(00:00):
Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a

(00:16):
Review or leave a five

(00:17):
Star rating or even better share with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone. So let’s jump right in.

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I’ve made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of hard lessons along my road to achieve better body recomp, improve my strength, overcome injury, and I wanted to share some of these lessons that I’ve learned with all of you to help you hopefully avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, but also to recognize that so often we overestimate what we can accomplish short term and underestimate what we can accomplish long-term with consistency. So going over six hard lessons that I’ve learned, number one, stop saying it’s not forever, but it’s not forever. And what I mean by this is often we go into something being like, oh, I don’t have to track forever. I’ll even have clients ask, do I have to track forever? And I used to always say, oh no, you don’t have to track forever. It’s just a learning tool. And while that is the truth, you may not track forever.

(01:17):
You don’t necessarily need to track forever. I think planting that seed in our head makes us not embrace how much we’re going to truly have to change our habits and lifestyles because you can’t just do one thing to achieve your goal and go back to what you were doing. What you do to achieve a result will then shift as you maintain because you don’t necessarily keep doing the same thing. What you do to reach a goal is not what you’ll do to maintain it or as you work towards another goal and hanging onto those habits might hold you back. But we have to embrace that we’re making changes that are going to be something that are going to impact our lifestyle long term, that are going to be mindset shifts that change how we always are going to view things in the future. We are acting as if until we’re acting as we are.

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So if we have this perspective, oh, it’s not a lifestyle change forever, it’s not something I’m going to necessarily do forever. We kind of fake the habits. So it’s not fake until you make it versus truly acting as if. So you’ve got to stop saying that it’s not forever, but also recognize that it’s going to change. And when you get to maintaining, you’re going to shift your habits. You’re not going to stay in a calorie deficit. Once you’re maintaining your results, you’re going to have to retrain your body to eat more. You’re going to shift how you train, you’re going to shift how you fuel. And then as you’re maintaining your results, that’s going to shift as potentially your lifestyle shifts. So one thing is not a lifestyle. A lifestyle is based on the fundamentals of understanding macros, understanding work, workout progressions, not doing the same workouts or the same macro ratios forever.

(02:40):
So it is but isn’t forever. Number two, not embracing minimums. It’s all well good to go all in, go do those six workouts or six days a week of training, do intense macro breakdowns, even potentially cut out foods you’d normally enjoy. I know there are phases where I’m like, okay, I’m not going to have my cheat day each week. I’m going to focus a little bit more on eating a lot of whole natural foods. I’m not going to let as many deviations in. I’m going to cut my cocktails for a little bit and I’m going to go really intense because I have a specific goal I want, but that doesn’t work at all times of year. There are times of year where I’m stressed where I just simply don’t care where there’s other lifestyle balances and things I want to work in. And at those times I would always sabotage myself by trying to enforce the same habits.

(03:22):
And when I couldn’t enforce the same habits, I would ultimately do nothing. So instead, I recognize how important it’s to do the minimum. Realizing that at certain times other things in your life have to take at the priority. But by doing the minimum as much as it doesn’t seem like your ideal, it keeps you moving forward. It keeps you maintaining the progress you’ve already built because so often if we can’t do the perfect thing and to keep moving forward, we do nothing or bad habits that lead to us sliding back down the hill. Why lose progress? Why not see maintaining itself as progress because you’re creating that new set point, that new launch pad off of which you can build when times do become a little bit more ideal when you can move forward plus often in doing the minimum and what feels like we’re not moving forward, we’re still inching forward.

(04:02):
So all of a sudden when things are less stressful, work has calmed down. We can go back to the six days a week of training or we can do a little bit more and push harder in our training because we’ve overcome that injury, whatever else it is, and we can go a little bit faster ahead. We have that solid foundation and it’s almost easier because we stacked those other habits. Maybe tracking for the longest time was hard for us. And then we got into tracking some very intensive macro breakdowns with specific foods and now life is busy and we can only track protein Tracking has now become so normal and natural that we don’t even think about the fact that we’re still doing a minimum that was above what we used to do, which was not track. And so when we have to go back to those ratios, all of a sudden that might be easier because we’ve kept in that one habit.

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So embrace doing the minimums because that keeps you moving forward and often keeps you maintaining your result, which leads to body recomp still snowballing even though we don’t feel like we’re necessarily doing a ton to achieve that. Number three, realize that the closer you get, the harder it gets and you can’t rush the process. So when you think about 10 pounds, the last 10 pounds, we have to think, well, it’s only 10 pounds, but those 10 pounds are probably going to be the hardest 10 pounds because even losing five of those 10 pounds, you’re losing 50% of the weight you have to lose. So if you think about if you had 30, 40 pounds to lose and you had to lose the 15, 20 pounds, how long it took you to do that and that 50%, this is 50% still, so it’s going to take you a lot longer than you think.

(05:23):
Just because it’s five pounds doesn’t mean it’s going to faster. And the more you try and rush that, the more you risk losing muscle, the more weight we have to lose, the more wiggle room we really do have, because some muscle will be lost as we won’t necessarily need all the weight that we have on as we do achieve that body recomp. But the closer we are to our goal, the more we’re pushing potentially a boundary we’re not used to pushing. We’ve never pushed before that our body doesn’t necessarily want to push. And so the harder it’s going to get and the slower we have to go so that we make sure that we’re not creating any metabolic adaptations, losing muscle, creating hormonal imbalances that will ultimately sabotage us maintaining those results. So what might’ve been one pound per week when you had 30, 40, 50 pounds to lose now as you’re getting towards the 10 pounds is probably going to be a lot slower because it is, again, each pound you’re losing is a higher percentage of the weight you have left to lose than when you had more weight to lose.

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So just remember that and recognize that and also recognize that in this process, and this is one of the other hard lessons that I learned, you may feel like you look worse before you look better even though you’re moving forward. And it’s often because you’re losing off of areas that you don’t care about as much. While the areas that you do want to lose from are not changing. And because other areas are becoming smaller, other areas look bigger. So just recognize that as you are leaning down, as you’re losing weight and you’re losing those last few pounds, you’re going to feel like you’re in a dead zone where nothing’s happening. But that’s often the point when we want to quit and that’s where we have to keep going. I know at 30 days when we’ve been working really hard, when we don’t feel like we’re continuing to see progress or six weeks because we are at those last few pounds, we just have to stay the course.

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That’s really what it’s, we have to stay the course then recognize that everything ebbs and flows. Life is never standing still. Your motivation is not going to always be there. You’re not always going to have the perfect situation. Stressors in life are going to change. You’re going to have priority shift. And the more you can constantly be evolving to meet yourself where you’re at, the better results you’re going to see. I can tell you that macro breakdowns that work really well for body recomp. At one stage, if I change up my training, add in something else or have a different focus, or even as wimpy as I’ve now become with Southern California weather in the winter when it’s colder versus the summer, I know my activity level changes. And if I try and force something that worked on one time at another time, it might not work any longer.

(07:34):
And if I don’t ebb and flow with the activity level, if I don’t ebb and flow with my stress, I’m going to ultimately sabotage my long-term consistency. I know we want to strive for this ideal that we see out there, this idea perfect, but more we can meet ourselves where we’re at, the more we’re going to continue to move forward during every phase of life. And if you’ve ever thought like, oh, this is not the right time. I’m not going to start now, that is exactly the right time to start because only starting during these perfect times is why we don’t learn how to ebb and flow when things do get stressful. It’s why we don’t learn how to do the minimum. It’s why we end up sabotaging ourself because we haven’t stacked those habits in a way that they’re sustainable when life gets in the way, which is a majority of life, life getting in the way.

(08:12):
So off of even my other tip about not feeling like you look better and hitting that dead zone, I think it’s a very interesting phenomenon that I noticed as I maintained longer and longer and didn’t have those big swings because I learned how to ebb and flow with life. But you may feel like you truly look worse while maintaining your result. So you might end up stepping on the scale and be like, okay, my weight’s the same. Okay, my measurements are the same, but I feel like I don’t look as good. And this is a strange phenomenon with maintaining that I call the comparison game. I think we are creatures of comparison, and I think a lot of times we do something in reference to another point. So when you’re first losing the weight, you look better than you looked before, right? The clothes fit better than they did before.

(08:56):
At some point A, when you hit that maintaining level, you’re going to have sort of bumpers where you will gain a little bit and you will lose a little bit, but you’re cycling very close around that weight. But there’s still ebbs and flows. So if you hit that bottom a little bit higher will look worse. But also you stop having that comparison because for just look that same way. So if you have a little bit of bloat on that day, you might feel like, oh, I don’t look that good, but it’s just a little bit of bloat. It’s not that you’ve lost progress. It’s not that you’ve sabotaged anything. So you have to recognize that you’ll lose that comparison when you’re maintaining. So you’ve got to stay focused on other metrics, other ways to keep yourself within those boundaries. Are you doing the habits you need?

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Are you tracking those? Are you tracking progress in different ways? Are you even setting performance goals? Because we don’t do well with no direction, we get very lost with no direction. So you always want to be setting that direction because you won’t have that clear, necessarily aesthetic comparison. And if you let that start to sabotage you, you might start to lose more even though you don’t need to, or you might end up giving up on healthy habits that are really working for you. The last tip I wanted to go over, a hard lesson that I learned was take breaks to focus on other priorities. It’s really hard to say, Hey, I have to put this goal on a back burner, especially if you still have 20, 30 pounds you want to lose. If you have more weight you want to lose, it’s really hard to say, Hey, I’ve got a slow down on my focus on the school.

(10:10):
But I think sometimes owning that other things in our life have to take priority, help us ebb and flow and move forward no matter what, but trying to white knuckle our way through willpower our way through is what ultimately leads to us giving up and never accomplishing a goal. And it even becoming harder each and every time we try and reach it because we’ve created other issues and even other negative mindsets towards tools. If you think about tracking, a lot of times we have a negative association with it because every other time we’ve tried to trap, we’ve restricted, we haven’t seen our results. It’s just a negative experience overall, which makes it really hard to want to use that tool again in the future. So the more you can say, Hey, this is what my schedule is right now, how can I plan for this so that I can give what should be a priority right now, the necessary attention that it needs while still being consistent.

(10:54):
So if work has gotten busy, hey, okay, yes, I do six days a week usually, or five days a week usually, but I’m going to go to three days a week and I’m going to go to 30 minutes. That owning of the other priority allows you to still do something. And a lot of times that’s something moves you forward a lot faster. Not to mention, you might find that by not having that mental strain of that other thing and given your whole focus to the thing that should take priority, you ultimately see results snowball better, you feel better and even want to do more. I think that’s something we forget is the importance of the success mindset. Because when you set six days a week, if there are other priorities and you’re not owning them and you can’t get into the gym six days a week, you start to feel like a failure when you miss one session, even if you still got in five.

(11:33):
But if you set your priority or not your priority, but your expectation of three sessions with your other priorities, and then you get those three sessions, you feel successful often you want to do more because sometimes missing workouts, then we go, well, what’s the point of eating? Well, who even cares? And then more workouts are missed versus, Hey, I did my three workouts. I feel great. I want to even dial in my nutrition a little bit more. So the way our momentum is going can really impact the results we ultimately get and the habits that we can allow to snowball and build. So just for recognize that it is okay sometimes to even say, I need a dieting break, or I need a deload week just because my priorities have shifted and this keeps me doing something, it gets me re-motivated even often faster to keep moving forward. But all these hard lessons really come back to the fact that so often we do prioritize or value more hard work. We do value doing more. We don’t often value time and consistency and balance and meeting ourselves where we’re at, but the more we stop pushing for the short-term fix and embrace that over time, we can really see the results snowball the better off we’re going to be.

(12:40):
Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks podcast. Again. This is the place where I share all my free workout nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone I.

*Please Note: this transcript is auto-generated and there may be some errors in the transcript

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(00:00):
Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a review or leave a five star rating or even better share with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know. So let’s jump right in.

(00:28):
I asked for your fat loss and muscle building questions on Instagram, and I got some great questions that I want to go over. The top one being that I got multiple times was, can you lose fat and gain muscle at the same time? The short answer is yes, you can achieve amazing body recomposition. Many of us have heard this is not possible, and it’s because we equate making aesthetic changes to only calories. So calorie deficit means we’ll lose weight. Calorie surplus means we’ll gain weight, and when we focus simply on calories in versus calories out, we are not going to see the body recomp that we want. This is also why we can lose weight, feel like we’re really progressing and not feel like we’re getting any leaner. It’s why we can be eating in the surplus and feel like we’re not looking more defined while we’re gaining muscle because it’s not simply about calories in versus calories out.

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Yes, that is the foundation, but macros matter most for body recomp. If you adjust your macros, you are going to lose fat and potentially gain muscle or gain muscle without gaining fat. So you want to make sure that you’re truly focusing on those macros and specifically protein, but you can lose fat and gain muscle or gain muscle and not gain fat or even lose fat as you’re going throughout that process. But it is a slower process and you’ve got to sometimes step off the scale. If you want to gain muscle, especially, you’ve got to step off the scale because you might see that scale increase, especially if you’re coming out of a calorie deficit and you’ve just lost fat. As you’re adding back in calories, as you’re adding back in potentially carbs, your glycogen stores are going to become full with that. You’re going to gain water weight as well, and because you’re no longer in a deficit, you’re no longer depleted, you are going to gain some weight.

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It is not fat being gained, but it is. As stores, you need to push hard to gain muscle and then you potentially will even have to eat more as you see the scale go up because you are gaining more muscle and the more muscle you gain, the more you have to eat to fuel that lean muscle. If you are trying to lose fat and you’re trying to see faster changes on the scale, while you’re probably just depleting your glycogen stores, you’re losing water weight, you’re potentially even putting yourself at risk for losing muscle mass because muscle again takes more energy to be maintained. And if you have less energy coming in, your body’s going to do what it can to adapt to the energy and fuel that it’s getting, and that will mean finding energy from internal sources, and it’s not going to draw from your fat stores that it can use later, which aren’t costing it energy.

(02:41):
It’s going to potentially use your muscle, especially if you’re training hard. It’s why macros matter most, but yes, you can achieve both. It is a slower process. It also means focusing on how you’re adjusting your workouts. You need to focus on the strength work, sit, hit, steady, state, cardio, walking. All these things can be used because want to improve our overall health, and especially interval work can improve different energy systems. It can help with our recovery. It can make sure that we’re able to push that lack of threshold more to lift more and have that strength endurance. So there’s lots of benefits outside of just fat loss for different types of cardio and how we include it. But I think an underrated thing or two underrated things to focus on when we’re talking about losing fat and building muscle is strength work and walking. Walking is going to help you move more, help you have a higher metabolic rate, burn fat without being a stressor or a strain on your body so you can train intensely.

(03:30):
Focusing on building that lean muscle is not only going to help you move better, but it’s going to help you build that lean muscle which will help you more calories at rest be functionally fit, feel better. So we’ve got to focus on those two things in our workouts as we’re adjusting our macros to match and everything can be designed for the time we have. So how you design your breakdown of your workouts will really depend on the time that you have going off of this best macro split and weight training, cardio splits so you don’t undo muscle gains. I bring this up after this because there is no one best. We are searching for a perfect macro ratio that will work for everybody. I can tell you that not only do I cycle ratios personally as I change progressions based on time of year based on how I’m even feeling based on previous ratios and the goals that I want to achieve, you’re going to cycle ratios throughout your entire life and you really should.

(04:13):
The more we do that, the more we’re going to find something sustainable, the more we’re going to see results continue to progress. So if you are trying to lose some fat potentially after you’ve gained muscle, you might find that you go to a higher protein ratio. I can tell you ultimately if you’re going into a deficit, higher protein becomes even more key. If you want to maintain that lean muscle you fought so hard to build and then avoiding going straight to a ton of cardio. Cardio and strength aren’t really either or. There’s the continuum. You can work along with one rep max heavy power lifting on one side with long rest periods and that steady state endurance marathon, ultra-marathon, that type of cardio on the other end. And in between you have metabolic conditioning, metabolic strength, all these different things you can use with different interval work to really make the workouts work for you based on the schedule you have.

(04:56):
Because if you have more days to train, you might include more set cardio days. So on that cardio end of the spectrum and more slower lifting days versus if you have three days to train, you might have to be more in the middle to get some metabolic benefits while also building strength. But you want to cycle your workouts and your macros over time as well because it’s constantly like you’re sort of doing a little too much one way and then a little too much the other way. So maybe you do add in a little more cardio and you’re doing more interval work and you’re not focused quite on building the muscle as much and you want to blast out a little bit faster. So you are still focused on that strength work, but more metabolic strength work. So okay, you go that way, you lose a little bit of fat.

(05:29):
Now you want to focus a little bit more on belly muscles shift. So it’s not these big dramatic changes where we have to be in a cut or a bulk. We want to stay in that middle and we want to focus on macros and that strength work and then implementing cardio strategically. And when we implement cardio strategically, the one caveat I will give you again is include a lot of walking. That’s a great steady state. If you’re an endurance athlete. This doesn’t mean you have to cut it out, but then don’t think more is better. So often where we get in trouble with hit and sit is that we’re not actually using it as or sit. We’re not actually doing that high intensity work because we’re trying to stretch these intervals out for an hour and you can’t maintain the same level of intensity over the hour.

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If you’re doing something super intense, it’s automatically going to be shorter, and the only way it would be longer is if you’re doing that sprint work where you work for 10 seconds and then yet truly rest for 10, 11, 12 times to really recover from that true sprint work because you’re going at that a hundred percent density. So the only reason to have a workout go longer is because the rest periods are getting longer. You’re including more mobility work, not because you’re trying to add in more wasted volume. So I would tell you there is no one best anything. It’s about designing for the time you have and making sure the systems work together. If you’re doing more cardio, you might need more carbs. If you’re less active, you might need fewer carbs, but as long as you focus on protein and then sort of adjust and cycle the carbs in fat, you’re going to see the best results and truly maintain that balance and get a diversity of food which will ultimately help your body run more efficiently.

(06:50):
So next thing I wanted to go over. Cardio midlife, how many times per week is good and how long per session intensity, and I want to bring this up in terms of body recomp because it goes back to that you want to be using a diversity. I actually commented on the best cardio for fat loss because someone asked about what they should be including, and it said that walking is vast over steady state cardio and what over the downsides and upsides of that more steady state endurance training that we often see people doing when they want to lose fat and how we’ll go to more, but our body adapts to it. There’s other even downsides to it with hunger cues increasing potentially with some steady state cardio and it being more catabolic to muscle mass. But this is not to demonize it. I think too often we hear something isn’t valuable for something else and then we don’t break down the nuance of it.

(07:36):
We hear strength work is really key if we want to see that body recomp, which it is. But that doesn’t mean not to use intervals, it just means use them strategically based on how you’re designing your strength workouts. If your strength workouts are more circuit based, you might be getting a lot more cardio in than you realize you’re working different energy systems in that way. So then trying to add in all this other straight cardio might be holding you back from seeing the muscle gains you want as you’re trying to lose fat. And you might end up looking a little bit softer than you want in the fat loss process versus if you’re doing more strict slower lifting, maybe more interval work is truly needed. And it goes back to your schedule too. Again, if you have six days a week to train, it’s going to look very different than three days a week.

(08:12):
So I would tell you if you are in midlife, if we are going through menopause perimenopause, struggling to lose fat, we need to focus on the stressor. And right now I see cortisol being demonized so much where it’s like, oh, I don’t want to raise my cortisol levels. No, you don’t want to chronically raise your cortisol levels. You want to force your body to have to have these hormone fluctuations to have to be stressed and recover from that stress, but you have to make sure you’re recovering. That’s the thing we often think, but we’re just under recovering. So with the cardio midlife, consider using all different types. You want some steady state, you want some interval, you want some sprint, you want to work all those different energy systems because that is going to help improve your conditioning, your lack of threshold, all the different things that make you healthier.

(08:53):
Not only cardiovascularly healthier, but be able to lift more, be stronger. You’ll see improvements in your strength work by including some cardio work. So I would tell you include the diversity, but focus on the stressor and the intensity over just doing more. The last thing I wanted to go over that was a great question on body recomp was is it possible for an intermediate lifter to body recomp at any stage in our journey, we can achieve body recomp, but the more advanced, the more experienced you are, the slower the process is going to be. And I’m going to bring this up with muscle gains. So Lyle McDonald actually did a great study of muscle gains estimates for women and men over the year. So for women with one year proper training, it was 10 to 12 pounds over the year, which is about one pound per month, two years of prior training experience, five to six pounds over the year, so about half a pound per month, three years of training experience, 2.5 to three pounds a year 0.25 pounds per month.

(09:45):
If you have four plus years of training, which many of us have, even if it’s sometimes been a little on and off 0.75 to 1.5 pounds a year, so 0.1 pounds per month, it gets slower, it gets harder. But yes, you can achieve it. It just means being more precise. And again, this is where macros matter most. If you are a newbie lifter, potentially not even changing your diet and just starting to train intensely, you’ll start to see body comp. You’ll start to see muscle being gained. You’ll start to see fat being lost because you’re gaining muscle and you’re not even changing your diet. Then the more experience you become, the more you’ve adapted to different training stimuli. So the more you have to add in different ones besides just adding loads, that’s where tempos different training techniques can come into play. But you also have to be more precise with your nutrition.

(10:27):
Again, being very strategic in the calorie surplus or deficit, not going extreme either way because that can ultimately backfire in losing muscle or gaining fat, but really focusing on those macros and constantly cycling them and then being consistent past the point you want to quit. Because most of us, if we’re not seeing that one pound per week change in weight loss, and the closer you get to your goal, the less you’re going to see that unless you want to risk losing muscle. But if we’re not seeing these dramatic changes in other ways, we assume nothing’s happening when results are really snowballing. And if you think about it, you’re gaining one pound of muscle per year potentially, which could be a huge dramatic shift in your body, would comp in how you look, but it doesn’t seem like it. But you’ve got to be consistent past the point you want to quit.

(11:04):
So yes, you can always build muscle and lose fat. You have to have a primary focus, whether or not it’s slightly towards the gaining muscle more efficiently or the losing fat more efficiently. And I can tell you if you’re not at the level of leanness that you want or the last few pounds, focus on that fat loss first a little bit more being strategic with a very small calorie deficit protein, strength work, all that jazz. If you are at your leant level, maybe you shift a little bit more towards those muscle gains because you don’t necessarily have a lot of body fat to use as fuel, so you’ve got to be in that little bit of surplus, but you can achieve both. It’s just a slow process, but you got to be patient. I know we don’t want to be patient, but you got to be patient. But that is the jazz on body recomp. You can achieve it at any age, at any stage, and it is using a combination of strength or cardio and really focusing on those macros. Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all

(11:52):
My free work, workout, and nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone.

*Please Note: this transcript is auto-generated and there may be some errors in the transcript

(00:00):
Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a review or leave a five star rating or even better share it with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know. So let’s jump right in.

(00:29):
Squats are bad for your knees, pushups kill your wrists, deadlifts are bad for your back. There are lots of exercise myths and a lot of moves that are being demonized is causing aches and pains out there. And today I really wanted to dive into why this is occurring, why people fear movements and what we can do about it because I firmly believe there really aren’t any bad or wrong or evil exercises. There are just misused moves and no one variation is not going to be right for everybody. But too often we label and move as bad as causing our knee pain, our back pain, our hip pain, and then we just simply avoid it. In avoiding that exercise, what we don’t realize is that we’re not training and learning to control a fundamental movement pattern often that we do in everyday life. And if we don’t learn to control this movement pattern, we’re going to put ourselves at greater risk for injury, stepping off a curb, trying to go upstairs, just moving to twist and put plates away in the kitchen.

(01:29):
So we’ve really got to see our workouts as a chance to rebuild and retrain those movement patterns. So I thought it was interesting even that it came up when I asked about movements. You guys wanted to hear about that someone brought up that they wanted something else besides back and front squats because they couldn’t squat because of their knees because this is the exact thing that I wanted to address. I also thought it was interesting and where this topic came from was off of the burpee video that I shared because I think it’s a fundamental movement that everybody needs to master, and I go over modifications in this new YouTube and one of the comments on it was, I disagree. I don’t think the burpee is right to use with clients. I think they don’t do it correctly and that because of all these other aches and pains, they shouldn’t do it.

(02:08):
And I put ’em on the paradigm bike instead and part of that, my reply to him was that the Dyne bike not only perpetuates a lot of the postures that contribute to a lot of the mobility restrictions we have, as much as I like the Dyne bike and use it, but also that when we’re not retraining these movement patterns, we’re not actually strengthening or reversing some of the things that we see and that leads to injury we can’t simply avoid. Because if you think about the squat, even with the squat, and I’ll even use the bench with the squat. This is sitting to a toilet, this is sitting to a chair, this is sitting down to a couch. You’re not going to be able to be like this and not do any flexion to get down very easily. So the more you can control that active knee flexion, the better.

(02:53):
A lot of times we don’t think about things that way and that’s what leads to other injuries. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve a client’s reaching for a pen, reaching for something and all of a sudden they get injured. It’s not even in the gym and it’s not that moves can’t cause injury. They 100% can, but we have to earn them. We have to understand that even form and recruitment are different things. Form is what the movement looks like. Okay, this move looks great. I’m squatting with perfect form, but if I’m watching myself and really I have a compensation and balance and I’m trying to force everything to stay in line when my body really wants to shift, that’s where overload and injury occurs, which is why we have to focus not only on what the movement looks like but what we feel working.

(03:32):
So I want to talk first about the squat. The squat is a move that is often demonized for causing knee pain. You’ve probably even heard the cue, keep your knees behind your toes and this cue came about because of that knee pain issue. When we sit back more, keeping our knee more over our ankle, that more vertical should angle not only helps us load our glutes a little bit more, but it doesn’t put as much strain and stress on the quads. Now, it is not bad for your knee to travel forward. The deeper you get in that squat, and especially if you go more as to grass, you’re going to find that your knee is going to travel forward. Where this becomes an issue is yes, if you have not built up those quads, yes, active knee flexion, depending on what you have going on with your knee, you need to really work up to it and the exact range of motion you include will vary.

(04:21):
But where this became an issue is that we didn’t have proper loading and people weren’t noticing that they weren’t keeping their heels down. And so that shift forward and weight not only puts more strain on the quads and you can even use that strategically amazingly enough, but that’s where that cue keep your knees behind your toes came about to help prevent people from squatting incorrectly and not actually sitting their butt back. Now if you do have knee pain and you’re like, there is no way I’m getting all the way down there, I don’t have that range of motion, I don’t have that control, I can’t keep my heels down, this is where we start to find variations that work for our build our body because even toes just being pointed straight ahead versus toes out versus their squat width, all those things are going to be based on our build.

(05:04):
And a lot of times with social media now we demonize any form outside of one specific mold and that’s just not correct. If you have longer femur and a shorter torso like I do, you are going to have more of a hip hinge squat. You’re not going to be as upright. But even in that you want to address any mobility restrictions from ankles to hips that might be impacting that if you are trying to get a more upright squat. So you can train that when you’re working on mobility, there are even modifications for that. That might be front loading a weight, it might even be pressing the weight out. That counterbalance to brace your core can help. But again, it’s finding ways to use the movement patterns work around our pain and retrain to earn all the different variations to control the full range of motion that our joints are supposed to do to strengthen the muscles involved in these fundamental movement patterns.

(05:50):
And that might mean as you’re starting out with a squat, you sit back to a box to help you load. You can then feel your feet pushing into the ground to drive up. You’re not feeling your weight come forward. You’re also protecting against the hip pinch as much because especially setting up at the bottom, you can focus on that drive up, but that helps you control the squat range of motion and hey, maybe coming back after knee injury, you’re using a higher box maybe right now you can’t control active knee flexion, so you use a wall sit or just a squat hole at the depth you can go. It’s not that you’re going to be able to do exactly the full variation that someone else does. So maybe back squat or front squat with a barbell is not right for you. But the point is is that you can easily find a variation that helps you build up.

(06:33):
The more you can help yourself build up and slowly progress, the more you’re going to earn harder and harder variations and be able to include more and more going move this back forward a little bit. Cool. All right, so I’ll actually use the barbell now because I wanted to go over deadlift next. Do you have to move back? My beautiful assistant is helping me out with Now. Moving on. I do want to touch on lunges. I also wanted to touch on deadlift. You know what? I’ll go back to lunges really quick just because lunges are really close in terms of being demonized often for knee pain, just like squats, and it’s because we haven’t been able to control the range of motion. If you are doing a front lunge, a lot of times what we see is that weight traveling forward, that heel coming up, weight not being centered, and that’s where you even see the shifts to get back where people can’t fully control it or we try and go into a deeper range of motion.

(07:25):
What we don’t realize is that lunges are also a hip flexor stretch. So when we do these things, we’re stretching our hip, especially because we’re squeezing that glute to drive the hip into extension. So if we don’t have the mobility, that’s where we can also see aches and pains. So when you are lunging, you want to think about keeping your weight centered. You can utilize different variations. So when you do that front lunge, the more your knee travels forward, if you don’t have the proper ankle mobility, the more you’re going to put strain on that knee. So you have to work on your ankle mobility to allow this to happen. But if that is too much strain and stress keeping that more vertical shin angle can help you load that front glute a little bit more. Potentially using a little bit more of a hip hinge can help you load that glute more.

(08:10):
Maybe right now the dynamic movement of the front lunge, you can’t control it. Maybe you step a little bit more narrow. Maybe you keep that back leg straighter to do an interior reach lunge. Maybe you even do a reverse lunge because that is slightly more glute dominant and you can keep that vertical shin angle. What I’m bringing up here is a lot of opportunity in using different options to make sure that we’re meeting ourselves where we’re at. But even in that, even if you can control the front lunge, you want to target your glutes more. You do a reverse lunge if you’re even building up and you’re like with all the movements, I can’t control everything. I can’t focus on what I feel working, we can start to do a split squat. So I actually like having clients set up even at the bottom of a split squat because that way they can focus on squeezing the glute to drive the hip into the extension.

(08:53):
They can make sure their weight is centered. They’re working through a full range of motion because again, this is the way we strengthen through a full range of motion and improve our mobility. Because if we’re only doing a split squat right here, we’re not strengthening through the full range of motion. So all that hip stretching we’re trying to do, hip mobility work we’re trying to do, we’re then going and reversing it by only strengthening and learning to control a portion of that movement. So by setting up at the bottom, and I’m going to knock myself over as I try and talk, you can learn to drive up evenly with your weight and then you can come all the way down and you’re strengthening through that full range. Now you might be thinking, I can’t yet control that full range of motion. Maybe you do have a hand support to help out a little bit to reduce some of the resistance, help with that instability or you even reduce the range of motion to control for it and then you slowly lower that block that you’re kneeling down to.

(09:41):
The key here is there are so many different ways to change not only the control, we have to feel those recruitment patterns but work through a range of motion safely. Again, if active knee flexion is something that you struggle with but you want to work your quads instead of avoiding the squat, instead of avoiding the lunge, find variations that allow you to build up and slowly strengthen the muscles, strengthen the movement pattern. Again, that anterior reach lunge, which has more of a hip hinge, has less knee flexion. That’s a great way to work your quads, load your glutes, even learn how to control maybe a forward movement and still be able to push back efficiently without your heel coming up. I do want to talk really quickly about ankle mobility because knee pain comes up a lot with both squats and lunges and the knee is generally caught in the middle of the ankle and the hip and injury there.

(10:28):
Even previous ankle sprains, hip pain, that’s what leads to movement compensations, which then as you can see, just moving at those two places impact our knee positioning, right? We can be squatting, we can see our knee cave in, so we might need to activate our glutes. We might need to address our ankle mobility as well, especially even if we’re seeing hip and glute issues. But with that, if you’re trying to assess where the mobility restriction is because you don’t necessarily have a hip injury or an ankle injury by putting weights here and putting your heels up, if you can then all of a sudden get lower without pain, you probably have ankle mobility restrictions that you need to work on. I can link out to some more tips to help with that ankle mobility, but you want to assess what’s going on. And even with the glute stuff, if you’re trying to work on activating your glutes, you are struggling to control your knees caving in, and a lot of it comes from your hips.

(11:18):
Put that mini band, I even like it above the knees or right below, but really close the knees so that you can focus on that tension. I love people starting it above just because I feel like that’s easier to focus on using the glutes to actually pull it open, but you can do that controlled squat that can help you really activate your glutes. And that being said, guys, while you want to get your glutes working during squats, during lunges, your quads are working. We’ve got to stop fearing our quads working during squats. They are a knee dominant movement, not a hip dominant movement, which now moving on to a hip dominant movement, the deadlift, so deadlifts often demonized as causing back pain and they are a hard movement to learn to control, especially because we spend so much time seated. We are in constant hip flexion and this is working on hip extension and we tend to overuse our lower backs and our hamstrings decompensate because our hips are tight and our glutes are underactive because of that hip flexor tightness.

(12:15):
So when we do deadlift, a lot of times what you might find is you end up leaning forward when you do the hip hinge, A great way to train it is against a wall pushing the butt back to touch the wall. You’re not bending your knees more, you’re just pushing your butt back. That hip hinge movement is so key when you do that. A lot of times we’ll think flat back, we’ll start to arch your lower back. This is where you have to pay attention to what you feel working. If you’re not paying attention and you’re trying to mimic a movement, you are going to seek out mobility from areas that aren’t meant to carry the load and you’re going to overload them. So you have to be conscious of what you truly feel working. While there are lots of different styles of deadlift from sumo to conventional, which has more knee flexion, but it’s still like a hip hinge, not like a squat where you’re trying to focus more on the knee bend or you can even do straight leg, which stiff leg, straight leg, RDL people use them interchangeably.

(13:06):
There are nuance to those things, but a straighter leg deadlift, we’ll just say for today, all these things can be used to your advantage to activate muscles to different extents. The conventional is going to use more quad versus you’re going to get and quad and back versus summa is going to be more leg intensive and R DLS are going to be more hamstring. You’re also going to do a lot of posterior chain, but there’s a lot working here. And I have the barbell out here because I wanted to highlight why the barbell can be so challenging to start because you have to drag this puppy up your shins, okay? Whatever variation you do, you’re keeping it as close to your body as possible. And part of this is stemming from your lot engagement, pushing the bar back, but that’s how you engage everything because when you create that lat tension, you are creating tension through your lat, through the thoraco lumbar fascia into your glute, and that bracing is what keeps everything tight.

(13:58):
And then you’re thinking about pushing the ground away. Too often the deadlifts is queued as a pull, which then makes us lose tension, and I learned it as it was called a stripper deadlift, but it was where your butt would come up first before your back would come up. And we don’t want that. We want consistent tension pushing the ground away, but you need that tension. You need that engagement, but it is uncomfortable to drag the bar ball up your shins. That’s why at competition you have to wear high socks. They don’t want blood on the bar constantly in between things. So if that is uncomfortable for you and that’s preventing you from being able to sit back correctly because you also can’t put it back between your legs, that’s where a kettlebell can come into play in that you can actually take kettlebells or dumbbells no matter whether you do sumo variation, whether or not you do more conventional, but you can set it back between your heels that can help you sit back.

(14:48):
And when you’re doing that conventional deadlift, again, it’s not about sinking your butt down as low as you can. It’s about thinking that you want to hinge at the hips and let the knees flex to be able to touch that weight down. So when you do it, you want to think about how can I sit back, hinging over to reach the weight, flexing my knees as much as I need, engaging my glasses, set it back, squeeze my butt, pushing the ground away, not driving my hips extra forward, but just squeezing and pushing the ground away as if I’m almost jumping off the ground and then set the kettlebell back. But it’s that setback, that hinge over that’s so important to do. And in doing that, we want to make sure that we’re not arching our lower back. And if you are arching your lower back to try and keep your chest up, address those thoracic mobility restrictions, address that glute activation through those activation moves earlier in your warmup, but notice what you truly feel being recruited during these moves, and then don’t be afraid to use other variations.

(15:42):
Think about the sumo deadlift where you’re setting again, the weight back between your heels, your toes are turned out. Push the ground away, pull your knees open with your glutes, drive the ground away, squeeze your butt at the top and then hinge back over and set it back. You want to use the different variations based on your build as well. But using a kettlebell, using dumbbells can be super helpful if you’re struggling with that hip hinge to start even doing a bandit hip hinge where you have a band link behind you to pull your butt back to squeeze your butt against can be helpful, but find a variation that allows you to retrain that hip hinge because you need it. Lifting a box off the ground, picking something up is a hip hinge in everyday life. And if you do not learn how to control that movement pattern, that’s where you’re reaching for the box and your weight is coming forward versus you being like, oh, there’s the box.

(16:29):
Okay, I need to go up to it and pick it up. I need it close to my shins. I need it back between my heels even versus reaching and then overloading because we want that lot engagement to be able to pull back as we use our glutes to drive up. The next thing I wanted to go over was the row. So you guys commented some great other things that I can share some other videos as well, but I wanted to go over the back row because I think a lot of times with back movements, and again, this goes back to our postures and positions, what do we do all day? What typing in our computer, typing in our computer, driving in the car, all those different things in constant hit flexion. We are rounded forward a lot of the time. I find myself doing that a lot of the time.

(17:13):
So activating our back and that scapular mobility, the ability to pull our shoulder blades together, the ability to pull our shoulder blades down, the ability to elevator shoulders, all these different movements, protract our shoulders. All these different movements are things we need to learn how to control, and a lot of times we’re not addressing that scapular strength. So if you’ve ever done back rows and you feel like you’re going like this and you’re feeling your bicep lot, you are not using your back. What you feel working in a move is what is getting the benefit? Doing an AB exercise, feeling your lower back, doing a deadlift, feeling your lower back. Those things are working, not the muscles you want to be working. And a lot of times we think, oh, well, the muscle’s weak. I need to strengthen it. Uhuh, a lot of times it’s getting overloaded.

(17:55):
So if you’re feeling your biceps a ton during your back movement, I want to encourage you to think about initiating that pull from your back. Don’t let your elbows bend until you sort of pinch the shoulder blades back. So do even the shoulder blade pinch and then pull with your back so your elbows, yes, are bending, but you are not just bending. You need to think about that movement of your shoulder blades towards your spine to engage that back. It can be very helpful, and I like doing the bent over variation, but just so you can sort of more see it. I like doing just the pinch of the shoulder blades back because that is that movement to initiate that pole, to engage that back. You should feel that movement. That’s where that pole comes from. And yes, you want it fluid, but it’s so important to do and change your grip.

(18:38):
Again, varying things up because a lot of times we’ll say, oh, it has neck pain, or I feel lower back pain when I do the different rows. Maybe you just start with a single arm and you put your hand and knee on the bench to help brace your abs. Maybe you lie down on a bench that’s inclined so it supports your chest so that you can do the row. Maybe you start with a band anchored out in front of you so that you can do that row. You want to think about different ways to support and prevent some of the aches and pains you have. And I can tell you, doing a little sumo chin tuck can really help if your neck is engaging, but a lot of times it’s because our shoulders are elevated, so change your grip. We can do overhand, we can do neutral.

(19:18):
You can even do under hand on a barbell or with weights here too. Whatever you feel working can be a great place to start to help you engage. There isn’t just one way to do a movement, but we want to be conscious when we do have these compensations because maybe going to a unilateral row if you can’t control it and you feel especially your shoulder or neck on one side can be very helpful because we can focus on that back engagement so that shoulder isn’t being overloaded in the wrong way. The bicep isn’t being overworked, but you need to find variations that allow you to build up and then even see opportunity in the options because the more we use these variations to our advantage, the more we can find progression through the same but different. Because as I mentioned with even the deadlift, they all work the same muscle groups, but to different extents with the pull up, even chin up versus neutral versus over handful pull up grip all just activate the biceps back to different extents.

(20:10):
They’re all beneficial and they can all be used. We just have to find ways that we can make sure that we’re working the right muscles. So those were the main ones I wanted to cover today. There are lots of different movements that can cause lots of different aches and pains, but I would encourage you to assess where your mobility restrictions are coming from to include that work as prehab, work in your warmup, foam rolling, stretching and activating, and then making sure that you’re using variations that allow you to work around, but try and rebuild. The one thing we should not be doing is avoiding the more fundamental movement patterns we avoid from overhead, pressing to horizontal, pressing to vertical, pulling to horizontal, pulling to squats, lunges, hip hinges, all those different things. The more we set ourselves up for risk for injury and everyday life as much as we want to, to often treat our workouts just as a chance to burn calories. As much as we want to work hard in the gym, we want it to be quality movement. We want to see the gym as a chance to retrain those movement patterns so that we move well in everyday life because that’s ultimately what’s going to help us build more muscles. It’s ultimately what’s going to help us see better body recomp. It’s ultimately what’s going to help us see a healthier metabolic rate, aging well, seeing the fat loss, muscle gains, all those different things that we want and feeling our bests. Guys,

(21:27):
Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating, review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone.

*Please Note: this transcript is auto-generated and there may be some errors in the transcript