one of the things that we discussed we were talking a little bit about posture and I think it's worth to First create a fork in the road for those listening and have an honest conversation with themselves and be like what is my interaction with gravity like what is my relative strength to body weight ratio that'll that'll first determine uh where these conversations go and how to really choose exercises effective for you why so the external environment is a variable that we don't really consider a lot of times it comes back to this physical empathy thing
right so you you and I we have a different relationship with gravity someone who might not train someone who might be overweight looking to sort of start a weight loss or a fitness or a weightlifting resistance training Journey if they aren't honest about their relationship with gravity some exercises are far Out Of Reach and that we we don't we often prescribe them without thinking about that relationship without approaching them with that empathy right so things like lunges you know that's that's a really difficult exercise for someone doesn't have a favorable strength of body weight ratio
right like you know if say someone who's been resistance training for a long time can squat two times their own body weight right have a bar on their back squat down sort of butt to the heels and back up a lunge to that person is is very different right it's like us walking on the moon right like it's with the strength they have relative to their body weight a body weight lunge is different but the body weight exercise and how often that's just Mass prescribed to people at home workouts that's someone could be be weaker
and a close friend of mine coin this term Kyle Baer brilliant some people are weaker than the forces of gravity acting on them right so if I woke up every morning and my strength was was met with my absolute load so like for me if I'm squatting 700 lb and then I when I wake up every morning and I have 700 lbs on my back and when I go to the grocer store I have 700 lbs on my back I'm going to start to adopt a posture that's that that has that that's responsive to this
interaction with gravity right this Gravity the combined Center of mass of this bar on my back so I think it's really worth you know if you guys are listening to this and and you're trying to create a workout plan it's like I need to understand my relationship with gravity first and you know it's a gradient obviously but you can kind of in this context will bucket it into weaker than the forces of gravity you know you're new to training because the way you should look at the gym is almost like a chessboard right so a
chess and a checkers board are the same board right what's different the pieces right so when we look at the gym it's the same equipment but the pieces the people in there are different and how we move the different people depends on you know the what type of piece so if you're a novice to the gym you your focus might want to be at the very first using more machine-based exercises Davidson right High Ground training yeah I will use the word stability as the English language suggest as that is the proper word to use but
it's interesting because the but guys that are very respected in the space um also respect you know you and Pat Davidson so I mean it's got to be on to something yeah and it's we're all pointing at the same thing right is he standing on one side calling a six I'm standing on the other side calling a nine but I think it's really use it's useful in understanding the principle of like what we're trying to do is we're trying to and this is really easy and I like the analogy because we start off and everyone
is not everyone but those who are on the less favorable side of the strength of body weight ratio who have a different relationship with gravity they're like a checker piece and what do you do with Checkers you make little jumps right there's no intricate L shapes and castles that do things and horses that do things but when you make those jumps across the board which means you know get a couple of exercises that as Pat would say I believe you would say High Ground I would say highly externally stabilized have a broad base of support
we're sort of just for you guys who don't know what that is or haven't listened to the podcast with Pat Davidson or the podcast that you did with Pat in your own pod it's basically um a lot of contact so one is very stable yeah broad basis support So stability as a concept in training is ever present it's what is our Center of mass and what is our basis support So for those who again less favorable side of the strength of body weight ratio just getting started we want to find movements that have more of
that external stability broadb support a leg press would be a great example because a leg press we can titr trate down to below our strength of our body weight yeah it's interesting because people usually start with body weight exercises and um some people have way a lot more than the 10 pound leg extension that someone would do would that be fair to say yeah yeah and that's a that's a really stark contrast to see the difference like that is your body will go into a Vigilant State due to the like I'll speak at a technical
level I'll bring it back down to kind of Terra Forma your body prioritizes or optimizes for a few things right like walking and breathing primarily not falling over being a big one that's we're biped ambulatory creatures we walk around on two legs very unique property of humans not my kids we but we've optimized for that biomechanically neurologically and a lot of in that optimization of becoming biped is moving a lot of muscular contractions to the side of the autonomic it's pushed over here it's taken care of for you so you can worry about your taxes
and everything else you don't have to consciously contract to stay upright it's very different than quadruped animals which is like the majority of things running around so we're optimized for not falling over when we start people off and with this with this Dogma this Paradigm of like oh you know body weight squats or back squats this is the king of this exercise whatever it's you're you're putting people in like a Vigilant state where their autonomic nervous system takes over and optimizes for not falling over right so you're going to get a ton of compensation that
you can't equate for because you're not being physically empathetic to the person who is weaker than the forces of gravity acting on them right where a leg press allows you to titrate down to their level and actually provide a stimulus where they can they don't have to be reactive the autonomic nervous system doesn't take over to make sure that they don't fall over under this you know ridiculously relatively heavy load right so yeah and and what I'm hearing you say is that universally prescribed for a beginner I am also guilty of this is to start
with body weight and you are also saying that someone could be weaker than the gravity around them and that body weight for that person is going to for lack of a better term amp up or amp up the nervous system to become hypervigilant right kind of turned on more and they'll compensate using potentially the incorrect movements even on something simple like a lunge is that accurate yeah and the cool thing about this I find it cool is visually and subjectively it can look exactly the same this is where we have say that again this is
this is very important for people visually and subjectively like if I'm looking at someone do something like I'm you know I I'm a subject to them performing an exercise and we have two people of different strength and body weight ratios someone can inid State compensate to go through a squat pattern that's probably the easiest and two people can do it of sim similar anthropometry similar size and shape but one be on the leading side of the their relationship with gravity strong well trained and someone being new and they be recruiting entirely different muscles right so
it looks the same to me but the internal state of how that how that movement is being performed is entirely rest strategized for the hypervigilant weaker than the forces of gravity right and this is where you to answer your original question about like like you know how do we use biomechanics to sort of like live this long and vital and healthy and injury-free life it's like you need to understand that you need to understand that look just because I'm looking at someone to perform something next to someone else in similar similar you know shape maybe
different size but and I watch the you know the joint angles like oh that looks like they they're squatting just like this professional Olympic weightlifter crossfitter whatever if we don't understand that like there's a there's a there's a there's an engine running a computer that's operating to optimize not for performing the movement but for not falling over during the movement you're going to be loading tissues that you don't equate for what would be an example give me an example oh sure let's go with the single leg movement we did today right so on the YouTube
channel we'll see a single leg hinge a single we'll see what is attempted to be a single leg but it's you know what I think it's I think it's a really good use case for people to see right to all accounts very well trained you're in better shape than 99.9% of the population but even you can still not understand your relationship with gravity right and this is where understanding the role of muscles and sensory organs comes in right because you don't you're not aware of some of these positions because you haven't trained your muscles like
that same glute that does the clamshell that is just primarily worried about the motor output of abducting the hip kicking the leg off to the side real like Jane Fonda Sunday morning special I'm I'm dating myself a little bit but it's like you know but when the foot's on the ground now the glute is only Contracting as it feels the center of mass deviate away from the base of support now it's like very reactive we see the leg kind of like you know like oscillating in space and you're trying to like most people would say
they're trying to keep your balance I would say that you're you're trying to stay stable and what's happening with that like really rapid what's actually happening in the hip when your knee is kind of shaking around and people will experience of this if they try like a single leg hinge what you'll see is you know like oh my ankles are unstable or my KN it's like no it's not of that right the foot is sitting there with a lot of sensory receptors going where is this leg going because the hip isn't tuned isn't trained with
that input of the rapid stretch that that would lead someone to being unstable it's like oh I'm shifting a little bit this way and then the muscle contracts and then it overcorrects and this is It's a process called neural polishing or neural sharpening depending on your preferred nomenclature and it's really interesting because you know we on the video I'll do a rep and I do this a lot and I have an awareness because I do it a lot and for me the nice part about you know this type of training this training on the end
of the spectrum of integrating muscle function and polishing that reflex from like that hip that's trying to really just keep my leg over my foot right over my Bas of support is that becomes more efficient over time I don't have to do that as much and and I think and one of the things I'm sure we'll get into like warm up and prehab is it's about doing less it's about addition over subtraction or addition by subtraction right and so to answer your question about you know what is an example of two people doing an exercise
that looks sort of you know the exact same as we you know we can both go through the hinge and you're like okay G's foot's there her you know her hip joint is there her other foot's on the ground her hands are approximately this far from the ground her toe on the other leg is approximately this far from the ground if you know we're trying to describe a single leg RDL for those of you following along home and then I can get in the same position and then I asked the the the million dooll question
which is and this is where it becomes important and this is where I think a lot of the um you know the science may run astray is I have to ask the question of where do you feel this because I know muscle's a sensory organ right so if I'm trying to relay if I'm trying to understand the relationship with gravity I need to know what muscle is and then I can kind of reverse engineer and go okay so for that example when I go on one leg and I hinge and I can do it Barefoot
you know no heel elevation anything like that I feel it in my glute right I feel it in the side of my hip where you did it you felt it in your hamstring right everything I always feel it in my hamstring and that's so telling but to me and it's like you know we can watch you Squat and we can be like well this squat should be a more quad it's like no it's it's not you're in this Vigilant State you're you're fighting this this this ghost in the machine of gravity and you don't realize
that yeah your squat can look like mine but I'm going to load more quad and more adductor where yours given the way that your body is is interacting with gravity is going to load more the hamstring so it's not a hamstring strength issue that you might be having and it might actually be a Str hamstring overuse but it's not because you're overusing it from doing you know nordics or hamstring curls it's it's all all the times you don't realize you're using it right and that's where biomechanics becomes a real tool of load management it's about
equating for all of that like dark energy that you're using when you don't realize you're using it and this makes the idea of Designing a program really challenging for someone who is um not a professional and understanding okay well there's a million different programs out there how do I I'm a 40-year-old person who's never trained um where do I start how how do I do it without injuring myself and kind of progressing [Music] [Music]
