Strength coach Mark Ottobre screens 19-year-old Lewis in five minutes, spotting a crooked hip line, weak hip hinge, and ankle-related imbalance from a recent roll. He skips traditional squats, prescribes unilateral work and trap-bar deadlifts to fix the hinge, and builds a 2-up/2-down/1-arms split.
Up overhead. When he gets in this position, he doesn't lock his arms out for some reason. Look at this, he's not centered. What do we see? He doesn't use his hips. My name is Mark Ottobre, and I've been creating head-turning results and getting people strong and injury-free for over 20 years. Come with me in this session as I take Lewis through a screen and assessment to create his first program. Yeah, all right, great, thanks. Yeah, do the other leg. Okay, can you see you like this here? Oh, like that. And, and just relax. Does anyone notice anything weird about what he was doing? Look at his hips. See how crooked he is? Yeah. All I see when I look at assessments is circles and lines, right? That's it. Circles and lines. Just, that's how you got to program your brain to see. There's a circle at his ankle, there's a circle at his knee, there's a circle at his hip, right? If you look at this, there is a diagonal that's going through here. He's shifting. It's kind of curious, right? Like, now with that alone, you go, all right, well, that's not a diagnosis, but it's information. He's also— when we talk about circles and lines, this is rotating in, so he's not really stabilizing from his glute either. And his feet are working very hard. I mean, he's got magnificent feet, You can see the space in his feet. He's really gripping the ground, which is great. But look at his shoulders as well. We talk about circles and lines. Look at this. He's not centered. He's completely on a slant. He's compensating somewhere, right? Again, this is just insights into how people move. There's a pattern here that's breaking down. Go stand on the other foot. It's somewhat present here too. Now relax for us. What's your goal? Do you have a physical goal, a physique goal, strength goal, athletic goal?
Not particularly. Just kind of— I want to get leaner and then just maintain. Or then bulk up a bit or something.
But so just aesthetics? Yeah, yeah, I guess. Is there a particular lift or something that you want to get?
I'd always have like a bench press goal. Yeah, but not so much anymore.
Why not? Don't think it's possible?
I mean, honestly, there might be a bit of that.
Well, the good news is you're 19. I'd want him to be good at, right, he said bench press. Okay, great. I would definitely prioritize that goal for him if it's bench press. And the first thing I would do in our session, which we can do in a moment, is I would see how he actually bench press and I would define our terms. And if He may surprise me. The screening and the assessment of the movement isn't a diagnosis to go, okay, this is it, right? This is just information right now. Yeah, it's a little bit like ChatGPT. I'm collecting data, I'm collecting information. That's the context data around. I'm going to use that to build his program. So if we look at it real quickly again and just review, if you flip this way, do the bodyweight squat so folks can see. All right. He doesn't— the abs are an issue, right? So number one, thoracic extension. We put this back in his hand. So I'm just flagging things in my head. None of this is diagnosis, but these are things that I'm noticing, right? Up overhead. When he gets in this position, he doesn't lock his arms out for some reason. Is there any injuries here or something that you've done?
Oh, not recently.
Oh, okay. Not recently?
Oh no, I used to have a problem with my elbows, but it's fine.
Tell me about it.
It wasn't a big injury. It was just like a recurring kind of soreness, I guess.
Okay, see, I spot something. For some reason, he's not bending his elbow, right? It's not coincident. There is a reason why he's not bending his elbows. All right, so he doesn't have the range of motion. So what I see is, again, he's not that strong through his thoracic extension. He bends— well, he's not strong through thoracic extension. He bends forward. We need to do some upper back work, hip Mobility is not there. Again, consistent with the clack test. Reaches down and touches his toes. What do we see? We see he doesn't use his hips. Again, when we reach down and touch our toes, it's not a test of flexibility. It's a test of how well does someone use their hips. He doesn't use his hips. So right now, if we're going to move into deadlifts, I'm probably going to start with a trap bar deadlift to build in a hinge position. The last one I want to do with you is on the floor. The backbend was phenomenal. That was A++, right? I want you to bridge like this as high as you can. Then you're going to take one leg off. Not like that. Just one leg off and I want you to hold. Okay, but bridge up to start with. Bridge up as high as you can. Okay, and switch and come out all the way down and do it again. Whoa, okay, so significant. Is that the ankle you hurt?
This one's ankle I hurt.
Yeah, so relax. Where do you feel that?
Uh, lower back.
Lower back. So you can see the significant difference from left to right. Yes. So again, when looking at this, would I get someone like this to squat? No, you wouldn't be doing squats. Why? Not yet. You need unilateral work because there's such a significant hip shift from left to right. You can— you're actually very stable on this side, but whether it's coming from— again, knees are a reflection of what's happening below, what's happening above. Whether— and I suspect the issue is in the ankle. That— are you getting pain in the ankle when you—
A little, a little. Right.
So I suspect that this rolled ankle is still actually causing grief and there's the compensatory— but compensation is coming from this side. You can see one side significantly stronger than the other. And whether it's his foot and there's like a pain reception that's causing him to tilt, or whether he's weak, whether it's the hip because the hip looks weak, but whether he's pushing through the floor and it's the foot, maybe it's too early to tell because it's only been 2 weeks. Either way, I'm not going to put this guy under a bar for squatting because he's going to be shifting way too much. And if I was going to do— introduce any squatting with him, he'd be putting a band around his knee to switch on his glutes. Now if it is glutes, then that would solve it, but if it's the ankle, it's the pain reception coming back to his brain shutting off force. It's probably too early in the piece to tell because he's just rolled his ankle. Does this make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah, so his lower body, I mean, I'd probably follow a pretty simple protocol for him already in the programming that I'm thinking. Probably 2 days upper, 2 days lower, 1 day arms. For a guy like, he just wants aesthetics and things.
