How to Train for Flexibility & Form to Avoid Injury | Pavel Tsatsouline & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | I love your book, "Relax Into Stretch."

00:00:05.320 | I think it's a really important concept, this idea that the nervous system and our mental

00:00:09.640 | state is preventing, inhibiting a good amount of our natural flexibility, and that we can

00:00:16.120 | work with the mental state and progressive relaxation and contraction of muscles and

00:00:21.100 | related tissues.

00:00:22.400 | We absolutely can.

00:00:23.400 | And it's very much mind over the matter.

00:00:24.920 | I have a great success story.

00:00:26.480 | So one of my senior instructors, a strong first, Steve Freedis, so I met him a couple

00:00:33.080 | decades ago, and he had a severe back injury.

00:00:38.500 | So he spent eight or nine months in bed in Percocet, and he was not athletic.

00:00:43.040 | He'd done some jogging or things like that in the past.

00:00:46.080 | And he decided to get serious about getting strong.

00:00:49.140 | So he healed up until he was healthy.

00:00:51.560 | He started lifting kettlebells, then after that he started powerlifting, and he started

00:00:57.840 | doing proper stretching like this.

00:01:01.520 | So he is, right now he is, Steve is in his late 60s.

00:01:04.580 | He holds a bunch of American Masters records in the deadlift, even though his back was

00:01:08.920 | totally messed up.

00:01:10.320 | Lifts without a belt.

00:01:11.640 | He is, you can break your fist on his abs.

00:01:14.000 | I like having people punch, "Would you please punch, Steve?

00:01:17.200 | Just don't hurt yourself."

00:01:18.540 | But he also worked up to suspended side splits, and you know, at that point he was probably

00:01:24.860 | in his 50s when he did that, and maybe 60s possibly.

00:01:29.180 | And then he even competed in this crazy all-around meets where there's one lift where you hang

00:01:34.120 | between two chairs, and then you pick up a dumbbell from the ground.

00:01:37.740 | You can find the footage somewhere on the internet.

00:01:40.060 | So here's the man who did not take his injury lying down.

00:01:45.580 | So once he was cleared to train, he decided to approach his training with the attitude

00:01:52.060 | of a musician, because he's a music professor.

00:01:55.340 | And in my experience, that people who could become very successful in strength, musicians

00:02:03.740 | and martial artists are among the people who can succeed, because they're used to practice

00:02:09.760 | for many hours.

00:02:10.760 | They're used to paying attention to small detail, and they're used to doing whatever

00:02:14.740 | other people consider boring over and over.

00:02:17.280 | So again, here is this 60-something-year-old man with abs you can break your hands on,

00:02:21.220 | deadlift records, and full splits.

00:02:23.500 | That's what a human mind is capable of.

00:02:25.580 | I love this concept of a practice, or of practice, not of a practice.

00:02:31.460 | But instead of training, I always thought training is such a better word than working

00:02:35.380 | out, and it probably is, but I think practice is such a better verb than...

00:02:41.100 | Training is also good, of course.

00:02:42.180 | But yeah, practice is... it puts you in the right frame of mind.

00:02:46.700 | You imagine the word "workout," like Litterman quote, "He literally worked himself out."

00:02:51.020 | I'm very stringent about form, and always have been.

00:02:53.940 | And I do want to ask, what are your thoughts on, unless somebody is training for isometric

00:02:58.460 | or eccentric-specific training, full range of motion, not just for sake of building strength,

00:03:04.260 | but can using a full range of motion also improve flexibility without some dedicated

00:03:09.220 | flexibility training?

00:03:10.340 | Yes, it can.

00:03:11.340 | So sarcomeres can grow in length as well.

00:03:14.260 | So the contractile part of the muscle, they can grow lengthwise as well.

00:03:17.940 | It's something that needs to be done carefully and cautiously, of course, and it's not with

00:03:23.460 | heavy weights.

00:03:24.460 | Eventually, it's possible for a person to perform, you know, flexibility feats with

00:03:29.020 | heavier weights if it's desirable.

00:03:31.380 | But initially, yeah, something go lighter.

00:03:33.100 | So yes, absolutely, you can, and it's one of the easiest ways to promote flexibility.

00:03:40.580 | And flexibility also has very much a neural component as well.

00:03:46.900 | So part of it, obviously, you know, you're looking at what's happening in the joints,

00:03:50.380 | of course.

00:03:51.380 | Part, you're looking at, you know, the length of the tissues too.

00:03:58.520 | But a lot of it is also the ability to reset the regulation of muscle length and tension.

00:04:05.200 | So it's like the ability to do a split, for example.

00:04:08.860 | It's part of it is, yeah, well, if you're provided your hip joints are built for that

00:04:12.840 | sort of thing, a lot of it is really in your mind because you're experiencing defensive

00:04:17.420 | inhibition.

00:04:18.420 | You're just afraid you're going to get torn in half.

00:04:21.300 | So which brings us to a very interesting parallel, as we kept talking about quality and has also

00:04:27.500 | talked about that flow channel by Professor Chiksuma, exactly.

00:04:33.660 | Thank you.

00:04:34.660 | So between boredom and anxiety.

00:04:37.180 | So when you're trying to do a split, for example, so you see somebody trying to get into that

00:04:40.960 | stretch and that person goes, "Oh," sitting there and panicking and being in total pain

00:04:46.620 | and nothing good is going to happen.

00:04:48.420 | You're pretty much just facilitating this pain pathways and you're just learning to

00:04:53.500 | hate this exercise.

00:04:54.940 | A smarter individual would get to the point to the edge of pain and then stay there for

00:05:00.300 | a while and then owning it until the spindles reset, you know, okay, accept the new range

00:05:06.260 | of motion, add some contraction, relaxation, contraction, relaxation, you know, isometric

00:05:11.460 | stretching, you know, progress, progress even further.

00:05:15.160 | So in any type of training, forcing the adaptations is not going to work, whether it's flexibility,

00:05:20.780 | whether it's strength, whether it's endurance.

00:05:23.100 | There's time for a very high level of effort, but there's never time for ripping yourself

00:05:27.340 | in half, right?

00:05:28.700 | There's never time for hurting yourself on purpose.

00:05:31.220 | So, but yes, do a long range of motion work to increase range of motion.

00:05:37.160 | For the upper body, I'm obviously very partial towards kettlebells, but one of the great

00:05:44.040 | many benefits of kettlebell training, you know, a bow they handle, is the waist design.

00:05:49.740 | So you press it from here overhead, that offsets center of gravity, helps to pull your arm

00:05:54.540 | back.

00:05:55.540 | So you're just improving the shoulder flexion, you're improving thoracic extension.

00:05:59.300 | It's so much easier to place yourself in exactly good position and then just stay there.

00:06:04.300 | So it's very important to stay open to keep that, keep that youthful posture and keep

00:06:08.180 | that good, good shoulder function.

00:06:11.660 | So but yeah, with squats, you can definitely do that just very progressively.

00:06:16.100 | One warning about squats.

00:06:19.420 | If you're going for a parallel squat, like it is in powerlifting, it's parallel defined

00:06:24.980 | as the top of the knees a little higher than the crease on the hip.

00:06:28.400 | Not a right, people will argue about this in some comical ways from time to time.

00:06:34.100 | So when parallel is not right angle at the knee, correct?

00:06:37.560 | It's parallel at the top of the thigh.

00:06:39.960 | I realize you said it very clearly, but I'm just making sure because debates abound on

00:06:44.000 | the internet.

00:06:45.000 | The top of the thigh should be parallel to the floor.

00:06:48.720 | Or deeper.

00:06:49.720 | Yeah, yeah.

00:06:50.720 | But when you do go for that depth or somewhere in that ballpark, that's, you can go wide

00:06:57.640 | in the stance.

00:06:58.640 | You can progressively increase the width of the stance if you do it for flexibility.

00:07:02.400 | There have been people who are doing squats like in almost like a horse stance, stealth

00:07:06.280 | squats and progressively developing great level of flexibility.

00:07:09.760 | It's possible to do that.

00:07:11.880 | But you're doing that, you're going wider, but not necessarily deeper.

00:07:16.540 | So it's okay to go wider, but you still, your femur should not be dipping too much.

00:07:23.000 | So if you're trying to go rock bottom in the wide stance, your hip architecture is not

00:07:27.740 | designed for that.

00:07:28.740 | Right.

00:07:29.740 | So like Tom Platz, right?

00:07:30.920 | Famous for squatting very, very deep.

00:07:33.320 | But he was narrow, but he used the narrow stance.

00:07:35.240 | Got it.

00:07:36.240 | So glutes on calves practically, but he was a shorter guy, right?

00:07:39.680 | But he also, he was, but also he was also squatting in a pretty narrow stance.

00:07:43.960 | So in this particular case, you're not experiencing with the hip, you know, with the hip limitation

00:07:48.000 | right there.

00:07:49.000 | So it's okay for you.

00:07:50.000 | But imagine if you try to go wider and then you try to go, it's just, again, this is not,

00:07:54.120 | not a good idea.

00:07:55.120 | You could end up on the floor, literally on the floor.

00:07:56.680 | If you want to develop, here's a great way to develop flexibility for this type of rock

00:08:00.400 | bottom squat.

00:08:01.400 | If you're not there yet, initially been without resistance, assume your normal squat stance.

00:08:08.160 | And I'm talking about a narrow stance, you know, shoulder width or somewhere there.

00:08:11.520 | And approach the wall, face the wall, put your arms out and start squatting.

00:08:18.240 | And you will find the wall is going to teach you.

00:08:20.440 | So it is the feedback from the wall.

00:08:22.840 | If you start doing something funny with your spine, you're going to hit your head on the

00:08:27.080 | wall and fall back.

00:08:28.740 | So it's, it provides terrific feedback.

00:08:31.600 | It is something that I learned originally from Shikun, a Shikun practitioner.

00:08:37.480 | And again, quite a number of skills that by system are picked up from, from martial arts.

00:08:43.360 | But we applied that strong first to use that for teaching people that upright squat and

00:08:47.160 | developing the, developing the mobility for deep squat.

00:08:50.600 | It's a, it's a foolproof.

00:08:51.680 | It's like Greg Cook would call this a self-correcting exercise.

00:08:56.200 | And those are really the best.

00:08:57.880 | When the coach can walk away and, you know, have a cigarette and the student is still

00:09:02.000 | going to be able to do it right.

00:09:03.080 | [Music]

How to Train for Flexibility & Form to Avoid Injury | Pavel Tsatsouline & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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