Jeff Cavaliere

and then put the foot down only after you've tied the shoe key and put it down and then go and do the other side and it is difficult it is very very difficult it happens to be one of the tests that i do a little bit better than other tests but um we were joking before i told you that i about twice a year i still get back pain every now and then and mine came from leaning over to put my sock on the other day and my whole back felt like it was gonna blow up on me like that so

There's a lot going on inside the body when you're doing this, right?

Why would my back all of a sudden seize up on me when I'm going to put on my sock?

Because you don't realize the responsibility that those lumbar paraspinal muscles have in trying to control even just leaning forward.

And they're trying to make sure that you're doing it at a pace that's safe for your spine.

So doing this every day is a little mini workout for those muscles.

And again, I think we tend to get so...

lazy as we get older and complacent.

And so that once you start sitting down, you're just going to sit down when you put on your socks and shoes.

What's the need to get up and do this every day if I'm comfortable doing this sitting down?

Or, wow, this was easier because I sat down today.

you can't be seeking easy if you seek easy you're going to get old a lot faster so this test is testing your balance it is testing against some of the many dynamic control from those muscles in the low back it's just it's testing your ankle mobility in a way because you're going to get a lot of this going on the perturbation through your ankles and your knees and it's testing your hip strength because again once you go on one leg you're now talking about pelvic control the same way we did before so you have to have good strength there

but it's not uncommon for people to not be able to pass this test but with practice like anything else you're training these muscles to get stronger and you're training these your balance and your these are all skills that can be learned and improved they're all trainable i actually put a a video out not long ago about um different measures of

of longevity and one of them was that test another one was pull-ups another one was the number of push-ups you could do we could talk about these after but the number one was like going back to your glute media strengthening can you lay in a side-lying plank position with the top leg up about 45 degrees

You could keep it stacked.

It's a lot easier to stay in a plank position.

You raise that leg off of the other.

Now it's all relying on that lateral pillar strength of the underside hip, the one closest to the floor.

So one arm down.

Heel stacked.