Use These 10 Exercises to Completely Transform Your Body - With Dr. John Rusin

19:46Shawn Stevenson:Amazing. This is so good. All right. I want to ask you, is this a good idea what I usually do, especially when I'm really loading the exercise and again, you're doing one leg at a time. If I'm really doing a heavy set, I'll actually do one leg, then I'll rest because I'm treating it like it's a full set of exercise, right? So I'll do my set, maybe rest for a minute before I do my other leg. I don't just go right to it. What do you think about that?

20:12Dr. John Rusin:There's two options. So that is one option. And I think if you are pushing absolute max capacity, especially in traditional strength schemes, so we're thinking like five to eight reps to absolute failure, meaning like that last rep probably took you six or seven seconds to raise up into the last rep of that concentric, maybe take a break and you probably need one to two minutes there because you're not only training the musculature. Like we said before, you're training that key leg, you're training on the stability factor on the opposite leg, and then more so you're training the core here. And because of that balance component, your vital metrics are going to skyrocket.

20:48Dr. John Rusin:So more than anything, you're just going to be fatigued centrally and you need to have that central fatigue reduced before you then go back in and get another hard and heavy set. But I'll be completely honest. I train the Bulgarian one to two times per week the last 15 years myself. I'm relatively strong in this particular lift, not some other ones, but this particular lift. And I do not rest between sides. What I choose to do is we always train the non-dominant side first. your weaker side first, because we're not symmetrical beings. Human beings are not the same right to left. We have size discrepancies, we have strength discrepancies, mobility discrepancies, even structural discrepancies in our bodies right to left.

21:30Dr. John Rusin:And that's totally fine. Anywhere at 10 % to 15 % difference right to left is what we can expect. So I know I have those discrepancies as well. So I have a non-dominant side on my left. So I always start my Bulgarian split squats on that left side. I get that one to failure knowing very well if I hit a five rep max on my left. Most likely I could probably get six on this side if it was fresh, but I have that central fatigue and most likely I match right and left sides if I go into my dominant side second, but I don't just go straight in. So you do five reps say on the left non-dominant side. You'll come back to central line.

22:06Dr. John Rusin:You'll have both feet on the ground. You'll still have the weights in your hand. one, two, three breaths, probably 15 seconds just to have your vital metrics not be spiking, just come down the tiniest bit, and then you're able to go in and repeat. I highly recommend that. What you're doing is not wrong, but what you're doing for the average person is probably not practical from a times perspective. Because you think about three to five sets of five to eight repetitions. Now you're resting two minutes between sides. You just had 12 to 14 minutes of your training session that you're resting additionally on top of probably all the other stuff that you need to do.

22:46Dr. John Rusin:Your warmups, your primers, your accessory movements, your cool downs. A lot of people just don't have that additional 12 to 14 minutes. From a practicality's perspective, I like just training them back to back, right, left, or left, right into right. I love it. I love it.

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25:58Shawn Stevenson:So again, head over there, check them out. DrinkLMNT.com forward slash model. And now back to the show. So number one, there's many ways to skin a cat, basically is what you're saying. And first of all, that's a terrible thing to say. Sorry. Sorry to all the cats. I'm so sorry. But also keeping this in context for me. So one of the things that I do, I usually go one leg right to the next in my, you know, like my warmup set. Or if I'm just, you know, maybe I'm just doing one kettlebell. I'm just doing like kind of this accessory work or working up to my working sets. And I'll do two heavy working sets.

26:34Shawn Stevenson:Right. So that's when I'll split up the time. And so, again, many different ways to go about this. But I love the practicality of it. And again, most of the time, most sets that I've ever done, I'll go right to the next leg. So this isn't a black or white thing. This is a paying attention to what your goals are, the structure of your programming. and this is what I love about you too, man. There's so many different ways. You're paying attention to the programming. It's not just about, you know, this kind of cookie cutter approach to things. And we'll talk more about that. But again, what we're starting off here today with are 10 of the most high ROI exercises on the face of the earth that you could possibly do that you're likely not taking advantage of.

27:17Shawn Stevenson:And also the nuances, that's what we're getting from you. The next one on our list is neutral grip pull-ups. Why neutral grip pull-ups?

27:28Dr. John Rusin:All right, so the neutral grip is threefold. It is the safest position on the shoulder because, again, you're in neutral grip, so you actually open up the shoulder girdle in order to not have a lot of stress that's coming through the front side. So you're actually externally rotating slightly. That opens up some of those gaps so you can have some slide glide of all those structures in there. Second thing is that as soon as you go to neutral grip, all of a sudden you have a lot more key musculature at your disposal. It's not only the lats. You know, the pull-up is not a lat exercise. Automatically, the pull-up is going to be lat plus upper back always.

28:02Dr. John Rusin:But when you go into the neutral grip, you have the ability to use the biceps and also the forearms. And then lastly, the neutral grip is very interesting because it allows people that don't necessarily have this complete overhead 100 degrees of range of motion to get into a better position to be able to train a full range of motion and a complete range of motion in the pull-up just because they have their shoulder blades actually working the way that we want them to, their hand position dictating their shoulder position, and the neutral grip, as crazy as it sounds, because your hands are out in front of the body relative to behind the body in a regular pull-up, you actually have more core recruitment, it actually puts your core and your pelvis in a better position to be strong.

28:44Shawn Stevenson:I love this already. Okay. Now, what about an on-ramp for people? If somebody can't just jump up and grab a neutral grip, pull up bar position and do the pull up, what are some progressions?

28:58Dr. John Rusin:There's two that I'll use predominantly. And I'll mention one that I do not use. Many people will go and gravitate towards the pull up machine at the gym. They'll put their knees on a pad, you know, they'll put the selectorized unit in there. They'll put their hands in that position. They'll start doing pull-ups, but that really doesn't show the functionality of what a pull-up actually is. You know, because it's high ROI, it means that we're training full body. We need to, that's not just the lats in the upper back moving. We're not just moving the weight. We need to be in open space. We don't need to have the core and also the pelvis and the lower body, uh, really in the whole movement pattern itself.

29:35Dr. John Rusin:So that is not one that I recommend because I see that many people will go into the pull-up machine and they'll never leave the pull-up machine. You'll like be there forever.

29:43Shawn Stevenson:It's like purgatory.

29:44Dr. John Rusin:But if you want to progress through pull-ups, two options that you can do, you can start using banded accommodating resistance, meaning that you can go right up on the pull-up bar. You can put your hands into neutral grip or any other grip, and you're going to have the band that is going to be supporting your body weight, either positioned on your feet or predominantly on your knees. If you do a bent knee variation of the pull-up, which I really like as soon as you start getting load. So it's not just the hollow body position, but actually bent knee with the knees forward. So that is one that I really like because it allows us to accommodate the pull-up, meaning that the bottom and the weakest range of motion, the band is going to be most stretched out and it's going to assist us out of that bottom weak position.

30:25Dr. John Rusin:And it's going to less and less and less give us assistance as we get to the top where we're stronger from a muscular length tension relationship. it. So you're able to train the pattern. You're able to do the thing that looks like the thing. You're able to have your core also integrated with it. But the key is that you need to be able to train that consistent enough to be able to make progress with it. So that's the closest one to the actual skill of doing a pull-up. And that's the closest one because you're actually on the pull-up bar itself. Now, the second one is one that I use with a lot of people that have excess body weight, or they're just larger individuals.

31:01Dr. John Rusin:One of my training partners is 285 pounds. And about 10 months ago, he had the goal of doing a pull-up and he'd never done a pull-up. You know, he's benched 500 pounds. He's squatted 700 pounds. Pull-up has always like evaded him. So we go in and we use the second variation that I like for building pull-up capacity. You put a bar in the rack and it could be a neutral bar. If you want to do neutral grip pull-ups, it could be a barbell. if you want to do chin or regular pull-ups, and we have the feet down on the ground. And we have it so when you're bent at the hips and bent at the knees, you're through a full range of motion, but then you're using your legs to assist only where you need it.

31:38Dr. John Rusin:And it's a little bit of a kick of the feet into the ground to assist through that range of motion. And that's more of a constant assistance versus an accommodating resistance with the band. But that one works extraordinarily well for people, especially ones that are more in tune with their body because they can make it hard automatically with the ranges of motion that they need to make it hard on and they can get that boost. And more specifically, you can get into the rep schemes and the actual sets and reps that you need to dictate intensity and also volume to progress. So it's almost like auto-regulating your pull-ups with your feet on the ground.

32:13Dr. John Rusin:The key is that you just can't cheat every single rep.

32:16Shawn Stevenson:this is awesome all right i want to add one more in here see what you think about this so i was training my son and his friend who's also his basketball teammate and my son can do around eight to ten clean pull-ups now and his teammate you know we use a band but he got to a place where he can do like two to three clean pull-ups yeah and then i come in and i assist him yeah with the last few. So like I'll, you know, grab around his hips and help elevate him. And he gets that like additional input and I'll help just enough so that he can do the reps. What do you think about that?

32:53Dr. John Rusin:That's great. So that's a manual version of the foot assistance that we were talking about. And the thing that assistance allows you to do is take full advantage with your full body weight over the lowering, the eccentric aspect of the pull-up. And that's really where you're lengthening everything out, out of tension and under load. So that can get people strong. Anyone who builds muscle or builds strength knows that lowering a little bit slower under constant tension, it keeps people really engaging with the movement. And that throws a lot of blood flow to the area and also a lot of tension through the area.

33:28Dr. John Rusin:So that is one thing that can really, really help people. So many times you're not going to fail on the lower range, right? That makes no sense. Gravity is at our disposal. You're going to fail on the raising up and the pull up or really any other movement. So being able to assist, it's almost like the equivalent of like force reps for a bodybuilder. You know, you can't raise it anymore. Somebody assists you and then you get that eccentric lowering back out something like a bicep curl. It's not just for biceps. You can also do it on any other movement pattern. A pull-up is a very good example of that.

33:56Dr. John Rusin:So those manual boosts help a lot because, you know, using your son's teammate as an example, him just doing one to two reps, it's not going to do anything for him because all of a sudden you're training at the highest end, one, two RM. That's like a max effort lift. Like you can't put volume on that. You can't get enough exposure to gain skills. So you got to get them into a rep scheme that I can actually get them exposure. So that's usually like the fives, eights, or even like the eights up into the fifteens to get enough accrued volume to get the stimulus that we're after. So anything that can get you quality reps with good range of motion, with tension and control, and gets you into a rep scheme that lines up with your goal scheme, that is always going to be advantageous.

34:37Shawn Stevenson:Amazing. Yeah. This just reminded me too, this is how my wife, this was like eight years ago since she's done her pull-ups. She was about that life for a minute, but this is how I helped her to get to her first pull-ups, you know, because also in the gym that we were at, like there's like a universal gym and the bar is super high, not really, uh, accessible for like putting a band situation per se easily. So basically she, I would help her. I would kind of, she'd jump up there and I help her even to jump up and grab the, the bar. And then I would just assist her in doing pull-ups. And then over time, she was able to jump up there and knock a couple out herself.

35:11Shawn Stevenson:And then I would assist her with the rest of the reps. And so again, it's just very, this speaks to the value of having a training partner as well. And I think we really undervalue that of having your coach there, a trainer or a gym buddy, for sure. Because those last reps, man, that's really where the biggest difference can happen.

35:31Dr. John Rusin:I think even on the pull-up too, a lot of people are focused only on body weight or, you know, getting that first body weight rep or getting that first set of 10. We go a totally different direction at Pain Free Performance. We want to treat the pull-up as the same as every other big key performance indicator lift. The same as a trap bar deadlift or a Bulgarian split squat or a bench press. meaning that we want to go hard and heavy. We want to actually add load to the pull-up and loaded pull-ups are an amazing exercise. Once you get there, you can take off onto a whole new performance trajectory and it is safe.

36:08Dr. John Rusin:It's effective. You're training a full complete range of motion. You're training the core. You're training your grip strength. Loaded pull-ups are awesome. I'm going to humble brag here for a second. I'm not the strongest or the biggest guy in the world. I'm getting up there in age, but just four days ago, I was able to hit a lifetime PR on my neutral grip pull-up. And I did 152 and a half pounds around my waist in a dip belt. And I got it for a single rep. And that took four years to get up to. And that was something that I never thought I could do. But it wasn't just practicing more pull-ups.

36:40Dr. John Rusin:Because all of a sudden, you show that on Instagram and people are like, whoa, how do you do that? It was a 12-week plan? It's like, no, this was a lot of different factors in it. The pull-up, you need to be strong, right? You need to have grip strength. You need to have pull strength, but you also need to have core strength and hip stability that can actually facilitate you using the strength that you have at your upper body and your pull pattern. So a lot of the things that I was working on to get over 150 pounds for the first time was all at the hips and the core. Those were my weak links. And by strengthening those weak links, it actually facilitated, um, you know, two and a half pounds more than I've ever done, even in my twenties.

37:16Dr. John Rusin:So that was one thing that you always need to look at is that the pull-up is not just for the arms. It's not just for the back. When you're starting to get into loaded pull-ups or actually training them like every other exercise and not making them the exception to the rule, it's something that you need to put the pieces together. And many times people fail on pull-ups because of their core and because of their hips. So true. That's so true. How much was that PR again? 152 and a half pounds. So that's three 45s and then a 10 and a five and

37:49Shawn Stevenson:two and a half that is that's crazy man that is crazy incredible incredible you know over the years again somebody that can i could do you know 25 pull-ups right and to really get the value out of it and to be more efficient as well adding that load was super helpful so again wearing a weighted vest or having the the dip belt it's called a dip belt and you know having some plates dangling between your legs as well. Or back in the day, actually, the first iteration of like a weighted pull-up that I did was grabbing a dumbbell with my feet. I don't know where I got the idea, but this was like, I don't know, 20 something years ago.

38:31Shawn Stevenson:But I would get up, actually the bar, rather than jumping up, I just stand on the dumbbell and then just pick it up with my feet and do a weighted pull-up like that.

38:40Dr. John Rusin:I love the different variations. So anytime that you can get your feet straight, your knees straight, that's called a hollow body. Hollow body is going to put the most amount of core intensity onto the system. So a hollow body is great for body weight pull-ups, or even if you're playing with like, hey, I want to add five, 10, 15 pounds on the system. Maybe you put a kettlebell and you hook it to your foot. Maybe you grab a dumbbell with your feet. You're able to actually create tension. And the reason that that works for a vast majority of people is you get your adductors involved. You get your glutes involved.

39:09Dr. John Rusin:All of a sudden your adductors and glutes feed stability at your pelvis. That makes your core more stable and people are able to get really strong off that. As soon as you get up into like the 45, 90, 135 pounds, put that dip belt on and make sure that you're doing a safe setup. That's going to be key. Getting your hands on the rack, have your feet on the box, step into it with respect. But I think vast majority of people do really well putting something between their knees or even putting a dumbbell or a kettlebell between their feet.

39:39Shawn Stevenson:This makes so much sense. Thank you. Thank you. All right, let's move on to number four here, Romanian deadlifts. What are Romanian deadlifts? How does that differ from what we were talking about earlier?

39:50Dr. John Rusin:Yeah. So a Romanian deadlift starts from a neutral position. So you can think standing upright. That is where you're going to start your most pure form of the hip hinge. So a Romanian deadlift is going to be the purest hip translation backwards and also forwards. So you can think about it as a stiff leg deadlift, Romanian deadlift. It is more emphasis on the glutes and the hamstrings and it has less knee bend associated. It doesn't mean that we're totally stiff. It doesn't mean that we have straight knees. It just means that the hips are the key driver in this deadlift variation. And the reason that I like it, and I get a lot of flack for saying this, but I do believe that the Romanian deadlift is the best of all hinge variations because we have three things at our disposal.

40:35Dr. John Rusin:We have the ability to lengthen the hamstrings at full range of motion from the top going down to the bottom and it can be customized range of motion automatically for the accessibility that somebody has with the neutral spine position and also keeping the tension on the hamstrings and the glutes where we want it. So that's the first one. From a mobility perspective, awesome for the hamstrings going through a full length. From a muscular targeting perspective, because we have the load in front of our body, we're able to actually get length at the hamstrings at the bottom and a hard flex against load coming back into a neutral position of the glutes at the top.

41:09Dr. John Rusin:Hamstring stretch plus glute flex, those work really well for muscular hypertrophy specifically. And then the last one is because we have a more vertical shin angle, the more vertical shin angle means that we're able to practice a more dominant hip hinge. The hip hinge is one of these movement patterns of all six foundational movement patterns that people just misuse, abuse, and neglect. So the RDL teaches them how to use their hips again. It automatically makes them use their hips as opposed to compensating with a forward knee or bending their knee, trying to squat their deadlift, so to say. So all three of those factors make RDL super awesome.

41:49Dr. John Rusin:They're strong, they improve mobility, and from a muscular hypertrophy perspective, they far outperform a traditional barbell deadlift.

41:57Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. Is this why so many people experience like that soreness from this versus everything else?

42:04Dr. John Rusin:Yeah. So when you're starting at a neutral position at the top and your eccentric lowering is the first portion of the RDL, that is where you can get a huge amount of load on the system and start lowering slowly. So you think about that tension, building, building, building, hitting N range of motion, full and complete range of motion under load is always going to lead to, oh man, I felt that the next day. And that's a good thing because you think about chronic tightness in the human body, the hamstrings are probably one out of three places that are always the thing that you hear from people. Why is your lower back hurt?

42:36Dr. John Rusin:Oh, my hamstrings are tight. I need to stretch them more. Well, maybe, but you also should be stretching under load and the RDL is the best way to do that.

42:44Shawn Stevenson:Would you recommend one or the other when it comes to like dumbbells or kettlebells versus a barbell? I like dumbbells specifically

42:53Dr. John Rusin:because you can place them not directly in front of the body, not to the side of the body, but as you go down, you can actually manipulate your hand position to place the load where you want it. So we have a dynamic hand position with dumbbells specifically with the RDL. That is my favorite variation. Dumbbells in both hands, RDL from the top down and being able to at the stretch of the lower end of the aspect of the range of motion, you have the dumbbells more in front of you. And as you pull up into the top range where you're standing in neutral, you have them more to the side of you. So you're thinking about having your hands kind of the side of your kneecaps.

43:27Shawn Stevenson:Got it. Got it. Well, speaking of dumbbells, number five on our list here is dumbbell rows. All right. Why is this in this top 10 for ROI?

43:38Dr. John Rusin:Think about the single arm dumbbell row is the Bulgarian split squat of the upper body. You are unilateral training one side at a time. You are blasting your core. You're integrating your hips. And you got that same, oh shit, moment when you finish one side and have to move on to the other. But the reason that I like single arm dumbbell rows specifically or any unilateral row is because you have the ability to have a dynamic hand position where you're rotating naturally. You get the lats and the upper back involved and that is recruited back to the core and the hips. So it's a very integrated pull pattern.

44:12Dr. John Rusin:And you think about just like the functional transference of rowing on a single arm. That's everything that we do in life. We're naturally rowing, rotating, and we're stabilizing with our lower body in an asymmetrical stance. And it also is going to be very core intensive. I also like it because it's a key driver of functional hypertrophy. You can get big and strong doing it. And you can also get the transference back to the things that matter, which are being able to keep the core and the hips integrated while you're doing a pull pattern. So there are times and places where you want to isolate out the rows, where you want to have a chest supported row versus a core intensive row.

44:48Dr. John Rusin:But in terms of ROI, what we're talking about today, the more bang furry buck you can get, you can get the upper back and the lats growing. You can get strong and stable. You can facilitate shoulder health because you're moving through full and complete ranges of motion into neutral and external rotated shoulder positions. That is just going to train so much in just one simple exercise.

45:07Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. Would you prefer that we use a bench for this exercise?

45:10Dr. John Rusin:Yeah. So the two ways that I really like to train it is something called a three point. So you're going to have one knee down on the bench. You're going to have the opposite hand down on the bench as well. You're going to put your one leg out to the side and you're going to be able to row from that. So the three points are going to be your knee, your hand and your opposite foot out to the side. So that's the one that I really like because you can feel it instantly right in your lateral core. So you're going to feel that tension kick on and you're like, wow, I can really feel this good. And then you can also place your glutes in a position to really stabilize that movement as well.

45:42Dr. John Rusin:So very rarely do we have somebody that's not like, man, I feel this in my ass, I feel this in my core, and my back just got a huge pump. That's a win, win, win. The other thing that you can do is if you want a little bit more hip intensive in terms of the stability, as you can split your stance, you can have your hand down on a bench or a rack or an elevated surface, and you can do a single arm dumbbell row from a split stance position with both feet on the ground as well.

46:05Shawn Stevenson:Got it. Amazing. Amazing. All right. This one, thank goodness, is rising more in public consciousness. So much value here. Number six on our list here is the farmer's carry. Talk about that one.

46:22Dr. John Rusin:I mean, what's more natural than walking? Walking is the most human movement on earth. So we might as well walk under load if we want to get maximal value from it. So farmers carry, the traditional one is putting two loads in your hands, both hands, and walking across space. And you can do this in a magnitude of different ways. You can put load on one side of the body versus the other side of the body. You can not only walk forward, you can walk backward. We can walk in circles. We can walk to the side. We can put load over a hand. We could split the load one high, one low. just being able to carry load through space that is going to be key because it allows us to kick on everything we call the loaded carry the full body functional diagnostic because there's nothing that it doesn't train it'll train your grip it'll train your shoulders your core your glutes your ability to balance on single leg as you're walking and having your gait being active it trains everything and it also has a full body strength effect with metabolic capacity that can build as well.

47:26Shawn Stevenson:Now, obviously, and you've seen the evolution of the plank taking over in popular culture. I love this so much more because in a way, if you want to frame it like this, which is not exactly accurate, but just for people who love planks, it's like a walking plank. That's well said. Right? It's like a walking plank. And in addition, you were really, especially again, if you're doing, you know, like a suitcase carry, right? With one side, that activation of the opposite side of your core, your obliques, like so much more is kicking into action. Plus you're getting this benefit of like actually moving your body through space versus just the static position, which there's value there.

48:09Shawn Stevenson:But I just think you get so much more ROI. There's so much popularity

48:13Dr. John Rusin:of loaded carries today. And I love to see it. Our gym, I see people that are in their 20s and they're loaded carrying trap bars across the floor with three, 400 pounds on them for 30 seconds. I'm like, hell yeah. I see people in their 60s and their 70s carrying dumbbells across the ground and going around the weight equipment. And I'm like, man, this is awesome as well. I see everybody doing carries today because it's become more popular. I see people carrying dumbbells. I see them carrying kettlebells, trap bars, sandbags, you name it. And it is a beautiful thing because when you talk about accessibility, this is a huge accessible movement that we can do.

48:50Dr. John Rusin:Most everybody walking into the gym can walk. And when we put load onto walking, that means that we can place load on the people's system that may be in pain, may have movement patterns that are, you know, not really active and not being able to be trained hard and heavy. So this is a safe and effective way to load almost everybody. You know, from youth athletes, I'm using them with my youth athletes all the time. It teaches them how to coordinate their shoulders, hips to move and reciprocate. And then I'm using them with my active agers, you know, 60s, 70s, and 80s, and clients that are moving through, you know, their later years in life.

49:26Dr. John Rusin:And the ROI is just so high on them. And the number one way I like to program these is metabolic finishers. So a loaded carry, it's super stressful on the system. It's like, hey, we have like one ounce of energy left, we're going to put it into a loaded carry. This is the way that we use it on the tail end of a training session. So say you go through full body or upper lower day, whatever it may be, there's nothing that a loaded carry for three to five minutes intervals on the tail end of a training day can't help. I think it's the perfect way to end a training session is that it's hard, your heart rate's up, your grip's going, your shoulders are burning, your glutes are on fire, your core is just locked in.

50:04Dr. John Rusin:And then you know what? After we do that, we go lay on the ground and we recover.

50:08Shawn Stevenson:Wow. I'm doing this on accident sometimes because, you know, we'll bring some dumbbells or kettlebells to the park and train at the park. And then we got to carry that shit back at the very end. And it's just like, and I start hearing the conversation in my head, just sit them down, just sit them down, just sit them down. But I'm like, just another, you know, 50 feet, I can make it, I can make it. And as you just mentioned that to be like a finisher at the end of your workout, you could add this to, you know, different training days as well. You know, whether it's upper body or lower body day.

50:38Dr. John Rusin:So we saw, this is an interesting story. So we're seeing chalk on the treadmills in the gym and we're like, the hell? Why would there be chalk on the treadmills? So there's all these deadlifting platforms. There's these beautiful squat racks. We have the powerlifting combo racks. We have everything, but the chalk is in the treadmills. The heck? People are actually now doing this for three to five minutes at a time, grabbing two kettlebells, walking on the treadmills to finish off their training days. And I'm like, you wouldn't have seen that 10 years ago. certainly not 20 years ago, but today people are seeing the value of just being able to be strong from a GPP perspective, a general physical preparations perspective, being able to carry load through space.

51:17Dr. John Rusin:If they're doing it on the treadmills with chalk, you know, they're getting serious and you know, that's part of popular gym culture today.

51:22Shawn Stevenson:Wow. Yeah. I saw like a CSI moment, you know, you go over to the treadmill, there's some chocolate chalk, powder, baby powder. who's, who's, you know, what's the story here? So this is amazing, man. Well, we're going to move on to number seven here. And this is so incredible. Thank you so much for sharing these insights. There are a ton of different lunges, forward lunges, lateral lunges, walking lunges. Number seven on this list of high ROI exercises that most people are not taking advantage of is the reverse lunge. Let's talk about that. Why the reverse lunge? So the reverse lunge, I always get that

52:00Dr. John Rusin:question, why? Why not forward lunges? Forward lunges are great, but they are very high in terms of the motor skill acquisition of being able to step your body through space, decelerate your body moving forward, and putting a huge amount of stress on the knee because you have to hit that break into the eccentric. So that's something that we progress to, but in terms of ROI, being able to be accessible and safe and heavy loaded for people, moving in the opposite direction is great. and it comes down to being able to have the working leg stay static on the ground the entire time. If you have the working leg stay static, meaning that you have ground contact, you have more constant tension in the system for the key musculature.

52:38Dr. John Rusin:Again, for the reverse lunge, it's going to be a combination of the glutes and the quads and the hamstrings being able to stabilize the backside. We have far more load capacity on the reverse lunge. We have people mitigate knee stress on the reverse lunge. We have less lower back stress on the reverse lunge And we have, again, loading capacity that is probably 30 plus percent higher than its forward lunge counterpart. This is one that we start almost everybody at. And it is their first ability to actually start stepping through space, which can then facilitate strength gains, but also balance and motor control gains that we want people to have, especially as they're moving through things like active aging.

53:18Shawn Stevenson:Now, what about are we alternating legs? Are we doing one side and then the other side?

53:23Dr. John Rusin:This is a great question. So you have the two options. So you can go alternating, which would be right, left, right, left, stepping backwards, or you have non-alternating. So we will start off if the gains are muscle and strength emphasis in terms of a goal set, we will train non-alternating. So we will keep the constant tension on the key working musculature, and we will do, say, 10 reps on the left, and then we will transition to 10 reps on the right. the times where we start doing alternating because you have to then reset the tension on the key musculature is where we're chasing higher end reps games so you're thinking 20 25 30 reps or even a time set you're thinking about wanting to have this be trained with the key musculature that is when we'll start an alternating fashion so both of those are really good but when the goal is lower end reps higher end load non-alternating is going to be preferred when the goal is just kicking your ass and just like testing your limits, alternating is going to be really good when you're chasing higher end rep schemes or just trying to go to pure failure.

54:26Shawn Stevenson:Great. Thank you for this context. I love this. Okay. We're going to move on to number eight here on our list of these 10 high value, high ROI exercises that most people are not taking advantage of. This next one in a certain demographic has exploded in popularity, but most people, I don't think understand the value and they're definitely not utilizing it. Number eight on the list is the hip thrust.

54:52Dr. John Rusin:Hip thrust. We talked about this last time I was in the glutes. The glutes are key, not only for the ladies, but for the men. But being able to have a strong posterior chain, that lines us up for almost improvements on every single type of goal. Athletic performance, clearly aesthetics, but also health and longevity. But the hip thrust is a great exercise because we have max loading, we have max control. And in terms of ROI, you have stability from the feet on the ground, you have stability from the back on a bench or an elevated surface, and all that support leads to accessibility for people being able to do it.

55:27Dr. John Rusin:So I will say definitively that I have clients that are coming in with lower back pain and injuries, being able to be accessible on the hip thrust. I have clients that are coming in trying to step on stage, trying to build their glutes to have a better aesthetic. They're going onto the hip thrust. I have sports performance athletes that need to get bigger, faster, stronger, they're going into the hip thrust. And I think that we just need to be pushing more volume into the glutes and the posterior chain because there is such a high ROI, safe, effective, and also accessible for everybody. But man, people love to hate on the hip thrusts.

56:00Dr. John Rusin:It's like a camp, either you're for them or against them. Whereas I look at them as just another exercise that has the ability to have a positive return on investment no matter the goal. So it's very well-rounded.

56:15Shawn Stevenson:Literally very well-rounded. Yeah. I see that. I see it. Now the question is, you know, with the, with this particular movement and the value that I think is overlooked is the fact that the glutes are this largest, are the largest kind of single, singular muscle group in the body, like, you know, fiber for fiber. And you have so much muscular capacity there, right? So whether we're talking about the metabolic benefits or the performance benefits, because so much of our movement, especially explosive movement, heavily relies on our glutes. Talk about that a little bit more.

56:55Dr. John Rusin:Well, the glutes are the thickest muscle in the human body, specifically the glute max. And it has the ability to get bigger and stronger, of course, but it also ties in everything above and below it. So you think about the hips being the intermediary joint of the entire body, not the spine, but the hips themselves. So they are the cross linkages between the entire lower body and the core and the upper body. So being able to train them specifically in different ways is huge because you can have the transference. If you go on single leg, you can have the max capacity for strength or muscle mass.

57:33Dr. John Rusin:When you're going double leg, you can manipulate range of motion. You can manipulate foot position, back position, tempo, ranges of motion, bar position. But I think the one thing that gets people like, eh, I don't want a hip thrust. You know, anecdotally, I've heard a ton of this, is it just kind of sucks bringing a barbell over. And if you're relatively strong, you're loading this thing up with four or five, six plates per side. Then you're having to figure out how not to hit the barbell right in your pelvis. And then you're trying to figure out how the bench doesn't slide behind you. And there's like all these different ways that this exercise can theoretically suck.

58:07Dr. John Rusin:And I'll be the first one to tell you that I don't program a lot of traditional barbell hip thrusts on a bench for this exact reason. The setup is arduous and really the accessibility of being able to do it consistently and safely, it lacks luster. So we end up doing a lot of different variations and there's so many different great pieces of machinery out there. You know, there's hip thrust machines now in almost every single gym. You know, thanks to Brett Contreras, right? He is the founder of the hip thrust. He is the creator of the hip thrust, the popular guy, the glute guy. And now he's shown that, hey, this is popular gym culture today.

58:45Dr. John Rusin:There's a lot of people that are now innovating machines based on, you know, 15 or 20 years ago, this not even being a thing. So we use a lot of hip thrust machines. If there is a machine in the gym for a client of mine, they're using the hip thrust machine. If there's no machine, we're using a Smith machine. And very rarely are we just putting a normal barbell onto somebody just because of all the variables that kind of make it inaccessible. And one of the most common ways that I'll use hip thrusts is heavy banded hip thrusts. This is going to be hugely accessible because all you need is a bench and a band.

59:18Dr. John Rusin:So we hook them around your waist, we hook them around your heels, whatever you have. And sometimes we even use a mini band around the knees in order to do something called a double banded hip thrust. so we're able to actually get all the benefits from hip thrusting probably if you're using bands instead of 400 pounds of load you're chasing 50 75 100 reps to pure failure knowing very well that that can build muscle as well those are ways that it just makes it more accessible but it needs to be said that a hip thrust is not just with the barbell the hip thrust is the movement itself and there's many different ways to train it and i think based on people's capacity to kind of like embrace the suck of a setup or they just want to get in and out and get the benefits from that all all-time great movement pattern, there's different ways to train it.

1:00:01Dr. John Rusin:We can't just be so one-minded and like, hey, this is the one way to do this exercise. If only a barbell was accessible with the bench, it probably wouldn't be as great of an exercise as it is today.

1:00:11Shawn Stevenson:Well said. Well said. We're going to move on to number nine here. Again, this one's going to come with some explanation. All right. Loaded pushups. Loaded pushups. Why? Number one, why pushup versus chest press, chest press machine, all these things, specifically loaded pushups plus.

1:00:32Dr. John Rusin:What does this mean? It's personally offensive to a vast majority of people, right? Like no bench press. What do you mean? No bench press. It's because there's an open chain way to push and there's a closed chain way to push. And I know a vast majority of people out there are already doing a lot of bench press. So the ability to actually get our hands on the ground versus putting our hands on a bar or even dumbbells for that matter, it totally changes the movement itself. So let's go back to why we would be training the pushup in general. By having your hands on the ground, that's called a closed kinematic chain.

1:01:08Dr. John Rusin:A closed kinematic chain means that we have natural abilities of the shoulder blades to be free, to slide, to glide, to dynamically stabilize. And we think about the ability to have a dynamically stabilized shoulder blade as one of the key influences of long-term shoulder health. So if you're not doing push-ups every single week in your programming, you're leaving a lot of chance for your long-term shoulder health. So being able to have your hands on the ground is a superpower, especially if you haven't done it before. But also just being able to have your hands on the ground comes with limiting factors.

1:01:42Dr. John Rusin:Because somebody does a push-up, usually they'll treat them in one of two ways. They'll use them as a warm-up before they go in and do something, so they'll just do some sloppy half-rep push-ups, or they'll treat them as like a, hey, it's a military test. How many pushups straight can you do? And it turns into muscular endurance instead of muscular hypertrophy or even muscular strength. I'm a big believer that functional strength is strong under load through a complete range of motion. A normal pushup doesn't qualify in either of those two factors. So thinking about being able to have a pushup plus, meaning that your hands are elevated on a surface so you can actually dip the chest closer to the ground while not having the ground limit your range of motion, that is the plus factor in the pushup plus.

1:02:26Dr. John Rusin:So it's actually a complete range of motion and that can be dictated by what somebody has. Usually if you go two to three inches of hands on like yoga blocks, for example, that is a great way to be able to do it. That allows us to do horizontal push pattern, free the shoulder blades, have the hands on the ground from a closed chain perspective and do a full range of motion. Man, is that a big bang for your buck exercise right there. And especially for people that have done a lot of pushups in their life, as soon as you add that additional one, two, three, maybe even four inches of range of motion, you get your hands on dumbbells.

1:03:00Dr. John Rusin:You get your hands on kettlebells. You allow yourself to train at a full range of motion. That not only gets you stronger at length, but that is actually a key muscular hypertrophy driver as well. You know, being able to train a position under load, under stretch, man, that's where the gains are going to be made. shoulder health, hypertrophy, strength, and then being able to add load to that. We do in the form of bands around the shoulders, plate around the lower back or the upper back. A little bit goes a long way. Kind of the same conversation that we're having with pull-ups and push-ups. You know, the tradition of those two, it's like, oh, they're bodyweight exercises.

1:03:39Dr. John Rusin:They can also be great loaded exercises for actually getting strong as well. So don't just treat the push-up as a basic exercise, treat it as a full range of motion exercise by elevating the hands, but also add it as a progressive strength exercise with progressive overload still being in play.

1:03:57Shawn Stevenson:Oh man, this one is really special for me because as time has gone on, I've become less and less of a fan of laying on my back and pushing weight overhead because it's just like, it doesn't translate for me, you know? And I get it. Like I was, you know, we'll say my heaviest bench press was somewhere around 300 pounds. I was like 165. It's pretty impressive. Yeah. But just the degree, the safety as well, but also just the translation. Like when am I pushing anything off of me laying on my back? Unless I'm a fighter. Yeah. Unless maybe I got to, you know, move my wife off of me. But now just to see something that's more, I push myself up off the ground all the time, all the time in the real world.

1:04:43Shawn Stevenson:And, you know, or at least, you know, I'm a fan of like sitting chest press machines as well. But with this being said, the thing that I tend to do the most now, but just before even talking to you today, is to put on a heavyweighted vest and to grab a couple of those pushup handlebars. Yes. And I'll do, again, because that allows a greater stretch. So getting me closer to the ground and I'll do like an eccentric, like a really slow on the way down. so maybe like five seconds and then kind of exploding up a little bit quicker you know like one to two seconds up and man that will whoo man the the the input itself but i wouldn't have thought that that would be as valuable as you know benching like even in the on a seated chest press machine i'll put four plates on each side easy maybe four plus a couple 25s huge amount of weight but then And I'll turn around and do this pushup.

1:05:38Shawn Stevenson:And these smoke me because I'm focusing on this eccentric portion and also, you know, loading the exercise with the weighted vest and also just the dynamic of the pushup itself. And so much more my body is being called upon to stabilize me. So, and I just, I, I just lean towards that now. Like I'm more attracted to that than these other things.

1:06:00Dr. John Rusin:I think sometimes people think like, oh, you're doing pushups. That's such a basic exercise. that's regress. You know, I'm too advanced. I'm too strong to do that. I need to keep on bench pressing. I'll give an example of just like the last couple of months, I was working with the world's strongest power lifter, John Hack. And he is an extraordinarily strong jacked human being right in Madison, Wisconsin, shout out. But he was struggling with a little bit of his shoulder pain. And, you know, this is somebody that is benching in the high five hundreds. And the one thing that we started to do with his training was we started putting pushups into his warmup.

1:06:35Dr. John Rusin:And then we started doing hands on ground shoulder mobility work, very simple things. And he just competed two weeks ago, 584 pound bench press. And then he trained with me three days later, strong and healthy and pain-free at the shoulders in the gym. And he told me that the one thing that made the biggest of differences is a lot of the things that he was doing with his hands on the ground, because he'd never had his hands on the ground before. So it just begs the question is like, hey, if somebody's benching almost 600 pounds is able to get his shoulders healthy while putting that amount of stress on the body and he's seeing the positive improvements from it, it means that it's for everybody.

1:07:14Dr. John Rusin:And it's for everybody because again, shoulder health is key today. The number one most painful area on the body amongst active people. We need to start doing more to being able to bulletproof and just maintain our shoulder health. And it's not just about doing more corrective exercises or even more stretching. It's being able to have more exercise variation, especially when it comes to more of the traditional patterns, aka bench press. I'm not saying not to bench press, but also working hands on the ground movements as well. Your shoulders will thank you. Amazing.

1:07:48Shawn Stevenson:We're thanking you already. We're at number 10 here on this list of high ROI exercises. Number 10 is the goblet squat. Talk about that.

1:07:58Dr. John Rusin:Goblet squat is a killer. It is a killer for so many reasons. It is the best full body functional squat pattern and exercise that there is. So you place a dumbbell or a kettlebell right in front of the chest, actively squeezing it, actively stabilizing it, actively front racking it, and then you're able to go through your squat pattern off of a bilateral stance at the lower body. Now, the goblet squat is very special because it facilitates a more natural squat pattern. Because we have a heavy load in front of the body, that allows us to counter that load by sitting our hips back, by shifting our knees forward over the toes, by getting more depth, by keeping a little bit more of a vertical spine position, and being able to have more spine-friendly for reducing the sheer stress on the spine.

1:08:46Dr. John Rusin:So this allows people to simply squat with a higher degree of proficiency. it feels better, it functions better, more depth, better looking reps, and we're able to load the system with it. And I will mention if you're loading it hard and heavy enough, it is devastatingly effective, especially when taken to failure. And I'm talking about technique and form failure. And that is one that anyone who's ever done our goblet squat challenge will attest to that this will test you no matter how big or strong or how good a squatter you think you are.

1:09:19Shawn Stevenson:Amazing, amazing. Can you give a brief on what the goblet squat challenge is? What does the weight look like for that?

1:09:25Dr. John Rusin:It's very simple. So it's relative to your body weight. So you're gonna take 50 % of your body weight and you're gonna take it in a dumbbell. You're gonna front rack it in a goblet position and you are gonna get as many reps as humanly possible through your full and complete range of motion without resting. So the goal is to break 25 reps. So that is passing our goblet squat challenge. World record is 73. It is my colleague and pain-free performance master instructor, Clifton Harsky. And he did it at 207 pounds at the time. So not a small guy being able to do that type of stuff. So the Goblet Squat Challenge, it shows that you're a proficient squatter.

1:10:05Dr. John Rusin:It shows that you can stand up under load. You have fatigue factor in terms of your stability. And you're able to kind of embrace the suck of going through something that is going to be a torture test. And it's not just about holding the weight. It's about stabilizing the weight so your lower body becomes the factor that gets trained and is one that is the limiting factor once you actually get good at it.

1:10:27Shawn Stevenson:This has been an absolute masterclass. Like the insights here are amazing. Thank you so much. And also I gotta ask you about this in closing. You know, programming is so important and creating the structure of things for yourself, your unique goals. Yeah. And you have resources for this. You have an incredible bestselling book that not only is geared towards performance, but also pain-free performance as well. So can you talk about the importance of programming and also where people can get more information and accessibility? Yeah.

1:11:04Dr. John Rusin:A lot of these top 10 exercises, they're variations that you're going to see in 80 % of the programs that I write because they are accessible, they are effective, and they're safe. That's the brand of pain-free performance. We want to get results. We want to train hard. We want to go heavy, but we don't want to have the repercussions of pain, injuries, and burnout in the process. So a lot of these that you'll see spread throughout all the training programs that I feature that we continue to release. The number one place to look at is the Unbreakable training app, becomeunbreakable.com. We have 10 plus training teams that are going simultaneously inside of that app, and they are ones that are new every single week for people to engage in.

1:11:43Dr. John Rusin:But that's the app that I use. That's the app that I use to hit my PRs this last training block with my pull up and things like that. And at almost 40, feeling strong and healthy and ready to go. But it's really dependent on being able to have a large emphasis on the big basics that we talked about today, but having a progressive mindset of getting stronger, more mobile, but also staying healthy, staying in the game and continue to consistently press forward. That's what it's all about.

1:12:11Shawn Stevenson:Yes, yes. And in your book as well.

1:12:14Dr. John Rusin:Pain-Free Performance is the book. So you can get that on Amazon and it is a bestseller. And that one is a beast. So it has 60 plus weeks of progressive programming inside of that. So it has programs for bands and body weight all the way up into a five-day functional hypertrophy program. And you can follow along and everything is programmed with all the details, but also QR'd with 3 ,000 videos that you can take advantage of.

1:12:39Shawn Stevenson:Man, you put your heart and soul into that bad boy. Along with your family, your wife as well. And you got an incredible team, incredible family. And this is one of the things I admire about you as well. Your family has come along with you. The first time that we met, you came to the studio, you brought your son along. And that was just an impactful, wonderful moment as well. And I was just talking about, like I mentioned, And I was talking about your son just a couple of days ago with my neighbor because the shoes he was wearing and just also just his his energy and his attitude. You could tell it's just by, you know, being around this culture, you know, that you've helped to create, man.

1:13:15Shawn Stevenson:It's really remarkable.

1:13:15Dr. John Rusin:Yeah. Being in here last year with the book launch and the tour and all that stuff, the most memorable moment was spending that two hours with you, with Cam and here in the studio. Since that day, he follows every single thing that you do. He is your number one fan, 11 year old Madison, Wisconsin. He's following every single step of the way. But I think that that made such a large impact because as a father, I want to expose him to people that are chasing their passions, that are doing things outside of the box, but are also elevating to a whole different level. You know, before that moment, I don't think that Cam had exposure to somebody at the top of their game like you have been.

1:13:54Dr. John Rusin:And just that ability to show him and open up his eyes to what's possible when you go in and you do all the right things. You treat people well, but you're also extremely talented at what you do. It was something special for him just to see in the studio.

1:14:09Shawn Stevenson:Thank you, man. I mean, my spirit is full from that. Thank you so much, man. Such a joy. So grateful for you. Looking forward to doing much more. The one and only Dr. John Russin, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. what exercise or exercises did you just get like, I've got to implement. I've got to take advantage of this exercise. What am I doing? Why am I leaving this out? Because I definitely had an exercise or two that really jumped out at me. I've participated in and utilized all of these exercises that we discussed today at various points throughout my life and throughout my career.

1:14:54Shawn Stevenson:but one exercise I really jumped out that I want to take more advantage of that I haven't done in over a year is the trap bar deadlift. I bees in the trap, bees in the trap, take advantage of that trap bar. Just again, thinking about the center of gravity and being able to really load that exercise. Not only was I doing this for, you know, the trap bar deadlift slash kind of intermediate it squat variation as well, but also for carries, loading up that bar and then just walking around with that bad boy. And I love the fact that, again, you can make that grip placement lower to the ground, closer to where a barbell would be, or you could flip the trap bar over and it's an elevated grip.

1:15:40Shawn Stevenson:So again, just really makes it accessible for a lot of people. But truly, all of this was inspiring. And again, very insightful, learning the why behind a lot of this and also the progressions and regression so we can make it accessible for everyone. But the most important thing is, are we taking advantage? Are we taking advantage? Whatever that exercise or exercises was for you in this episode, please share them. If you're listening on Spotify, share a comment share your voice you have the ability now to leave comments on spotify get this conversation going i appreciate that so much or take a screenshot of this episode and share it on social media share it on instagram you can tag me i'm at sean model tag dr russin as well i know he's very active on instagram in particular or on the tickety talk facebook x wherever you want to share, just share this information.

1:16:41So powerful, so accessible.

1:16:45Shawn Stevenson:And again, most importantly, again, we're looking at ROI, ROI, return on investment. Get more bang for your buck with these 10 exercises. We've got some incredible masterclasses and world-leading experts coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. Thank you.