How To Rate Repetition Effort - ATG Principle #4

Athletic range part two, the three scales.

I think by the end of this lecture you're going to have a different perspective on strength, on how you go through sessions, and on what you need to talk to people about or the internal dialogue, what you need to be thinking about.

In the part one, we spoke about remodeling versus rewiring movements.

Is the body protecting itself against full muscle tendon rupture like in this one on the left or is this movement a crampy kind of a movement?

These are the extremes.

It can be a mid-range movement in which case you'll have equal amounts of both characteristics.

The movement on the left is extremely anabolic as we become more comfortable with it.

We will use a heavier weight and lower reps and we will use this kind of movements with heavier loads less frequently like once or twice a week because there's going to be a significant amount of inflammation caused and rewiring that comes, remodeling of the tissues that comes because you're already putting the tissue, the connective tissue on the load and then you're adding muscle tension on top of that.

They're extremely high-tension movements.

Where in the movement on the right, it's the mind-muscle connection it's neurological they're good for regenerating the muscles.

At a certain load, if you just keep increasing the load obviously there will be a point where the tendons are working hard.

If the tendons are damaged and you're using a lot of weight then, of course, you can flare up tendons with these sorts of movements as well.

But the holy grail of strength and the way to improve someone's strength fastest is to improve the full range of the strength curve.

This is the Charles Poliquin secret source and the ATG difference is to take that a step further and take the range to things like these lying bicep curls and taking it to the extreme and with this curl we could even have him push the bar behind his head.

We're getting a bit more shoulder flexion as well.

Sometimes we really need these extreme inner or extreme outer range movements to get the results that we want in life.

Other times we don't have to but if children can do it, if it's the natural human condition then I believe, my experience is, that we should work towards that, we should use god's blueprint as our scaffold.

We should work towards how we would naturally put together what we, our innate abilities were.

The movement on the left will result in more laying down of connective tissue, and new tendon collagen into the muscles.

Then we have to consider also the speed of the movements.

The movement on the left, people tend to want to go slow through the eccentric that is because there is a risk to the tissue.

If you do those movements at high speed then you're going to have a much higher chance of rupture, as you become more comfortable with the movement, you will be able to handle more weight at more speed and that will make you a more resilient athlete.

If you look at how Ben was doing some of his drop catch RDLs a year or so ago, extremely high-speed movements basically the equivalent of this for the hamstring and he was doing fine with them where a lot of other people felt may have suffered tendon issues as a result of those kinds of movements. That's our recap of lesson one.

It took me 20 years to get this and the feedback has been very strong that “yes we're heading in the right direction with this” and it's just it's a new way of looking at strength training and it works.

We've all been kind of beating around the bush like don't feel bad that you didn't kind of come up with this, it's like 20 years and looking at Ben's program and looking at a lot of other things has helped me to arrive to this point, different bodybuilders, etc. but there is a better way to train and understanding this philosophy really really does matter.

The least understood concept in strength is that we need to consider the connective tissue component, contribution of the movement, independent lead to the muscular component.

We want to evaluate to what degree is this contributing?

To what degree is that contributing?

The hand cranking the wire here is the nervous system.

We can train that ability to crank the wire, the wire is the connective tissue, the crank is the muscle.

On the left, the guy is the nervous system or the muscle and that stick is getting the job done, that stick is the tendon transferring the force into the bone.

We need to look at, is the stick going to break or is the man going to break?

Is the man the problem or is the stick the problem and there's a third factor which maybe some of you can guess right now.

There's a third factor that we need to be considering when we're doing a movement. Is the reason why we're struggling, if you're watching the Mark Bell podcast or you're watching some of the content that's coming out on the other side of that right, is he struggling because the man isn't strong enough, or is he struggling because the bar is giving him feedback of “hey don't go further with this” or it's simply can't handle anymore.

If we look at this elastic band, this connective tissue component and say “oh okay how much is the elastic band?”

How much is the connective tissue component contributing to this exercise versus the hand cranking the pulley?

The next step in this technology is to be able to quantify.

How do we quantify?

We've been working hard on quantifying the rate of perceived exertion in lifting lots of different scales for rating the total tonnage and all of these measures that we've been taking for strength training are really great and really valuable and now we're realizing that there is at least one more that we need, there's another one that's kind of common but not often thought about and there's one more, I think that we need to add.

This is just an evolution of technology, which is natural and that needs to happen.

When we replaced the Nokia.

When the Nokia arrived it was fantastic and modern strength training is fantastic.

If we could find that next level then even better, much better for us, to us, etc. and there's so much more possibility for results if we can get this right.

The three limiting factors are muscle weakness connective tissue tension or pain.

Either the muscle isn't sure enough to produce the force, all the connective tissues are giving feedback of “hey this is too much tension, shutting down the nervous system” or there's a pain feedback mechanism that's saying “let's not do this”.

If we evaluate each movement and each repetition on this scale, then we're going to get much better results.

Too often and speaking from my own experience and you might for yourself you can judge but if I could lift the weight or lift myself then I considered that a completed repetition, I considered that a win.

If you're watching CrossFit, if you're watching the Olympics, no one cares what the sensation on the connective tissue is, no one cares what the pain is.

They just care that you get it done but in the long term of training, what really matters is are you going to keep coming back and getting these sessions done.

If we can identify, “okay we just need to be stronger or okay we just need a bit more connective tissue ability to deal with this length for one of a better word, or is there pain going on here that's inhibiting?”

If we evaluate these three criteria rather than just saying “are we strong enough to do it?” then we will actually get a lot better results a lot faster.

Is the muscle too weak to perform the movement?

You know whether you're exerting maximal force and you just can't get it done, very simple.

The connective tissue strength.

Are you getting that feedback from you?

Or like “something's going to break here, stop.”

If you're doing Jefferson curls, it's not often the nervous system that is like “I can't lift this way”

It's like “I feel like something is going to snap” and “there's too much tension here”.

Same thing if you do a massive depth jump, the reason why jumping down off something that's more than taller than you generally on a landing you're going to get a collapsing sensation because the body doesn't want to produce maximal force to receive that shock or to reverse the shock.

It takes training, that's why the shock method and plyometrics work but you're desensitizing this mechanism around the connective tissue.

Same thing goes on.

If we're looking at Mark Bell and in sissy squats,it's the connective tissue that's telling him, “hey like that's all we've got for now.”

We need to work on this, we need to normalize the movement and you can see with things like the ability to sit on your own heels, if you do tibialis raises and get some life into the area, get some heat into the area and then try to sit on your heels in the way that Mark did in his training with Ben then you'll notice that you get more.

If you brought heat into the system, before you do this stuff, then there's going to be more possibility for the movement.

Pain is going to cause inhibition.

We've all seen these atrophied limbs whether it's after something's been in a cast or if it's simply just a pain thing.

There's different neurological conditions etc.

If there's pain then the strength gains are not coming.

That's the point.

If you're just pushing through pain then it's much harder to get strength gains.

Yes, you can persist and you can get things done but you can still have muscle atrophy in certain areas and you compensate in other areas.

I know for me, getting to 160 kilos squat, I could get there, I go to 100-kilo snatch but my body was creating all kinds of adaptations to get around the weight because my quads didn't like receiving that weight and I used to watch other people snatch, other people lift and think like “man how do they do that like that? That would really really hurt me and my knees to squat like that, to snatch like that” and therefore I didn't have the chord development simply because I just lifted the weight.

I was just thinking as long as this is fine then everything's good.

I didn't understand how to build this and therefore I had this and the results show.

I had pain as a result. Do we need more muscle force?

Do we need more connective tissue strength or do we need to decrease pain and inhibition?

This is what we need to analyze.

If muscle force is the major issue then we want to look at that neural connection and build more mind-muscle connection.

If the connective tissue is shutting us down, then we want to put more effort into those long-range movements and then if there's pain inhibition then we need to do things that are going to bring a lot of circulation to the area and bring health back to the tissues.

Super high rep stuff, very low intensity, and long-range movements.

That needs to be the focus.

The way that we deal with, for example, Mark Bell getting his sissy squat, he doesn't need more neural drive, he's not going to need the Patrick step-ups and whatnot, and not going to be the key for him.

Where a guy with super skinny legs then getting size on the legs through the VMO squats, through the high volume of the step-ups.

They still can build size if you do enough volume on those shorter range movements but if we're also working on the human knee extension then this is called better, but for Mark, you can build strength also through the outer range for sure and it's specific to the goal for athletic force then yeah those step-ups are going to be super valuable because that's a more specific position and you're going to get the neural gain but if the size isn't there or if the connected tissue is the issue then we need to focus more on the structural change which is going to come from structural movements.

For Mark Bell to get his sissy squat, what's going to work best for him is to work on the single leg human knee extension, that bottom position.

That's going to be the fastest way.

Basically for me, an upgraded version of the couch stretch.

By working on couch stretch, that's going to be the thing that's going to bring him towards the sissy squat as well as working partial range of motion where each set able to go a little bit lower.

If you can couple that with something like the split squats.

For Mark that would work really well to really open up that back hip flexor. Rather than doing the full split squat, we might just have him hold some of those bottom positions.

Work on lengthening the hip flexor so that the hip flexor isn't getting in the way so much.

All that tissue tension in the front of the body, even the kneeling sit-ups from the anterior chain series would fit really well in there.

The connective tissue is the key focus but if there is pain then sleds will be the big thing that will make a difference.

If we did a lot of sleds and then slowly warmed into the KOT squat or the sissy squat then he's going to be able to get there faster.

If we can shut down that pain, and get a lot of heat and warmth into it then maybe he actually hits the movement on the back of that.

We've got this troubleshooting ability now.

Is the muscle drive the issue?

Is the connective tissue the issue or is it pain that's causing the challenge?

If the answer is one then the next actions are different to if the answer is two or if the answer is three.

We want to know the reason why someone can't perform the movement and if it's on Nordics for example, for myself, I was able to complete lots of full reps but I started to cause connective tissue injury by going too hard, too often, etc.

Basically supra maximal, creating extreme amounts of tension at the bottom by speed out of the bottom which we're going to talk about, the qualities of tension in the in further on in this series.

But the type of tension that you create to cause these connective tissue adaptations is also important.

You can create a lot of tension by moving really fast or you can create a lot of tension by using a lot of load, a lot of force.

If you're hitting out of the bottom of those Nordics then it becomes a very connective tissue dominant exercise and that can cause issues which caused pain and then the most important exercise for my Nordic was to be doing banded hamstring curls and the inner range hamstring work to bring life back into the area that was injured, insulted.

That was what was going to work best for my Nordic at that time and so based on the challenge that you're facing, depends on what the best next course of action is.

Let the limits drive the program.

Let limits drive the program means wherever the limit is that's what determines the next step.

This is your dexterity to be able to use the tools appropriately in the environment that you're in.

What makes this impossible for most athletes?

It depends, can be the strain.

There's just not enough ability to produce force in that outer range position like literally “I just can't produce any force there”.

A lot of people feel like that on the human knee extension where it's like “it doesn't hurt, I just can't produce the force in this stretched position”.

Another reason why a lot of people can't get into this position is there's just too much connective tissue tension and so it's going to take a lot of load or a lot of time or both to change the connective tissue.

The other reason could be, “no, it starts to hurt on the way down.”

Now we're going to go into these three scales of how we actually rate these things so we can make it more useful, more practical.

How are we going to use this in practice?

We get this idea of like it's either muscular, it's connective tissue or it's pain, that's limiting things.

With the pain it's generally localized and it's unilateral there may be swelling or redness after.

We're not going to train or treat pain that's not our thing but we need to be aware of it so that we can do other things.

It's important if you're doing a movement with someone and it's like they can't do it then you can say, “well on a scale of one to five, how much pain are you feeling there, between painful, significant pain, slight pain, positive feeling of tension or no pain”.

If you can kind of get this rating from people of “I think if I keep going with this, it's probably going to get sore” then it's going to be around that two or three sort of scale.

It's quite intuitive of if one's no pain and five is painful where are you at?

That is better feedback to get when you're someone's doing their Jefferson curls or their sissy squats because you don't know if you don't ask what's the limit on the movement.

Same with muscle.

Is this an all-out effort?

Is it challenging?

Is it in the sweet spot?

Is it insignificant or is it negligible?

The question of “can you train every day?”

Well it depends, of course, one and two, you can train every day.

Three, you can train every day, most days.

Four and five, you can't train every day or it's very very difficult taxing, high risk, very few people will survive it, you might need supplements etc. to get through it.

On this muscle scale, how hard are we working here?

Because sometimes people could be doing their Jeffersons or they could be doing their lying bicep curls and they're like all sorts of strain on their face and you say “how heavy is this for you?” and they might say “well two or three” because it might be that all the pain is coming from tension because it's bilateral, they know it's connective tissue, it's not like one specific spot on one side and they say it's just a lot of tension, it's maximal in terms of tension even with a moderate load.

This is a new way to look at judging the training effect and what we're actually doing and it's very different for different people in the same movement.

Is it the connective tissue that's holding you back?

Is the muscles holding you back or are you experiencing pain?

If we generalize this scale, it's stuff that's going to give no impact through to extreme training effect, maximal training effect.

Now yes, doing stuff that calls on all the body's reserves will cause issues if you go for maximal all the time.

We want to be doing most of our training around this like three and four and the ability to be patient with that and to not hit these fives all the time is what's going to make the difference.

If you're going to fives, then you need to be really really really smart about it and the same goes with if you're experiencing pain, we're aiming for zero, we're aiming for no pain or the one in terms of this scale but if you're getting this score off people then you're going to have more dexterity about what to do next.

If it's one or two, it's very different, if it's a four or a five.

Can you train every day?

I think this is kind of a question that goes around all the time.

It just depends on how much insult is happening.

If you see you've been jumping off these ladders and doing these sissy squats and whatnot, there's some of these movements that you can probably do every day.

There comes the point where it's just not that much work for his connective tissues, it's not that much work for the CNS, there's no pain.

Therefore you can do it every day, like people do parkour every day, like maximal depth jumps, etc. and people will get to the point where they're doing it every day.

It's because for their connective tissues it's only a two or a three, whereas for most people's connected tissues, it would be a five or a six, like they're literally gonna break straight away and if you try to do it multiple days, it's not gonna happen, you get extreme soreness.

It depends on the preparation of the body.

I think that is also a really important concept for us to understand like “yeah you can do sissy squats every day as long as they're really easy for you” if they don't take much strength and the connective tissues are not under significant strain with it, then go for it.

That's the thing to understand with expanding athletic range is it's relative to you and how much effort it requires from you, how much tension you are creating.

Now we have a better framework to look at what's going on and why we can do these movements or why we can't.

We've discussed what we do training Mark Bell.

My goal is if you are the one to train Joe Rogan, if you are the one to train Mark Bell, if they send their friends to you, I want you to get it right.

Following the protocols is going to work but if you don't understand why you're doing what you're doing, the chances are in my experience with coaches, you're going to veer off in all sorts of different directions.

My goal is to equip you maximally so if you're working with LeBron James and there's a troubleshoot, you don't just go “oh he didn't teach me how to do that” and “I don't know what to do next”.

I want you to go “oh okay, it's a tension issue”, “okay it's a pain issue”, and “okay it's a muscle, neurological drive strength issue” and take the appropriate action from there.

Mark Bell would need more tension work which means get it really warm and then the kneeling squats progressing towards the human knee extension the single leg human knee extension position will be really really valuable to work towards with Mark Bell.

Going unilateral to increase the force in things like the kneeling squats as and when he's ready to do that.

Is it pain or is it tension?

I didn't get into asking that question.

I don't know what was actually going on there.

For Ben, what's his next progression? looks to me like it's about muscle. As Ben's maximal squat goes up, I think you're going to see him going into and out of these natural knee extensions and KOT squats with more speed and power progressing towards single leg feets and whatever like it's already obviously at an extremely high level, what he's doing is already throwing down massive dunks but the aerial for him to improve would be that.

To put me in the spotlight a little bit more, human knee extensions, VMO squats, partial repetitions like I kind of need it all to have better sissy squats, I need to take some tension out of the front probably adding in the ATG pause stuff as well, take some tension out of the front and get stronger legs and then just practice the movement would be how I’m going to get better at these.

The protocols definitely work.

I’m not questioning or challenging your use of these and I want you to understand every movement exactly why it's there and exactly which direction to adjust it based on what is going on.

Do you need more load? less load? more range of motion? less range of motion, etc. where should the emphasis be, that's my goal with this is to give you ultimate dexterity.

You can get amazing results with yourself and with everyone who crosses your path.

I do believe that ATG coaches are going to change the way the world trains whether we like it or not, Ben is dragging us along on this journey.

Our job is to show up with deep knowledge of what we do to really know our craft, to be able to speak to the physio or the team doctor, the physical therapist, and to be able to explain what we're actually doing, where the scale is, where the next direction needs to go.

I don't know of people speaking about things with this terminology but I do think that this terminology is the future of strength training.

Athletic range, it just has to happen.

Coaches need to understand this and athletes are calling for it.

Athletes are asking for their coaches to know this stuff and to understand it. Apply the three scales to your own training and your awareness of what's going on inside your own body and in coaching others and I believe that we will achieve this objective of improving human ability on a massive scale.

I hope you enjoy that today.

I’m really looking forward to your feedback.

I’m also happy for you to share this with other coaches who you think may get a deeper better understanding.

Ultimately it's going to be the Real Movement Endorsed Coaches that are going to go out there and change the world.

We want everybody to have this knowledge and those who will apply it with us and do the work and show up are gonna be the ones that get out there and make a difference in the world.

Looking forward to your feedback and let's make the world a stronger more able place.