Yo what is up guys, welcome to the live train perform podcast. I'm your host sean purpose of performance functional training. I'm currently the head strength and conditioning coach at the world renowned tiger might in M. M. A. Training camp based in Phuket Thailand. I'm a strength and conditioning coach, nutritional therapist. NLP master practitioner, a former Australian army soldier and combat veteran. This podcast is dedicated to bringing you the tools, knowledge, experience and expertise to allow you to live your life to your fullest train to your potential and perform at your best. I'm going to do that by providing three different styles of podcast. Style one is going to be 3-5 part miniseries, 15-25 min episodes each covering a numerous topics including nutrition, lifestyle, sleep, stress management and training philosophies. Style too is going to be me interviewing people at the top of their game, who they are, how they started out, where they got to where they're at and what makes them tick Style three is all about you guys. I'm going to be answering your questions, you can find that on my Q and a memes, which I'll be posting on my social media platforms.

My social media platforms are at instagram at K O B E S underscore pft at codes underscore pft facebook is performance, functional training and Youtube is at performance functional training. Make sure you like subscribe and follow those platforms. I will be referencing my Youtube channel throughout the episodes. So if you want your questions answered, go onto the men to the Q and a memes that will be posted on my social media platforms popping your questions and I will answer them for you on the podcast, let's get it. Mm Yo yo, what is up guys? Welcome to today's episode, which is going to be a Q and a base session. So a number of my followers and listeners have written in via DM and via my Q and a memes on my social media platforms and I'm going to be answering those questions on today's episode. So some of the topics that we're going to be discussing during today's episode is the relationship between your environment and your ability to perform, how to bring awareness to your movement quality.

What is a good age to introduce lifting to Children and does lifting weights, stunt growth. And the final question I'll answer is how does lifting weight affect your mobility. Let's get started. The first question comes in from Joanna rubinstein on instagram, how do I bring awareness whilst training and making sure that I'm always keeping good form. So many of us just do burpees or squats all run without paying attention to foot placement, hips, et cetera, which causes bad injuries. I absolutely agree with you there. And one thing that I want to talk about here is something called motor unit recruitment patterns. This is basically your brain creating a blueprint for movement. Now, the first time you learn how to do something, your brain doesn't have a blueprint. It needs to figure out what muscles should be firing when in what order. Okay, so this is why it's super important to really practice techniques, slow your movement down and become competent and proficient at movement first.

And this takes time in teaching your brain how to create a blueprint. Now, like I said before, when you're first learning how to do something, your brain needs to expend a lot of energy, basically trying to figure out how to do that thing. So if we take a dead lift, for example, if you're learning how to do a dead lift, you don't just walk into the gym and start smashing through as many reps as you can, as fast as possible with the way that you can barely handle. Okay, you need to practice the technique first and every single person is going to need to go through different progressions. So if I'm looking at a dead lift, I'm looking at loading up the extensive of the body. So primarily the hips, the hamstrings and all of the musculature of the back, okay, it's about creating stability in the hips and the shoulders and the spine. And once the primary engines of the body are stabilized being the hips and the shoulders then that allows the spine to be put in a good stable position and the spine is what links those two primary engines together. Alright, so stability must come first.

Our brain is like a governor. So think about like this, If I get a piece of sh it Honda Civic and I put a fucking Ferrari engine in it. Okay, that car is going to fall to pieces because, you know, it's producing so much fucking force that the chassis and you know, the body of the car and the structure of that car is not going to be able to handle it. All right, so the brain is kind of like a governor of the body and it understands that if the joints are not in a stable, strong, sturdy position, then it's going to reduce force output, which means that you're not going to be able to produce as much strength, you're not gonna be able to produce as much power or speed. Alright, so, we first need to practice stability, stability. Is the body's ability to resist force strength. On the other hand, is the body's ability to exert force. Okay, so we need to be in a stable position through the hips, the shoulders and the spine before we can start up regulating neural drive to those muscles to get those muscles firing harder, stronger and faster.

Now, the reason that stability is so important is that our muscles are what control our skeleton and articulate and move our joints. Okay, so all of the muscles surrounding the joint need to be firing optimally so that the joint can move correctly. If the muscles surrounding the joints are not firing optimally to hold that joint in correct alignment, then there's going to be a slight change in how the joint moves. Let's take the knee joint for example, it's a very simple joint, very easy to explain. Okay, it's a hinge joint. The quads primarily extend the knee and the hamstrings primarily flex the knee. Okay, can you have a little bit of rotation? Lateral flexion? Yes, a little bit but not much. It's a stable joint. Okay, It flexes and extends. So if the quads are dominant for example, like they are in most people and their abductors, the muscles on the inside of the legs are tight, which they are with most people then our abductors and our hamstrings, the muscles of the back of the leg and the muscles on the outside of the leg that flex the knee and take the hip away from the midline of the body, we kick the leg out to the side.

If those muscles are under active then what's going to happen is when your knee flexes, if there's an imbalance between the inside muscles being the abductors and the outside muscles being the abductors. Now, when that joint flexes and extends or when that joint moves, you're now creating friction because the muscles are imbalance which is pulling the joint into slight misalignment. So every time you flex that knee or extend that knee, okay, instead of being even wear and tear on the articular cartilage to take the load and distribute and displace that load. Then, you know that joint might be slightly shifted to one side. And now, instead of that wear and tear being evenly distributed across the articular cartilage. Now, it might be grinding away on one particular spot because certain muscles are overactive and pulling the joint into slight misalignment. All right. And you know, this is not something that's going to hurt initially. It's not an acute problem.

This is more of a chronic problem, okay. Because if you don't address your motor unit recruitment patterns, being the right muscles, finding the right time in the right order to hold your joint in correct alignment, which then allows that joint to move efficiently and freely. Now that's going to cause wear and tear over time. And it's going to put a lot of load and a lot of strain through the connective tissue being the ligaments and the tendons. Okay? And then over time, if one side is too tight, let's say the muscles on the inside of the leg too tight muscles on the outside of the leg aren't strong enough. Okay, that's going to pull that joint into misalignment and you might get some wear and tear on the inside of the knee. The articular cartilage and on the outside of the knee, the ligaments and the tendons are under constant strain. Okay, now over time that's going to add up the more you run, the more you practice movement squat, dead lift lunge, et cetera. Then without addressing those patterns. Then the more wear and tear you're going to create, the more strain is being put on that connective tissue.

And over time that's going to add up to fund. My knee has been playing up for six months now, I didn't land on it, I didn't have any traumatic injury, but over time, like that pain was just kind of like talking to me. I kind of noticed that was there was it wasn't painful, maybe a little bit discomfort here and there. But over time that's going to get worse and worse and worse until it gets to a point where like fun now I can't do anything lower body because my knee starts screaming at me and that's simply because you've practiced poor movement without addressing the root cause over and over and over again. And this has become your blueprint. Okay, this is where your brain goes. Call. Every time I squat, this is what I need to do. Okay, I need to find these muscles at this time in this order. Okay. And you haven't addressed any imbalances, any recruitment pattern issues and any discrepancies. And now that's become your default pattern. So to answer the question, it's pretty complex. But basically um you know, you need to address your motor unit recruitment patterns.

You need to do some soft tissue work loosen up the muscles that are overactive, fire up the muscles that are under active, do some banded distractions. Um and pull that joint back into alignment. This topic is way to dance to be able to get the points across during a podcast. But if you head over to my Youtube channel performance, functional training and you type in simple drills to address lower cross syndrome, this will give you a really good understanding of what I'm talking about here. So number one is soft tissue work to down regulate and dampen the signal to those muscles that are overactive. Number two, is you some banded distractions to essentially pull the joint back into correct alignment, and then number three is to activate the opposing muscles to hold the joint in that correct alignment. So, now it can move freely. So, basically what we're looking at here is loosening up what's tight strengthening up, what's weak and getting the joint to move efficiently and effectively.

So, that was the long answer. All right. Now, the short answer is that you shouldn't be doing any movements that your technique breaks down. Okay. You shouldn't be changing the adaptation. You shouldn't be doing dead lifts or box jumps or burpees or anything like that for conditioning unless you can do really fucking strict movements. I've spoken about this in a previous episode about people using dead lifts for conditioning or olympic lifting for conditioning or fucking kipping pull ups For conditioning? Okay, that's stupid. Um How many people do you see that are doing kipping pull ups for conditioning, but can't even do five good strict reps without keeping okay, they're basically bypassing that stability component. All right, they don't have the stability and the strength and the connection to have the muscles control those joints through that range. So now they're fucking going and Thrones keeping movements in and turning it into a conditioning session. Okay, That is fucking stupid. That is a recipe for disaster. That is an injury just waiting to happen.

Now, don't get me wrong if you have really competent and proficient movement patterns and you're super solid, you're super stable through all of these different movement patterns like myself, for example. Yes, I'm a crossfit coach. Um but I don't train crossfit, but I've got an athletic development background. I grew up playing rugby, I've done a heap of bodybuilding style work. I've done strength based work. I've done olympic lifting style work, done power work, speed, work, conditioning, work, um stability based work, corrective exercise, etcetera, etcetera. So, um you know, I've competed in a couple of crossfit competitions as part of a team and I've compared in two competitions and won both of them as part of a team. Now, I don't train crossfit, but the fact is that I have a really solid movement. It doesn't matter if you've got 100 kg or 200 kg on a bar. Bell, My dead lift looks the same. It doesn't matter if I've done one rep or 100 and one reps? My dead lift looks the same. Now, the biggest point that I want to make here is that I've gone through all of those different modalities of training for 20 years, okay?

I don't just walk into the gym and do all of those exercises at the same time, Okay? I walk in and I might just practice dead lifting for one session and I'm fucking dialing my technique in. Okay. Movement is a skill that needs to be practiced. Okay, train often test seldom. Alright, so you're training the movement patterns, your training to get the right muscles firing at the right time in the right order, your training, muscular contraction, You're training good posture, good alignment, good tension, good control. Alright, so biggest piece of advice I can give is put your phone down. Pay attention to every single rep that you do, okay. And then refine that technique over time and consistently. I'd recommend sticking to a program for roughly 4 to 8 weeks, okay, and then make some adjustments to it. You might go from a conventional dead lift into a sumo dead lift, okay? And then from a sumo, dead lift into a trap bar, dead lift, and then a trap bar, dead lift into a Romanian, dead lift, Romanian, dead lift into a rock pool.

Okay? You've literally got fucking training all year round, there's your programming. Alright? But practice the movements. It's not about moving hard, it's not about moving fast, it's about dialing that movement skill in. Okay. Once you have that skill down pat, then you can start adding reps at the time, then you can start adding all of these other fucking variables. Okay? But you need to pay attention to your movement when you're first learning something because what you practice becomes permanent. An example of this is someone who breaks their leg when they're six years old or something like that. Now, what happens there is the brain starts creating you you still need to move right? You still need to get from A to B. You still need to walk. So your brain goes all right, Well, I still need to do these movements, but because that joints hurt, that bones hurt, that whatever. Um let's change the recruitment patterns. Let's work around this. Let's let's bypass let's find a detour that's going to allow us to get to the same point, but we take a slightly different route. OK? And, you know, 20 years later, that person still walking with a little bit of a limp, or you can see that, you know, one ankle rolls in and the knee collapses in when they squat or when they walk or or something like that.

And I see this all the time. I'll go through a I'll send an email to my clients, they'll answer um you know, injury, history, medication, surgeries, training, nutrition, etcetera, etcetera. Okay? They'll get into the gym. The first thing I do is we go through all those questions, but then I'll go through a movement screen and I'll just simply get them to take their shoes off and walk from one end of the gym to the other, okay? And turn around, walk back and then the next lap they're going to jog and then the next lap they're going to get a little bit faster and a little bit faster. Okay. And what am identifying here is any imbalances, any discrepancies in their movement? Okay, now here's the thing, if I can pick something up when someone's walking, I can see that arch collapsing their knee caving in. Um then their femur going into internal rotation, guess what? That tells me that there's some sort of problem there. There's some sort of muscular imbalance that pulling their joint into misalignment. Okay then I ask the question, have you got any knee pain? Oh yeah, I've got some pain in my knee when I do X. Y. Z. Or when I run or something like that.

Alright, cool. What about the back? Yeah, I feel something in my back now and again. Okay. And I'm looking at the same thing with, you know, spinal alignment, I'm looking at the shoulders, okay. If I can see that, you know, one shoulders a little bit higher than the other and the arm swings across the body, the thumb is facing in then, guess what? There's gonna be some misalignment there and I'm like, hey do you have any problems with, you know tension headaches or something like that and they're like yeah I get I get it pretty bad on my right side. Alright, I'm fucking seeing that stuff at very low intensity, that is just walking, think about what happens when these same people then go and load up and they start running and they start increasing that intensity. Okay, the more problems they are at low intensity, the fucking more that spotlight shines on those issues when that intensity starts increasing. Alright, so addressing your movement patterns and making sure you're dialing them in and being proficient with movement before you start adding all these other complexities. Super important, Okay, that's going to stop you from injuring yourself way further down the line.

The next questions I'll answer come in from two of our professional fighters at Tiger muay thai and they're kind of similar questions, so I'm going to answer them in the same segment. The first question comes in from hulk mafia. Can people around you affect your performance if yes, How do you know it? Good question man, um absolutely people around you camp, impact your performance. Ah and I spoke about this in one of my last episodes on the effect of your environment. So we have the internal environment, which is essentially your mental toughness, your mental resilience and how you view the world and then you have your external environment, which is basically everything that you take in through your senses. So this is the news that you listen to, the people that you follow on social media, the people you hang out with in your own time. Um this is the food that you eat, the type of training that you do, literally everything has an impact the case. So your environment plays a massive part on um you know how you can perform and basically all of the variables that occur throughout the day.

So let me give you a little bit of an example of what I mean, the difference between the internal environment and external environment. Now I want to point out that there's both interrelated, so the internal environment is going to affect your external environment and likewise the external environment is going to affect your internal environment. So when we can't control one, we must manage the other. There is a concept in the psychological literature known as the locus of control, which is unfamiliar to most people, even though once it's defined is commonly understood. Locus of control is an individual's belief system regarding the causes of his or her experiences and the factors to which that person attributes success or failure. This concept is usually divided into two categories internal and external. If a person has an internal locus of control, that person attribute success to his or her own efforts and abilities, A person who expects to succeed will be more motivated and more likely to learn a person with an external locus of control who attributes his or her success to luck or fate will be less likely to make the effort needed to learn.

People with an external locus of control are also more likely to experience anxiety since they believe that they are not in control of their lives. This is not to say however, that an internal locus of control is good and an external locus of control is bad. There are other variables to be considered. However, psychological research has found that people with more internal locus of control seems to be better off example, they tend to be more achievement oriented and get better paying jobs. Now the reason I bring that up is because we all know someone who if we run into them, they're fucking energy vampires, they just drain your energy and you walk away feeling like you've been fucking punching bag for someone. All right, we all know these people. Now, here's the thing. If you have a strong internal locus of control, you can just compartmentalize that conversation or that interaction with that person, you can walk away and not let it affect you too much. Okay, people on the other hand who have an external locus of control when they run into that person they walk away and the rest of their days fucked their whole mindset has been thrown out of whack and it makes it very difficult for them to achieve anything and get anything done.

So I feel like there's two parts to answer this question. The first part is you need to manage your own mindset. There's a very good book called The Subtle Art of Not giving a Funk by Mark Manson. And this book is essentially how I live my life. I read it and I was like, this sounds like I wrote a book um and it's basically choose what you give a funk about because people in this day and age just fucking care about what everyone thinks and what people are posting and all these other bullshit that really doesn't affect them all right. But people start letting these things affect them. So the book's message is not that you shouldn't give a funk about anything. It's more the fact that you need to choose what you fucking care about, choose what you wish to invest your time, energy and effort in. Okay. And anything that is outside of that that's not valuable to you. That's not serving you. It's water off a duck's back. Like it doesn't really matter. You don't let these things affect you now. If you know obviously people are talking sh it about you or this rumors being started or whatever.

It's like, well I don't really give a funk what these people think and like their opinion doesn't really matter to me and they're talking sh it about me then they're probably talking about other people and that's more of a reflection of them and they're projecting their insecurities. So once you understand that then it's much easier to just go yeah, I don't really give a what those people think. If on the other hand, you know, your friends and family and close people, people's opinions that you actually trust and respect, start saying these things then you probably need to have a closer look at yourself and make some adjustments, make some changes. Now, the other side here is that if you notice that when you spend a little bit of time with X. Y. Z people and you always walk away from those interactions and you always feeling like your energy is drained and you know you're picking up this mindset of winding and bitching and looking at the negatives in things, then you know that's a good indication that those people are not serving you and you are in fact having a negative impact on your mindset, which is also going to affect your ability to perform.

All right, So it's very difficult to have these conversations with yourself but you know sometimes you need to be ruthless, sometimes you need to cut these people out of your life or not necessarily cut them out of your life but minimize your time an investment that you spend with these people because you know that you can only handle them in short doses or small doses Now we've all heard this before, You are the some of the or you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Okay, and this is so true. Okay, you pick up other people's tendencies, so simply paying attention to how you're feeling when you meet up with these people, you have these interactions and how you feel afterwards, how you feeling during the conversation and then how you're feeling afterwards, and if you always walk away feeling like a punching bag then it's probably worth reducing the time that you spend with those people. You can't change the people around you, but you can change the people around. You had a very funny message a couple of weeks ago, I did a post on my social media stories about basically digging a hole when I was on my snipers course and you know having to live in it and um you know, the caption was struggling with isolation, this is what we did for blah blah blah.

So anyway, I had one of my mates message me and he goes I remember being in a pit with old mate in Singleton, which is um initial employment training for becoming an infantry soldier, and he said I formed a stutter because of his stuttering every day. We've spent so much time together that we're picking up each other's mannerisms. All right, and this is so true, I'm sure when you get with certain people, when you spend time with certain people you start using the same dialogue that they're using were very social creatures. Okay? We start mirroring other people, we start using the same um dialogue, we start using the same mannerisms, we start using the same body language and things like that. So simply paying attention to um how you're feeling during those interactions and after those interactions will give you a good indication of you know, what those people are doing for you. The next question comes in from Mel Ziemann, who is also one of our profilers similar question, what are some things that you find benefit your mental performance, pre competition and during hard training? Another good question and it does tie in line with the last answer about your environment.

Okay again you need to have a good internal environment and you need to create your external environment. We are a product of our environment now we also create that environment. So you know having a good internal environment by using mental preparation, visualization, balancing the autonomic nervous system that might be something as simple as some meditation or mindfulness or something like that is a good tool. Um I won't go to we were here, but basically if you can manage your internal environment, your autonomic nervous system. Most fighters are fucking jacked up all the time. They always go, go, go, go go there looking for the next thing. Okay and that essentially puts you in a stress state constantly. So what we need to do is balance autonomic nervous system. And this is where we focus on the recovery side of things and the breathwork and mindfulness and the meditation and you know, it might be ice bath or sauna or something like that and where you're focusing on your breathing and you're literally just calming the nervous system.

Okay. Um and this is an excellent tool for enhancing recovery because if you're in a sympathetic state, which is our fight or flight stress state, then your ability to recover is affected, which then affects your ability to perform, which then has this kind of vicious cycle that flows on. Okay, So we don't adapt in the gym, we provide the stimulus and then we rest recover and then we adapt outside of the gym, which brings me to my next point and I've spoken about this before and that is train often test seldom most people when they go in the gym, particularly high level athletes, professional athletes, professional fighters, they're trying to smash themselves every single training session. All right, drill, good movement, practice the techniques that you're trying to improve upon throughout the week. Okay, And then once a week, then test yourself. So, as an example of this hour, um, em Emma classes on monday and friday are aspiring. Okay, so on monday, don't go into the gym and fucking burn off all your energy and go hard, Okay?

Because that's going to affect your ability to recover throughout the rest of the week, which is going to affect your ability to perform and dial in these techniques and get these skills right through the wrestling classes and things like that. So, um the monday class go into sparring and practice technique. You might do one round at the end where you go all right, I'm going to pick it up a little bit, but you're not going five rounds where you're hammering yourself. Okay? Then you go through your wrestling based drills on, say Tuesday thursday and you simply apply the same principles where you might do say, you know, skills and drills and then you might do two rounds hard, Wednesday might be a little bit of a lie today then thursday you go back into your wrestling class and now you'll do two rounds hard at the end and then your sparring session on friday. Once you go through a good solid warm up you might do one round where you just kind of feeling it out and then you're going to get after it for four rounds. Okay? So this is kind of balancing everything out. And the reason I say this is because when people get after every single training session that they do, your heart rate's jacked up, your respiratory rate's jacked up and your technique starts suffering.

Okay, so what we wanna do is practice good technique once we have that good technique. Golden and I spoke about this at the start of this session. then we can start adding more intensity, then we can go harder, then we can go faster than we can go longer. Okay, but practice the skills first train those skills and then test those skills once a week. Okay. Now the other thing that I want to talk about here is the openness to and the ability to accept constructive criticism and this is where having good training partners comes into play. So if the coach goes through certain skills and drills, then you might go away for around and you're going to drill those skills and you're stopping with your partner and you're discussing you're talking your work shopping different positions and different leverages and um foot positions and energy transfer and all this type of stuff, so you can get your technique right, okay, and this is the importance of a good training partner. You want someone that's going to help build you up and you're going to help build them up. Training partners are fucking essential. Good training partners are fucking essential for good development.

You don't want someone that's just going to come out and try and go hard because then you're going to go hard and that's going to lead to again, that jacked up heart rate, respiratory rate and your techniques start suffering. So practice a technique in the earlier rounds and then as you get those techniques more and more dialed in, then finish with a round or two where you're getting after and you're applying those techniques in live scenario. Okay, so we practice good skills and drills in a controlled environment and then we should be able to apply those skills and drills in an uncontrolled environment to round out this answer. I just want to point out the importance of intent. You need to have an intent and a purpose for every single thing that you do, every single training session that you do okay, if you don't have intent then just going to roll through the motions and you're not going to get as much out of it. So, you know, set yourself up for success block is the meeting between preparation and opportunity. Okay, so your preparation is what essentially puts you in a good position to then take advantage of any opportunities that come up.

So leave no stone unturned when you're going through your fight camp and think about making sure that every single thing that you do has an intent behind it. Some days it's going to be right, I'm testing my mental toughness, I'm testing my conditioning. I'm testing my skills and drills in the funding fight situation. Okay, that shouldn't be every single time that you train, that should be like once a week or something like that, depending on where you are in your fight camp. Okay, now most of the time you're going to be practicing skills and drills okay? You're practicing technique for Brazilian jiu jitsu, you're practicing technique for Emma? You're practicing technique for you? Kick boxing, muay thai, um grappling etcetera. You're practicing technique and developing strength, speed, power, stability, endurance and energy system conditioning through your strength and conditioning program. Okay, everything has a purpose. Sometimes you'll get after it. Sometimes you need to back off. Okay, I'm going to have a little bit of a light today, I'm going to work through some mobility. I'm gonna work on some activation. I'm gonna work on basically giving my body a service so that I can walk back into the gym tomorrow and fucking be able to perform again.

Now, here's the thing when I'm talking about giving your body a service. This is essentially going through the recovery based protocols. This could be anything from massages to mobility based work stretches, pull, work, ice bath, sauna float tanks, et cetera. Okay, but what also falls under this category is some form of mindfulness meditation or fucking breathwork, call it whatever you want. Okay, the whole idea here is that we balance out the autonomic nervous system, we allow the body to rest and recover so that we can adapt to those responses or that stimulus that we're creating when we're in the gym. Now people look at mindfulness meditation, breathwork as fucking woo ship. But let me tell you the practical applications for this type of stuff? Okay, what happens if you go into a three round, five minutes per around fight? Okay? You're working hard for five minutes. What happens when your heart rate gets jacked up and your respiratory rate gets jacked up?

Okay? Your technique starts failing okay, It starts breaking down. You can't produce as much speed, as much power, as much force output, you balance your coordination, timing accuracy, everything's off a little bit. Okay? Now If you can practice some mindfulness based work and this might simply be um you know, 10 breaths once a day where you're literally just fucking closing off the external environment and bringing your attention and your awareness internal and you're just paying attention to where you are right now what you're feeling, So pay attention to your senses. Okay listen, hear feel smell et cetera. Okay if you can do that in an uncontrolled environment and you can manage your heart rate and you can bring your heart rate and your respiratory rate back down. Guess what happens when you go into your fight? You're working hard for five minutes, you've got a minute rest between rounds. Okay? Now when you sit down you practice 3 to 5, really fucking deep breaths, bring your attention in okay?

And instead of walking out and starting the next round where your heart rate's still up at 150 beats per minute. Now you're walking back out into the next round, your heart rates at 120 beats per minute, okay? You go through the same process, You work hard for the second round, you go back to the corner, okay? Your heart rate's jacked up 1 71 80. Focus on your breath, focus on the recovery, bring your attention, your awareness inside. Then heart rate comes back down 1 21 30 you're walking back out at a much lower heart rate, so then you can work harder. So it's not just about your ability to perform, it's about your ability to recover if you can recover. Well that's going to improve your ability to perform when you're actually on. The next question comes in from my man Shane Crowley, one of my mates that I grew up with played rugby with. His question is with professional sports, looking to target kids earlier and earlier in age and Children trying to get bigger faster, stronger. What is your advice on kids lifting weights at a young age? Is this something that could stunt their bone growth long term and lead to more injuries?

Is a focus on body conditioning and nutrition more beneficial. And at what age would you introduce external weight? Excellent question. Um Now, I tried to well, I did do a lot of research on trying to find the studies that said that um lifting weights for Children stunted bone growth, and I fucking couldn't find anything. So, I don't know where that myth started. Uh and it doesn't make sense to me. Okay, now, where I can see the problems of rising is when you have Children that are lifting weights that they cannot handle with poor technique. Okay, because our muscles are what control our joints. Okay, that's what articulate our joints and that's what get our bones to move. So if Children don't have good recruitment patterns, they don't have good movement quality where they can generate tension control. Um then, you know, the joint is essentially going to take that load. And this is where I could potentially see, you know, the joint and the connective tissue, the articular cartilage and the growth plates and you know, the ligaments and the tendons having to take a faq load of strain which then causes issues and you know, potentially reinforces these poor recruitment patterns which then pull the joint into misalignment.

So let's go a little bit deeper and discuss how bones are formed. Because this will give us a little bit more of an understanding of how this myth potentially came about. Now, bones start off as cartilage, okay, cartilage is laid down and that becomes like the framework for how bones are built. Bone tissue is a living tissue that develops into one of the hardest types of connective tissue in the body. Now, they can be either compact or cancel this or spongy bone. All bones have an element of both. But the purpose of the bone determines the majority of its makeup. So bones are formed through a process called ossification during ossification, quandary sites which are cartilage forming cells enlarge and arrange themselves in rows similar to the shape of the bone that they will eventually become. Then osteoblasts start producing the primary organic component of bone by adding calcium salts to produce osteo oid, which is predominantly made up of collagen. Osteoclasts perform an antagonistic action to osteoblasts.

So while the osteoblasts build and develop, osteoclasts break down and liberate minerals and other molecules stored within the bone matrix. They also play an important role in the remodeling of bone structure. So think about when you've broken a bone or something like that. Okay, your osteoblasts are producing the and modeling the bone as you grow. But if you break something then osteoclasts have to go through and break that bone mineral down so that it can be remodeled. So then the osteoblasts can then come back in and start laying the foundation for bone again and essentially fuse those two pieces of bone together. Long bones are found primarily in the limbs and categorized by their shape and structure some classic examples of the long bones are the femur tibia and fibula in the lower body as well as the humerus, radius and ulna in the upper body. The clavicles are also considered long bones along with the metacarpals, metatarsals and phalanges, fingers and toes. Long bones are formed primarily by the elongation of the diagnosis, which is the central shaft.

At either end is the epiphany assis connecting these is the metamorphosis so the central shaft is the compact bone. The epiphany sis on either end is basically spongy bone that meets up with the next bone on the other side of the joint and is held together by ligaments. Now the metamorphosis is the growth plate, it's cartilage that sits in between the compact bone of the long shaft or the central shaft and the epiphany sis being the spongy bone, it connects that. And basically, when we're growing, when we're developing, uh, the compact bone of the central shaft becomes longer as osteoblasts lay down more and more bone matrix for inorganic salts to attach to which then calcify and give that compact bone its density and strength. Now this process continues until we're about 25 years old. So once we get to about 25 years old, that highline cartilage, the growth plate in between the compact bone and the spongy bone starts becoming part of the bone, it turns and forms into bone.

Um, so this is basically as tall as we're going to get in our life. And this is largely determined by genetics. The reason I went through that process and explain that is because when we talk about stunting growth with Children due to the growth plates and now it doesn't make sense because if you start lifting weights at 15 and you're your growth plates and your bones are still developing up until you're 25 years old. That's basically like saying, Hey, no one should fucking lift weights until 25 years old, until that growth plate closes up and calcified and actually becomes bone. Can the growth of the bone be stunted due to, you know, lifting weights or something like that? Yes, if you have a traumatic injury where you essentially snap your bone, then obviously, you know the development of that bone is going to go through a remodeling process and then have to be fused back together. So yes, that could potentially stunt growth and you might know people I know people that um have had, you know, gunshot wounds, two legs and things like that and basically had to have their their famous snapped and then uh kind of fuse together and then snapped again and use the vice to kind of pull the Bonaparte, let it fuse again, then snapped again.

Use the vice pull it apart and repeat that process to essentially try and promote bone growth. Now my mate has um two legs that are different lengths due to this process and I think he had multiple multiple surgeries and had these fucking famous snapped over and over and over again and then pulled apart to allow that bone to fuse back together again. But you know, even with even with the technology we have these days, his legs are still different lengths and you know, you might know people that um had a traumatic injury that snapped the bone when they were younger and now they have some problems with their, you know, their legs being different lengths or something like that. Now I have been ranting for roughly 40 minutes, so I'll answer your question now, what's your advice on kids lifting weights at a young age? I recommend going light and teaching good mechanics. Now, they're not going to get the most out of it until they start hitting puberty when testosterone production increases. Um that's also going to lead to higher bone density because now we're loading the structural components of the body being skeleton and we start loading the muscles as well, which, you know, teach the brain to connect to the right muscles to fire them at the right time in the right order.

So maybe a year or two prior to hitting puberty is when you can start practicing um Good technique for the primal movement patterns being hinge, dead lifts, squats, lunges, push in multiple directions, pull in multiple directions and carries and things like that, and that's actually going to lead to a stronger, healthier human um But they will get the most benefits once puberty hits. And if they've already got a year or two's training under their belt, then we can start loading up those movement patterns and increasing muscle mass and bone density. The second part of the question is, is a focus on body conditioning and nutrition more beneficial. And at what age would you introduce external weight. So I answered external wait, uh full body conditioning is going to be important. Obviously kids are going to be running around, they're going to be moving, they're going to be playing. Um So we want to teach them how to play how to move with quality movement patterns. Professional sports teams and organizations are targeting Children at younger ages and identifying and trying to recruit them into sports.

Now I think that's a topic that would need an entire episode to answer. Um but basically think about this, we adapt to whatever we do. So people that have been fighting for example doing boxing and martial arts and things like that from a young age, their bodies start adapting and more thing to those positions. I work with a lot of professional fighters who have these rounded shoulders and you know, these poor postures and things like that simply because they're in this hunch position all the time, you know, and they create these movement patterns and they create these blueprints for their body to start adapting to, your body's constantly trying to conserve energy. So it's going to manipulate your positions and adjust your positions to try and conserve energy. Now that can lead to overuse injuries in the long term you get to 2030 years old. And if you've been fighting for a long time now you're sucking shoulders don't move very well and every time you go overhead you don't have good mobility, so you start creating an arch in the lumbar spine. Um and that creates issues all throughout the body.

So when kids are younger, encourage them to play multiple sports. So they can get the benefits of, you know, different movement patterns, different exercises, um different positions, um different abilities, different skills, you know, there's balance, coordination, timing, accuracy, agility, speed, stability, strength, power conditioning, etcetera, etcetera, Hand eye coordination. All of this stuff comes into play. So we want to try and encourage kids to play multiple sports that are utilizing different movement patterns, different skills at a young age, so that when they get a little bit older there are fairly well rounded athlete and then when they decide they want to become a professional rugby player or fighter or something like that, They've really got a really solid baseline and then they can start building upon that base. So the bigger your base, the higher your peak can be some good recommendations for sports to get your kids into will typically include things like gymnastics. Okay, so we're basically teaching Children how to manipulate how to move how to control their body through multiple positions.

Multiple directions create stability, produce force, et cetera. Okay, and then you might add some ball sports in, it might be cricket or soccer or rugby or anything like that. So you can start developing hand eye coordination. Might be tennis, golf, whatever. Okay, so include some gymnastics and a ball sport or two that they are going to enjoy it. I mean at the end of the day, if kids don't enjoy doing something, they're not going to do it and to answer the nutrition component, obviously that is going to be important. You need to make sure that you're giving your child the correct nutrients in the right amounts at the right time so that they can develop and they can take advantage of you know, going through puberty and having their fucking hormones all over the place. They can build, they can develop and they can grow into a strong healthy human. Um And the point to note here is that you as a parent, you're on display, Okay, don't be one of those fucking parents that tells your child to eat vegetables, but you don't eat vegetables, knew each ship and you drink coke every night. Okay, Children are sponges, so you need to be their example, You need to be the role model.

Okay, don't ask your child to do something that you're not doing yourself. The final question for today's episode comes in from Spencer Bly on instagram. Uh Hey mate was working out at home today and thought of a question that maybe you could answer, how does lifting weights affect joint and muscle mobility. Okay, so let's define mobility, mobility in my eyes is the ability to articulate your joints through their fullest range of movement with control. Again, your muscles control the joints, they control and move the bones. All right, so uh weights can affect mobility in either a positive manner or a negative manner. This really depends on how you use them. Let me give you an example here, if I walk into the gym and I'm one of those fuckinjimmie bro, is that, you know, hits international chest day, three days a week, then I'm going to strengthen those muscles and that's going to pull my shoulder forward. That's going to internally rotate my shoulder, my humerus, my thumb is gonna be facing in.

Ok, I'm going to end up with this rounded posture, so that's going to affect my ability to take my joint through its fullest range of movement. If I'm not doing enough back work. Now that joints being pulled into misalignment. And I see this all the time with, like I said earlier, the fighters that I work with, they're doing, you know, they're throwing all these punches in front of them and they're not doing that much work for their back. So, what happens when they go overhead? They don't have the shoulder mobility to go overhead. They can't get their thoracic spine in a good position, They can't manipulate their scapula, which is essential for um shoulder health. Um something called scapula humerus rhythm, which is basically our scapula should move every time our humorous moves, the upper arm moves are scapula should move along with it and if that scapula is locked up, then that's going to affect your ability to take your shoulder through that full range of movement. So if the fighters, for example, are in a class and they've got an overhead exercise, they don't have the thoracic mobility, They don't have the shoulder mobility. So when they go overhead, instead of loading up through a vertical press, they don't have the mobility.

So they create that movement, they create that mobility at another joint. And that typically comes from the lower backs. You'll see people pressing overhead. They have poor shoulder mobility that create this big arch in the back and they're not actually pressing overhead. They're kind of overhead but they're more in front of them. All right, so this creates some issues if you don't strengthen the other muscles surrounding the joint because now your joints in a poor position and then you're going and loading that position. Okay, so we want to create stability. First, have the joint in the correct alignment. So now all the muscles surrounding the joint can provide that quality movement and allow that joint to move free. So this is where a well rounded training program comes into play. Okay, speak to a professional coach, speak to someone that you can actually get some work in with. It goes through a movement screen or a movement assessment to identify any movement dysfunction or muscular imbalances or discrepancies or anything like that and then get a specific program written up for you.

Yes, you could get some funding program off the internet that could potentially get you results if you don't have any problems, but if you've got any movement issues, if you've got any muscular imbalances and movement discrepancies, then you could literally be loading up a fucking poor position over and over and over again. Which is going to lead to overuse injuries. So invest some time in a good quality coach that's going to do some specific work with you to address any of these problems. Now let me quickly discuss how using weights can actually improve your mobility. Let's take a squat. For example, if someone is a little bit locked up in the ankles and the hips simply doing bodyweight squats or using a PVC pipe or broomstick or something like that might not provide enough resistance to actually allow you to get down in that bottom position. So what you might do is load up a bar bell um with whatever, if you can score 100 kg, you might just put 40 or 50 kg on. Okay? And then you're gonna lower under control, hit that bottom position and just hold that position, maintain tension, maintain connection and he's going to hang out in that position, okay?

And that weight is actually going to push you down into that position which is going to loosen up those tight muscles of the hips and ankles that's going to allow you to get into a better position. Likewise, if you're doing front squats or you're doing any type of olympic lifting or something like that. If you're in the front rack position where the bar is resting across your shoulders, your fingers are wrapped around the bars, your elbows are high. If you don't have the mobility in that position, then using a bar bell, a loaded bar bell and just practicing that position and driving your elbows forward and creating a little bit of movement in the wrist, creating some thoracic extension etcetera. Could actually help you improve your mobility for that position, which is then going to go and lead into your training session. Okay, so using weights is and can be a really good way of increasing your mobility. The jefferson curl, for example is an excellent way to create a little bit of length in the back, through the entire posterior chain really, um focusing on the hamstrings and um the ligament tissue of the spine.

So for most people, if they've never seen this before, it looks like a dangerous position, okay? But what you're doing is you're standing on a box and you're grabbing a kettle bell or a barbell or dumbbell or something like that and you're basically folding forward and you're letting that weight pull you forward. Now the important thing to note here is it's a controlled position, okay? You're not just flopping down in that position and allowing yourself to hang out in your joints, Your muscles are controlling that position. But that extra load, working along with gravity is actually doing a good job to pull you into a deeper, deeper position so that you can increase the flexibility of the muscles, which then improves the mobility of the joints. I could literally go on and on and on about different examples in different exercises that are excellent for increasing mobility or examples that are poor for mobility. Um but I'm at 50 minutes on this podcast, so I need to wind it up here. Um but head over to my Youtube channel performance functional training and there's two specific videos on there to address lower cross syndrome and up across syndrome.

And this will give you a really good understanding of what I'm talking about and I think I spoke about earlier in this episode about um loosening up what's tight strengthening, what's weak and using some banded distractions or some other tool that's going to allow you to pull the joint back into good position. Okay, and once you create that extra mobility in that position then you need to you need to strength training, you need to connect to that position. So that's the thing. Strength without mobility is a waste, okay, you're limited mobility without strength is fucking dangerous. This is where you'll see Yogis and things like that that are hyper mobile in the elbows and the shoulders and the hips and the back and all that sort of shit. Okay, and they're just flopping around from position to position. Yes, they can make some good shapes but they have no control. Once they get there, they're just hanging out in their joints. Okay, so again, mobility. Once you increase the mobility of the joints, you then need to strengthen that position and that's where the weights come into play. If you enjoy the message that I'm delivering, please help me spread the word and like share, save and subscribe to my social media platforms, instagram is at K O B E S underscore Pft at codes underscore Pft, my facebook is sean Coba and my business page is at performance functional training.

You'll also find performance functional training on Youtube. Go and check that out and please pass this on to your friends, family, anyone else who would benefit from hearing this message and if you could also leave me a five star rating and review, that would be much appreciated. Anybody who does leave me a five star rating and review will have precedence when it comes to my Q and A sessions I'm going to be posting on my social media platforms in the coming weeks of questions and answers you guys ask the questions, I will answer them on a podcast episode. That's it for me today guys. Hopefully enjoyed this episode and I look forward to bringing you some awesome content. Moving forward piece