BTS AT ELITE BOOTCAMP - Raw footage

All right, let's move to the squat. First, before we do anything, let's have a look at— start with your bodyweight squat. Go again, just do 2 more. Just do 1 more. Okay, so what do you think your body weight's for? I hope you guys are taking notes. Okay, so if I was going to prime Jazz What might I do? Core stability and pelvic tilt. So what I'm going to get you to do is, um, can you just grab a 4 kilo kettlebell? Let's just— I just wanted to demonstrate again. Let's just have a look through that movement. Let's look at what's happening. So there it is, right? See how range of motion isn't ideal either, and there is a lean forward. So we're going to grab this upside down and place it straight in front of you. Out in front of you. Yep, no, no, like that, uh, this way, right? So I want everything locked out, stiff. Yep, that's it. Now do the same thing. Instantly we'll get a range of motion. Hey, you, stay right there. You've got 5 slow-ass reps. Star straps. Beautiful. The range of motion has increased, the butt wink is gone. Why? Because stability equals what? Mobility. And look what's happening here, right? We're getting that stability. Yeah, you know what to do. 2 more reps. See how she's moving a hell of a lot better through this? Do one more rep. A hell of a lot better. All right, relax. Put that to the side. So that, that we want to prime the squat before she starts squatting. So now her abs are going to be more engaged. So as part of her warm-ups, before she touches the squat bar, I'm going to get her to do 3 sets of this combined with planks. So I want her abs to switch on. Let's have a look at how you squat. You do you, I'll do me. And go from there. That's my favorite line for most clients. They're like, what do I do? I go, I'll do me, you do you. I just want to see what you do. Yeah, because I don't want to start changing things, and I just want to see what they do because it might be good, might be bad, I don't know. Okay, that's pretty good. I'll get you to wrap it. Make some observations. We'll carve that one. Good. Are you good? You did not talk to Richard right now, just for the purposes of the video. You're skipping a couple of steps there. Just want to get the folks to get to know you first before we start sticking wedges in. The— All right, so some observations. What have we got between the two spots? Second squat to get the depth, he's kind of overextending through his lower back. Overextending through his lower back. I'm assuming he's lying on the wedge. That's right. Yeah. Knees are coming in as he was going down, then at the bottom, pulling out again. Yep, good stuff. Yep. Do we want him to overextend his thoracic extension on a squat? We don't. And what about Jazz's? I'd say almost slightly the same to get down to the bottom, so she's almost halfway down, she's slightly more, but extends again. Who has more energy leaks between them? You're agreeing? I'm going with Jazz. The reason why I say Jazz has more energy leaks, he's getting overly tight, it's almost like he's yanking it, right? He's trying to get super tight and overcompensate for going into thoracic extension, You're a bit— like you're letting the bar go. One of the things I always look at is what people do with their hands on the bar. If you notice, every rep she let go of the bar. Every rep. Her upper back wasn't as stable as it could be. Now, we can definitely add a wedge, right? We can definitely add a wedge to both of their squats. So there's something that we just needed to cover, is that there is a marked difference between a low bar squat and a high bar squat. We know the differences? What about not? It's okay, it's safe, it's a safe space. Do we know the differences or not? Is high bar more, more ROM than low bar? High bar has more range of motion than low bar. So let's cover that. How are you going to use it? What? Can I get you to do a low bar? So I'm going to get Hugh just to demonstrate a low bar. So what happens with a low bar is the center of mass, the bar is closer to your center of mass, right? So therefore it becomes easier— well, you're going to be able to move the load. It's— you're in a more advantageous position to move load, right? The higher it is, the more distance it's moving and the more core stability. So from an athletic point of view, your high bar squat's going to have more carryover to athleticism. It's not to say you're not going to use a low bar squat, but it's going to be more focused on the glutes. He's going fairly wide up, probably too wide in my opinion for his grip, but that's okay for purposes of demonstration. Do a low bar squat for us. The other thing about the low bar squat, as you can see, pivots— well, he's not a very good low bar squatter. I've never done a low bar squat. Fucking shit. Anyone here? Put it back. You can do a good low bar squat? I'll get you up there. Don't worry, I'm not going to get you load up, but we just need someone who can stay upright on the low bar. That's beautiful, look at the exposed arm. So even here though, he's tipping forward too, right? So there's a few things on this one as well, lever-wise, that isn't ideal. That's not how you squat normally, hey? How do you normally squat? High bar? Like a mix? So, okay, you're a perfect person to use this on though. One of the ways I would fix his squat, because a lot of our squat, you want your ribs still stacked and you're moving through this range of motion, right? What I would do in this case is I'd get you to squat in front of a wall. He's in this position, see if he's just stacked, just go as low as you can. That's going to start to train him, stand up. That's going to start to train him in the position that we want him in. So this is what I would use for a primer, especially for Hugh as well, who's face-planting. We don't want to face-plant on a lot of our squats. Go into it, go into it, go into it. It's pretty good. See, he has to spread from the pelvis, he has to really spread. See that position he has to be? That's where we want to be. That's a much better position. 2 more. So you can see, these are some of the tools that we can use to start to correct not great movement patterns. And again, if you put Hugh in front of the wall, that's for shits and giggles. Let's see what he does. Let's see how low he can get. Because you can make it look easy, right? He's really having to work. His facial muscles. So he really has to— you can see the difference, right? I mean, Hugh's pretty tall too, so he's got a longer lead. So let's make excuses for the guy. But, and he's standing really far away from the wall, like, fuck, man. Turn it on. How do you like it? Shit. So, so we'll get feedback on the, on the bar, just to go on this random low bar squatting. Hand position much better than before. He's probably going to already get into a wider position, so if we put him on something, his body goes, okay, this is a better way to be. So much better. Great. Back up. So that's all from primal. Much, much better. That's a good low bar squat. You can see on the low bar squat— now do the high bar squat for us, just so they can see the difference. So low bar squat, more hamstrings, more glutes. Your high bar squat, you're going to be using more quads. Just go onto the platform. We primed Hugh with the wall squat and it starts to look a lot better. All right, let's get Jazz back up. Now I'm going to talk Jazz through some things. I want you to take note of how I coach her and some of the things that we do. All right, Jazz, grab the Remove the bar. Same position. All right, put the bar back. Bring your hands in closer. So, so I want you to go there. I want you to really grab that bar like it owes you money. Yeah, so I want you to squeeze that bar. Once you grab that bar, you want to really go. You're a little bit too wide with the hands. You want to be closer. Oh, where's the fire? Boss? A bit more control. Hands, hands, hands. Grab the bar like it owes you money. Squeeze. Just do one more. All right, is it good? Yeah, it's a good squat, but what do we want? Do you want a good squat or do you want an elite squat? Elite. Right, so what are we going to do? She needs to be tighter. So maybe tucking her pelvis on the way down rather than sticking it out, arching it back. 10 points for Jana. The way we're going to do that is I'm not going to say anything. Can someone please grab me one of the bands for her knees? Let's go. What I see in most gyms, most people, is near enough is good enough. Well, in my world, near enough isn't good enough. Good enough is good enough. Do what it takes. Get this below your knees. Now, like, not below your knees, because I just want there to be a bit of feedback. So I'm just going to copy a few things. I said squeeze, squeeze, right? Squeeze in. Squeeze the way I'm squeezing. Yeah, stack the ribs like we did. Chin up. Now move slowly through. 4, 3, 2, 1, up. Pause at the bottom. Good, you're gonna do 2 more like that. You're gonna hold it for one sec. 4, 3, 2, 1, hold, hold, hold, yes, hold, hold, hold, hold. Stand up fast. No, do it again. You know what you did. Hold that position. 4, 3, 2, 1. Hold, hold, hold. Come up fast. So at the level that she's at right now, again, most of your training with your clients, I'm telling you right now, is going to be ironing out bad habits. So for Jazz to get really fucking strong, which I 100% believe she has the absolute capability of doing, we cannot accept any discrepancies in her movement. I'm training her now to lift 100 kilos, not when she gets to 100 kilos, because when she gets to 100 kilos, it's already too fucking late. So you would have noticed what I did. I put the bar, I also primed her, I put my hand over her hand, I squeezed her hand, and I said, squeeze the bar. She wasn't squeezing the bar. You got it, you're like, okay, I need to squeeze the bar. Okay, great. Then at the bottom of the position, I said, only come up when I say. Why? Because I was waiting for her to hold the position, which is the right position. She didn't hit the position, I was telling her, don't come up. Does that make sense? My count started when she got into the right position. So every rep, what am I saying to her? But this is the right position. This is the right position. This is the— oh, fuck, if I get into this position faster, the count will be less. So what does she naturally want to do? She wants to get in the right position because then I'm going to let it extend up. Make sense? Every rep from warm-up should be primers to the way it looks at your max weight. Don't accept it at light weights. Let's switch over. That's good. A gentleman now. Let's have a look at, see how we can fix his technique. All right, stop. Everyone see what we just did? One of them is the thoracic extension of the squat. So what I'm going to get you to do, because when we thoracic extend, we're going to lose. So I want you to do this, pull the rib cage down. I want you to stay there. Get that. Yes, feel that. That's right. People don't get away with jack shit on my watch. I'm watching everything. The moment they grab the bar, how they grab the bar, where they grab the bar. So get into position. So that's with the inhale. You can still inhale. So look at me. I mean, let's see where I am. I'm not, not here. That's bench press, right? It's a squat, bro. I want to stack my ribs. That's better. 4, 3, 2, 1. Spring up. 4, 3, 2, 1. Again. 4, 3, 2, 1. That's better. One more like that. 4, 3, 2, 1. He does a little thing at the bottom which I don't really like. You see it? No, it's coming in. He loses a bit of tension to the bottom and then he kind of springboards back up. Let's go to 60. On an orange band, we're going to put this around your ankles. And again, why am I putting around his ankles over his— I want him to get a little bit more stable, but I want to get stable from the ground, not stable from the pelvis. So that's why I'm putting it over his feet. 3, 2, 1. Good, that's better. Tighten up the upper, tighten up, tighten up. Stack it, stack it, stand up, stand up, stand up, stack it. Okay, cool. Two things actually I noticed. One is you don't keep your upper body stiff enough, right? And I'm going to show you all how to do that, and that's because you've got massive extension. So we're going to do that, we can all, we can all understand by that. The second thing is you have massive hip shift. I don't know if anyone else saw that, but his hips are shifting quite a bit. So that's another thing that we're probably not going to solve in one session. But we can solve that through core strength and more unilateral work. But there is definitely a hip shift, right? So the first thing is, if you can stand here for me, I'm going to demo, right? So pelvic tilt, right? Let's tuck the tailbone under. Good. Stick your ass out. Now let's do the opposite. Tuck the tailbone under, right? So now what I want you to do is I want you to stack the ribs on top. There we go. Put your hands in like a squat position, right? Now when you breathe in, breathe in for me through your nose. Breathe out. With your breathing, he's breathing very much into his chest. When you're breathing for stability, you want to breathe into your stomach, right? So I'm going to be quite particular here, right? Get your abs on, pelvis up, ribs down. Now when you breathe through your nose, we can breathe into my hands. All right, now let it go. Breathe through your nose and try and expand all the way through here. I'm touching— there you go, you've got it. Feel that? It's hard. That's where it should be. Yeah, I was feeling for where he was breathing. He was breathing onto here. First he was breathing into his chest, then I felt him breathe here and getting his abs tense, but he wasn't breathing as a full belt. I wanted him to expand all the way around. So I was cueing, I was actually pushing on his back and telling him, breathe into my hands, and I was palpating his back to get him to breathe all the way around. So if everyone stands up and just tries it on themselves, if you put your hands on your, on your belly, on your sides, right? So in that position, anterior pelvic tilt. Everyone, that's the first part we're going to do, anterior pelvic tilt. Squeeze your ass cheeks as hard as you can, stack your ribs, right? Everyone in that position. Now I want you to breathe through your nose and expand through your hands, right? And let it go. Again, breathe through your nose, expand through your hands. And if you're not getting it through, put your hands on the back of your body as well and feel, feel it expand. Let it go. Try one more time. Try and fill it up. So that's what, that's what's called intra-abdominal pressure, right? It's going to enable us to Fill up the body with air pressure to help us be more stable. So take your time with your breathing. Fill up, squeeze your hands, move your ribs down. There you go. On the count, you want 2-second pause at the bottom. So breathe in. Yep, hold it. 4, 3, 2, 1, hold. 2, 1, up. Good, go again. So much better. Do 2 more like that. 4, 3, 2, 1, hold. 2, 1, up. Fuck, so much better. Knee tension in all the lifts. What I noticed was his upper body wasn't getting— and I think getting his upper body tight combined with getting his feet tight is actually what solved his hip shift. So you can try and solve the hip shift, or you can work on the system below or above, and that can sometimes create the shift that you're looking for. So it's hard to say, but generally speaking, my first go-to is putting a band around their knees because that's going to create stability around the hips. So again, you just— you want to check in, that's the instability, We need to create more stability. How can we do that? We can create external forces, bands, we can use different training mechanisms and devices. Say for example, cambered bar would also work because the cambered bar— some of you have used it— that bar there where it goes like this and it pushes the center of gravity forward so you have to use more glutes. It's kind of the trap bar of the squat because the trap bar creates the center of gravity. But yeah, I mean, generally creating things that have more stability aspects of it is going to help, and also priming. So getting them to do glutes before they do their squats. So you might get them to do clams, you might get them to do reverse hypers, you might get them to do glute drives. Those things before they squat will help neuromuscular activate the muscle that you want them to be using during that exercise. It's actually not that bad. Go again, just give me like 5 reps. Okay, what's the first thing that you'd fix? Head. Head position is terrible, right? Stick your chin up, because your body's gone— it's really bad, geez. All right, it's pretty good, it's pretty good. Rack it in. Second thing I'll fix is the hand position. So I'm gonna get you to grab the bar again. Whoa, whoa, whoa, no, come back. Grab the bar. Are your hands even? Not really. It's yes or no. No. So let me teach you. Put your thumb here, wrap each time. Done. Now grab the bar as hard as you can. That's it. I need you to rack it in again. Answer to the good question. Let's bring your hands there. Why do I pay attention to that? It's going to go up at back time. Now I want you to pull the bar onto your— don't look at me. Pull the bar down. That's it. See your muscles on the back all of a sudden switch on? Okay, great. Now go. Now I want you to move with a 4-second tempo. 4, 3, 2, 1, back up. Go again. 4, 3, 2, 1. Okay, not— you don't want to save the tempo for that, you know. Let's make it even throughout. Okay, so 4, head up, 3, 2, keep going, keep going, keep going, hold it, hold it, stay there, chin up, elbows back, sternum up. Stand them up, stay in that position, stand up, go again. That exact same thing. 4, head up, keep your head up. 4, 3, 2, actually stop for a second. Let's put a band around your knees. So, do we see a pattern? What's her pattern? She's constantly moving. We need to teach her to hold stability through her body. Because when she lifts, she has so many energy leaks. Energy leaks through her hand, energy leaks through her hip, angely through, back, angely through. There isn't the stability aspect. So when I look at this, I'm like, this is a pattern. Go, go back to your squat. Let's see if this changes her pattern. That's all we're really looking at. Does this change her pattern? Beautiful. She's already taken on board the hand position. I want you to squeeze the bar harder. Squeeze the bar harder. It's not hard enough. There you go. Squeeze. She heard me coming. Warm this down. Pull this down. There. Right there. Back a little bit. So much better. Changed two things. Is this a better squat? Yes. Head up, head up, head up. The other thing that I'll do to brainwash her is go— don't touch my hand. Head up. Be replaced right now. Like, fuck, this guy's intense. Go again. But you remember not to put your head down, cuz my hand's right there. She's going to smack her hand in my face, right? Okay, go again. Beautiful. She's looking at me like, fuck, I'm going to get slapped with this shit. Let's give her a round of applause. I've just figured out ways where you want to cheat. If I put my hand in front of your face, you're like, fuck. The thing that you want to do to make it easy for yourself is the thing that I don't let you do. Fundamentally, if you look at what we changed here for Niamh, we got her to stabilize her spine, we got her to stabilize her pelvis. How do we do that? Well, from the moment she grabbed the bar, She grabbed it really loosely, kind of like on holiday. What did I do? Changed the hand position. I said no, I grabbed her hand, squeezed the bar. I showed her where her scap— where her hand— where her scap needs to be in position there. So we fixed the upper stability for the upper back. The band helps us with the stability of the hips. She's pulling everything down and then pushing her forward, she's no longer leaning forward. Spine. She's up nice and tight. So now we have all hubs of stability. There's no pressure leaks. Everything's stable. Now all I need to do is get her to do 10,000 reps of this so she never does that movement pattern again, and then she'll be great. 10 things we learned today over the course of the day. What are 10 things we learned? Stability mobility equals strength, and you saw real-time examples of this. That you can utilize primus to get people to improve their technique. Yeah, how do you like— was that cool? How I did the demo of the deadlift? Like, do this, now do this, now do this. Oh, wait a minute, now it's a lift, right? It was always there, we just had to prime it. Do it in a sequential order, build the skill, move it into the exercise, and away we go. So don't underestimate— talk about primers— don't underestimate the value of primers. When I give a cue, I don't give a cue without giving a physical cue. Physical command as well. So if I say, 'Shoulders back,' I physically put you in the position that I want, and I say, 'Shoulders.' And when I say 'shoulders,' you're anchored now. For every time you say 'shoulders,' you'll go like this. I'll anchor the physical action with the word so that when I step away and they're looking, that's the command. They know that that's what I mean by that cue. Value of template manipulation, especially dysfunction, and virtually. Yeah, it's very valuable. I think that bracing position is the biggest takeaway because that's every exercise. It's every exercise. So the plank, so the plank is where you want to practice that. Rotate, stack, get into that. And don't go narrow with your planks, makes it easy. Go wide. Working back, absolutely, it's definitely a big takeaway, working back. Think of Think of where the client— you want the client to be. Think of where they're at. Start with where you know what you're going to do, say, 12 months from now. You know where you want them to be. What do they need to work on now? Using priming exercises? Yep, priming exercises, definitely. Yes, the strength standards. So using strength standards can be very much an insight in terms of if you're wanting to bring up a lift and you're not sure about how to bring up a lift, use that 100% value. Say, well, this is where my— we'd use the example of the bench press. If I want to get my bench press stronger, then my shoulders are only at, say, 50%. If I can get my shoulders stronger, then I'm going to be able to get my bench press stronger. Yeah, good takeaway. The case study from Ari, Ari, like, was— he's there, like, initially, like, building the rapport with the client, focusing on, like, the ability rather than what he couldn't do. Yes, I'm like, I wrote down stuff but I've forgotten now, but like, I think that was an awesome presentation there, just like the journey that they've gone through. Well, I don't know any client that doesn't have any issues whatsoever. Every client has some type of issue, whether it's time, resources, physical abilities, restrictions of some sort, you know, but there are going to be restrictions and it is about how do you work through those things to get the client an elite result. Awesome day with all of you. It's day 1. Woo! Happy? Yeah.