of maybe doing a little bit of a hitch or whatever, you can at least be sure that you fully fatigued your biceps at that point, you know. So, I think that uh takes us quite nicely to a post you made about beginner gains. Can you briefly just touch on how uh beginners can expect to see more gains than someone who's been doing it for a little while and more advanced lifters as well? Uh yeah, so essentially that's just because you're you're less adapted or in some people's case pretty much not adapted at all to to any kind of resistance outside of just day-to-day tasks. And in the beginning stages of training, it really doesn't take an awful lot for your body to be convinced to spend energy on um on getting stronger and building muscle because you're starting from such a low point. And I think that when you think about our bodies in context of the time period that they're from, as in the Paleolithic era, and that's what they're they're adapted and evolved for. and you look at training actually from what it really would have meant in that time period, which was survival, I think it makes a lot of sense because um if you take somebody who's very uh far along in strength and muscle building, um you know, maybe say they're at the point where at most they're going to add like 3 to 5 kilos more of like lean mass to their their frame in those last however many years of making progress. There is pretty much no way that anybody would have ever gotten to that level of muscularity in that time period thousands and thousands of years ago because it just it would have probably been an impediment to survival. It would have made it harder for you to move. You would have required so much food to be able to sustain that amount of muscle mass. And there's a reason why when you give humans access to lots of food and you tick off things like shelter and not having to worry about getting eaten by a bear and stuff like that, most people just sit around on the couch in their spare time. It's because our brains and our bodies are designed to make us want to conserve energy as much as possible and only spend energy on stuff that's absolutely necessary. And that's a concept referred to as homeostasis in biology. So basically a beginner making progress in their strength and muscle mass is a pretty easy calculation for the body and brain to do because it doesn't cost a lot of energy and there's a decent likelihood that you might encounter that stressor again. And if it does, you'll be a bit more prepared for it. You'll be a little bit stronger. You might have gained a small bit of muscle. You have to give your body a really big nudge to go from a 300 kilo deadlift to a 310 kilo deadlift because it's already adapted so much. It's already spent so much energy on putting on muscle mass and your back and your hamstrings and your upper back and your quads um that it it just it becomes less and less of a priority for your body. um there's actually uh um genes that uh directly stop that from happening. And there's some people might be aware of instances of not only animals but humans that have defects in those genes that kind of take the cap off um the amount of muscle mass that you can build. There was a there was a kid called little Hercules who was like I haven't seen any photos of him since, you know, 10 years ago or so, but he was like seven or eight years old and like disturbingly jacked looking at that age because he had this gene defect that meant that he just he didn't have that cap that most people would have that that stops muscle mass coming on really easily past that first year or two of training. Um, you can also look up um animals like Belgian blue bulls, I think they're called, that have um I think they were actually deliberately bred to be able to gain muscle easier as well. So, um but the the short answer to that question is basically just making gains as a beginner is easier because it just costs less energy for your body. Um and then as you get more advanced, it's just more effort to make a smaller increase in strength and muscle. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. And before I go on to the next question about overcoming plateaus, um I just wanted to touch on um I think it's myostatin that prevents uh muscle being acred and then you can get things like myostatin inhibitors like folstatin which uh I don't know if you're familiar with Brian Johnson. He's the longevity guy. Oh, he he took my he took folstatin uh to increase his muscle and since taking it, he gained 7% muscle increase in lean tissue, which is quite quite impressive. I'm not I'm very I'm very skeptical of that guy to be honest. There's some good um some good analyses and critiques of uh the stuff that he claims to be doing that have been put up. Um one thing he loves to say all the time is that I'm the only person who's sharing all of my data. and there's some key um things on blood tests and stuff like that that he's not putting up. Obviously, the speculation is that his health isn't as perfect as he makes out. Um and there's all I'm always a little bit dubious of people who are selling lots of stuff off the back of this really kind of like pseudo science stuff that gets framed as being on the cutting edge of science but hasn't really been verified to have any meaningful impact on longevity. Um, sorry that's just a little bit of an aside, but certainly if anybody is claiming that you can uh, you know, alter the the effect of myostatin in somebody who's like a living human being and not, you know, in a lab or something like that, uh, with an embryo, I would be very skeptical. Mhm. I think that, uh, it's called the superhuman gene. So Eddie Hall I believe has the superhero gene and I think it it's exactly like that kid you mentioned the superjack kid where he easily acrews new muscle tissue which is quite unfair but to be the best in the world you have to have the best genetics as well. Oh I think it's undeniable that you know genetics is just something that you have to have on your side if you're going to be the best in the world on any physical pursuit. doesn't mean that you don't have to work really hard but um you know you don't get to Usain Bolt just by working hard. Can we uh chat a little bit about overcoming plateaus for the more advanced lifters? Yeah, absolutely. Really forcing that forcing the body to to adapt. Yeah. Even though like you said it doesn't want to. Mhm. Um yeah. So So what do you want to know about that? Tips to overcome plateaus I guess. Uh well I think that I always look at problems that are really complex like that which is the majority of stuff related to the human body. I think that you really want to look at what is the most likely cause first and then kind of work down a hierarchy from there. Um because we could never be able to say with absolute certainty what is you know um the exact cause of somebody's progress stalling but we can definitely always work out uh what is more likely and less likely. Um and I use uh what's called the principle of inversion for this which I think works well with a lot of training problems. The principal inversion of inversion basically relates to the fact that there are far more things that can work that as opposed to things that definitely don't work when it comes to training. So let's say somebody has plateaued on their deadlift. Um there's only a few things that you definitely don't want to do if you don't want to make progress. So if I said like how can we make the worst deadlift program possible? You would probably start off with like okay the worst thing you could possibly do is just not train at all. So consistency if we invert that we would go to right are you training consistently? Are you doing the full sessions doing all the exercises? Are you actually training the deadlift or are you just doing a lot of exercises you think are going to help your deadlift but not practicing the skill itself? So that would be number one. And then we would say right after that, what would be most likely to make you fail in terms of making progress? Well, probably if you were eating in a huge calorie deficit, not getting enough protein at all, um no fruits and vegetables being taken in whatsoever, etc. Then we invert that and we say, okay, so are you eating enough to fuel strength and muscle gain in your deadlift? Looking at your calorie intake, protein, etc. To be honest, by the time we're on this second question, usually we've identified I would say at least 50% of people I works with reason for a plateau. I think a big reason for this is that people get tricked in the beginner stage of training into thinking that gains are going to be really easy to come by and that you can just keep eating and sleeping the way that you usually do and you show up to the gym consistently and you're going to get stronger. That definitely does work for quite a while. Um, but I'm sure you yourself have found this at a certain point that actually no, you you do not only do you have to keep showing up consistently, but you have to put effort into all the other stuff outside the gym as well. That might mean significantly increasing um the effort that you put into things like preparing your meals or planning them in advance. Um maybe cutting back on things like, you know, junk food, takeaways, drinking on the weekends, etc. Sleep is a huge one as well. So obviously if you were getting like two hours of sleep a night, you wouldn't expect to make progress in a program. You invert that. Maybe you're only getting five or six hours and that's a huge gap that could be plugged by getting an extra hour or two consistently. And a really big one as well, again relating to that whole thing that the beginner phase kind of tricks you with, is effort. And I find this is huge for exercises like a deadlift or a squat, any kind of multi- joint lower body exercises. Most people are massively underestimating their reps in the tank on those exercises. Uh I have had people do an ARM wrap set with what they thought was two or three in the tank and regularly get 10 or 12 reps or maybe even a little bit more. Um, so you have people that were basically training with 15 reps in reserve and were wondering why they were plateaued and were going on to YouTube looking at all this [ __ ] about best deadlift variations to get stronger, etc. And it's like, buddy, you're not even at 10 reps in the tank there. You've found your reason for why you're not making progress. Again, you can get away with 10 reps in the tank for quite a while as a beginner, probably the first few sessions at least, and you'll be able to add some weight to the bar, but you can't expect to do that as you get stronger. And again, you know, by by the time you're at this point in working down that hierarchy of potential reasons for a plateau, unless somebody is quite advanced, I found that you've you've at least identified a significant percentage of um room for improvement in those few things that we've covered that we could expect to start making progress if we looked at those. And then obviously once you get past that, you can definitely look at things like what does your training program look like? You know, the training that you're using, is it conducive to recovery? I is there any scope for uh working on potential weak points? Like if somebody is like consistently really struggling with the lockout and the deadlift in terms of technique or strength, yeah, sure, you could do something like RDL's or good mornings or something that's a really hip uh glute hamstring focused deadlift variation. But I'm always really hesitant to pay much lip service to that stuff because I'm a big believer that the vast vast majority of people in the gym and who are consuming content about fitness online are much closer to beginners than they would like to believe. And um it to me like the idea of focusing on special exercises when you've still got so much on the table with basic things like the consistency, the sleep, the food, the effort. The analogy I give to people is it's like, you know, a garden with all of these rocks that have money underneath it. and you've got like several rocks that have got 20 quid here, 50 quid there, and you want to focus all the conversation on one of the rocks that has like a few pennies underneath it. Doesn't mean that pennies don't contribute to your overall bank account, but putting most of your focus into those pennies like the special exercises when you've got, you know, maybe a 100 bucks or whatever that you could pick up really easily by just getting 20 grams extra protein per day going to bed an hour earlier. It's just nonsense to me. And I think the reason why it doesn't get talked about more in the context of plateaus is that it's just kind of boring to people and it requires a lot more difficult long-term habit formation and behavior change. No, I totally agree. And one of the major points that you've uh mentioned a few times is consistency. And um there was a post you made about consistency over um the angle of the cable. Oh yeah, I found that hysterical. Do you mind elaborating a little bit on on that? Yeah. Well, I think actually that ties in really well to what I was saying there that like the angle at which you do a cable exercise. Let's see it's a cable row or a lat pull down. Could that feasibly have some kind of effect on the results that you guess in terms of muscle growth, strength, whatever? Yeah, absolutely. You can make a case for almost anything that you do in the gym having some kind of effect. The the problem that I find is that very rarely does extremely popular fitness content put this stuff into a hierarchy of importance because there definitely is a hierarchy of importance. Like like I said with the principle of inversion, I think it's pretty evident to people that if we were trying to make a program that was almost certain to make you fail, not training consistently would be much more likely to be a problem there than whether you have the cable at the exact right heist. But yes, when people go about trying to improve their program, they tend to overlook the consistency thing. they'll overlook the fact that they miss every fourth or fifth session and they'll hyperfocus on the the cable angle or the special exercise or whatever. And honestly, like the consistency thing does not just apply to beginners. I've worked with people who would be in that intermediate stage and they want to say stuff like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, consistency, that's fine." Like obviously that's not a problem for me. And yet when we get into say like an online coaching relationship and we're working together for weeks and months, it's like hold on, consistency still applies to when you go on holidays and you decide you're not going to train for a week. That's fine if you want to do that, but if you're saying that you're not making progress in the um Sorry, that was a cuckoo clock I had in the background. You know, if somebody is bitching and moaning about not making progress in their lifts and they're going on holidays every couple of months and that's an entire week of no training whatsoever, not a lot of people are going to be able to make really good progress taking that approach or, you know, every time that there's suboptimal conditions for getting to the gym, whether it's, you know, you have to work later or traffic is [ __ ] or you missed a meal during the day, skipping workouts when that happens because you're like, "Oh, If I can't do it perfectly, what's the point? I'll just move all of these sessions around. And then eventually, you find yourself in a position where you've moved the sessions so much that now you're trying to get three or four sessions done over the course of Friday to Monday, and then there's a social event you want to go to, so you just say, "Fuck it. I'm going to miss them all together." That's the the element of consistency that people don't think about. And it's very evident to me because like when I do online coaching with people, I can track their compliance and I can see literally what percentage of the sessions have been done to completion and almost without fail. Anybody who gets 90 to 95% compliancy or more hits their goals, hits PRs and is really happy with the progress they get. People who get less than 90% compliance, um certainly if they're past that beginner stage, they don't make progress. They don't set the PRs that they'd like to and they end up blaming it on exercises and not having the perfect splits and not having perfect technique and it's just a matter of of showing up. I remember I worked in um a school before as a strength and conditioning coach kind of early on in my career and we had a a sheet for that season where every single kid on the rugby team had a score and that was their their compliance or their attendance score. So was the the percentage of sessions that they attended and almost to perfection the best lifts across the squad lined up almost perfectly with the guys who had shown up the most. And so and like that's the the secret sauce that people are always looking for and they just don't want to accept it because it's difficult. It means showing up on days when you're not feeling like it, when things aren't perfect conditions. And that's why I push back so much against the angle of pull on cable exercises because I just know for a fact that nine out of 10 people who are searching stuff about that stuff and and hacking and changing different things in their program based on it aren't showing up consistently. So, it doesn't matter. So yeah, that that's basically what the basis of that post was. I totally agree with you and that actually takes us really nicely. It's flowing so well. Thank you. Uh into the next question about you've mentioned a few times now programming and exercise selection into a post you made about opinion verse science. I'm a big fan of Jeff Nippid. Um and I've also had Dr. Milo Wolf on the podcast. Um but they something something that they have chatted about is uh and and in your post you mentioned best exercises according to science and those are posts that like yourself I also maybe think I'm sure they're really good exercises but I think are quite clickbaity to say best exercises according to science because like you've said and like I've said there isn't really science to to back that statement up because there's no science scientific study comparing every single um exercise ever done. And yeah, I I agree. They're probably fantastic exercises and maybe their favorite ones or the ones they their clients get the best bang for their buck out of, but um it's still very clickbaity to to just say best exercise according to science. Yeah. So um I like a lot of the content that both of those guys put up. I'm less familiar with Milo Wolf, but I've seen Jeff's stuff on YouTube for a long time, and I think on the whole they put out really great stuff, and they've been a force for good in the fitness industry. However, you know, I think that the the term science and the methodology of science does need to be treated with respect if we want it to um you know, it gets pushed back against a lot already as it is in the fitness industry. And I see this a lot in in different spheres of life where people use science kind of as a marketing term. And I think that it actually cheapens what science is and it actually sews distrust in science and the general public for good reason. Because if if people are saying that stuff is based on science when it's clearly not and they're supposed to be, you know, ambassadors of science in the fitness community, uh I think it's understandable why people maybe start to second guessess just the what what exactly the value of science is. So I think the problem that I have with that tier list based on science concept is a few different things. The first one would be that like you pointed out it's not based on science. Yeah, you can say that, you know, you're you're kind of extrapolating from mechanistic data or trying to apply principles and and logical thinking, but that's not science. That's that's critical thinking. Like you said, a scientific study hasn't been done. And I think really, you know, you just they need to be honest there that they're using the word science to get clicks because people are clicking on to that assuming that there's some research that really properly demonstrates this. And I think that's evidenced by the fact that they both gave pretty wildly different scores to different exercises. I can't remember who uh scored which one, but like one of them had leg extensions and in like F or something, I think the other one had it in like a C, one of them gave lunges a D or something like that. And the thing is that you know even if you are extrapolating from science the kind of most logically consistent way of going about that is to actually look at what studies we have that are the closest to doing that kind of tier list comparison thing is and see what the outcome is. And overwhelmingly if you look at research that compares different re um exercises and their effect on hypertrophy it ends up being much the same. Yeah. you'll get slightly different regional hypertrophy in say like we know leg extensions work a different part of your quad than than say squats do. So that's it's reasonable to say that there might be one reason for doing one over another there. But like you know the difference you're going to guess in say like bicep hypertrophy between doing a cable curl versus a a dumbbell curl versus a barbell curl. Like you're bending your elbow under resistance at the end of the day. And there's no basis for saying one of these is radically different in the results that it's going to give you enough to put it into a whole different tier to another. I think if we were being, you know, scientifically um genuine, we would say actually where muscle growth is concerned, as long as an exercise can be put through pretty much a full range of motion, loaded consistently and with stability and, you know, hits the target muscle group. any differences that you're going to see are probably going to be massively just down to individual differences in terms of how well people feel like they can recruit that muscle. And I think that's what you're seeing in those tier list videos is that it is just opinion. It's a combination of what has worked for them and their training and maybe people that they've coached and then they're trying to retrospectively justify that by, you know, applying some kind of scientific thinking to it. But it is just opinion. So I think it's I think it's important for people who kind of market themselves as scientific communicators to be really honest about what is science and what's just opinion. And then also aside from that whole debate, I also think the thing with the tier list thing as well, it kind of goes back to what we were saying on that that previous question you had that it's just a distraction for people. Like it's the same thing when I sometimes do Q&As's on my story and really common when people ask me that like I understand where they're coming from but it kind of drives me mad. It's this question of like if you could only do three or five exercises for the rest of your life what would it be or what do you think is like the most essential back exercise or whatever. And I always know that the underlying thing they're really getting at there is is there a magic exercise? Is there something that is going to give me radically different results compared to what I'm already doing? And the honest answer is no. There's not. There's basic movement patterns that you should have involved in your training. There's muscle groups you should make sure are being hit. But unless you are competing in powerlifting or some sport where you have to be doing a certain exercise, there's no reason why you can't do a front squat instead of a back squat or a cable curl instead of a barbell curl or a dumbbell bench instead of a barbell bench or a push-up or whatever. And you know, I think this is kind of evidenced by like in that post in the comments like there was one guy who was like, "But I thought quad or uh leg extensions were trash for quad hypertrophy because you know they got given I think Milo Wolf came out and said something like yeah and he made some comments. I think I remember seeing that uh leg extensions are the worst exercise for quad hypertrophy. It's like the worst exercise for quad hypertrophy would be either an upper body exercise because it doesn't hit it at all or one where you're like on a bozu ball or something and only going into like a quarter squat like you could build huge I remember leg extension. It it loads your quads. Plenty bodybuilders too. Abs. Absolutely. Yeah. And so like I just I think while I respect these guys and I think that on the whole they put a good content. I do think there's a little bit of sticking the fingers in the ears when it comes to actually considering who is it that's consuming this content and what are they act what's actually being communicated to them by the content because if there's one thing that I have discovered from posting on social media and especially as my audience has started to grow is that there can be a radical difference between what I think I'm saying in a post and what people are getting from it. And it might be the case that yeah, maybe, you know, 50 60% of people understand what I was getting at. And maybe a lot of people do look at those tier list videos as just a bit of fun and don't take it too seriously in terms of how they look at their programming. But like if you could avoid having a significant amount of people come away from it thinking that unless they're doing the S or A tier, they may as well not be bothering, why would you not just try to avoid that that outcome by maybe just trying to give a little bit of perspective, you know? Um, and honestly, I think a big problem that we're going to see emerge uh with science-based communicators who like really their job is content creators and influencers. They're not scientists for for the most part as their their full-time paying profession. And so I just feel that we're already beginning to see what's going to happen more and more, which is a conflicts of interest, where they want to be the science guy, but they also want to be the guy who gets millions of views on a YouTube video, who's able to make a good income from producing content, who's able to sell products or whatever. And I don't begrudge anybody doing that. We all have to make an income. But there's a reason why the biggest people in the fitness industry water down the science stuff and the accuracy of their information um much more compared to the people who are smaller than them, it's because it sells. And the more kind of inflammatory hot takes you can make about stuff that if we were being honest actually doesn't really matter very much, the more likely you are to get engagement. And look, if those guys want to do that and just call it a tier list video or be like my favorite exercises or whatever, go for it. But um I don't think they can expect to throw science on there as a cheap marketing gimmick and not expect to get push back from people who hold science and scientists to a higher standard than that. That makes perfect sense. And like you said, I want to reiterate that I really like the vast majority of everything that Jeff Nippet and Dr. M Wolf put out. I used to have a segment on this podcast where at the end of every episode, I would ask a question exactly as your Q&A people did. So the question used to basically just be a scenario where you only had 10 exercises that you could pick and nothing else. Um and the kind of idea was to get a list of like the best exercises according to these experts and then made them uh after maybe 50 episodes and see which one were the common ones were and I realized that it was quite futile and people really struggled to make a list of only 10. Um and it was kind of pointless so I stopped doing it. Well I I think as well like it's like thank god we're not in that situation because that's the other side of when I get asked that question. And it's like, why would you want to be limited to just five or 10 exercises when you can literally do whatever you want, especially if you train in like a public gym that has machines and barbells and dumbbells and body weights. So yeah, and I think I just, you know, maybe it's a bias that I have because I fixated on it too much when I was early in my trading career, but I really think the exercise selection thing is so massively overvalued. Obviously, it's different if you're training for strength because there's a skill aspect to that. There are considerations of where you're applying force and the movements that you're doing for that that obviously matter for strength. But for general health, fitness, muscle gain, general strength, I just think the exercise selection thing could be boiled down to what are your goals? What do you enjoy? Pick something that's in the middle of those two things. I totally agree with with that. And then um how can one avoid burning out early in lifting and what are some overrated versus underrated recovery protocols? Yeah, I I put up a post about the the burnout thing recently and um that was talking to a client of mine who made really phenomenal progress in um his kind of beginner stage of lifting into the early intermediate stage. So, it was really that that first year of working together. And I put a lot of that down to his compliance with following the plan, which was on paper probably very conservative by most people's standards in terms of what they do in a gym. Cuz most guys when they go into a gym want to make five or 10 kilo increases in their bench press every week. Whereas with Aaron, like we just started with the empty bar and we would just take whatever increase I thought would allow us to go up again next week. Uh so there were some days when we just did a few reps extra, a set, extra, 2 kilos extra, but you know what that amounted into was a huge amount of progress given that when he started training with me, he was 47 kilos. Um so you know, he was actually borderline actually really underweight by BMI standards even being like I think he's maybe about 5 foot seven or so maybe 5'6 and yeah over the course of that year he got up to 59 kilos so he gained 12 kilos and honestly like a lot the vast majority of that was lean mass because he was already such low body fat to begin with and he went I think his like his best deadlifts he's done now is he's done 140 kilos that was at about 57 kilos body weight. And you know, he was just able to consistently go up and PR all of his lifts without burning out. And the key for that was just not adding crazy amounts. He maybe had to take like three proper D loads um in the course of that year, missed almost zero sessions, and we just took whatever little increase we could do on a given day. And that's how you avoid burning ass is, you know, looking at training as a long game. It's months and years. It's not days and weeks. And also, he did a great job with what we talked about earlier, the food and the sleep side of things. And so, to me, it was no surprise that he didn't hit a plateau because he had the beginner gains on his side. He had a really smart plan on his side and then he was fueling himself um efficiently outside the gym and getting better sleep as well. Sorry, your other question was about underrated, overrated. Well, first huge congratulations to your client there and then um secondly, um overrated versus underrated recovery protocols. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, so I put this post up uh last week and it's it's gotten a lot of traction actually. That's an example of posts that don't take very long to make and for whatever reason um resonated a lot with people. Um, so again, it comes back to this idea of putting things in in perspective. The recovery protocols that I think are overrated are like pretty much anything that's not food and sleep. Because I think that when we're using terms like overrated and underrated, we're talking about how are these things valued by, you know, the mainstream and by the average gym personal trainer. you could go to fitness influencer versus what we actually know in science um is likely to be the case about their value. And so things like foam rolling, ice baths, sauna, massage, really any any kind of like um anything that you you need to go in and pay for like a service tends to be very overrated in terms of what it actually does for your recovery. Because I think recovery for me, it's almost like the the word functional. I almost kind of want to stop using it just because it's been so bastardized over the last few years that by using the word you kind of immediately give people the wrong impression of what you're really talking about. I think most people when they think about recovery, they picture themselves sitting in an ice bath and they picture them doing something to help their body uh recover from training. when really the recovery aspect from training is primarily um covered by eating enough good food that your body has the fuel to recover and then sleeping because we know that the majority of strength that we gain and muscle that we gain doesn't happen in the gym. Uh the gym is actually a direct stressor to our body and acutely leads to things like muscle breakdown. But when we're sleeping, um, that's when the gains actually happen for the most part. And so, you know, there's a there's a radical difference in the gains you could expect to get getting four hours of sleep a night versus eight for most people. And so, that stuff is underrated in my opinion because it doesn't get talked about an awful lot. It's just kind of like, oh yeah, you should definitely make sure that you're eating and sleeping enough. But then there's a huge amount of content on social media, particularly the stuff that gets really good engagement that's about, you know, the foam rolling routine you have to be doing before and after your workouts or like why you need to be doing ice baths to maximize your recovery. And I think often times the push back that I get when I talk about stuff like that is around a misunderstanding of what I'm really saying, which is that, you know, in some cases some of these recovery methods have little to no benefit outside of a placebo effect. And look, you can get a placebo effect from anything. So it makes it hard to criticize anything if you're going to overvalue the placebo effect too much. But I I mean like I lay on a foam roller a few days ago myself, you know, mobilizing out my T-spine. It felt nice. Um I was in a sauna with my girlfriend a few months ago. Felt really good. It was a nice relaxing way to spend a Sunday. There's a difference between saying this stuff feels nice and it might help you relax and that it's like, you know, a nice little cherry on top of the cake as opposed to saying this is basically the whole cake, which is what is implied by the majority of fitness content. I think when it comes to recovery, so sleep, food, stress management, obviously not running yourself into the ground in the first place with your training, all of that stuff really governs the majority of how well you're going to recover. And then anything else outside that, whether it's things like massage, ice bath, sauna, whatever, might help a little bit. A lot of it is probably a placebo effect, but I'm not going to say, you know, definitely don't do it. just make sure that it's given some perspective about how important it is relative to that other stuff. I completely agree with all of that and we actually had Dr. Pack on the podcast who was one of the authors of putting cold water on on on ice baths or something that study basically where it found that uh ice baths and cold water immersion uh were negative not even neutral but actually negative for muscle growth. one thing. Now, I I don't know what study he's talking about there specifically. I have yet to see a study that actually shows what effect it has in terms of actual muscle growth as opposed to proxies for muscle growth. So, I've certainly seen research that shows that it affects the signaling chain negatively. But again, as you've probably gathered from most of this discussion, I'm all about trying to give perspective to things. So, I think it's important for us to to discern like, okay, ice baths definitely seem like they're negative for muscle hypertrophy, but what does that practically mean for most people? In other words, if I do an ice bath for 5 to 10 minutes every morning, is that going to reduce my muscle hypertrophy by 5%, 10%, half a percent. If it's only half a percent, I think that's an important uh part of the discussion because there's lots of stuff that I do that I know probably reduces my muscle hypertrophy by about the same. The drinks that I have with friends on the odd weekends, the hour and a half less sleep that I choose to do sometimes scrolling on my phone or whatever. So, I think it's important for that stuff to be given perspective. Maybe that research has been done recently, but I've yet to see somebody actually do research where they show this is the effect that it had on the cross-sectional area of the muscle or whatever. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right and there are probably other things that make a difference. Um that study in particular was ice bathing after um after a workout planting growth. Um but yeah, I agree with you. There are definitely other things that are blunting it to a greater extent like you mentioned alcohol being a a big one. And then my kind of last uh prep question for you. I saw spinal loading and Jefferson curls, that kind of stuff. I I do Jefferson curls. I love loading my spine safely. M and then just about asymmetries and we did chat a little bit about perfect technique as well, but just can you just throw all of that together and give your like overall opinion on loading the spine asymmetries in the body and then like we said so-called perfect technique. Yeah. So like I I I think I mentioned earlier, you know, the honest answer to oftentimes people will ask me um particularly if they have been exposed to say like functional coaches or content before, how do I know that lifting asymmetrically is safe or how do I know that lifting with spinal flexion is safe? I don't know that it is safe. I don't think we can say absolutely anything is 100% safe. Like I would say life is a 100% injury risk. And again, trying to keep things in perspective, I have gotten more injuries from sleeping weird than I have from lifting. Um I injured my wrist in a a way that lasted for like a year. Um one time from just sleeping with a kind of like tucked underneath me. Don't know why my body didn't decide to wake me up for that, but I [ __ ] my wrist up pretty bad doing that. Um, I've woken up with cicks in my neck that lasted for months sleeping weird or even just twisting weird getting up. And I think the problem is that people kind of apply an unfair expectation of uh certainty and blame to lifting related pains and aches that they don't to other things. You know, most people if they went out for a run and started getting an ache in their back, they're not going to like catastrophize it. And if they tell people about it, they'll probably say something like, "Oh, that's bad luck. It might get better in the next week or two." But if you were doing deadlifts and you start feeling the same thing all of a sudden, people assume that there's reason to think that you're, you know, significantly damaging the integrity of your spine or something like that. So I would be very honest in saying that I have no idea really what the exact percentage risks are of moving with asymmetries or without or uh spinal flexion or without. But I think honestly it kind of comes back to keeping it in perspective of like are these things that we can even control and is there even good anecdotal evidence that shows that they're um a significant issue because I have coached so many people that have asymmetries. I have um like you were mentioning that powerlifter like if you look at elite level powerlifting as well asymmetries are the norm. Um most people have some degree of a hip shift some degree of maybe one foot being placed a little bit further forward than the other. Most of us have an arm or a leg that's a bit longer than the other. And I don't think there's any good reason to assume that this stuff is a big rock that needs to be flipped for most people in their injury risk. I think it's much more likely that things like load are a much bigger contributing factor when it comes to people's injury risk. So, it's interesting to kind of try to pick that apart with people because, for example, I I trained a guy who came to me with uh sciatica and um you know, early on I tried to get him start building a little bit of confidence and mobility in his back by having him do some very light Jefferson curls. Um and what was interesting was we started with touching his toes, which is just an unloaded Jefferson curl. And he was like, "That's perfect. That's fine." because in his head that's stretching or yoga, that's not resistance training. Then I gave him some 1 kilo dumbbells. And I think in his head, okay, this is now just kind of like assisting me into the stretch. That's fine. We went to 2 and 1/2 kilos and I could see he was starting to look a little bit what's going on here. And it's funny because I think it was like around the time I gave him four kilos. All of a sudden that was the cut off in his head. He was like, "No, this is strength training now. This is loading my back with weight. I'm not doing this. And so I could see that that was just going to be a a nonrunner for him. So I just decided not to push the issue and we just found ways of loading his back that he was on board with. And that actually led to his sciatica getting better anyway, just doing things like trap bar deadlifts and pushing a prowler and stuff like that. But the whole like rounding your back or asymmetrical movement, I think it's so drilled into us culturally from popular media, from what the mainstream fitness and medical system tells us about what's the cause of pain. And it seems so intuitive to people that there's right and wrong ways to move and that asymmetry is bad. Uh that it's very difficult to see that changing anytime soon. But the way that I look at it is basically that our bodies are phenomenal, capable, adaptive biological machines that if you give them the right amount of stress, there's no reason why they can't make an adaptation. It doesn't mean that I would have somebody come in on day one and just yank on a a Jefferson curl with as much weight as possible and think they're not going to get hurt. Of course, they probably will. But, you know, by the same token, you could go I mean, I know people several people who got plantar fasciitis from going on a walking holiday that they weren't prepared for because it was loaded on their feet that they weren't prepared for. The difference there is that nobody is going to say to them that walking is dangerous because of that. They're going to say you walked too much. But if you hurt yourself picking the thing up off the ground with a round back with way too much weight, they're not going to look at the weight. They're going to say your form was wrong. And so I think that is a big part of the problem to parse out with the movement thing is that we're not holding all movement to the same standards. And the other thing as well, I wrote an article about this uh that people can find on my website that kind of goes into the research and science around spinal flexion. Spinal flexion is unavoidable. If you're doing any kind of lifting, they've done biomechanical research on it. Um, even in what looks like a perfectly flat back position on something like a squat or a deadlift, you're using anywhere from about 50 up to 80% of your max spinal flexion when you're doing that. It's something that just happens to everybody once they get into a certain degree of hip flexion when they're bending down. So, if spinal flexion is dangerous, it's pretty much unavoidable. So talking about it as if it's this major risk factor that we need to avoid. It's it's like if we found out that breathing or walking was a risk factor for spinal it is it it very well could be. You know maybe it is the case that if you walk um every single day you're more likely to have spinal degeneration. But what else comes with that? It's it's never just purely pros for one thing and no cons. There's always a tradeoff. So, I would rather be fit, healthy, strong, good bone density, healthy organs, and maybe have a tiny percentage increase in my risk of spinal degeneration, then say, "Boy, I never tax my spine, but now I'm 70 years old and can't sit out of a chair because I didn't do anything for my entire life." Yeah. So, um, again, I think a lot of the stuff comes back to keeping it in in perspective. Obviously if you're getting pain from you know moving in a particular way and you know doing things like adjusting load isn't helping absolutely you can look at things like changing up your exercises uh working on certain movement restrictions but the pendulum has swung so far at this point to assuming that all of that stuff is always the answer. And quickly uh before I I I finish up with kind of this answer um again it comes back to what I was saying about when we focus on one thing too much it distracts from the bigger more important stuff. Um I think a great example of why load and load management really isn't uh properly understood by people and the danger of of rabbiting on too much about perfect technique and asymmetry. I had I have a client who um he injured his knee like it was about maybe two months ago now and he was making great progress on his uh on his squats and lower body stuff, lifting more than he ever had before. And he came to me one day and said, "My knee is really hurting. I don't really understand why. I think maybe it might be something with my technique or maybe I I'm not doing enough mobility work or something like that." lessons. You know, I was asking him questions about when the pain started and trying to work through it, and he revealed to me that he had done an impromptu skipping workout at one point during the week. And this guy's 110 kilos, never really done skipping before, not for years. And he did 40 minutes of skipping. Not not all without any breaks. There were some breaks in between, but 40 minutes of skipping on and off at 110 kilos. And it didn't even occur to him that the load management would be the obvious reason for why his knee got hurt doing that. To him, it was, oh, maybe my skipping technique was wrong, or maybe I wasn't doing the right exercises, or, you know, maybe it's a mobility issue. No, it's cuz you jumped up and down with 110 kilos of body weight through your knee and you'd never done that before. I would have told you that was going to hurt you um with enough certainty that I probably would have put a bit of money down on, you know. And I think that again it goes back to what you were asking about with the Milo Wolves and Jeff Nippards where the common push back when I criticize people like that is like, "Oh, well, of course people understand that you you have to be consistent and do the nutrition and the sleep stuff." I'm like, well, if they do, then why aren't they doing it? And why are they focusing on all this other stuff? It's because they don't understand that. It's because they're getting it communicated a very different message. And the same thing happens with the pain and injury stuff. Uh people talk about technique and symmetry on posture and muscle activation all day long and then they're surprised that people don't understand that doing way more than they ever have in an exercise or a sport gets them hurt. Um, I can't even remember what your your question was there, but uh, yeah, that was my answer for that one. You nailed the answer regardless. Don't don't even worry. You you you hit all of the heads on uh all the nails on the head. So, thank you for that. I I love what you said about the body being adaptable. Um, we're not dead pigs like that dead pig study for the spine, but let's not even get into that. Um, that was Dr. Stuart McIll, not my favorite character anyway, but we'll stay away from even mentioning going down that rabbit hole. Um, uh, and then finally, what are your parting words of wisdom? Uh, what advice or parting words of wisdom do you have for our listeners who are looking to embark on their own journey of muscle growth and health? Um, I would say get your underlying motivation right first. This is something that I talked about in uh I have a a course that I that I started and I did my first kind of trial run through with some coaches and I'll be launching it officially soon. But one of the the modules takes a look at um soft skills around coaching and uh and and communication with clients and stuff like that. And uh something that I think is massively undervalued in uh the fitness industry currently again based on the kind of messaging that gets put out is motivation. We hear all the time about discipline over motivation. Ironically I think that is often said by people who are highly motivated. So it's it's easy to say that. Um, so when I start working with somebody, the the first thing and probably one of the biggest things that is an indicator to me if they're going to be successful is if they have a really clear strong motivation for why they want to be training. I think that if your reason for wanting to build muscle or get stronger is that you just want to look like the guy on the cover of a magazine or you think it's going to make you more of a man or that you're going to be happier when you get to X percentage body fat or whatever. Those are all red flags to me that are going to lead to a lot of the other issues that we've already talked about in this like program hopping and not not committing to the hard long-term behavior change stuff is often, I think, a coping strategy for people who are actually kind of afraid of of knuckling down and doing the work because they don't really have a clear underlying motivation. So, get your motivation clear. Make sure that it's one that's based on you wanting to better yourself for you, not for uh a family member or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or anybody who thinks you need to be uh getting into the gym or whatever. Then make sure that you have a goal that you're actually very enthusiastic and passionate about and excited about trying to get towards. Obviously, you want to make sure it's realistic. Maybe not necessarily aiming for like being Mr. Olympia or whatever, but you know, giving yourself something that if you said to yourself, if I achieved this a year from now, I'd be really, really pleased with the work that I'd put in and and my growth. Um, and then make sure that you have a proper plan put together that again is realistic, that you're excited about executing, not trying to go from, you know, zero days of training a week to seven all at once or not trying to go from training three days a week up to five or six all at once. And yeah, that that would be my my overall advice. I think anything outside of that is going to be fairly, you know, individual um centric, but uh just that basic stuff of really like having a clear motivation for why it is that you want to train in the first place makes things like discipline much much easier. Absolutely. Indiv individualization is key and specificity as you've said. And if anyone is looking for motivation or anything, uh, episode 33 and 34 is with Harvard educated mindset coach, uh, Jeffrey Seagull. Um, so you guys can go check out that episode to find your motivation. Great. Might check it out myself. You're very welcome, man. Thanks for having me on. Thank you for tuning in to the Muscle Growth Podcast. If you found value in today's episode, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave us a five-star rating and a quick review. It helps us grow and reach more people just like you. Don't forget to follow us on all major social media platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, and X. Find us at the Muscle Growth Podcast and at Reps with Rosco. For more insights, exclusive content, and full episodes, visit the muslergrowthpodcast.com. Your support truly makes a difference, so please like, share, comment, and follow. We're grateful for every bit of it. Until next time, keep pushing your limits and staying focused on getting bigger, stronger, and