Dr. Andy Galpin

But looking at the research that has directly compared different types of activities,

You will see squats and deadlifts and carries and sled work and overhead presses oftentimes activate the core muscles more than the isolation exercises.

And since we know we're using this as a means to transfer force from one part of the body to the other, it just makes more intuitive sense to focus on that.

I've made that point several times, so I think we can actually move past that a little bit and get directly into our third category, and that's feel.

And again, I'm usually using this as a euphemism to say spinal health, back pain, or avoiding those things.

Of the three categories, this has by far the most research, and it makes sense.

There's a lot more people in back pain.

In fact, you'll hear wild stats, like 80% of people will experience low back pain at some point in their life, and like 50 to 60% are experiencing it chronically.

So we should have probably a lot more research here than we have on which exercises transfer to football better.

Makes sense.

We're probably now going the other end of the spectrum where we might do 75 or 80% isolation exercises and 20 to 25% the big exercises because we have direct intention now.

We want to be a little more cautious and we need to ensure exact movement patterns are doing what they're supposed to be doing because we're trying to correct dysfunction.

And we need to make sure that individual muscle groups themselves are not underutilized or lacking function.

This is a situation where we can go more frequently.

If you want to go every single day here, it's okay because we're not progressing these with intensity.

very often.

We're not trying to go really, really, really heavy with them.

We're generally, by definition, choosing exercises that I can't actually load that heavy anyways.

And we're oftentimes using it as a neural grooving pattern.

So I'm trying to establish either pain desensitization or activation or small blood flow changes.