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This is Brent and in this video we're going
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progressions for a very common movement pattern, the row, that many of us use for back.
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We're going to use the suspension trainer to start developing a
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progression that would fit perfectly in that stability endurance or strength
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endurance phase of our training. I'm going to have my friend, Melissa, come out.
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She's going to help me demonstrate. Now, before Melissa gets started here, one
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thing that I think people forget a little bit when they start using a
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suspension trainer is just because we put a new piece of equipment in our hand,
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doesn't change optimal
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form for the human body. So, melissa is going to grab the True Fit here, she's going
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to lean back, and the first thing we're going to notice is her posture looks good.
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Her posture looks good, just as it would be for a weighted row, cable row, if she was
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doing a cable chest press. It's generally the same posture, which is
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head back, chin tucked, neck in alignment with the rest of her back. You notice
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her shoulders are down and stable, she's drawn in, her pelvis is neutral. If she
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had gone into an anterior pelvic tilt, I could say draw in, tuck under. Her
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quads are nice and tight, knees nearly locked, and her feet are parallel to one
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another and hip width. She's got that nice posture that we've used on every other
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exercise by now, just like every other row that we've done. She's going to pull and
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pinch her shoulder blades down and back. Let's see a few of those.
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What you'll notice is Melissa's form looks good throughout. She's pinching those shoulder
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blades but not doing this thing. This is this I am trying to pull too far,
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compensation. We want to make sure that shoulder blades go down and back, not up and back.
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Go ahead and relax for a second. And if I was Melissa's trainer, the first thing I
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would notice is that's too easy. So now we have to start thinking about how we
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progress this exercise, and there's a lot of ways to progress with a suspension
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trainer. We could start with maybe one leg, so we'll go two legs to one leg.
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Just make sure on that leg that she's using, that that glute's tight, her hips
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staying up and forward, she's not sagging at all. Does that make it a little
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tougher? Do you want to switch legs?
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Make sure you do both sides. Just because we're working on the back,
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doesn't mean we can't gain a little stability in the hip, but you want to
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work on both sides.
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Relax for a second. Still looks too easy. So we got two legs, one leg. Could we
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go two legs, one arm? You guys do have to be careful with this one, because,
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obviously, when she goes from two arms to one arm with something like a suspension
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trainer, she's also going to double the load. I might need to move her feet
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back just a little bit.
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You'll notice that the hard thing about this particular progression is people
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want to do all sorts of rotating at the trunk. They have a hard time retracting
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their scapulae. You've got to make sure that just because we went from
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two arms to one arm, we don't let go of any of those form cues. We have to keep
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just as strict, otherwise we've just gone too far in our progessions. Alright, relax for a
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second. So we went from two legs to one leg, two arms to one arm. Could we go
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one leg, one arm? We're going to try one of these cross-body patterns. Generally,
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when I go one leg, one arm, I try to do contralateral limbs, so she's going to
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use her left leg to stabilize, we're going to pull the right arm, and then vice
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versa. When she goes to left arm, I'm going to use her right leg to stabilize. You guys
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will find that this is real tough to maintain scapular retraction, real tough
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to maintain square shoulders, square hips. Is that tough?
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Aright, we're getting there. We're getting close. If I'm in a stability endurance or
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strength endurance phase, my goal is to get her to fail in 12 to 20 repetitions
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at a slow tempo. We're getting pretty close. I think she would be just about there. So
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what can I do to even further progress this? Well, an easy progression
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is to add an unstable environment. Be careful when you add unstable
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environments, like an airex pad. We don't want her sliding, her feet sliding out
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from underneath her. Let's go two legs, one arm on an airex pad.
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Let's go one foot, one arm on an airex pad.
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And you notice Melissa keeps her form. Well, almost. We're starting to break down
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a little bit here. Good, relax for a second. So, I do think the fitness
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professional population, the athletic
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training professional population, those of us who work on strength and
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conditioning, we do need a little bit more practice on the stability and
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strength side. We need more practice creating good routines. If I was working
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with Melissa, I think I would have stopped at the progression of single arm,
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single leg in a stable environment. I could see good form, but it was
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challenging, and I think she could maintain that good form for the 12 to 20
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reps I was looking to achieve to increase endurance in that phase. Now, we
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do have load progressions, so I couldn back off or increase in load
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depending on how advanced my athlete was. Melissa's going to help me demonstrate that real
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quick. So, just starting off with the handles the length they are now,
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if she moves her feet closer to where I have these hanging, she gets more
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horizontal. I
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increase the perpendicular length from my lever here, it'll actually be more force
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she has to generate to do that row. And you can see she's shaking a little
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bit. That's tough. If I wanted to go even further, but her feet are all the way
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against a bar, or they're all the way against a wall, let's say I had this hanging
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off a wall clip, what I could do is just make these longer. I could get her even more
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horizontal. Good luck.
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That's tough stuff right there.
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If I wanted to go even further, I could go completely horizontal. What we're
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actually going to do here is we're going to start with these a little bit shorter,
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but I'm going to put her feet up on something.
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In this case, we're skipping a progression here, guys, I would usually
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use a bench first, but rolling a bench into the shot was just a little awkward so
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we're going to use a stability ball instead here. You ready? Do your best. I'm going to have
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you hang down first, so almost sit down on your butt. I want you to put one heel up here.
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It helps to get the ball in a position where your heel's in the center
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of the ball so that you have a little bit of control with your legs on where
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you're putting that ball. Your feet don't have to be perfectly together either.
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Now, pull up into position,
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get nice and flat, squeeze your butt, draw in, try to get those feet
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straight for me.
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Good. Alright, let's try a couple of those. We can see- Do you want to give it one more shot?
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Give you a rest? We can see this is a little bit beyond where Melissa's at, but
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some of those other progressions from a strength standpoint, if I needed to
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increase the way to get our reps down, let's say she could do more than the 20 reps I was
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looking for, we could see maybe moving her feet in would work, or making the
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True Fit a little longer here would work.
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This is a tough progression, guys, this might be one of those challenges I put
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out: Let's see who can do 20 reps horizontal with their feet on a ball
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with two independent suspension trainers here. We're just going to try to get a
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couple. I'll give the ball a little bit of stability here. Head back, really try to
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retract those scapulae.
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Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, down slow, down slow. One more. Good.
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Relax. Alright, guys, there you go.
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Tons of progressions, stability progressions: two feet, one foot; two arms,
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one arm. We did one arm, one foot together, so there's five progressions right there.
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Then we added unstable environments, like an airex pad, so then you can go back to
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two feet unstable, one foot unstable. Then we talked about our load
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progressions. Try to keep in mind where your fulcrum is. The more
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horizontal you get, the harder the exercise is going to be from a load
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perspective. Moving the feet in, making the straps of the True Fit longer, or as
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you saw in this last progression, which was just mean, going totally horizontal are
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all ways for you to progress this particular exercise. And as we mentioned
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towards the beginning of the video, this is the type of practice you all need, we
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all need as an industry to make our stability endurance, or strength
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endurance training just as exciting just, as challenging as the max strength
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training, the power training that's become so popular.
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Don't forget, you can't lift more than you can stabilize. I look forward to