Mostly nodding, with one footnote from the trail side. Ankle dorsiflexion was my big restriction for years and rolling my calf did exactly the ninety-seconds-then-gone thing the post describes. What moved it was slow weighted dorsiflexion and just spending loaded time in the bottom of a deep split squat. So the mechanism held up for me. The part it undersells is that finding that range the first time, before there's anything to load, took a few weeks of boring positional work that looked suspiciously like the stuff he's mocking.
What is actually going on with the prehab craze?
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Before this man is permitted to touch a barbell, he must first do his 30 min prep. Out comes the lacrosse ball, and he rolls his glute on it on the gym floor with the face of a man receiving terrible news over the phone. Then the foam roller, the full length of each leg, wincing theatrically at knots he has decided are there, even though science cannot yet see these knots. Then the little resistance band, looped above the knees for the side-steps, the monster walks, the clamshells, the entire…
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Mostly nodding, with one footnote from the trail side. Ankle dorsiflexion was my big restriction for years and rolling my calf did exactly the ninety-seconds-then-gone thing the post describes. What moved it was slow weighted dorsiflexion and just spendin
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Before this man is permitted to touch a barbell, he must first do his 30 min prep. Out comes the lacrosse ball, and he rolls his glute on it on the gym floor with the face of a man receiving terrible news over the phone. Then the foam roller, the full length of each leg, wincing theatrically at knots he has decided are there, even though science cannot yet see these knots. Then the little resistance band, looped above the knees for the side-steps, the monster walks, the clamshells, the entire physical-therapy waiting-room routine. Then the band gets hooked to the rack to distract his hip capsule, whatever that means, while he hangs off it and makes a face. Forty minutes in, glistening and deeply warmed up, he is at last ready to lift, except now he is tired and it is time to go home.
He calls this mobility. He has decided he is tight. He is always tight. Tightness is his whole personality and his eternal works-in-progress, and no amount of rolling ever finishes the job, which he reads as proof that he needs to roll more, rather than proof that the rolling does nothing.
Here is the secret nobody at the band table wants to hear. Most of what you are calling tightness is weakness. The muscle is not too short. It is uncontrolled past a certain range, so your nervous system, very sensibly, slams on the brakes and guards the position, and that guarding feels exactly like tension. You then attack the feeling with a lacrosse ball and buy yourself maybe ninety seconds of borrowed range, gone by your second working set, because you did not make anything stronger. You sedated the alarm. You did not fix anything.
The actual cure for being weak and shaky at the bottom of a squat is, and I am sorry that an entire industry of rubber goods will hate this, squatting to the bottom and getting strong there. Load the range you cannot control until you can control it.
Load the range you cannot control until you can control it. Said it twice because it's that simple.
Strength in a position is what convinces the nervous system it is safe to let you into that position in the first place. That is mobility. Real mobility is just usable strength at the end of your range, and it is built with load, slowly, not purchased in rubber.
Some restrictions are valid though. Warming up is great and very useful. I am not telling you to stroll in cold and sprint for your life. I am telling you that prehab is, most of the time, bad programming in a lab coat holding a lacrosse ball, and that if your warm-up runs longer than your training, you do not have a mobility practice. You have an elaborate, sweaty, deeply sincere way of avoiding the one thing that would have actually changed your body, which is getting strong somewhere you currently are not. Find a way to strengthen whatever is tight and weak and you'll see how it relaxes.
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45 minute warmup, 9 minute lift, then surprised the lift isn't moving. My guy, you trained the warmup. You're going to set a really impressive clamshell PR and squat to parallel forever 😅
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the man receiving terrible news over the phone while rolling his glute. THAT'S MY GYM. there's a guy who does the exact wincing face at the foam roller every single morning and I have started timing my water breaks around his routine 💀 I have no opinion on the science I just feel so seen by the wincing
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Been lifting long enough to watch this exact pendulum swing three times, and the tell is always the same: people reach for a tool because progress is boring and invisible and a lacrosse ball feels like doing something. Sitting in a loaded bottom position twice a week for six months doesn't feel like anything until one day the floor is just there. No before-and-after photo, no ritual, nothing to film. That's why it loses to the band table every time. It's right, it's just not fun to watch yourself do.
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Mostly nodding, with one footnote from the trail side. Ankle dorsiflexion was my big restriction for years and rolling my calf did exactly the ninety-seconds-then-gone thing the post describes. What moved it was slow weighted dorsiflexion and just spending loaded time in the bottom of a deep split squat. So the mechanism held up for me. The part it undersells is that finding that range the first time, before there's anything to load, took a few weeks of boring positional work that looked suspiciously like the stuff he's mocking.
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"You sedated the alarm" is the whole post for me. I rolled my IT band like a religion for a year because it felt productive and tight stuff felt looser for about one set. Never got stronger, never got better, just got really good at rolling. Started actually loading the position and the tightness quietly left. Turns out it wasn't tight. It was weak and nervous.
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ok week-two person here, asking for real. he says warming up is great but prehab is bad, how do i tell which one i'm doing? right now my warmup is just copying whatever the guy next to me does. are the banded side-steps before squats the warmup part or the theater part
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Load the range you cannot control until you can control it. That line is the whole post and it's correct. The bottom of a squat is the cleanest example there is. Guys who can't sit in the hole add a band to the rack and tug on their hip for ten minutes, then go fail at parallel anyway. Pause squats in the bottom, a few weeks of them, did more for my depth than every lacrosse ball I ever owned. You don't roll your way into a position. You get strong there or you stay scared of it.
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"Forty minutes in, glistening and deeply warmed up, he is at last ready to lift, except now he is tired and it is time to go home." I felt that in my soul. This is the guy who has a 45 minute pre-lift routine and a 9 minute actual lift and wonders why he looks the same in March as he did in October. At least when I waste time in the gym I'm honest that I'm just talking about chicken and rice.
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I coach this for a living and the post is right about the average case and a little unfair to the edge cases. Most people do not need the band table. They need to add weight to the lift and stop avoiding the hard part. Agreed, fully.
But "prehab is bad programming in a lab coat" sweeps up the people for whom a specific drill is the right call. The lifter rebuilding an ankle after a real sprain, the desk worker who genuinely cannot reach the bottom without the bar tipping them backward, those folks get five minutes of targeted work so the actual training can happen, then they train. The error isn't doing the drill. The error is the drill becoming the session, and never progressing past it. A principle done forever without getting harder isn't rehab, it's a hobby.
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Okay genuine beginner question because this is exactly the kind of thing I can't tell is a real rule or just loud. A coach at my gym had me doing clamshells and banded side-steps before squats and said it was to "wake up my glutes." Is that the theater you mean, or is there a version of it that's fine for someone who's eight months in and still wobbly at the bottom? I don't want to skip something that matters, but I also don't want a forty-minute routine before I've earned one.