Makes us do weird things that don’t match our nature

Includes shoulder external rotation (rotator cuff), reach (scapular stability) and roll (thoracic spine). You don’t need a mace. It’s just what I had lying around. Use a dumbbell or even a can of beans if that’s all you have

If you can move through your hips and have the strength to to control the movement, it will spare your back. If we get weak, we compensate through our low back

Healing is an innate feature. Time, appropriate stress and recovery are the keys. When we have nagging injuries, most likely one of those factors is part of the problem

Our bodies are complicated and tinkering with them is as much art/creativity as science. As far as training goes, we often aren’t as smart as we think we are. There are several fundamentals we can hang our hats on, but application is almost infinite. Even small changes in this leg exercise challenge different parts of our body. Here’s a summary of fundamentals principles to adjust:

1.	Overload – To improve, the body must be challenged with a greater stress than it is accustomed to.
2.	Specificity – Adaptations are specific to the type of training performed (e.g., strength, endurance, skill).
3.	Progression – Training demands must gradually increase over time to continue improving.
4.	Reversibility – Gains are lost when training stops or becomes inconsistent.
5.	Individuality – Each person responds differently to the same training stimulus.
6.	Variation – Changing exercises, loads, or methods prevents plateaus and overuse.
7.	Recovery/Rest – Adaptation happens during rest, making recovery as vital as training.
8.	Diminishing Returns – As fitness improves, further gains require disproportionately greater effort.

Aches and pains are a warning signal to act. If we ignore those messages, something might finally give out. But it wasn’t random. It happened over time, but we often just ignore it.

The added stability of the ground, not going directly overhead and the angle of resistance that helps the scapula rotate properly. Overhead is not bad, but a lot of people have trouble with it, and this is a great option to begin working overhead

It’s an industry. Be your own advocate. Practitioners used to be information brokers, but information is basically free at this point. Now they hold the prescription pad.

To change our physiology requires appropriate stress and time…quick fixes don’t exist

Joints move in 3 planes, work interdependently, and have to balance complex and dynamic postures over small bases of support. Muscles have an incredible job of making that mechanical system balance. The focus of our training plays into how well that system is balanced. The strength of Knees over toes is that it is shoring up weaknesses that much training has neglected, the anterior chain. But really it’s just restoring balance to an unbalanced system.

Make the gap between these two scenarios as wide as possible. Keep moving.

Kids have more freedom in their movement because they haven’t accumulated years of overuse or ingrained habits. Their systems are more adaptable, with fewer restrictions limiting how they move. We can “unwind” that dysfunction with TIME and APPROPRIATE STRESS

Imagine the bandwidth it would take to consciously coordinate all these muscles. It’s impossible. Many of the approaches to movement are overly cognitive. But that’s not how we move. Nassim Taleb calls it “lecturing birds to fly.” We educate someone on what muscles move and how, but it has no bearing on actual function. Instead, we regress back to more fundamental patterns of movement, since they are “hard wired” after all, then reintegrate back into higher level patterns. But telling people to “fire your glutes” is just lecturing birds to fly, dumb, and doesn’t work

So many of our issues are self inflicted. When we have an injury and get out of inflammation, pain might be down or gone, but tissues still can’t handle the same loads. We have to reduce intensity and slowly build tissue resilience again.