hey everyone we're here at atg headquarters with Ben Patrick AKA knees over toes and today we're going to cover some strength through length so as you can see we went on a little field trip to visit the knees over toes guy in order to combine some anatomy and physiology with strength and flexibility now if you're watching this video you've probably thought about the best ways to improve your own strength and flexibility and for good reason these are both important attributes for Fitness Sports athleticism and even longevity but often we think of strength and flexibility almost like they opposing qualities that one compromises the other and we even tend to train them independently of each other like we do a strength workout and then afterwards we do some static stretching in hopes to maintain or even possibly gain flexibility but is there something else that we can do to get the best of both worlds is there a method to effectively increase strength muscular size as well as flexibility at the same time well clearly just by observing in Ben it is definitely possible so today we are going to talk about this effective method to increase both your strength and flexibility discuss how this method is more effective at preventing and reducing your risk of injury and of course give you some examples on how to incorporate this into your routine it's definitely going to be a stretchy one and it even seems to be helping this old 41-year-old guy figure out how to get off the ground again first I do want to address some quick points on static stretching and just in case you haven't heard the term static stretching you've likely participated in this before as this is the most common form of stretching where someone will say bend down to touch their toes and hold that pose and stretch for 30 seconds or so but if you were to ask people what are the benefits of static stretching you'll usually hear things like it improves flexibility and range of motion reduces muscle soreness after a workout it helps to prevent injuries and you may have even heard that it can help to increase strength with the first point static stretching does work to improve flexibility there are multiple studies to support this and plenty of real world examples of people that have improved their flexibility and range of motion when they have consistently made static stretching a part of their routine however there actually isn't much evidence to support that static stretching significantly reduces delayed onset muscle soreness reduces the risk of injury or even have a significant impact on muscular strength but the method we are going to talk about today has been shown to not only improve flexibility but to also reduce the risk of injury and have a significant impact on strength simultaneously and this method is a form of Ecentric training and for us to understand the Ecentric training or what this Ecentric training is we have to give a quick overview on the different phases of muscle contractions so let's use the quadricep muscles as an example examp Le here we are going to see that there will be phases where the muscle fibers lengthen shorten and can even just hold and stay the same length so let's visualize what happens during a squat as Bend lowers the quads are actively lengthening they're controlling the downward motion and this is called an Ecentric contraction when he stands up the quads change to a different phase of contraction by shortening and this is called a concentric contraction now holding a squat say like in a chair pose during yoga or holding a plank this would be an Isom metric contraction where the muscle fibers are Contracting but not changing their length so it likely won't surprise you that Ecentric training focuses on the Ecentric phase of the contraction but what is it about focusing on that Ecentric phase of the contraction that helps to improve flexibility reduce injury risk and improve strength well to help us answer this we're going to use two exercise examples that pretty much address multiple mobility issues in the lower body as well as have the ability to build strength we'll look at a Romain Ian deadlift as well as an atg split squat so starting with the RDL when he lowers the weight the hamstrings would be actively lengthening with an Ecentric contraction and then as he brings the weight up the hamstrings would concentrically contract now there are obviously other muscles involved in this like the glutes low back Etc but the key is pushing the range of motion to where you would feel a stretch during that Ecentric contraction obviously Ben has great Mobility but you'd want to take this to where you feel a moderate stretch in your hamstrings and after you feel that moderate stretch then you would proceed to the concentric contraction bringing that weight upwards and if you continue to try to push this range of how far you can go while of course maintaining your form little by little during each workout you will notice that you'll be able to go further and further over time thereby improving your flexibility and range of motion and it's not like you need to hold the bottom position for 30 seconds like you would during a static stretch you could maybe do a brief pause at the end range where you're feeling that moderate stretch but again just pushing that Ecentric limit little by little during each workout and during each repetition like doing two to three sets of 10 repetitions during your leg workouts would provide enough stimulus that you can create adaptations to improve your flexibility and let's also address the weight Ben is using a decent amount of weight but I hope it goes without saying that you would use a weight that matches your current level of strength I mean this could be as little as 5 to 10 lb dumbbells that you start with and work your way up as your strength improves so hopefully this is starting to give you an idea on how this type of Ecentric training can improve your flexibility and strength at the same time as your flexibility gradually improves you could also gradually increase the weight but let me emphasize an important point one more time you've heard me say things like going to that end range or the end point this is very important in order to get the improvements and flexibility because there are plenty of strength exercises where we don't typically go through a full range of motion or get to that end point or that stretch the squat is a classic example I was always told to hit parallel and then go back up but that doesn't take the quads through their full range and won't provide much of a stimulus from a flexibility standpoint now there are definitely times where partial ranges of motion are necessary for specificity of training for sports and competitions but for one's overall Baseline strength and Mobility I can't find much of an argument for why exercises done at full ranges of motion should not be the foundation of somebody's strength and Mobility not only do full range of motion exercises stimulate improvements in flexibility and Mobility but they also increase the time under tension that a muscle is placed under and muscles tend to respond quite well physiologically with improvements in strength to these increases in time under tension now you can also just increase the time under tension by choosing to lower a weight more slowly but again this also happens with going through a full range of motion and this also leads us to our next benefit of this type of Ecentric training and that is reducing the risk of injury we used to have this phrase when I was working with my sister years ago at her pilat Studio we used to say strong and long and it was a lot of fun meeting up with Ben for multiple reasons but one of those reasons was because with everything he had discovered and that he's been teaching he also had a very similar phrase strength through length and what is meant by this is that you can definitely increase flexibility and Mobility with static stretching but again it doesn't do as much for improving strength in that lengthened position and therefore isn't as effective at reducing the risk of injury hence strong and long and strength through length with the addition of this Ecentric training and I feel like I do need to take a quick second to make another disclaimer on static stretching because it kind of feels like I'm poo pooing on static stretching a little bit but that is not the case static stretching does have its place and I still incorporate it into into my routine but for another reason that I'll get into in just a minute but when you eccentrically contract a muscle throughout its full length all the way to the end range where you feel that stretch you're training that muscle to contract and get stronger in a stretched or lengthened position under a load under higher tension which has huge benefits for reducing the risk of injury because the majority of muscular injuries occur actually during that Ecentric phase of contraction think about when you are landing from a jump or needing to change direction quickly that muscle is eccentrically loading and loading and loading and getting ready to contract back concentrically to propel you in a certain direction but during an injury it's more like and the fibers get pulled or torn and of course it makes that noise but instead imagine building up your strength when the muscle is in a lengthened position in a controlled environment like the gym or a weight room then when you step onto the field the court a race or these other situ uations where things can happen in a split second then you have more protection or to quote Ben more bulletproofing Now quickly for you anatomy and physiology nerds out there what is thought to be accounting for these changes in length at the cellular level or the level of the muscle fiber is potential increases in the muscle faasle length so if we look at the hamstring you can see all these muscle fibers that are making up this whole muscle and if we were to zoom into this we would see that in anatomy a fasle is just a bundle of muscle fibers so in other words if this type of Ecentric training is potentially increasing the muscle faical length then that just means it's increasing the length of the muscle fibers and if we were to go a little bit further and look at an individual muscle fiber we would see that it is made up of little contractile subunits called sarir and it's thought that the increases in muscle fiber length could be due to an increase in the number of these sarir in series so adding them lengthwise or the length of the the individual sarir that you already have just increases so there still needs to be some more research on the exact details of the structural changes that occur within the muscle fiber with this type of training and there are also other additional questions that arise with this like if you added sarcomeres and series what does that do to the ideal overlap of proteins within the sarom Mir like actin and mein and how would that affect the overall shortening or concentric capacity of the muscle and you can see that would get us into the weeds quite a bit so that's for another video but it does appear that this is a different mechanism or adaptation that occurs when compared to static stretching static stretching tends to be more greatly influenced by adaptations within the nervous system but we've actually done a whole other video on what happens with static stretching so I'll link that to this video so you can take a look at that afterwards and as I mentioned earlier I also do want to go over the atg split squat because this is one of the staple or foundational atg exercises and for good reason it addresses so many mobility and strength issues allinone and again if you combine this with something that targets the hamstrings like Romanian deadlifts and a few other exercises you can address pretty much every mobility and strength issue in the lower body so looking at the atg split squat if we freeze it at the bottom you can see that you would be lengthening and strengthening the quadriceps also lengthening and strengthening the hip flexors in the back leg like the soas and elius and even lengthening and strengthening the calf muscles now obviously I'm up on the platform because I don't have the same ability as Ben so this is a great example of how you can start at a level that suits you lower the platform as your flexibility and Mobility improves and also introduce a load as you get stronger and let's come back to a few last points on static stretching there have been studies that compared static stretching to Ecentric training where they separated the people into a static stretching group and Ecentric training group and even a control group and what they found was that both static stretching and Ecentric training groups improve their flexibility and Mobility it's just again the Ecentric training group had some additional benefits like the improvements in strength and injury risk reduction so if you made me pick between the two like I could only do one of them I guess I would have to pick the Ecentric training however why not maximize and get the best of both worlds I personally do strength training on my legs twice a week and so the other days of the week I definitely incorporate static stretching striving to improve my flexibility and Mobility even further and then of course train those muscles to contract and be strong in those lengthened positions during my leg workouts so hopefully you've learned some useful information with everything we've discussed today and for those of you that have been watching our YouTube channel for a while now you know that we typically have a sponsor with our videos but today we don't I actually found Ben the knees over toes guy doing research for my own personal fitness routine I loved his approach what he was doing and more importantly it works it makes sense from from an anatomical physiological and biomechanical perspective it has worked to help people get out of pain improve strength mobility and athleticism I share this stuff with my family and friends and figured that the two of us should do a YouTube video together so that I could share it all with you so definitely check out what he's doing we only covered a few exercises today but he has a lot of content on YouTube and Instagram that shows different exercises and addresses multiple areas of the body so in the description I've linked his YouTube channel as well as his atg online coaching website where you can sign up for personalized coaching and moving on to my typical sign off thanks for supporting our YouTube channel like comment and subscribe if you want to further support the channel and of course we'll see you in the next [Music] video