0:03 I'll draw this diagram like this again. We do need to be careful with 0:11 wording and every once in a while you hear me correct something you say, 0:14 it's not because I really care about your grammar, I don't, but every once in a while 0:18 we need to be careful how we word things, because I hear people go, 'long and weak' 0:22 and then they go, 'short and tight,' or 'short and strong'. They'll say something 0:27 that doesn't quite make sense. So what you should know, 0:34 let's say this is my hip, I keep going back to this example, it's a good example, 0:37 this is my pelvis, this is my femur, these are my hip flexors, and this 0:42 is my what? If this was the backside what would this be? Glutes. So this is long, and this is 0:56 short, we've got that. Usually, not always, we're going to see some examples where 1:04 this doesn't happen, long also means under active, and short usually is 1:13 overactive. So, rather than short and strong, it's just over active. Now, generally 1:22 speaking short muscles are about a third stronger than long muscles, but they're 1:27 still weaker than they should be. The only reason they're a third stronger is 1:32 because they're involved in everything. They get a little bit more conditioned than 1:35 these, but they're both weak. In some rare instances what you will find 1:44 is, there is long 1:48 and overactive. Those are some troublesome muscles. Take your hamstrings for 1:54 example. They get long. They get pulled long by an anterior pelvic tilt. 1:59 You feel like your hamstrings are involved in everything if you get jacked 2:03 up in your lower leg or your hip. Your hamstrings will not shut down. So we 2:09 can't exactly say that your hamstrings are long and under active, it all 2:13 has to do with neural stuff. That's cool? 2:18 We're actually going to leave this up here as we go through these because it'll be a 2:21 good example to keep coming back to. Have you ever heard the term hypertonic and 2:25 hypotonic. Another couple of vocabulary words you'll want to write down. Hypertonic means 2:33 overactive. So you can put 2:38 hypertonic here, 2:44 and this would be hypotonic. -The only way you could have a a long 2:52 muscle and it be overactive is if it's neurologically overactive, it could never be 2:56 mechanically overactive. Is there a difference? I don't know if anything is ever mechanically 3:02 overactive or interactive. So what's the what's the root 3:07 word of hypotonic and hypertonic. Tonic. Tonic refers to what? 3:14 Tone. Tone itself as a neural thing. So all that's controlled by 3:21 the nervous system. It has to do with something called our gamma 3:24 system. So we basically have two different types of fibers that come out 3:29 of our CNS, or rather our spinal cord, to our muscular system. One set is 3:36 to contract our muscles, another set goes to our muscle spindles, and those muscle 3:41 spindles through another feedback mechanism, control how toned we are. 3:47 So this whole thing is all neural. Even if it's something that's under active, its neural. I 3:51 just answered your question. But there's overactive or under active, long or short, 3:54 the overactive, under activity part, that's all neural control. How many 4:02 of you have heard of reciprocal inhibition? So, 4:08 one of the reasons this is under active is because of reciprocal inhibition. So 4:16 follow my logic here, if this becomes short, short muscles have a propensity to 4:21 become overactive, that gamma system is charged. Well once the muscle turns on 4:29 what is it supposed to do to it's functional antagonist? It's 4:33 supposed to turn this off. Well if this is overactive it's always turned on, 4:38 so that means this is always turned off. It starts creating a 4:47 vicious cycle really fast. Now, one thing I do want you to understand about 4:52 reciprocal inhibition that I think gets a little mistaught in out industry, it's not 4:56 on-off. It's toned up, and toned down. Are you with me there? So just because this 5:04 is overactive, doesn't mean this can't fire at all. It won't fire as much if 5:08 this is a little tight. A little tight, a little off. Really tight, really 5:14 off. Like it's on a dimmer switch, not a flicker switch. 5:20 -Which one do you go to first? Which one happens first? -I had the 5:28 conversation a couple of months ago because my experience is tight hip flexors, I did foam rolling and stretching, 5:38 after I start with activating the glutes, then my hip flexors just released. He said because of synergistic dominance I would not be able to fire my glutes, but it was my own experience I 5:52 was able to. That confused me. 6:08 So there's a couple of 6:17 arguments here, that we can somehow activate our way out of flexibility 6:21 issues, and I know there's some schools of thought that would think that that's 6:24 fine. With a really stubborn muscle, you might try to do a little bit of 6:28 activation work and there are some other techniques that you could do and then go into 6:32 your flexibility training. Generally speaking, this is like a 6:37 general rule to set down before we start looking at more 6:40 complicated ways of doing things. If you don't have the range of motion, you can't 6:45 activate yourself into it. It doesn't mean that you can't fire your glute. Like 6:50 I said, this is tone up, tone down, not turn off. If I only have, let's say, optimal 6:56 hip extension is 15 degrees, so just past that neutral position, but 7:02 let's say my hip flexor only lets me get to here. When I go to activate my glute 7:07 I'm only activating it to 0 degrees. I don't have the other 15 degrees. There's no way to get there. My hip flexor 7:12 is just going to stop me because it isn't long enough. So then we go back 7:16 to another rule. Do you remember isometrics got really popular about a 7:19 decade ago? What's the problem with isometric training? 7:26 You actually would only end up strengthening the muscle at a certain angle. 7:30 You only get about 15 degrees sway at a joint that 7:37 you actually get an increase in strength out of, and then the rest of the range is 7:40 not strengthened by an isometric. It's like, yeah this strengthens your 7:45 biceps to hold a really heavy weight right here, but it really only 7:48 strengthens your biceps right here. If I do my activation work and not my 7:53 flexibility work first, I strengthen my glute through the range of motion I 7:59 already had, but where do I need to strengthen my glute? In the range of motion 8:06 I lost. Because until I strengthen my glute there, I won't keep it. I won't use it. I 8:12 won't feel comfortable in that new position. So generally speaking this is 8:17 one of the reasons why I think flexibility from the corrective 8:19 standpoint is probably the most important component. We have to get our 8:23 range of motion back before we're going to get optimal strengthening, which you 8:28 still have to do to get a permanent change in our posture. Does that make sense? 8:36 So, synergistic dominance, which we've already been referring to, this is kind 8:40 of a circular conversation, these six definitions are all embedded in 8:43 each other. So this is short, 8:49 reciprocally inhibiting this, being our glute. So this is our hip flexor, this 8:55 is our glute. Well, if I need to do a hip extension, and I don't have a glute, am I just 9:03 not going to do hip extension anymore? Hip extension is kind of important to daily 9:07 activity, right? How are you going to get out of that chair without hip extension? 9:11 You still need something to be able to do hip extension. 9:16 So what are we going to do? We're going to call in our synergists. 9:22 Which, in this case, is going to be who? Hamstring, specifically your biceps 9:29 femoris. The big overactive synergist for the glute max 9:34 is biceps femoris. So we've got this coming in, and once it becomes the 9:42 overactive synergist and you start training that way, what's going to 9:45 happen to the neural drive of that muscle? It's going to start toning up. 9:50 So we've got hip flexors, toned up, hamstrings, toned up, glutes toned down. 9:58 We're starting to create a pretty jacked up relationship. Then realize too, and 10:03 I know you have seen this in your clients, this isn't just stronger, this 10:09 also fires faster, fires before it's supposed to, maybe fires in movements 10:14 that it's not related, like you try to go into hip flexion and your hamstrings fire. 10:18 That stuff happens. When we stay toned down, it's not just weaker, 10:24 it's also a timing thing. So it not only fires less hard, it fires late which is 10:31 part of the problem here too. That just keeps leading to the deconditioning. I go to 10:37 do a squat and my hamstrings fire first, and then my glutes kind of come along for as 10:41 much as they need to to get the rest of the movement done.
