Dr. Andy Galpin

Think about it this way.

There are some muscles and joints that are meant to be stable and others that are meant to be movers.

And they tend to stack in an every other one fashion, such as this.

I gave examples of the knee and the hip earlier.

The ankle is meant to be highly mobile and to move a lot.

The knee is meant to be stable.

So if the knee is stable, this allows the ankle to move a lot.

And then the opposite direction would be the hip.

So you want a highly mobile hip

a highly stable knee so you can have a highly mobile foot.

Going above that, since the hips are mobile, you want the low back and the lumbar spine to be stable so that the thoracic and kind of mid-back spine can be mobile so that your shoulder joints and your neck can be stable.

This allows then the shoulders to be mobile, the elbows to be stable, and the wrist to be nice and mobile.

Now, it is more complicated than that, but really at the highest level, that is a nice summary of how the muscle actions are supposed to work.

If you think about that in general context, it's going to keep you pretty safe and it's going to allow you to move well.

Lastly, then, is what I call the three to five rule.

So the three to five rule applies to strength, power, and speed.

What it roughly means is this, choose three to five exercises, do three to five repetitions for three to five sets, rest for three to five minutes in between each set, and repeat that three to five times per week.

So at the lowest level, this could mean three sets of three repetitions, three days a week of three exercises.

This would be a pretty low volume, but because of that, that would allow you to go really, really heavy or to really high intensity.

You're going to have a lot of recovery, not going to stimulate a lot of muscle growth, won't stimulate hardly any muscular endurance, but could be used if you're trying to maximize the recoverability or the strength aspect.