To explore unorthodox movement or not?

Something I get asked a lot online is what I used to support or believe in with health and fitness, that I no longer believe in or support now. I’ve talked about this a bit in other episodes and on Instagram, but I used to be quite the movement elitist.

I’ve also mentioned that I think having more rigid beliefs in any instance when you are new at something is part of a natural process.

We see this often in religion or when someone enters a new industry or philosophy in any area. We tend to start with a more rigid system, and then as we expand and get more comfortable in that space, we are open to questions and gray area. Beyond that gray area comes a new understanding.

Early in my strength and conditioning career, my philosophy was a mix of starting strength, Mark Rippetoe, and Kelly Starrette.

None of those resources or people are bad, it was more so that I took all of that information and thought everyone needed to squat the same, deadlift the same, keep a neutral spine all day every day, and don’t veer away from the basics.

Now, I am still a fan of the basics.

I still aggressively support squat, hinge, push, pull, carry. But I am much more open to squatting patterns, hinging patterns, pushing patterns, pulling patterns, and more unorthodox versions of those patterns.

In the world of training glutes we always hear that we need to train the glutes from all different angles in order to get optimum hypertrophy or increase in cross-sectional area of the glute max, as well as the glute med.

That information is certainly not incorrect, and I ask you how it can be applied to other areas of the body.

People who made me question my movement elitism were doc Jen fit, knees over toe guy, the shirtless dude from move you which I believe now is wealth, and Edo portal.

I’m not saying I support these people or accounts forever and always, I am just saying that at one point in my career or another, these accounts and people specifically made me broaden my view of movement for strength and conditioning.

So in today’s episode, I want to explore all things movement, like bracing with a rounded spine, knees going over toes, strengthening the spinal erectors, and exploring end ranges, in general under load.

Along with topics like the fact that everyone thinks that doing single arm high pulls causes shoulder impingement. Let’s just go ahead and start with that right now. I program high pulls for my clients. And we should start by defining what impingement actually means. According to Oxford Languages, impingement in a medical sense means “a painful condition caused by rubbing or pressure on a tendon, nerve, etc., by adjacent structures.”

That does not need to happen, and should not be happening if performing a the movement of a high pull in the absence of internal rotation and scapular anterior tilting.

If you are performing a high pull correctly, it will only strengthen your shoulder joint and the functionality of that joint. The stronger we can be across different ranges of motion the better. Yes? YES.

A high pull is just another vertical pull. We have pull ups as a vertical pull, and things like lat pull downs. The high pull is simply in the opposite direction of those downward vertical pulling movements. And that is largely why I program it for my clients. To balance the strength we’re building in downward vertical pulling.

If performed correctly, a few things should happen.