1:37:18
being skeptical but not cynical is encouraged. But I always say that
1:37:23
the longer that somebody’s in a career path that’s certainly in science or medicine and they realize how hard it is to do various studies.
1:37:31
Once they publish a few studies, generally they sort of get a better understanding of how the various things are done.
1:37:38
In any case, along the lines of pain and pain relief
Tool: Properly Holding Weights & Deepening Grip
1:37:44
and misunderstandings about the origins of pain in the body, one of the great tools that I picked up from your content
1:37:50
which is benefit I know a huge number of people is I think I used to hold weights
1:37:55
sometimes in the tips of my fingers as opposed to in the meat or the palm of my hands. And I had elbow pain.
1:38:01
And I always thought that, I felt it most on tricep exercises and pushing exercise and I thought I was doing those exercises wrong.
1:38:07
Turns out toward the end of my pull ups or my bicep work, I was letting the weight or the bar drift into my fingertips.
1:38:14
And the mere shift to making sure that my knuckles were well over the bar
1:38:19
or that the weight was really in the meat of my palms has completely ameliorated that
1:38:24
for reasons that you point out and maybe you could just share with us why that is you have this kind of finger pull exercise.
1:38:30
Usually when someone says, pull my finger, it’s like a bad middle school or elementary school joke… - Yeah, we would say push your finger.
1:38:36
- [Andrew] Right, right. - You know this is fascinating. This is because it just shows again how intricate the body is
1:38:42
and how responsive or over responsive it can be to something so little. And what you’re talking about is that when you grip a bar
1:38:50
whether it be through a curl or whether it be through- And this is mostly pulling exercises because the tendency for the bar is going to be to
1:38:57
fall out of your hand not like with a pushing exercise where it’s kind of you’re pushing your hand into the bar. So on a bench press say.
1:39:04
That bar can drift just by gravity doing its thing or fatigue of the hand grip strength.
1:39:12
Can start to drift further away towards the distal digits. Through those last couple knuckles
1:39:18
that we have on our hands. And though our hand can still hold it there,
1:39:24
the muscles are not equipped to handle those types of loads. And that can start at a very, I’m not going to say light,
1:39:31
but like it could start at dumbbell weight. 40 pounds, 30 pounds, even 25 pounds or something
1:39:38
depending upon their overall strength levels. But then when you start to apply it to something like your body weight with a chin up, right?
summarize this :1:39:46
'Cause that’s natural for the bar to somewhat kind of float down towards your fingertips. And it actually is a little bit easier
1:39:53
to perform the exercise with that sort of like false script little hook grip at the end because you’re not going to engage the forearms
1:40:00
into the exercise, you’re not going to start pulling down. But at the same time while it could help you to perform them
1:40:07
better by getting the back more activated, if you have weakness in these muscles. 'Cause it’s not a thing that happens to every,
1:40:13
it’s not one of those upright road type things where I think this is happening to everybody. This is happening to people
1:40:19
that have these inherent weaknesses in these muscles. You or haven’t done enough of the gripping
1:40:25
in the meat of the hand for long enough but it starts to put that stress on these muscles
1:40:33
that are ill-equipped to do this and to handle this and it starts to it’s particularly on that fourth finger,
1:40:38
which is part of the muscle we call the FDS, a flexor digitorum that is just too much for it to handle.
1:40:45
And that comes all the way down and meets right at the media level. Right on that spot that you can say feels like someone’s knifing you right in the middle
1:40:51
in that medial level. And medial epicondylitis or they call it golfers elbow is something that a lot of us deal with in the gym.
1:40:59
It’s one of the most common inflammatory conditions people get from the gym and it all comes from this positioning of the dumbbell
1:41:07
or barbell or hand on a pull-up bar over time. So the easiest thing to do is just grip deeper
1:41:13
so that what you’re doing is you’re using more leverage from the palm to encapsulate the bar
1:41:19
or the dumbbell or whatever and you’re not putting that pressure really distally right on that last digit
1:41:25
because that’s where that FDS muscle is most strained. So you just almost eliminating that from the equation.
1:41:33
And it’s one of those exercises that the load can exceed its capacity pretty quickly.
1:41:39
So that like, maybe it’s only capable of handling 30 pounds and then when you’re doing a chin up
1:41:44
and it goes and it drifts so far that it’s now you say you’re a 200 pound guy you’ve got let’s say 100 pounds through one arm
1:41:51
and 100 pounds, this is simplified math that obviously is offset by other muscles, but 100 pounds to one arm 100 pounds to the arm,
1:41:58
100 pounds off of a muscle that can handle 30 is not going to take many repetitions to strain it
1:42:03
and you’re going to feel that maybe by the time that a set’s over or certainly by the time that workout’s over or the next day
1:42:08
you wake up and you’ve got that notable stabbing pain. Whenever someone feels that the best thing would be to determine,
1:42:15
okay, what exercises would I do that were pulling and where the bar could have drifted deeper or further from the meat of my palm into my fingers
1:42:24
and figure out a way to deepen that grip. When that happens though, the best thing to do with most of these inflammatory conditions
1:42:30
is not do any of that stuff for a little while. Not ever, just for a little while. There’s always things that you can do around it.
1:42:37
I’m not saying ever do I say, like, don’t go to the gym or don’t find something you can do, but I’m saying that particular exercise
1:42:44
that you feel the pain on while you’re doing it, never a smart idea to do that exercise when it’s inflamed.
1:42:51
If you are doing exercise and it hurts, you probably shouldn’t do the exercise because another reason
1:42:57
for the variability of exercise is there’s so many other options that you can do
1:43:02
that will train similar muscles or even the same motion and not cause that stress. So, I mean, a cable curl would be much easier to do that on
1:43:11
than let’s say a chin up where you don’t have the control over the weight like you do by moving a pin on a stack.
1:43:16
So I think that is a common thing that people find and the best thing to do is just figure out
1:43:23
how deep you gripping in that bar. You’re going to find that, oh my God, I didn’t realize that because it was just. Even though you might start a set in a good position\