ATG Step-Ups Explained with @theatgcoach Ben Clarfield

Step ups, the ATG system, where do they fit? What are they good for? We're going live with Ben Clairfield is the plan. The step up is part of the ATG system. It fits in alongside together with the sled. Now, if you're going really hard on the sled, the step up might not be as key as if you're unable to jump in on the. On the sleds. We need that strength from the ground up. We need to be strong. We know that we need to be strong in the foot. We know that we need to be strong in the calf. If we're going to dominate single foot jumping, then it makes sense that we practice something that is like single foot jumping. Mason, how are you?

Here we go.

We've got the man himself. Mr. Clayfield, how are you?

Here we go.

We're good.

Here we go. Rolling step ups.

We talk. We're talking step ups. When, when, when did the step ups come on, on the radar for you? Was that like very, very early in your training career or is it a little further in?

A little further in. I think it's funny, like, I talked to one of my coaches. It's an interesting thing. Sometimes we. We go to the thing that we're good at or that sort of makes sense to us, and it's good and sometimes it's bad. And for me, weirdly enough, I used to play basketball and I thought lifting was stupid and I didn't care how people looked. I thought that was also stupid. It's like, what? So what? Like, you got a 20 pack, but I just crossed you and scored on you while you suck. There was no like, oh, but he's better looking or what? There's no. I didn't care about that. When you're athletic, you don't. When you think about athletic performance, you think, well, did I or didn't I win? So my back used to really, really hurt after basketball and my knees hurt. I just thought it was obvious. And I started lifting late. So I think I was 23 when I moved to Canada. 22, 23. I dicked around and did some biceps randomly once in a while, but I never lifted seriously. And my back used to hurt all the time. I think I read in Men's Health, like, deadlifting is good. So I started deadlifting and my back pain disappeared. I was like, oh, this is cool. So I did various rep styles and whatever, and I didn't really look up. It was like men's health garbage. So I had no idea. So. So. But at some point I started figuring out, well, okay, well, how about trying to lift more? So I remember lifting 135 back in the day, and they're like, that's heavy. You know, not kilos pounds. So 60, 60, one kilo, whatever. I was like, oh, this is weird. And meanwhile, this is at a time where I could dunk. So I didn't care about lifting. I'm like, but my sport, I'm good at my sport. So deadlifting work. And then I kept being like, okay, well, how much can I lift? And every time I would just put more weight on the bar, you know, the most basic conception of progressive overload, without having known what progressive over, it's like, okay, next time you add more. And then I got a job as a personal trainer and I deadlifted and did some other random stuff. And I would chin up, I would do chin ups and say, like, well, how much can I chin up? Can I do 10? Can I do 12? Can I add weight? Oh, I can add weight. What if I add more weight? That kind of a thing. So pretty decent before. Yeah. So step ups came afterwards when I, when, when I discovered Charles Poliquin. That's when all of this stuff of like the progression of step ups, it's a Poliquin step up. And, you know, there's no Patrick's day. It was just a side step up, you know, Pauloquin step up, Peterson step up. And just the whole discover for me was that where you then incorporate it into a program and you would do it. If someone had terrible knees, you would do those first work towards split squats and all this kind of stuff before you even squatted. So it was one of those like, huh, this is a cool solution. But I never, so it was pretty late, I would say, from a random lifting point of view. So that's, I, I, I think it was an interesting thing for me. Squats came late and they came because of all of this, all of the Charles stuff, which I realized how terrible my squats were compared to other stuff that I was just naturally decent at. You had a great point, I think, some time ago, which is what's interesting is when you sort of measure a bench press as a capability of someone to exert force squats, you know, someone tells you they squat 450 or 200 kilos or, you know, I had a guy who said, yeah, yeah, I can squat. I can squat, you know, 200 kilos easy. I'm like, he couldn't squat 130 kilos properly. The way we do it as the grass, you know, it wasn't even close. It was like 100 and whatever. Um, so there's such variance. So in some ways it's easy for us to be snobs and say, like, wow, that's not a real squat. Okay, well then how do you measure? And how do you have someone from afar tell you how strong or not strong they are? How do you assess whereas a bench press, the guy says, well, yeah, I've benched, you know, oh, 300. I can bench 300 for eight. And you're, and then you. So you see if they're benching 300 pounds for eight, or if they're, or they're not really benching 300 pounds, there's. It's an easier metric. So I remember I could, I could bench over 300 way before I could swat over 300. So that was one of those. It could pounds, you know, kilos.

Yeah, but, but that tells you the nervous system works. Like, I, it's. It. It's not something to write off. Like, bench press can be criticized, but if an athlete has a big bench press and they're not injured, then it's a good sign. It's not a bad thing.

Yeah, it's funny because it became a tool that was denigrated, but it's still a tool, right? Like so. And it's very funny. Like, and I train a whole bunch of jiu jitsu, very high level jiu jitsu athletes in Canada. And there was a whole bunch of, well, I don't really bench press. One of the guys says, and I'm like, why? It's like, well, some trainer said that bench pressing isn't. My mindset is. Well, but it's a very, very closely correlated tool for the sport of jiu jitsu, which is lying on your back and getting someone to get the F off of you. So actually it's. Obviously there's technique involved and all this other stuff, but really there's force production. And if you can bench more, your defenses become easier. So he was like, oh, I never thought of that. And the answer is because it's been demonized. And I think that's the thing. It shouldn't be demonized. It's another tool. It's when people say, well, a barbell. I would never use a barbell. Well, why? It's a great tool. It's a fun. It's one of the best tools. It's like, oh, I never use dumbbells. Well, just because you don't have any dumbbells, they're all great tools. You know, the people that make kettlebells, the be all, end all. No, it's a tool. But the people that dismiss kettlebells and say they're useless, they're not useless. It's a tool. Each one of these things is a tool for us to use in space and time to either get stronger or not stronger. And there's better tools for various things and worse tools. But again, that's how to use the tool. But I think the philosophic point is to realize these are tools and we should use them with our brain and our body.

That's it's such an important thing because anyone can make a cake, but only some people can make a really world class cake. Wolfgang Onslaught said that when I went, I went and visited him down in Stuttgart and he's like, you know, anyone can put food on a plate, but there's only so many Michelin three star chefs. And so we can all be doing the same thing and we can all be doing something very, very different. We can all be using flour, eggs and sugar and coming up with very different concoctions that people will pay different money for and have a different experience with. And I think that's important to acknowledge because a lot of coaches will write themselves off and say, look, we all squat, bench, deadlift, you know, we're all, everyone, you know, we're squat, bench, clean. Like we're all doing basically the same thing. So it doesn't really matter too much. Like, no, it's the details make all the difference of whether someone becomes really successful or they, you know, you put them into a position where they get injured and they go out the back door and they end up on painkillers and like, it's like literally like life and death difference between whether you're getting these details right. So speaking about this in relation to the step up, like, how do you use the step up? Like, where does it fit in? How important is it? Is it peaking? Is it prep? You know, what is it?

I think an answer is the best answer always is. It depends. So I would say, you know, if you're, if someone comes in and their knees are blasted and they're just garbage, you know, like it's, it's easy for all of us that are in any way, shape or form associated with atg. Because Ben, you know, Ben Patrick is doing such a great job for us. But the thing that's interesting is I had a guy contact me, says, well, I like what Ben's doing, but like, my knees are fine. I've got really crappy back. So with this guy, like step ups aren't going to be the primary thing I'm going to do. I'm going to make him split squat until his like he, he has split squats coming out of his, like, you know, every pore of his body. And he's going to do a bunch of stretching and he's going to do a bunch of stuff for his low back and all kinds of different ways. And I might throw in a step up once a week because his knees aren't the number one thing. But I would say the worse a thing for someone, the more I attack it. And that doesn't mean attack it in the sense of like, okay, you've got a bad back and bad knees. All right, it's 500 pound back squat for you. It's like, no, we get there. It's if someone has bad knees, worse knees, then I'm not so quick to back squat them and I'm much quicker to do all of the other things. So it might be during the week, I think I did a call where I talked about how would you use the step up in a way that the person can step up for the rest of their life? Because really when we're getting paid as coaches, you have to figure out how and that's, you know, this. We can talk more about what sort of my, what I'm, you know, discussing with Ben and yourself of what, how we need to coach our coaches, which is to understand that we're trying to sell. Ben had a great line. He's like, we're trying to make the unsexy sexy and Ben's doing a phenomenal job at that. So, okay, so the question then is like, what are the details of it? So, okay, so let's say we have someone that is lower body hurt and they need step ups one to twice a week. Again, the other question you always have to ask is how many times are you seeing them? So let's assume that I'm seeing these people minimally three to four times a week, which is what we generally do here. Sometimes it's more. And again, we're talking gen pop. So if it's an athlete, it's a whole nother ball game where the return on investment and the time frame is much faster. So, so let's say we have. Go ahead.

Will I sled before that?

Yeah, sure. It all depends. Like.

Yeah, yeah, I like with bad knee. Yeah, yeah.

I actually really like sledding before, so it's really easy. So let's assume this is the workout. We're going to go and they're going to come in and I'm going to go reverse lead. If someone gets a bit more advanced, they'll go forward, backward. But, you know, reverse slide is the easiest thing because it's such an easy buy in. And you love buy ins. I love buy ins. Buy ins are great because it means that someone isn't just like, all right, put the bar on your back. And it's like squatting. That's big. Or the deadlift. They pick up the bar, it's like, oh. By the time they get to that, I don't believe it should be 40, 45 minutes into an hour workout that they touch the bar. That's stupid. But if it becomes. If it's 10 minutes in, cool. Where they've done some calves or they've done. So depends how crappy their calves are and how much work they need. But I would say we're gonna go sled. Depends on what it is. I just did a video on it, which is, you know, an easy one is two minutes on, two minutes off. Like you're not trying to kill them, you're shooting the shit. They're grabbing their water, they're slowly warming up. Three sets, three to four sets, depending how warm they get. And they can start to speed it up on their own pace, but really it's just blood flow, grooving, the grease moving, not technical. Their brain's gonna start rolling. Then I do one of two things. Either start with the step ups or I'll start with their calves and tibialis raises.

Yep.

Some people, they're so garbage and they're so tight in the lower extremities that it's even good to start with a certain calf tip. And so I get them on it. So it's standing calf, seated calf, tibias race, or tibias race first, usually, because it's just so nice and easy. It just blast into it. Three sets, 25. 20 to 25. Depends where they are. 15 to 25, really, if we're going to play intensification and if we're going to really play all the way. 15 reps is when they're squatting heavy, but again, they're not there yet. So then we get into the probably a Patrick step up because it's just the easiest to start off and it could be low and we start going. And I'll load them pretty quick because then they'll feel like they're working. So it'll be 20, 20 reps. Have.

You been a fan of the side Step Up? I do remember that was in the PICP too, but I never, I never really used it.

The thing is like the problem with Charles and it's not a problem, it's in some ways like the gift that keeps on giving. There was so much I was talking to. It's funny, like there was a lady who's a friend of mine who lives not far from Ben and she visited the last time I went down and she actually introduced Ben. She biosyced him and told him about Strongman and some stuff. This is over a decade ago. And Ben went off on his way and did all this stuff and whatever. But, you know, it was great to have her come and work out.

Is it Ashley or not?

Lexi. Lexi. No.

Okay.

Anyway, she's great. She's a good friend. She's a great. And what's interesting is that she's gone off and done very well and she's very intelligent and she's in the functional medicine world. The thing is with Charles, you can go off on that and could have gone off on that and be very successful and very deep diving on all kinds of very complex stuff with nutrition and brain health and gut health and microbes and molds and all kinds of crazy stuff and help a lot of people, which is so cool. And then you could be Ben, who's like the, you know, one could say the preeminent knee expert in the world or whatever you want to call it, you know, and, and there, and there's a whole myriad of people that do all kinds of different stuff in between. There's body comp. People that have never touched an athlete in their life and bodybuilding and all kinds of stuff. And there's people that have never touched a bodybuilder in their life and their, you know, athletic performance. So there's. There's so many different things that you could go down the path. And what's my point? My point is Charles gave us so many exercises. He was the absolute master of saying, oh, you have advice? I think I did a video on this. Oh, you've got a dumbbell. Well, okay, great. This is one curl. This is one curl. Well, if you have your pinky on this side, it's a different curl. If you have your thumb on the other side, it's a different curl. And if you semi supinate. Supinate, Supinating. Pronate it. Pronate. It's, you know, 20 different exercises and we haven't gotten into the rep ranges or the, you know, the periodization model or pauses, or he was a master of every different angle exercise because he knew that variety, really, he lived by variety of the spice of life. And we can talk upper lower, but the idea is that lower body doesn't need as much variety, but our brains need variety. So, you know, you can do. So I think, you know, I talked about this, or we've talked about this, where you can do a step up with dumbbells, that's fine. Then you can do a step up with the barbell on your back, that's fine. You can do a step up with the hex bar, that's fine. And you do a step up with, you know, in all kinds of different ways. So you can do it sideways, you can do, you can do forwards, you can do stepping on, you can do stepping off, you can do. So the thing is, that's the genius of a coach. If we think, oh, well, all we have is one thing. So you have the side step up. Use it. Great. Awesome. You know what I mean?

Oh, where does it fit for you, though? Like, it's obviously less. Less impact on the knees, a little bit more posterior chain involvement. I mean, less ankle mobility.

Funnily enough, I used a high step up and I used it and I use it a lot, actually. I use it with a lot of my NFL ers that didn't like squatting. And Charles said that you could go all the way up to a high step up or a quad where the quad is parallel or higher for three reps to peak. So one of my athletes had a back hurt and he was a multimillion dollar athlete and I didn't want to fight with him, but he wanted the stimulus. So he loved split squats. They made him feel great. He got really mobile, really strong. He was extremely explosive. He would rock, pull a truck, he would do all this kind of stuff. He wasn't great at Olympic lifting. Didn't really care about it. I made him do poles. He hang clean forever because of, you know, the NFL and the, and collegiate strength conditioning make you do that. He's like, I don't really care. I just want to feel mobile and good and strong. But I got him extremely strong. He did chin ups with 75 pounds on his waist for three on fat grips at 300 pounds. Pretty good for a, for a lineman, like, you know. Yeah, like, I got him like he was. I got him. In one off season, I got him down just over 280 pounds with abs, like, just abs, you know, at six foot five and a half. It was like. He loved it. And he did phenomenally well. He made a ton of money. He's great. He's retired now, you know, but he loved step up. Like, he loved split squats and he loved step ups. Yeah, we would. I would peek him before camps and before games with a high step up. He loved them and he would, he would explode. Like, we're talking a lot of weight, dumbbells in hand. He really liked that. He didn't love a marble on his back. He thought it was uncomfortable. But I've done that. And you go all the way up to three reps. All the way down to three reps, yeah. So I use that instead of like. Well, but. But if you're not front squatting or back squatting, I don't know what to do with you. Like. Well, that's not true. You have to be creative and you have to figure out a solution.

That's a great story. I think that's super powerful. And I think this whole conversation, anyone who's listening or listening back, you get that feeling of, like, the love of the art and the dexterity within the art where it's very difficult to answer question without the context. But, you know, you're getting some perspective of what you know. I love that example that you're given there. James Broughton's asked step ups, short or long range. They weren't really thought about in that way. Right. In the, in the day. It was just that they were. They were an important movement. We've started to classify movements in that way because we've found that when tendon health and rehabilitation is the primary objective, it's valuable to think about that. Bodybuilders also found it valuable to think about the joint angle and position and the amount of stretch. They were very conscious of whether the muscle was stretching or it wasn't stretching with within a movement. And they would sequence the movements and they were thought of as being quacks or thought of as being crazy for doing that. Whether, you know, comes from Vince Gironda and probably before him, that they really targeted whether the muscle was stretched or not and where that fit in the workout. I think John Meadows did great work with that, who is a good friend of Charles. So the step up, short or long, if it depends on which joint you're talking about as well. Right. And yeah, how you execute the step up.

Like, I've done a step up from, you know, from the lowest of. I mean, listen, you can do a floor, like, where there's no elevation you can do a Patrick Poliquin, Peterson. It doesn't matter. We started. We start on the floor.

Yep.

You can start with someone on the floor.

That's the other question here. Is the increase recommended, increase weight or height first? So we can maybe get both of those.

I like weight first, actually. I like weight first.

Me too. Yeah.

It makes people feel like they're training and you're getting load on something, which at the end of the day is what we're trying to do now. It sort of goes against a squat. So if someone asked me about a squat, I would say range before. Before. Because the goal is to actually get a great squat, not a. Well, you know, your biomechanic, all that. I never believed that bullshit. It never made sense to me that, oh, well, different people have different, you know, femur length and hip. So they can't go all the way down. I'm like, okay, well, then let's figure out how to get them all the way down, because truly they can. Like, I've. I mean, the only person I've seen, I have one client that I can't squat them because he's got a new knee, a new ankle, and it's 20 years old. Like, he got it. He's got his knee 20 years old. He's got an ankle four years. And he squats, but it's a box squat onto a bench, but he can't get all the way down. Like, literally, it will not go. It is used. There's.

It's quality of life at that. At that point. It's not about.

It's not.

It's not the same game. Yeah.

Not the ideology. And he does great. Like, we're talking. This guy both been blasted. It's a whole nother ball game. So. So I would say. I would say, yeah, find a way, but don't. I wouldn't look. So there's a lot of coaches like, no, no, no, his joint will never go. I'm like, I think it's an amazing thing to say to people what will or will never happen. And I say this with that client, but that client, it is used and done. It's not. Well, he's different. It's like, that's. I mean, so unless it's used, you can get all the way down. Now not. And that was an interesting. Someone's commenting on the guy that just visited, Ben Junsu, who's. Who's Korean. And so there's the. The stereotype of the Asian squat. But it is what it is. That's biomechanics. And there's genetics involved, you know, it doesn't, it's better or worse. And Ben's with a slightly forward lean. And mine, I have more of a forward lean because of my hips and my. But I get all the way down. So different people have different angles. But it's not wrong to have a slight slightly forward angle. It's. That's biomechanics with a squat. So back to the step up, I would say you've articulated the short range, long range, but if you see some of the step ups, like a triple jumper, step up type thing where it's full, you know, knee flexion and pretty much ass is touching the heel into a step up where you have a high, high box, I mean, that's. Is that short range? No, it's not short range. So the point is, it depends. But I would say to start, if we're starting knee rehab, even with someone who's, who's an athlete, it doesn't matter. Knee rehab, knee rehab, you start low and slowly add weight and then add height. And the thing with these things is that is there a KPI or not KPI? Is there benchmark medical? A benchmark. The answer is no, because the point is everyone's different. Some people's tissue is so garbage and they're so ruined and they've done so much garbage that. And I say this, the same thing with the split squat. When do you lower the front elevation? Well, like, that's the magic of coaching. And you try and if it's too much, then you go back, but you still have to progress. But it might take someone three years and it might take someone intro workout. I mean, I think I tell the story of the same NFL guy. He, he had a bad. And he had a, a plate in his, in his ankle from an injury and then he hurt it in one game. And then we were doing rehab on it and we were doing a wobble wobble board, split squat, front foot, wobble board, split squat. Charles says, you know, wobble boards are pretty much garbage except once in a blue moon for two weeks of the year for some stuff like split squats. And it is actually really good to recalibrate the neurological aspect. So especially post injury, it's actually not terrible. So for some people, you know, I think I rehabbed someone's knee and it was like a month and a half on the wobble board until they got to figure out and all this kind of stuff. And for this athlete, it was one workout. So they did one set. You Know, it was all over the place. They were like, okay, let me try again. Boom. Straight. Figured it out. Knee full, straight, split, squat. Figured out. So we did it twice. It was enough stimulus. Next, moving on. His ankle was fine. Like, I mean he got treatment too. But you know, it depends on the capabilities of the person. So the point is, same thing with flexibility. Some people's tissue just, just, just opens up. And some people's tissue, it's like, Jesus, Louise. Is it's nutrition, it's hydration, it's damage, it's neurological, it's trauma, all kinds of stuff.

So I think one of the genetics.

But when do you, but when do you change? And the answer is like you change when it gets slightly better and you stimulate it. Right?

Yep. Yeah, that, that patience and listening to what's going on and not forcing yourself into, well, someone else said I could do it or they can do it, so I should be able to do it. Like that's where a lot of things go south and people get themselves behind. But the, the thing with the step up just to finish on the short long, like the ankle range is one of the gains that can be really important as well from the Patrick's. If you, if you do max out the ankle range that then you can look at it as like a longer range movement for the, for the ankle. Generally the step ups that we use we would consider short range because there's no stretch. So that's the way that you can, you can think about it is, is the muscle on a stretch the difference with the step ups though? And why? Because generally short range exercises are less aggressive like the spider curls or the, you know, the terminal knee extensions or tricep lockouts or kickbacks, they're less aggressive, they don't cause as much inflammation, they don't cause as much muscle growth. The thing with the step ups is because, especially in the Peterson because you're kind of replicating a movement that can damage the knee joint or like, you know, with a weak knee you're going to feel that straight in the knee joint. So, so you have to consider the joint adaptation as well as the muscle. So for the muscle it's short range and it's not going to cause like massive hypertrophy or serious like tissue damage. But for the joint you could, you could tear it up. Like it's, it's something to be conservative and considerate about. So that's why I kind of have a concept of like joint dominant movements where if the joint is really what's speaking to you then listen to the joint, don't worry about what the weight like listen to the joint. Maybe you can lift more. But if the joint is telling you something or if it's not going to be good after the session, then you know that was too much.

Right. I think, I think there's a lot of, you know, it's an interesting thing that's, you know, you and I always get to the philosophical points. I think there's very much something that like I always go to, I always go to Plato. There's a dialogue called the Theatitis, which is Socrates talking to a mathematician kind of. And there's this conception that this mathematician can understand the universe. I'm summarizing very much so that you can understand the universe in a formula. And Socrates pretty much flips it and says that there's always the human element. That's pretty much the. I'm summarizing and I would say that the art of coaching is Socratic, such that you always have to understand the human part as opposed to the mathematical, which is a formula. And I think we're always going to get up against the science guys that think that no, no, no, science hasn't come to the position yet where it's just, we're just one little discovery away from the perfect formula to do whatever it is with all humans. And I think that what's amazing about, you know, a 2,500 2500 year old philosophic tradition going back to Plato, which in these books it teaches us to say not so fast. The human element is always, always there. And it's in anything, it's in any interpretive conception of data. And I think that's the magic of it. And that's what actually fascinates me and actually what drives me because I actually really, really like humans or I like human interaction. So for me, when I get an athlete, whether it's gen pop or not gen pop or helping someone or whatever, I'm trying to human and all these factors we talk about, which is their genetics and how quick they adapt or how slow they adapt, allows me to play this game of like how I can improve them and help them and interact with them in a way that I can coax them because it's coaxing. Because as Charles said, muscles and movements are coaxed. You coax things, you don't blast them. And even hard training has to be coaxing. It doesn't mean gentle, it just means you have to find the exact, exact quantity. That's a little bit too much for the person such that they go home and they. The stimulus causes adaptation and they improve. And I think that's the thing, is that. That's. For me, what's so fascinating about coaching is it allows me to do that every day, where I'm always trying to figure out how I can do a little bit more with the person, because obliteration is easy. So I think these questions are always good. Is it long range? Is it short range? And I think the answer is it depends. And when do I use this and when do I use that? And the answer is, it depends. Well, what you do is you can push and try, and you can assume certain things about certain people and not about others. I'm helping an NFL guy who plays on the Cowboys, and one would assume that it's blasting. He's 6 foot 7, 255 pounds and an absolute monster, but actually needing the opposite now. Right now, he needs delicate. He's on his second block of training, and the first block was so gentle. It was so gentle that, I mean, it's not hero, but it's like. Because there was weight, but it's. It's not how most of us train, which is much harder. And it's an interesting thing to realize. That was my judgment call because I knew where he was and I knew what would happen. It was my call, having seen some of his videos of how blasted he was and how worked after the season. He was such that he actually needed a lot of stuff that would rebuild him. And so he would buy in and say, oh, this is exactly what I need, as opposed to the feelings of, like, another trainer trying to bleed me and put me into the ground. And that's the thing, is that you would assume that a guy who's that big, while he's bigger than I am, he's clearly stronger and faster than I am, and he's fighting gorillas. Well, we're gonna have to actually make him like it's gorilla training. No, it's not. There's a pace to it, and there's a. There's a. There's a patience that takes smart coaching that you decide when to do what and where.

I love it. Yeah. I think that's what you're going to get from Ben Clearfield is nuance. I think the ATG coach is going to give a lot more nuance to coaches, and that's what coaches need. I think it makes all the difference. And there's different areas that you can find nuance in. In communication with. Ben Patrick is phenomenal with the way he communicates things and inspires people to take action. You only have to look at, you know, what's happened over the last few years. Yeah. We've all got our strengths with these things and listening in, it's going to help a lot of coaches go a lot further and just love what they do. There's a question here about how to help 12 year olds love step ups. Ruben Parotta is saying he's coaching a kid for Muay Thai and he finds that when he's doing the physical stuff he doesn't get the same buy and he's training twice a week. Any thoughts about that?

Yeah, I don't think you can't train kids like you train us. Like it can't be. It has to be fun. Like you have to make it a challenge and make it a game.

Yeah.

And so I think having a prescriptive 10 reps actually is a mistake.

Yeah.

I actually think a 12 year old has to have fun. And I don't even know if I would coach Step Ups to be honest. I would sled the kid and race him, make him race it and make it be that kind of thing. Because actually, and Ben talks a lot about this. Sometimes you can, you don't need the step up if they sled. So I would sled the living daylights out of him. I would sled in all kinds of different ways, you know, backwards, forwards, there's also sideways type stuff. You know, I would actually do squats, full squats. I would do a healer. I, I would make him squat. And the thing with step ups is it's hard to quantify numbers for kids, but you can get a kid stronger. 12 year old kid can squat. I mean make sure it's perfect and then add load. That's what I've done. I've done it with my kids. I have a kid who's 21 now. He's serious. He's just started to get his pro. He's university player, rugby scrum half. I think I've told, I told Keegan about this.

Yeah, yeah.

I've seen about 70 kilos squatting, 150 kilos. He's a beast. But he's a guy that shouldn't be playing. Like, he's not genetically gifted. He's garbage. He's like, his body's garbage, but I've made it not garbage. He's kind of like Ben in the sense of like. But for rugby it's like, it's not, he's not, he's not meant to Be like he wasn't meant to be an athlete. Like he's very, very cerebral, very intelligent and he, you know, I made him squat early. I taught him the Olympic lifts early. I mean I could do anything with him. This kid, you know, make him throw ball, make him throw, throw stuff, make him, you know, like I would sled the living daylights out of the kid and make him make it a race, make it fun, make him beat his times. You know, that's what I would do. I would not. Technical, technical over technique the kid.

Yeah, that's what I do. I love it. It's a great, great answer. It's a question from Joseph Weston. Do you guys have a step up equivalent for shoulders?

It's a really good question. I think we're talking less in the group. I think I was talking, I have a call at 1 and I've been talking about. I think people make a mistake to think that the shoulder and the lower body are the same. And I keep harping on this. I think I like it when people are trying to see similarities. And it's good to look back to our ancestors, the apes and then look at horses and then where. How the shoulder is and isn't. And we make different demands of our upper body than we do of our lower body. And I'm going to get back to this point about the lower body is stupid. The upper body is smart. The upper body is, is. We make demands of our upper body. What do I mean by that? We make demands of our upper body that are fine motor. We're playing with. No one looks at anyone and says wow, that person is so impressive. They can text on a, on a, on a phone. It's not impressive. Every, everyone can do that. But if you could do that with your toes, fine motor skills, that would be impressive. We demand fine motor skills of our upper body. That mean that we need all kinds of different angles with our shoulder and our fingers and all this kind of stuff. So the variety is different. For the upper body you need different variety, different angles and much more of a look. You know, all the stuff that I'm doing, it's not impressive. But if I could do all this stuff, if I could do all the stuff with my feet, everyone would be impressed with our feet. And our legs are much more for gray roast mortar movement. We're standing on them, we're running, we're jumping, sometimes we're kicking. That's why soccer is an impressive game. Not that I like it is because people can do stuff with their feet that Is impressive. But the point is, is that it's for explosive movement that you're sitting on and standing on. So, so thinking of this, of the shoulder in the same way, I don't think of it in the same way. The movement of your upper body is something that, that you have to think about that like that's why, that's why we, we encourage rotator cuff strength so much. At atg, it's so neglected because everything has to come out of the shoulder. Everything. Upper body needs the stability of the shoulder. So I don't, I wouldn't say it that way, you know, that's why it was a joke. I think I hashtag one of the posts, whatever, you know, what is it? Elbows over fingers, guy like it. It's not the same, you know, and so to think that it's the same as a mistake. I think so. I think making, trying to make analogies is good. Being creative intellectually is good, but we also have to be open to where it's not correct. So I think I would say the upper body and the lower body are not analogous and the upper body has to be treated. I'll give a great example. A significant quantity of people in the bodybuilding world get obscenely huge upper bodies that are shredded, jacked and have tons of muscle. And their legs look terrible because they try to train their legs in the same way as their upper body. The lower body needs repeated effort. And I think I posted this recently. I think someone's talking about differences in squat or whatever, heel elevation, quad. Oh yeah, Keegan, we were asked this by a great coach, Nick, about heel elevation regarding the squat. And my comment was I made a comment that I learned this about, about the old Italian weightlifting team is that they just would change shoes every three weeks and their workouts were the same and that was enough for their lower body to have the stimulus for them to actually make gains and progress. Just heel elevation. Each shoe was slightly different and that was enough. So for the lower body you can hit the same thing again and again with slight variations. Now there's compliance. Right. So the question of the step up is it's possible that you'll do. I think I wrote this 20 reps for three, three weeks of a Patrick Step up where you slowly progress and load with dumbbells and height. And then three weeks later you decide to do a Poloin step up with the bar on your back for both height and load. And then three weeks later you decide to do a Peterson step up with dumbbells. And then you Go back to Patrick step up three weeks. So it's all still a step up. It's a lot of variation because you're like, oh, it's a Peterson. It's just a step up. You're doing the same thing again and again and again with slight variation just so that you don't get bored and there's some stimulus. But the upper body is a different ballgame. The upper body, you have to hit different angles. Like, so we have the rotator cuff and a video is going to come out very soon where I'm going to show multiple different variations of the rotator. Yes, we have our metrics then our standard, and Charles did that. But there's a myriad different rotator exercises and all are good. So in some ways I would actually say the upper body shouldn't be thought of as the step up because you could do well by just repeating the step up. Really, like, if you got really good at the Patrick step up over a year, really good things are going to happen. But if you just did the same things for your upper body, actually bad things would happen. So in some ways it takes an intellectual switch. And obviously all of our fascial chains are connected, but there's some things that we demand of that are different than other things on different parts of our body. So I would say, no, there is not an upper body step up. How's that for a long winded answer on that? But I think it's important to understand the desire to make things analogous. Ah, well, the knee is this. So we'll just do it for the elbow. It's not the same. We make different demands.

Yeah, I, I definitely, I agree. The, the thing with the. If you were using the step up to help with knee tendon issues, and that was the alternative that you were using to sled, which you wouldn't do that like you want to use the sled. But I have seen really good results with using tricep extensions for elbow tendonitis. You know, in all you've said, I 100 agree with. And for the shoulder, there definitely isn't, you know, the step up. The hip doesn't do that much on the step up. So the shoulder and the step up, they don't really relate very well. But elbow tendonitis, I would say, like, that's maybe a little gem that someone takes away from today. I've cleared up elbow tendonitis with the same kind of philosophy. Thinking about, okay, what would, what would the, what would the knee do for this? Just getting a lot of blood Flow to it. Lockout type work before getting into your French presses or skull crusher type movements that are much harder on the tricep tendons. Yeah. I would say there's like still some value in. They're not the same and there's a lot more complexity possible. But there's some, there's some tricks there that could help people as well.

Yeah. Again, like I. But that's, you know, back to. The thing is that I think that you're. I think you're. One of your brilliant gems or one of your most brilliant takeaways that I would say you've contributed to strength and conditioning is this idea of short, long. And I think if you think of it that way, then yes, you can apply that to any joint, even the shoulder. You can apply that from a quote unquote rehab or a warm up point of view and I think you can get great benefit. So if we're going to some form of tricep extension in the short, you know, in the, you know, lockout type stuff that can bless. Yes. So then yes, you could have some form of step up type idea. But I think the way I think about it is I don't know how helpful that is to understand the upper body versus the lower body. And I think in some ways it's connected back to my major point, which is the demands even that we make of the elbow from a, from a point of view of grace, gripping and all kinds of different stuff. Yeah. I mean, having come off Elvis elbow surgery last year from a jiu jitsu injury and I did all your stuff and all your stuff is great and it helped, but there's so much stuff that like I needed so much grip work for my elbow.

So I think.

Whereas the step up I think can do so much for the knee. It's not the only thing. I just don't, I don't know if we're gonna play games of how much of a percentage of the thing the. That I don't know.

I mean that to get back to BJJ as well.

Yeah.

To get back to BJJ after an elbow surgery as quickly, you know, as you have. Like that's the ultimate demand on the elbow really, where people potentially going to want to arm bar you. You're grabbing things like that's. You need everything from that elbow. It's almost like if you're doing leg locks and all that stuff with the legs, like it's almost the most you can ask for from, from the joint. So from surgery, from being cut to that is. Is like a lot of rebuilding. I was listening to Devin Larratt. I'm not sure if you've come across. He's a Canadian right arm wrestler. He's a world champion arm wrestler. I'm not sure if you've. You've seen him, but I love his stuff and I love what she's training. It's.

It's.

I think it's really important for coaches to look at. Okay, this guy's a strength athlete and he. What really matters is his elbow and his wrist. But he says it's like three years after a surgery before you can expect to be like a legit arm wrestler again after a serious surgery. It's like, yeah, it's no joke to come back from that.

Hold on. I seem to have cut out.

I've still got you there. There's. There's. I don't know if you can hear, but there's a ton of questions. But I think that we should probably.

Wrap it for this one second.

I can still hear you, Ben. I don't know if you guys can hear, Ben, but sometimes things jump in. So we do have a call in just under two hours live with ATG coaches and I definitely will. I'm planning to use this YouTube channel more, connecting you guys up with more of the coaches to share more value. Yeah, Tim saying you coming through. We can hear you, Ben, and I can still see you as well, so I don't know if you can hear us or not, but. All right, well, yeah, I think we might wrap it for that today, but it was great to have you guys on and great to have the questions and I'm planning to do more of these together with coaches. I have Marcus Filly coming up. I'm trying to get NSIMA Inyang on and some of the other top coaches from the community, so if you want to see more of them, then let me know.

And.

And are you back there, Ben? Can you hear us? I can, yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, we'll wrap it there, guys, but appreciate it. And if you want to be a part of ATG for coaches or if you've got any questions about it, please just get in touch or message ATG for coaches on Instagram to ask anything and get feedback.