Why Your Nightly Yoga Routine Isn't Enough For Better Mobility w/ Matt Phili (SSOF Ep 61)

James de Lacey2:04

So where would someone start with mobility training? Can they just go on YouTube and find yoga for jiu-jitsu kind of channels or yoga channels? Is that adequate enough for someone to do?

Matt Phili3:02

So the way I like to look at it is that mobility training should be progressive. Again, mobility training is a strength-based protocol. You need to approach it in a way that is progressive. So that means you need to regress it to a point to meet you where you're at.

So just like you wouldn't throw 400 pounds on a barbell and get under it right away within your first month of squatting, you're not going to want to essentially just dive right into intense, more intense mobility training right off the bat.

So of course, getting started, we're just going to want to try and apply more range of motion in very simple basic capacities. So going on YouTube is definitely not a bad way to start off. Once you want to actually make legitimate progress that is going to take you to the next level with your mobility, you're going to have to find a way to start loading and applying progressive overload principles, which can be quite challenging in the grand scheme of things for mobility.

As we don't often use much external loading like barbells, kettlebells, dumbbells, that kind of stuff, we need to apply progressive overload principles but more with internal strength protocols. So now we're looking at, instead of adding weight, we're now looking at reducing rest. We're now looking at increasing volume. We're now looking at increasing range of motion and the stimulus in that way, or increasing tempo.

So you got to look at: what are your goals, what are you trying to achieve out of it? And that's going to dictate what is sufficient in your approach. So if you're just like, 'I just want to recover better,' YouTube is fantastic. It's free. You don't have any intense goals that are going to be requiring any kind of highly detailed approach, so I would say that's a great approach.

But if you're looking to reduce pain or seriously reduce risk of injury, depending on, let's say you've injured your ACL in the past and you really want to avoid that in the future, like for heel hooks or something, you're going to want to make sure that you progressively overload those biomechanics to make sure that they're prepared to accept stress through jiu-jitsu and various different other challenges like that.

James de Lacey5:05

Nice. And before we dive into some exercise examples, maybe do you want to maybe dive into why some people might go on a stretching regime, they want to get more mobile or flexible, but they don't really see the changes in range of motion over the weeks and months as they do it?

So I don't know, maybe someone's decided they're doing yoga at home for 15 minutes a night and they're doing maybe the same stretches, couch stretch, something else for the hips and something, and doorway pec stretch and stuff, but they're not seeing that change. Do you want to maybe dive into why that might be and what they can do instead?

Matt Phili5:37

Well, something that we're noticing that is happening frequently is that, again, kind of what I was just mentioning previously, is that there is no progressive overload approach to it. It is not being approached in the same manner somebody would approach a strength protocol, and that seems to be where the biggest fallback is.

People aren't approaching their mobility training with enough intensity. So they're really approaching it more like a feel-good type situation, whereas the way we approach it with our clients, it's like, this should be really challenging. This should be very hard and should kind of rival your workouts with how much effort you're putting into it, and that's where the true gains will come from.

And this is why our clients will see progress within a very short period of time, because we're showing them: stop taking it easy in your mobility, put the effort in. We have an RPE scale that we work with to show people, this should not be a three, this should be more like an eight. This should have you feeling like you need to rest after one or two reps, that kind of thing.

James de Lacey6:36

What's an example of an exercise that would elicit like an RPE 8 after one or two reps, like a mobility exercise?

Matt Phili7:03

It could be a lot of things. We implement around eight to ten techniques of training, and then of course you can have the individual work exercises within each technique.

So CARs is controlled articular rotations. The concept of CARs is basically to just take any particular joint through its full range of motion with as little compensation from other areas as possible. And with that, we generally want to apply a high level of effort to it.

So we'll bring people, or we'll suggest that our people go through like a nine out of ten RPE on their hip CARs, for example. And every single rep, we'll suggest take like a five to ten second rest in between, because we want to make sure that you're actually moving accordingly.

And then of course there's like eccentrics. So we could look at like a sumo squat, like a deep wide, almost horse stance position, very, very wide. And control, ten seconds from top to bottom into those deepest ranges of motion where you could feel the knees trying to cave in, but you're to keep them open. Those are exercises that we can absolutely start getting higher up with the RPE scale.

And you know, something like an eccentric sumo, you can definitely load it up as well, quite easily, like heavy kettlebells, barbells, whatever, and really apply the stimulus in that regard.

James de Lacey8:40

At what level do you start to load someone in some of these positions? You mentioned someone starting might start with some YouTube stuff, maybe some stretching stuff or whatever it is, and kind of progress as they overload. At what point do you start to look to add load where you're not going to maybe, I don't know, potentially cause an injury and kind of thing?

Matt Phili8:40

Yeah, for sure. With the nuances to mobility, we need to make sure that when the mechanics, the movement patterns are on point. So what is the goal at hand? So if we're trying to help somebody improve their squat depth or just improve the position in general, one, we need to make sure that their squat pattern looks sound, technically sound, it looks good. We need to make sure that they're in their ideal stance first of all.

And then on top of that, we need to also make sure that when they're going through these patterns, these movements, these techniques, without loading, without the insane intensity that we're trying to apply as they progress, are they compensating?

If they're compensating, they're showing signs that their nervous system doesn't quite have those patterns down yet, doesn't have those ranges of motion down yet. And we are at a higher likelihood of causing risk of injury if we begin to load too rapidly. So we look at how their body begins to compensate and how their movement patterns are.

James de Lacey10:05

Let's go into some examples. You mentioned CARs just before. Maybe provide an example of a CARs exercise and maybe just go a little bit into what you're trying to achieve with doing—I mean maybe the shoulder CARs or something like that's probably the easiest to show on the camera there—but even just what you're trying to achieve kind of doing that kind of exercise.

Matt Phili10:05

For sure. So CARs, I feel like CARs are potentially like the golden exercise when it comes to mobility. They're not fantastic for flexibility. It's not going to necessarily help you improve the potential of the joint—it's like a potential range of motion I should say—because it absolutely can improve the potential in terms of like power output of the joint. But when it comes to like flexibility, increasing ranges of motion, CARs are not going to be great.

But when it comes to learning control and creating that neurological connection with those deeper ranges of motion, so essentially teaching your nervous system that those ranges of motion are controllable and you have the ability to manage them, your body will begin to start holding on to those ranges a lot more effectively.

So that's one of the reasons we use it so frequently, is that you're teaching your body that you want to use these ranges of motion more frequently so your nervous system doesn't get rid of them as it may seem like they're unnecessary. Our body, the way I like to say it, is that our body is like an adaptation machine. If our body deems something unnecessary, it's going to get rid of it very quickly. So CARs is a great way to show your body that these ranges of motion are necessary because we're applying them frequently.

So essentially I'll do a shoulder CARs very, very poorly, but just to show you guys kind of an example of what we're looking for. So again, it's to bring the entire joint through its entire range of motion with as little compensations as possible. So I would want to make sure that we're being very strict with the movement but also bringing as much engagement to the particular joint as well. So we may want to recruit more muscles surrounding the joint to bring more engagement to the particular joint.

But what we're going to do is bring it to its full flexion and then we're going to begin moving through the full rotation as we begin kind of going around the world in a way, all the way back to that starting position. And then you can see that I'm rotating as I go. So again, the way I would apply this, I would be fully contracted, going with a lot of intensity and making sure that I'm not opening up or I'm not bending my elbow or shrugging.

These are all compensations that as a coach I would be looking out for to see how connected to their ranges of motion are they really.

Because I've seen people get crazy ranges of motion with their shoulder but at a finer eye and looking a little closer we're seeing a little shrug of the shoulder or we're seeing that they're bending their elbow when they're back here or maybe they're again opening their torso a little bit and causing those compensations. So from I guess from the perspective of like a newer coach, a newer mobility coach, it may seem like this person's ready to start loading up particular ranges of their shoulders when in reality they're still showing signs of compensations that show they're not prepared yet. They don't have those patterns, those movements ingrained.

James de Lacey13:36

Before getting back to the podcast, I want to let you know there's a link down in the description for the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground Community. You can get all the help you need for your combat sports training. You get every single Sweet Science of Fighting training program, online course, and you get access to a range of coaches within the private Discord community. So go check that out and back to the podcast.

So how would you address some of those compensations then? I'm assuming it might be different things, but let's say like they're opening up or someone's shrugging while doing it. How would you address that within those CARs? Cues? Just cues? There wouldn't be other—so there's not other exercises that you need to do? It would just be cueing to stay?

Matt Phili14:03

Well again, that totally depends. It's like showing—first teaching somebody how to squat who's never squatted, like let's say with a barbell on their back. At first they're going to be moving all weird and wonky until they learn the proprioception, the awareness of how their body's moving through space. So we'll probably give them a ton more reps. I don't know if I can curse on your podcast, so sorry.

So we'll be giving them a ton more reps most likely to help them ingrain the pattern and show their nervous system, and over time it generally starts to get better and better, especially when we give them the cues first and tell them what we're looking for and what we're looking at and then give them all the reps. So now they know, they're more intentional going through the movement, they're thinking, "Oh, I can't open my torso, I feel myself doing it now," and so on and so forth.

So usually what I'll say is have a look back at your video at this moment. What do you see? And then they'll come back with, "I don't know," or whatever. It depends on the individual of course. Then we'll start chatting about what it is and why that's happening and so on. The education behind it is very important when it comes to such fine movements because essentially what we're doing is isolating biomechanics and building control and strength within them. So it's usually cues, just more reps.

James de Lacey15:25

Gotcha. And a very generic question for you because obviously it depends on the individual, but maybe one of your go-to or favorite exercises for improving shoulder mobility. Maybe we can even put it in a combat sports context, but is there something that you typically like to have people do that's common among a lot of your different clients?

Matt Phili15:57

Well, are we talking specifically shoulders or it doesn't really matter?

James de Lacey15:57

We can do shoulders and if there's anything else we can cover those too.

Matt Phili15:57

Well actually I think I would like to take it back a sec and say that one of the most common issues with people making progress in their mobility is because they're just not consistent enough. And that's a lot of the time is because people don't generally see mobility as something as a necessity. They don't see it as something that's quite enjoyable compared to their average training.

You're talking with a lot of combat athletes, that shit's fun, that's addicting. And training your hips in certain positions can be very challenging at first and it can show that—or it can feel like the progress behind it is very slow.

So a lot of people will put mobility training on the back burner. And the way we like to approach it to make sure that we can ensure that our people are growing and progressing are trying to make mobility training fun. So the reason I took it back to that was basically to say that when we're presenting a mobility program to someone, we're trying to throw things in that are clearly unique and get people in weird positions that are going to feel good at first and then are going to challenge them in a big way quite quickly after that.

So for a lot of people, some of my favorite things to do are getting them in the frog position and putting in a lot of work there, because not a lot of people will get their hips open to that degree. And training their internal hip rotation within that position can go a very long way, especially for people in jiu-jitsu that are constantly in the guard position and stuff like that.

So I would say the frog is anything in frog, usually frog internal lift-offs is going to sound really confusing from people who have no idea what mobility training is. These types of things anyways, like CARs, PAILs, RAILs and eccentrics, it probably sounds like I'm speaking a different language right now.

James de Lacey18:00

I'll have to put some video over top.

Matt Phili18:00

Yeah, exactly. I have some videos I could share too if you'd like. I have frog stuff and pigeon stuff. So the reason I like those a lot is because we're going to show people how their average stretches that they use—so a lot of people their go-to will be the pigeon stretch or a couch stretch for example. And we like to get people in those positions and then apply a different type of stimulus.

And that shows them like, "Holy [expletive], I've been in this pigeon position like a thousand times, but this is next level and my hips feel incredible after two minutes," as opposed to maybe it would take normally like a week of being consistent with the stretching of that position.

So I would say those two are very common of how we like to influence people on quick progress, quick enjoyment of mobility training.

James de Lacey19:02

So what—so you mentioned about hitting with the different stimulus in those positions. What would an example of that be?

Matt Phili19:02

So a good example probably is like pigeon squats or frog squats. Essentially you picture yourself doing an elevated pigeon, an elevated pigeon position where you're up on a box or you're up on a bench. And you get your leg in the pigeon position there and then you let yourself lower, but you are completely controlling how you're lowering. And then you drive your knee into the bench and push yourself back up to that starting position. That's brutal, very challenging on the glutes, external hip rotation. It's pretty intense.

For sure. But that's a good example of applying a very different stimulus from just holding a classic static pigeon stretch.

James de Lacey20:03

I really like that. I mean I can barely do a proper pigeon position, so if I do that I have to have my hands on the bench to lower myself down and get back up. Maybe my hips are damn tight. But is there a point where maybe someone is, I don't know if it's genetic or structural or something, where things just don't change even with mobility training? Have you come across something like that at all?

Matt Phili20:29

Yeah, I mean that definitely happens quite frequently too. You can't change anatomy through mobility training, right? So that comes down to the coach. The mobility coach, we have seven coaches on our team, it comes down to the individual coach helping the client set expectations accordingly.

So somebody that wants to come in with a terrible squat pattern and they're like "I need to be able to squat as to grass." After further assessment we realize your hip anatomy and anthropometry, the length of your femurs and stuff like that, it's just not happening. There's just no way going to get there. It's just not structurally possible. And obviously being a little bit more empathetic when approaching that, but that's essentially what the conversation will come down to.

First of all, you shouldn't be squatting in this position. You're never going to have a nice upright squat pattern trying to squat in a very narrow stance when you have long-ass femurs. It's just not going to happen. You're going to be leaning forward crazy and we just got to set expectations accordingly when you face those types of challenges, I think.

James de Lacey21:37

Nice. And the other one is breathing during some of these exercises. I know I've watched Mona do a fair few different things with the exercises that you guys have, and the different breathing that just do during exercises. Do you maybe dive into how someone can use breathing to improve their mobility training?

Matt Phili22:07

Yes. So there's a lot of people that'll talk about breathing exercises and all that stuff. We don't dive into that, we're not training the diaphragm and whatever else, which I mean could definitely have its pros. What we're usually approaching is how you should be breathing during your particular mobility training exercises.

So again, some exercises are going to be better for recovery, some are going to be better for more warm-up or legitimate mobility training approaches. And something that we like to say is essentially, mobility training is a game of influencing the nervous system. And the way you breathe has a big impact on how your nervous system responds.

So if our goal is to help you recover faster and elicit a response of recovery in that way you can hit the next day, your training the next day just as hard, if not harder, we need to make sure that you're not ramping up the nervous system right after you just went through your training protocol. We need to make sure that you are calming things down, letting your body start to recover and go through that process.

So there's different ways that somebody should be breathing depending on what the goal is. So again, think of it this way: if your goal is to recover or calm the nervous system, we need to slow breathe, deep breaths, minimal breathing in terms of how many breaths are you taking in a minute. And then if the goal is the opposite, we want to ramp up the nervous system and prepare you for your training or prepare your joints for putting in some serious work for your mobility training.

When I say prepare you for your training, I'm talking maybe you're going in for a heavy rolling session or maybe you're going in to squat heavy that day. You want to prime your joints. Those days, or in those situations I should say, you want to have some more intense rapid breathing, some stronger breathing patterns where you're exhaling harder or that kind of stuff.

James de Lacey24:12

Gotcha. And you mentioned obviously the different goals of the different sessions. So you had when we talked about recovery there, maybe doing it at the end of your session or before your session to kind of wrap yourself up. Do you want to maybe give a couple of examples of how those sessions look in terms of the recovery versus the before training?

Matt Phili24:12

Yeah. So recovery will often look at things that are going to be applying deep ranges of motion in a gentle manner. So you'll see things like flows, you'll see things like static stretching. That's a great opportunity to get into those static stretching positions and just hold it and let the tissues experience those deeper ranges of motion to help reduce the DOMS, the muscle soreness. That's kind of how it looks generally. It's very gentle stuff.

So that's kind of the main thought process I want people going into when they're doing their recovery is "how can I do this but be gentle through the process?" That's what your body, for the recovery, right? If we're going to be aggressive, your body, your nervous system, is going to stay fired and it's going to take you much longer to recover from the process. So we got to make sure that things are gentle, calm, deep breathing, slow movements, deep ranges of motion without intensity, that kind of stuff.

And then the opposite is true for applying, let's say, a mobility training session where now you're focusing, you're dedicating 30 minutes to specifically improving those deep ranges of motion of your hips. Now you're going to want to kind of give yourself a little warm-up for the hips and then you're going to want to apply those heavier breathing patterns.

And so what that would look like essentially is when you're getting into the thick of it, you're getting into those deep ranges of motion and then you're forcing yourself to use them in a way that's going to challenge you at very intense level. So again, the pigeon squats is a great example. You get a deep pigeon position, your glutes are lengthened, you feel a huge stretch in your ass, and then from there you're going to have to apply that range of motion by driving your knee into the floor as hard as you can.

So, for example, just the classic pigeon stretch. When you get into that deep pigeon stretch, big stretch in your glutes, right? People will normally hold that position and stay calm and relax there. But instead, you can drive your knee into the floor really hard and now you're training your glute while it's in length. So now you're training your glute while it's in that deep stretched position, and that's going to train your nervous system that "oh, we need to be able to use these muscles in those deep ranges of motions, so we better be able to hold on to those positions and essentially make it easier to get into next time." It's classic adaptation, right?

James de Lacey27:07

Nice, nice. I like that. And then I guess within a training week, so I guess a lot of combat athletes they're already short on time. Maybe they're working full-time, they're training multiple disciplines in the week plus trying to add their strength conditioning on top. As you mentioned, mobility training is almost kind of last on the list. So where does someone fit some of these exercises in without having to maybe block out another 30 or 60 minute session out of the week so they can get it done?

Matt Phili27:35

Yeah. I think that's probably the most common pickup or roadblock that we'll experience in our company is that we have to find ways to apply this training to people without giving them a ton more homework and time in their day, right?

So the way I like to do things is, one, we need to understand their lifestyle and their schedule to be able to apply the protocol for them in the most effective manner. But you can really do some solid work with just two to three exercises for sure. We don't program anything more than four exercises per session. So depending on the person, we can have one session per day, we can have four sessions per day. Depends on who they are and what their goals are, of course. But we'll never program more than four exercises as you don't need it.

You can make some serious gains with very few exercises. You can do one to two exercises and you could be good, or you can go up from there. So I would say for those that are really busy and concerned with that, then starting with "what's the one stimulus my body needs?" And I'm going to focus on that for two to four weeks, and that's the exercise we're going to be applying maybe four to six times per week. And if you're that busy, then one to two exercises, that's it.

James de Lacey29:06

Could it be easily done, for example, maybe superset as part of their strength conditioning stuff? If they're maybe doing, I don't know, squat sets, is whatever it is already and supersetting with that? Or is this something that's kind of too intense to superset with big exercises? You want to superset it with maybe easy exercises? Or you want to do it maybe after you've done your combat technical training, before that kind of thing, just to be able to fit in?

Matt Phili29:06

Yeah, exactly. We will tell our people that generally speaking, the mobility training is most often best applied right before the workouts. Unless you are going to test a max or you have a really heavy day ahead of you, you're going to tax your system too much and you're going to be too fatigued to hit the numbers that you're potentially trying to hit.

So it's definitely something that you can apply during your training protocol, but it's something you want to be conscious of.

With what are your goals and how are you approaching your training protocol for that day. So usually it's best if you have a separate chunk of time to get it in, but if you're trying to be as efficient as possible you can definitely do it that way because it's very cohesive. Mobility training and resistance training is very cohesive and it should be supporting your resistance training. Your mobility training should be supporting your training.

James de Lacey30:31

I mean mobility training, it is resistance training, especially with the exercises that you're doing anyway. So I mean it could even be, a lot of them could even be your accessory exercises in the gym, right? So if you're doing your main strength power stuff, maybe you finish your session with a couple of those exercises.

Matt Phili30:31

A lot of people will actually say that our work feels more like accessory work than it feels like a stretching protocol.

James de Lacey30:56

For sure. And I wanted to get your take as well on on yoga. So a lot of, I mean jiu-jitsu and yoga are almost synonymous. Everyone who does jiu-jitsu does yoga of some form. So obviously there's different forms and things like that. I'm not too familiar with all the different kinds, but just your general opinion on using yoga. And we'll put it in the context of mobility. Is that something that someone can benefit from in that context? And if not, are there benefits to doing yoga for combat sports, or are there drawbacks that people should be aware of doing that as a combat sport athlete?

Matt Phili31:24

So one of the biggest benefit that I think is worth discussing is that your mobility training should directly provide proprioceptive gains. So when I say proprioception, that means the awareness of where your body is in space as you're moving. Your mobility training should be applying proprioceptive gains to what you're trying to achieve outside of it. So if you're not able to isolate the positions that you know you need to improve, it becomes very challenging to apply those gains into your practice of whatever that is.

For example, the guard position, having the legs in that position, the hips opened up, and let's say somebody tries to pass your guard and presses down on one knee, and now you're in a deep frog stretch type position where the hips are just way open and the groin is stretched out. We need to be able to isolate that and make sure that we can apply movement control within it.

Because if you're drilling with someone or if you're rolling for example, and somebody presses you in that position, you're not going to just be static in that position. You're going to be engaged and active and trying to fight back.

So we need to make sure that the approach that you're taking is going to create proprioceptive gains and help you understand how to use and move your body out of those positions more effectively in the scenario when it's demanded.

So yoga is fantastic for getting you into positions, but it's not fantastic for teaching you how to use them and move in and out of them effectively. Whereas mobility training, we now look at isolating those biomechanics of the various different joints and then apply this stimulus that way, so we can easily get you into these various positions that are challenged throughout whatever practice you're trying to improve and then apply the stimulus and progressive overload principles to that.

So mobility training is much more effective in my opinion, and I'm sure we get some backlash from that, but definitely far more effective for a very specific goal than yoga training would be.

James de Lacey33:34

No, I agree with you there. I've got an article on the site kind of, I wouldn't say trashing yoga, but kind of trashing yoga versus other forms of training. But we actually got a comment on YouTube from Brandon Williams saying he really likes your Instagram, so you're obviously doing some good content on there that people are following.

And I guess if anyone's listening to this now in the future, you can jump on and join these live and ask questions and anything you want while we're on here recording. And also after the podcast too. But we also link up Matt's Instagram and all this stuff after this in the description. But I don't think I have too much more to ask you Matt.

Is there anything else you want to add to the conversation? And if not, do you want to maybe plug Primal Mobility and where they can find you and follow you and get more information and exercises and all sorts of ideas from you?

Matt Phili34:30

Awesome. Well first of all, thanks to Brandon. I appreciate that. That's an awesome little shout out there. Otherwise I don't really have too much else. I could talk about mobility literally all day, and so I have to kind of force myself to take a step back whenever I need to.

But what we're doing at Primal Mobility is, in my opinion, we are revolutionizing the mobility industry, particularly in the fact that we are teaching people how to become mobility coaches, which is a very underdeveloped niche in the fitness industry. As the problems that we're solving as mobility coaches is rampant, everyone struggling with pain of some sort or old injuries that keep bouncing back that are plaguing their fitness journeys and that kind of stuff, and teaching people how to essentially develop a protocol around that and create a business around it.

We've done it and we know that the industry has a massive gap there for others to be able to create a lucrative business around it. So that's the direction we're really trying to go right now.

However, we'll never stop coaching. We have seven coaches on the team that are very focused on bringing people in and helping support them and develop strength through their joints and show them what their body can truly feel like, and that they don't need to train with all this pain. I can't even tell you when I go to jiu-jitsu, and I'm pretty sure 99.9% of people there are telling me their knee's broken or their neck. All these different, that's what we do as well, is essentially we dive in there and we show people how to strengthen those areas without any equipment.

So if you guys want to learn more about what we do, or if you just have more questions about mobility training or you're curious about it, a really great place to start would be our free Facebook community where we're constantly putting in new resources and just giving out as much support and information as we can for free until it's clear that you need to go a step further and get a program and get involved with a coach. That's a great place to get started. So I would say check out the Primal Mobility Free Community on Facebook. That's what it's called, and that's about it.

James de Lacey36:53

Sweet. I'll link that up and your Instagram. We actually, another comment from Brandon here. He's saying he's got pretty good flexibility and a guy was passing his guard, pushed his legs to the right and pinned his left shoulder, so pushed his right leg and then pinned his left shoulder and popped a rib, and that wasn't fun.

Matt Phili36:53

That's a pretty extreme position. Shoulder down, leg going right, right leg is pinned down to the floor, and then left shoulder being pinned down.

James de Lacey36:53

I think so. Right leg and left shoulder, so it's like the chiropractor, your whole spine rotating.

Matt Phili37:23

I'm not surprised to hear that, because if the ribs are restricted, then the spine is not going to rotate very good. So if somebody's forcing you into that position, something's got to give. I would suggest, especially for jiu-jitsu athletes, shoulder external rotation, of course internal, shoulder rotation in general for those Americanas and Kimuras. You're going to want to improve those positions. That'll help you avoid submissions. Not necessarily, if your game sucks then you're not going to, but it'll help you avoid injury in those situations.

And then neck extension, building strength through that will be a very important aspect to helping keep your neck safe. And then hip rotation as well. Those will be very important things.

James de Lacey38:35

Let's jump into thoracic in a sec. I know I said we're going to end, but I've got more questions. Brandon says that that's exactly what it was. He's going to check out your Facebook group. But regarding thoracic, obviously strikers tend to have a very kyphotic upper back just from being round. I mean even jiu-jitsu players too and wrestlers, depending on the postures they have. Do you, what do you recommend for people to start to improve that, mobilize that if they're having issues maybe at the shoulder level because of that?

Matt Phili39:02

So it's kind of a full spectrum type thing. You need to have, if your shoulders aren't moving well, you should probably start by looking at the thoracic spine. If the thoracic spine is restricted, then your scapula cannot move effectively. If your scapula cannot move effectively, your shoulders will definitely not move effectively. So we need to make sure that the thoracic is moving well.

And the way I would begin is just by getting into simple extension-based exercises while staying intentional about not flaring through the ribs. So a really classic example would be the foam roller stretch where you get on the foam roller and you do one of those. Great stretch to go through and it opens up the thoracic spine. Feels amazing. Everyone loves that one. But a lot of people will end up opening up at the ribs and just flaring at the ribs, and their thoracic spine is basically getting very minimal

Amounts of extension through that because the ribs are just taking all that range of motion. So we want to get as strict as possible. So make sure your pelvis is neutral so your lumbar spine isn't going into extension, and that you're keeping those ribs as neutral as possible and making sure you feel like a nice deep stretch through the thoracic spine area and move through those intentional patterns more frequently. And then start applying rotation patterns.

It's hard for me to just explain just with words, but rotation is going to be a big benefit to you. Improving rotation is going to be a big benefit to you, especially considering the injury of popping a rib from spinal rotation.

James de Lacey40:29

I guess the other question around the thoracic stuff, how do you end up—obviously we talked about the hips and we can load it through various resistance and tension through the body weight, but obviously with thoracic it's a little hard. Even thoracic extension, it's a little harder to load those positions. So how do you end up progressing those then from that kind of body weight to loading?

Matt Phili40:57

You use as much gravity as you can, essentially. You apply more local recruitment of the surrounding musculature, so you learn to engage the muscles that surround the thoracic spine more effectively and bring more intensity to that. So that's how. And then essentially reducing the compensations as much as possible as well.

So you just become better at controlling the ranges of motion. Your proprioception becomes stronger within those ranges as well. And over time that goes a very long way in terms of the progressive overload principles, because again, a lot of mobility is challenging to load with external loading, with like dumbbells and stuff like that. A lot of it is challenging, so it comes down to learning how to engage the muscles as much as possible and then moving through very strict patterns of movement without compensations.

James de Lacey41:32

Perfect. Okay, I think that's a perfect way to end the podcast there. So for anyone, check the description. There's going to be links to Matt's stuff where you can learn some more mobility. Obviously there's also the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground where you can be in the members, in the audience too. We can chat afterwards, all sorts of stuff. There has all the training programs, all that good stuff.

But tune in later this week. We have another podcast going, and obviously every Monday this will be released. So thanks for coming on Matt, I appreciate it.

Matt Phili42:04

Thank you sir, it was great. I love talking, so thank you so much for giving me a platform. I appreciate it.