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