Bonus Episode: Stretching, Range of Motion, Tiger Woods x BBM, Low Back Pain, and More!

0:00Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum:Hey, it's Jordan from Barbell Medicine. Now this episode preview is from exclusive content that regularly goes out to our Barbell Medicine Plus subscribers. In addition to exclusive content, Barbell Medicine Plus subscribers get early access to episodes and products, ad-free listening, discounts on products and services, and the ability to ask Dr. Baraki and I questions, all for about the cost of a cup of coffee each month. And in case you were wondering, the first month is free. To join, head over to barbellmedicine.com slash plus and sign up to be a Barbell Medicine Plus member today. That's barbellmedicine.com slash plus.

0:32Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum:All right. Thanks for your consideration. On to the show.

0:37All right. This is the Barbell Medicine Instagram Live. I'm Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum. Today, I'll be taking questions. So if you're tuned in, welcome. And yeah. Yeah. David Rodriguez, 168 asks, how important is stretching to you? Weighted or normal stretching? Do you do it? It seems more and more people are highly advocating for it now. Again, another exclamation point, but I'm not going to yell at you. I think that dedicated time spent towards stretching, whether it's static type stretching, PNF, stretching, so proprioceptive, neuromuscular, facilitative stretching, ballistic stretching. I think most of the time there is poorly spent for most folks.

1:23Stretching, like strength, is specific. It's specific to the length of the muscle, the position that you're in, the velocity which it's done, et cetera. So I guess the question I would ask people who engage in a lot of stretching is, what's the point? What are you stretching for? If you are just trying to be generally more bendy, then sure. There's no specific goal that you're really stretching for, but you just want to expose yourself to various postures and positions via some dedicated stretching work. And you're otherwise getting all of your resistance training, your conditioning training in, able to earn a wage and live a high quality, you know, life.

2:04Go off king or queen. That's totally fine for me. Most people time is not the they don't have that much extra time and they would probably be better served by doing more conditioning or more lifting. or otherwise something else unrelated to exercise. If somebody has a specific issue with achieving a particular position in a lift, so you think about like the front rack position in a front squat or the overhead position in an overhead squat or a snatch or, you know, the bottom of a squat, they have problem hitting depth and they think it's a mobility issue. Exposing yourself to those specific positions for various durations of time or various, you know, sort of progressions to those positions.

2:48If you want to call that stretching, that's fine. I just call it training. So, for example, right before I squat, I'll do a bodyweight squat or a couple sets of bodyweight squats where I'll pause at the bottom for, you know, five to ten seconds. It's part of my warmup. Is that stretching or is it just a warmup? If you want to call that stretching, then yeah, I do that stretching. But I don't spend any time on a foam roller, lacrosse ball with the band doing anything that's like nonspecific because my goals are to be as strong as humanly possible and, you know, try to help as many people as possible.

3:19So stretching does not really help me achieve either of those goals. If I wanted to tackle a new challenge, so let's say I wanted to start doing Olympic weightlifting, you know, more seriously, I do like power cleans quarterly just to make sure I still got it, you know. I would have to get, I'd have to gain more mobility in my front rack position, my receiving position for the clean as well, and also the snatch, the overhead position. I wouldn't do a lot of static stretching, but I would be gradually exposing myself to higher and higher, you know, threat types of positions. So for example, right now I can wrap my hand all the way around the bar and get into somewhat of a front squat position.

4:00When I start loading with weight, it's challenging. So I would, you know, expose myself to a progression there. Same thing for the overhead position. I can push a bar overhead in the, you know, what would be my snatch, you know, the finish position. But as I start to overhead squat, my shoulders are a little tight. So I would gradually progress that. But I don't – wouldn't spend any time with a band or whatever to, you know, non-specifically open my shoulders. I would do it more specific for the task or tasks that I'm trying to get ready for. box 3r47 uh does full range of motion help with mobility and is it the best way to grow muscle uh generally speaking you do gain access to you know so functional use you're able your ability to create muscular force through a range of motion via exposure to it so in that way yes, most dynamic exercises will increase range of motion or certainly maintain it if somebody started with that access to it.

5:02There's been some decent studies actually looking at untrained populations and having them just stretch or lift weights. And then, hey, what is the range of motion at the end of the study? And the people who lifted weights actually did a little bit better. That's not always going to be the case. Individuals are going to vary. And then depends how you test people's range of motion, et cetera. But anyway, yeah, generally speaking, lifting weights dynamically. so not just isometric sort of resistance training through a relatively large range of motion is likely to do good things for people's mobility.

5:31If people have additional mobility goals outside of that, they may need exposure. They will need exposure to those things. And if you want to call that stretching, it just depends on the task, right? It depends on the task. As far as is it the best way to grow muscle? Yes, certainly partial range of motion exercises have been shown to increase muscular size, muscle cross-sectional area muscle mass generally less than larger ranges of motion but it's not this sort of like dose dependent relationship where longer and longer and longer and longer is always better and better and better and better it's just like a threshold so for example in a squat if you squat an inch or two inches below parallel that's going to be fine squatting astagrass is probably not going to increase hypertrophy any more than that it's just a different exercise at that point and if somebody can only squat to parallel going one inch lower is probably not going to light the world on fire from like a muscular growth perspective.

6:22So yeah, generally speaking, longer range of motion is better. But if there's not a big difference between like the current range of motion and the, you know, what somebody is targeting or being advised to do, I would not predict big differences in their sort of training outcomes with respect to hypertrophy. All right. Ithoma underscore will. I've been on your power building first generation program for about a year and I'm seeing a stall in strength gains. Should I switch to a another program or troubleshoot on the current one? I mean, I like that program, to be honest. But, you know, it's not I don't think it's going to work in perpetuity.

6:59And honestly, getting a year out of a single program, it's good freaking work, my man. If you like power built the power building style approach. I see no reason to modify that. I would just do something that has a higher training load. I I suspect that's the big issue here. Maybe with some exercise selection changes, depending on kind of where you're not seeing progress, you know, we can use that to address certain sticking points depending on why there's a sticking point for you. I think Power Building 2 or Power Building 3 would be a great option. and if you wanted something maybe a little bit more different but still keeping in the power building theme or setup, the low fatigue template, strength four, has a power building template in it that I love.

7:46I love that program. One of my favorite things I've ever created and ran. So those would be my recommendations. I would change the program. It'd probably still be a power building approach and go from there. Hopefully get another year out of it. That's very impressive. Nice job. what are those crunchy bits you feel during deep deep tissue massage well what it is um the massage therapist now this is what you don't know this is a secret secret that all massage therapists share and they they don't want you to know this the one weird thing they don't want you to know and i've said this before for a long time everybody knows i've said this cornflakes what they do is they they they buy this costco size thing of cornflakes and you don't know because You're face down.

8:29You got they got the ambiance going, the music. They got the incense going. So your sensorium is disrupted. And they actually they put cornflakes on their hands. And, you know, there's oil to keep it there because that's the massage. And then that's what you're hearing. It's cornflakes. Sorry, man. I wish it was something cooler than that, but it's just cornflakes. So.

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15:24Right. And so if you look back at the 2008 guidelines, they were saying it has to be 10 minutes at least. 2018 guidelines said five minutes, and then there's been some stuff coming out suggesting that literally any amount of exercise should be counted and is helpful. And yeah, we see that with these exercise snacks that last a minute or less than two minutes, a single set, all beneficial compared to less exercise or not exercising. Now, the more interesting argument or question here, I think, is that let's say you had somebody that was doing, let's say in your case, 20 minutes of conditioning per day, and it was separated into two 10-minute blocks of activity versus 20 minutes at a time.

16:07I don't think there's a big enough difference there to make a difference in like cardiovascular fitness, VO2 max, health trajectory, et cetera. But I do think performance-wise, it probably does get a little dicey when you start talking about like, okay, this person otherwise would do an hour of this specific conditioning work, or they're doing like six, 10-minute bouts. I think, generally speaking, longer, more continuous type stuff ends up being better for stimulating and generating cardiovascular fitness. But that's a different argument than this, which is more of just a participation thing, in my opinion.

16:47James underscore K719, caddied for Charlie Woods today, told him his dad should check out Barbell Medicine's work. If true, that's awesome. That's awesome. You know, I played golf yesterday, 19 ,000 steps around the course. I did walk, shot a 74, two over, three birdies against five bogeys. Not bad. And we were talking about the Ryder Cup picks. And so Bryson DeChambeau is going to be on the Ryder Cup. And we all agreed that as of right now for active players, he probably brings the biggest crowd, the most hype, et cetera, to the golf course. And the only person that could outdo him would be Tiger Woods.

17:22So you caddy for his kid. And he told him about Barbell Medicine. Listen, if true, thank you so much. If it's a lie, you got me. You got me. Dealing with back pain while being a strength athlete, how to get over it. I mean, yeah, I'm not going to tell you to get over it. Your back pain is real. It sucks. Being injured sucks. Not performing up to your expectations sucks. Having a modified training, suboptimal. I get it. But you have to persist. And that doesn't mean you have to persist in pain. but rather instead of just taking time off, that is definitively not the recommendation. I would have you stay as active as possible.

18:00I would still do resistance training, finding exercises that you can tolerate right now, and that's where you start your progression back to unrestricted movement. So if you can't deadlift from the floor right now, could you do a deadlift from below the knees like a rack bolt? Could you do it from above the knees? Could you do it with a trap bar? If you added a tempo, is that tolerable? If you increase the rep range, lighten the weight, is that possible? We cover all of this in pain and training, what do, the article, and then like the top three mistakes people make during rehab, those two articles, read those and see if you can find a way on your own to find a starting spot.

18:34If you need help, our pain and rehab team, best in the business, happy to help. We have a low back pain rehab template that also may be useful during this time, but you're going to get better. I just think you get better sooner if you keep training in a way that does not keep pissing off what's hurting right now. You've got to find something that's a little bit lower threat, more tolerable, and then you start from there. Are ortho bros recommendations for workout programs skewed because of what they see in practice? I mean, I don't know what orthopedic surgeons recommend for workout programs. I know some orthopedic surgeons, some of them have trained with me and they provide generally good recommendations on exercise.

19:16But I don't think doctors in general are good resources for exercise prescription. So – and that's not really their area of expertise. So I don't know that I'd be asking my physician for exercise recommendations unless that's something that they have a unique interest in and are well-trained in otherwise. And I think they would agree with that too. so yeah pretty much anything from an injury risk perspective from a doctor with respect to exercise I'm very skeptical of unless they are an expert in that space uh yeah hopefully that's that's helpful

19:50Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum:all right that is a wrap on this free sample of our bonus content that regularly goes out to our barbell medicine plus subscribers again to join head over to barbellmedicine.com slash plus and sign up to be a Barbell Medicine Plus member today. That's barbellmedicine.com slash plus. Thank you so much for listening. We'll catch you guys next time.