A few major points/ concepts we come back to are:
– Hamstring tightness vs the “feeling of tightness”
– Exercises to train the hamstring that are safe
– If you’re feeling a hamstring “grab” during exercises then it’s not normal
– Training of the hamstring centers around posture, compound lifts and eccentrics
– Hamstring tightness is not always bad
– Assessment of an individual starts with observation!

If you’re a clinician this is the perfect podcast session to share with that patient who’s been asking questions about what they can/can’t do in the gym with a hamstring strain.

If you’re a patient/ athlete you need to be examined first and properly diagnosed with the CORRECT condition before you rehab. Movement is everything and often times you need to be cued properly by a professional.

0:00:00 Sebastian Gonzales: This is session number 71 of the Performance Place Sports Care podcast. You know what really sowers my apples?

0:00:07 S?: Welcome to the Performance Place Sports Care podcast where you can learn about sports injury theory, rehab, diagnosis and how to understand the doctor lingo you didn’t understand at your appointment. And now your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales.

0:00:24 Sebastian Gonzales: Welcome back everyone. I’m Sebastian Gonzales, I’m your host. What sells my apples, oh my God. Actually, you know what? I think one thing that it drives me absolutely insane and it’s nothing about anything of the way that it’s done, but it’s just my neuroticism as I go through this whole experience is those yellow feet at the airport, and if you’ve been flying and you go through that, what is it now? It’s almost like a biometric scanner or something like that, they don’t just like wave you through the metal detector anymore. Going through, it’s funny, this whole security TSA thing to me is the worst ’cause they rush you through, which, it’s fine, and everyone [0:01:04] ____ line. By the way, this is nothing against TSA, just the experience of the airport, but I gotta take my belt off so my shorts or pants are falling down a little bit and I gotta shove them into the thing, I gotta make sure to take my shoes off, and then, and then, you look around.

0:01:18 Sebastian Gonzales: I remember I saw this one girl one time. It’s like that whole region in the airport right there is where everyone decides to take off their shoes, and for me, I don’t have a foot phobia, I work with people, I work on injuries, but at the same time, I don’t really wanna walk in the highest traffic region of people’s foot zone. Honestly. And I remember I saw this one girl one time that she had flip flops on, and she took them off and all of a sudden, she curled her feet up and she’s up on the sides of her feet and walking like a penguin and stuff. You could tell she was very uncomfortable, and I thought, “Why did you not wear socks to the airport?” I mean, I legitimately have airports socks that I wear ’cause I knew I do not wanna touch them again after I go through the airport.

0:02:01 Sebastian Gonzales: So anyways, those yellow feet going through there, I actually kinda jump on there and kinda half-ass the foot position because that right there is the highest traffic of foot traffic. Literally foot traffic in the entire world, probably, those yellow feet. So never without fail [0:02:18] ____ before I go there, I say, look, I’m gonna through there, and watch, they’re gonna say, “Sir, can you put your feet on the yellow feet?” and I go a little bit wider, and next, “Sir, can you go directly on the yellow feet?” And I think, “Oh man, this is the worst, this is the absolute worst. Okay, I’ll put my feet on the yellow feet. So I probably have nightmares about those stupid little yellow feet. But anyways, I appreciate what you guys do at TSA, but at the same time, I hate going through there. I hate going through there.

0:02:43 Sebastian Gonzales: So thanks all for coming on, this has been a great month at the podcast and I had some great guests on. I’m gonna have another great guest on today. He is going to be talking about hamstring training or training around hamstrings, and you’re gonna hear throughout the entire podcast that I’m trying to pin him down to like, what would you actually do for that one area of the body, but it’s really just the collective ideas that we have to train the entire body as a whole, it’s hard to separate. So the guest is gonna be Brennan Ghassemieh. He was referred to speak with me by a good colleague and friend who was actually on session number 31.

0:03:22 Sebastian Gonzales: We’re gonna learn a lot today, but before we actually get into it, I want you to actually do me a huge favor and I want you to tell me what you think about the podcast. I want you to go onto iTunes or whatever listening platform you’re actually on, scroll down and actually just rate this. It could be five star, wink, it could be four star, kinda like a grimace, but honestly I just wanna hear what you all have to say, okay? So give me feedback, tell me what you want to hear about ’cause I do read those things.

0:03:48 Sebastian Gonzales: What you should be listening for today though is that if you’re a clinician, a doctor, a trainer and you’ve had this conversation many times with clients, then it is something that you might as well send them to this podcast. Send it directly to them right now after you’ve decided that this podcast is actually something that you like to hear about, or they should hear about. So I believe that we shouldn’t have to have the same conversation all the time, and we really dug into the topic here at hand today, so please share it with the public. A lot of times I think this miscommunication and poor knowledge that the public has about their injuries is because we don’t share things such as this. So if you’re a patient, if this sounds like it’s something that you’re experiencing then you should probably go see someone first for an assessment, as always, and then we can build a program around that a lot of times, and that is the biggest thing that people don’t understand a lot of times, is they feel like they can manage their own thing and I know that for a fact with me, that even I get too close to my injury [0:04:45] ____ and I have a hard time programming for it.

0:04:49 Sebastian Gonzales: Now lastly, before we get to the interview, I wanna remind all the docs, clinicians and trainers out there that this is a part of an educational series that I’m trying to move forward with. This is the audio version, obviously, there are podcasts that come on every week. Please subscribe. There are videos this year, I don’t know about next year, but this year, there’s videos that go on every single day and I’m trying to correlate them to the podcast where the topic of the month, which I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to continue with because this is a lot harder to do, but here Brennan today is gonna speak about a bunch of different types of exercises and movements and I’m gonna try to reference all of them, and he’s gonna do a little bit of a video recap for me, so that’s all stuff for you guys to learn and share.

0:05:31 Sebastian Gonzales: Lastly, also the visual thing, which if you haven’t seen the posters on my site yet, I’m starting to design posters that are designed to help clinicians and trainers create and understand, but also to buy in. We want clients and patients to understand why they are required to do what we’re asking them to do and I honestly believe that we shouldn’t be treating clients and patients as children, we should build some responsibility with them and they’ll only fare better from that. So this higher level of education, I want them to understand, these are all tools for that, so go on to p2sportcare.com/shop and you’ll see all these posters, smaller ones, also vinyl banners as well. So these are all for you guys to help educate your patients and get everyone to just collectively to start working as a better, healthy community. So, thank you all for listening in. I’m very gracious of you taking an hour or so out of your day to hear me and my guest.

0:06:30 Sebastian Gonzales: So without any further ado, let’s get straight to our guest. Alright. Here’s the interview with Brennan Ghassemieh. Brennan, say what’s up.

0:06:37 Brennan Ghassemieh: Hey, how are you?

0:06:38 Sebastian Gonzales: Excellent. Thanks for coming in. I don’t always get people actually in house with it. So, we are… Well actually, [0:06:47] ____ today, we’re gonna start with a little bit of…

0:06:50 Brennan Ghassemieh: Well, today… Usually a Wednesday’s a pretty busier day, and so I actually got to start off with a VO2 Max test on…

0:07:00 Sebastian Gonzales: Yourself?

0:07:00 Brennan Ghassemieh: A client. No.

0:07:00 Sebastian Gonzales: Oh. [laughter]

0:07:01 Brennan Ghassemieh: No. Not on myself. I haven’t done one in a few months, so I’m kind of avoiding those, but doing it on a new client, and then I had a first session following that with that same client, so that was… That’s always nice to meet somebody new, assess them and see how the first workouts go and how they really move, even if you know that person and… Other than that, a few regular clients that are on Wednesdays, and yeah, it’s always great.

0:07:30 Sebastian Gonzales: What’s their… So you work at Equinox over in SoCal, so I guess people could be listening all over here, so we don’t know where they’re at. So how long have you been there?

0:07:41 Brennan Ghassemieh: I’ve been in there for three and a half years now, and I also spend my time… Off time at STARS which is down in Anaheim, which is a performance-focused facility. And I’ve been there for now two years, so I split time there, but primarily, Equinox.

0:08:01 Sebastian Gonzales: What made you want to… Like what was the journey like to actually become a trainer?

0:08:06 Brennan Ghassemieh: For me, I mean it’s been a lot. It’s really been a lot of different focuses that all led to the fact that this was something that you could do long term. I started off as… I’ve been a football player all my life, in high school, I got to play in college, I was extremely injury-prone, actually, when it came to really large injuries. Both my ACLs have been torn, my meniscus have been cut out and my shoulder labrums have been torn on both sides.

0:08:36 Sebastian Gonzales: God. You got a lot… [chuckle]

0:08:37 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I’m like a bionic man at this point.

0:08:40 Sebastian Gonzales: You were probably like Gumby at the time, like were you just extremely… [chuckle]

0:08:44 Brennan Ghassemieh: I mean, I didn’t know that the knee could go on the frontal plane that well, but I proved everybody wrong, so… Yeah, I kind of started off as that, so that shifted my focus to physical therapy a lot during playing, and I started to gain an interest in the human body and how my poor movement mechanics and my poor behavior patterns on rehabilitation, regeneration and things like that were leading to really large injuries that took me out of my own identity. And from there, my college major was in Exercise Science, so I’m pairing both my own experience with education of just understanding anatomy and different biomechanics, and some general courses.

0:09:29 Brennan Ghassemieh: From there, I took it to a master’s degree to focus on Sport and Exercise Psychology because, again, relating it to myself and what mentally an injury did for me, I wanted to learn more about how to untap that fear again and how to bring in the coaching side that related to the biomechanics and the anatomy of movement. And yeah, I mean, I guess over that time, started working as a trainer and as a physical therapy aide and that just kinda built into being a full time performance coach.

0:10:07 Sebastian Gonzales: So what made you not want to then do actual physical therapy and go more to actually the… I guess [0:10:14] ____ I would call training in more of like the movement or performance side, but did you not wanna work with injured people or was there more freedom or like is there a reason?

0:10:24 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. That’s a great question. I mean, I definitely switched back and forth a lot throughout college, I’d say the most of, “Do I wanna go down physical therapy or do I wanna go down development?” And as I was working in the physical therapy clinic, I started to really enjoy that, but I enjoyed more of the return to activity aspect of it, so once those patients were coming in and they got to tell me how they were able to run again after their knee surgery or things like that, I started to realize that that was something I wanted to try to develop in people again, and performance side of things from an athletic perspective has always enticed me more, so I figured, “Let me see where this development side goes and if I can work closely with the rehab side and build a bridge with that to understand more, that’ll be really nice as well.

0:11:24 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. That’s good. I think you made the right choice like the… I mean you went to the same seminar I did. You were handpicked by Cody Dimak for this podcast.

0:11:35 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh man. Cody Dimak, too, that’s a pretty big honor. He’s a great guy, so…

0:11:40 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

0:11:41 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I mean…

0:11:41 Sebastian Gonzales: I almost surprised you… I know he’s working today, but I was gonna let him know, “Hey, this is the day we’re doing Brennan, so why don’t you to just come in and heckle at him?” [chuckle]

0:11:49 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh man. He can heckle, too.

0:11:52 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

0:11:52 Brennan Ghassemieh: I actually threw him off his flow yesterday during his workshop ’cause a coworker threw away the ball that I was sitting on and it threw him off his flow, so I think today if he did come he would have let me have it, too, so I’m glad you didn’t do that.

0:12:06 Sebastian Gonzales: No, I’d back you up.

0:12:08 Brennan Ghassemieh: A big guy, so I don’t know.

0:12:09 Sebastian Gonzales: Well I wasn’t gonna man-handle him, I was just gonna bring him down mentally. Everyone if you wanna hear that, there is… Dr Dimak is in our podcast, I think he’s around number 25 or something like that. You can search down there for that. So, Brennan, the reason I wanted to have you in at least for… So when I asked Dr. Dimak about who would be a good person to talk to about how to train, move and lift around hamstring injuries, or at least perceived, whether they’re real or not, hamstring injuries, which I’m sure we’ll go into that, tell me your experience of working with people like that.

0:12:45 Brennan Ghassemieh: You know, I’d say, there’s two ends of the coin with that. I’ve worked in athletic performance where you’re really watching sprinting and jumping where the hamstring is involved in some way and you see dysfunction at a high threshold area, so I have some experience with that. Not rehabbing it but trying to work around it and trying to find ways to improve the mechanics rather than perfect them. But with general population, which I’d say I have a lot more exposure to, you get a lot of people that have that perceived hamstring injury or full-blown hamstring injuries that occur maybe a general activity like playing with their kids. And you could see it coming almost as with their movement patterns and their overall posture, how they’re sitting and what their lifestyle dictates with a sedentary lifestyle and things. I’d say I have a lot of experience with almost dysfunction of the hamstring and trying my best to take away the overall injury risk that general population tends to have. And I don’t want somebody chasing around their kids and popping a hamstring, so if I can develop some strength and some open movement to it, then that’s really the goal with that.

0:14:08 Sebastian Gonzales: I feel like the best remedy is probably just to hobble children so they can’t move so fast.

0:14:13 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, just like hold them down, just be stronger, I guess.

0:14:16 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah, right, corral them. You said you can almost see it coming. Then is there a certain way these people will present, things they’ll say? Some of the listeners that are listening in here, they’re… I want them to think, “This is me,” or “This is not me.” You know what I mean?

0:14:35 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I’d say, with my own assessments, I guess I can see things in their movement. Every movement, as we know, is an assessment. It doesn’t have to be a pure assessment like the FMS and it can be something like a lateral side bridge which you can start to see from a clinical side and from a practitioner side, we can see that things are coming. But I like to try to see their general movement even with me. Something as simple as how they pick up their weight in an unrelated movement, like a farmer carry, let’s say. Like how they pick up their weight can tell me a lot about what they’re doing in the rest of their day. And with clients that report that their back may be tight or that they’ve been sitting too long and they feel almost soft in the middle, those are things that I like to look for where maybe there’s something going on with the posterior chain altogether, but it could be focused a lot more on lack of hamstring strength or even lack of hip mobility and things. But I try to listen to how their day is going and some different feedback that they’re giving me during a movement. “I really feel my glutes on this one,” or you know, they try to name out muscles, which is always great and I love the awareness, but it’s when you lose that awareness of feeling in the movement that we need to address, and I want them to at least have that sensory feeling of it.

0:16:17 Sebastian Gonzales: Let me reiterate then or for everybody, then so the sensory awareness, what is that? What’s that all about?

0:16:24 Brennan Ghassemieh: Well, let’s say, for instance, I have them doing a glute bridge. And this could be for movement prep, could be during the exercise, if they tell me like their hamstring is cramping up or their back is tightening up, then I know there’s something going off with either their posture or their overall activation with the movement. It’s more of their own reporting that they’ll give me, telling me that something feels tight, something feels loose, something’s cramping up during movement, but when it comes to how they tell me their day is going or little things that they’re reporting to me with a client that’s in pain or just somebody that wants to improve their posture and improve their overall quality of life, I hear things, over time, just some success stories and some other ones where they almost feel overly tight from just a general movement that doesn’t really warrant it, such as golf. Golf’s a big sport in the general population. Once we get older, we start to… We’re doing a golf swing without really understanding where our body is really supposed to move. That’s actually a lot of cases, I get gentlemen that will say they cramped up their hamstring with chip…

0:17:50 Sebastian Gonzales: With golfing?

0:17:50 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

0:17:51 Sebastian Gonzales: With chip? [laughter]

0:17:52 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, with like chip. I’m like, “What are you… What kind of chip are you doing? But it’s that motion that they can find a lot of cramping coming up, so when they started to report it to me, that’s when I understand that their own general movement, without it being within the session, is really important for me to address.

0:18:13 Sebastian Gonzales: So then, when people are… I think it’s an important point you made there, where you were saying it’s, the movement could merit a certain type of sensation. Should day-to-day life, such as sitting, walking, sleeping… Let’s just leave out chasing kids. Do you think those should merit any single-sided tightness or two-sided tightness? ‘Cause people would probably think, “Well this is normal life, this is how it is,” and they might not tell you, right?

0:18:45 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

0:18:47 Sebastian Gonzales: Is there anything of those normal activities that would actually be of merit?

0:18:52 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. Sitting and sleeping… What was the third?

0:18:57 Sebastian Gonzales: Walking. Yeah, let’s go with that. I don’t wanna go with exertion yet, ’cause that’ll be a whole different story.

0:19:03 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I’d say walking, I don’t feel like people are aware enough of maybe the lower half, as they are of their overall posture. And typically, people usually address how their chest or their spine is feeling, in walking and in sitting. I feel like people don’t really have too much awareness down there. But there is a lot of merit to the fact that when we sleep and when we sit and when we walk, there is gonna be some tightness there. Like we talked about, sometimes the tightness can be in our head. But sometimes, true muscle tightness can be addressed through movement and through soft tissue manipulation, and things of that nature. But we all need to understand that the way we shift, the way we choose to sit in a chair, and the way we choose to sleep will have some sort of long term effect. Does that mean it’s always gonna be negative? No. Are there asymmetries to be expected in somebody’s left hamstring to their right hamstring or how their glute works and things? We shift in our chair and if we consistently do that over year and year and year, it’s gonna have some sort of an effect. Whether that’s a red flag, I don’t feel like that’s always something to bring up. But if it gets to the point where it’s a red flag, and they actually address it, and sitting is something that becomes almost painful to do or so discomforting that they wanna stand up, then that’s definitely something where we can address it more directly.

0:20:44 Sebastian Gonzales: So, when people start working with you, is it common at all for them to leave stuff like that out? I’m guessing their goal to come to you, a lot of them, general population, is just to probably look better and feel better secondarily. So they wanna get a sweat on, right? Do they ever leave that history part out?

0:21:07 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I’d say the general client that has the goal of, “lose weight, build muscle, look better” isn’t gonna have as much heightened awareness of the little things that go on in their day. Are they moving on a constant basis, and are they doing things that involve a full body, good posture? Their sitting is not something that they’re really worried about, or they feel relates to what we’re gonna do in the gym. Because, when we get into the gym, their mindset is, it’s time to have an intense workout, sweat a lot, and the result I expect is to lose weight and burn body fat. I’d say for the general population that has experienced any sort of major injury, that’s when they will bring up those little things constantly. And I love the fact that they had that heightened awareness. That heightened awareness is almost a mandatory, once you’re injured. The second you’re injured, wherever it is, you are highly aware of that area.

0:22:15 Sebastian Gonzales: You start getting crazy about thinking about it.

0:22:18 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah. Suddenly everything you do, you can suddenly feel that area, and you’re wondering, “Why?” It’s always been there, but now you feel pain so your body is just sending you that little reminder. That’s when I get a lot of people that bring up the way they sit, the way they sleep, and how their shoulder felt all funny when they fell asleep, and so on and so forth. It takes that little bit of a extra feedback for those clients that may not be as aware, of the little things that go on in a day, that I need to be maybe a little bit more demanding of how they pick up things or bringing more awareness to their overall posture, how they’re walking, when they come in. That just takes time.

0:23:06 Sebastian Gonzales: Okay. Just to bring things back a little bit, since we started on hamstrings. So we’re tangent-ing out to whole body and movements. Just to make sure everyone understands that we’re still on the same podcast, can you explain how their movements and the body as a whole correlates to their hamstring tightness or injury?

0:23:29 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah, totally. Painting a picture for the general population, we are a sedentary population. When we’re sitting down, we are in a shortened position on the hamstring. We are in sometimes a slump position, and we’re kind of bringing kyphotic…

0:23:48 Sebastian Gonzales: This will be on video by the way, over there… So if you wanna emphasize…

[laughter]

0:23:52 Brennan Ghassemieh: Sort of kyphotic position, and obviously, now bringing that into an upright posture, we are now taking that into movement, the poor posture that we’re having, and it is affecting the overall strength and usage of our hamstring. So, when, again, client comes in, we’re starting to warm up. If they start to feel over-activity of the hamstring when we’re not even directly affecting that, like a glute bridge or a squat, and they’re starting to feel perception of the hamstring tightness, that’s when we need to really intervene with how are they sitting, how are they walking. That’s when things in the session are starting to focus on that more. And I start to change the position, I start to change how they’re resting maybe, and starting to enforce a better posture, so that I know that they’re getting better movement overall out of the hamstring, without either over-activity or just lack of awareness.

0:24:51 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. Well, this might sound like a ridiculous question, but I’ll ask it anyway. Someone’s probably out there thinking, “With a glute bridge and a squat, I thought I was working my hamstring? So what should I be working, what should I be feeling if not the hamstring?”

[laughter]

0:25:11 Brennan Ghassemieh: That’s a great question, because you and I understand that we wanna not really feel anything when we’re doing a squat. We don’t wanna feel one area light up where the other is dead, but if you’re feeling over-stretching of your hamstring in a squat or a deadlifting motion… A deadlifting motion, I guess I would say is a little bit more common, that people were saying, “Ah, hamstring’s really tight today.” And usually just intervening and mobilizing the hip really helps, but when we’re doing a squat and a glute bridge and things, we want our mover to be coming from the hip. Therefore, our glute wants to get tight at the top, our core needs to be nice, and braced and down rather than here and overextending. And when it comes to the hamstrings with those movements, there’s tightness, but there shouldn’t be an over-twitch because that’s just a dysfunction in itself.

0:26:11 Sebastian Gonzales: So it’d just be like… You should feel something working probably everywhere, but nothing to scream at you or say, “I need to stop because of this one section.”

0:26:23 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. Yeah, and if there’s one section of a compound movement, and you’re only focusing on one, almost like an isolation movement, like a bicep curl…

0:26:33 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

0:26:34 Brennan Ghassemieh: Then obviously, top or bottom is not working at all or overworking, and there’s some tightness there. And that alone would tell me that I need to regress that movement, whatever it is, in order to gauge just a little bit more overall movement. I will regress whatever the squat is and whatever the bridge motion is to something that’s just a little bit easier for them to do.

0:27:05 Sebastian Gonzales: And now, a word from our sponsor, Health IQ. Did you know that higher levels of physical activity, like running, is actually associated with reducing risk of seven, seven different types of cancer? And it’s actually around 20% roughly. This is a big drop. Health IQ knows this, and they know that you are an overall healthy person, so why not pay less for life insurance? Contact them and take their lifestyle quiz to see if you qualify for special rates on life insurance. Health IQ is an insurance company that helps health conscious people, like runners, cyclists, weight lifters and vegetarians get lower rates on their life insurance. To see if you qualify, get a free quote today at healthiq.com/performance or mention the promo code “performance” when you talk to a Health IQ agent. Now, back to the show.

0:27:54 Sebastian Gonzales: You brought up a good point there, so you brought up compound movements. Was it compound or complex, I forget the…

0:28:01 Brennan Ghassemieh: I’d take both of them as like… [laughter] okay, you’re talking about squat, then lunge and then everything.

0:28:06 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. With that then, so if someone’s feeling tightness in a region, and we’ll stick with the hamstring example, is there a reason to do an isolated, say, hamstring curl? And I don’t wanna bash on the hamstring curl, but an isolated single joint rather than a global body movement? Or which would you rather pick for most people? I know everyone’s different.

0:28:28 Brennan Ghassemieh: When it comes to the hamstring, I definitely love training it as an isolated movement, but I want to pair it with a postural hold of some sorts. The Nordic hamstring curl has gained some popularity over time. In my opinion, not many people do the Nordic hamstring correctly, I’ll be the first one to say…

0:28:51 Sebastian Gonzales: It’s hard as hell, man.

0:28:52 Brennan Ghassemieh: Hell yeah.

[laughter]

0:28:53 Brennan Ghassemieh: It’s like it’s so hard that people don’t realize we’re trying to do it, but most people break at the hip or overextend. And I’m doing the same thing, I’m trying to work on them to see where I can adjust it just for the general client, general population. I can’t give it to anybody, because my own hamstrings, they’re feeling like they’re getting torn up, and I have no control of it. My favorite movement to come with actually isolating the hamstring is eccentrically loading it, but in a bridge where I could slide my feet away slowly.

0:29:28 Sebastian Gonzales: Okay.

0:29:28 Brennan Ghassemieh: So if you were to lay on your stomach and do a hamstring curl, now you’re just bringing it back the other way. Good thing about that is that you know you’re gonna keep a pretty neutral spine during that time. You can keep bridged up and once you extend out, I at least know that your hamstrings are gonna be focused on mostly in that movement, while we’re also bracing our core, tightening up our glutes, and we’re holding a pretty positive posture.

0:29:55 Sebastian Gonzales: That’s like… Actually, you don’t have a video about that anywhere, of you?

0:30:00 Brennan Ghassemieh: No, unfortunately I don’t.

0:30:02 Sebastian Gonzales: I’ll try to find one, I’ll link one. But I’m assuming you’re talking about… So face up, hips up, knees bent and then imagine on a swiss ball. Letting the swiss ball roll out?

0:30:12 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yes.

0:30:13 Sebastian Gonzales: Something like that or a TRX?

0:30:13 Brennan Ghassemieh: Or even a [0:30:14] ____ gliders on the floor ’cause then you can give more of the neutral glute bridge drive up. So now you just slowly slide out. People have a lot of control of that, so they can only go three seconds at times, they can bump it all the way up to 10 seconds. The good thing is that they have room to adjust from rep to rep on how they’re feeling.

0:30:37 Sebastian Gonzales: Oh, cool, yeah.

0:30:38 Brennan Ghassemieh: And that mainly came from the CFSC. Mike Boyle was talking about it and it actually kinda brought up why Nordic hamstring curls weren’t as beneficial as this type of movement because Nordic hamstring curls is just honestly too hard for a lot of people.

0:30:54 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah, they are. I’ve had people do them into, like will put a bench in front of them. But the benches… Now I have benches, but they’re not going very far and they’re definitely not going past 45. So it didn’t take much.

0:31:08 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, so it’s not even getting to the biggest tension arm of the movements. If people wanna use that as a progression and they feel as though they have benefits, and also bringing in those parameters, I find it to be a great tool to isolate hamstring strength. But when it comes to actual isolation of just that one motion, I feel like I’m gonna go with what’s gonna give them the best opportunity without overworking other areas.

0:31:40 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. Before we started the podcast, we were talking about neural tension. I’m not gonna pin you down to answer this fully, but ’cause I know that it’s gonna be important to talk about in this setting. Can you talk about your understanding of the feeling of tightness versus actual tightness?

0:32:00 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. And Cody Dimak has been great component of this, especially with him being such a frequent resource of this and also giving us a lot of insight on how posturally and how we’re over-stretching things. The mental side of tightness can be some sort of a guarding mechanism in some cases, where… If they had a bad back or they just hurt their back. Suddenly the hamstring’s always tight. If they’ve been sitting so long that they’re almost numb on their posterior chain and then the second you kinda try to activate it with an ASLR or even foam rolling, it’s almost an over sensation ’cause it’s the first time you’re waking it up all day. When you get to that point where it’s almost either overly sedentary or overly used, and people are going to perceive that as, “This area is extremely tight, therefore I need to stretch this on a constant basis.” When in actuality, posterior chain overall, especially the hamstring, we wanna try to find some strength there and control overall. I’d say, the injury aspect or the sedentary and first awareness type of aspect of people’s perception of tightness is the best way that I can think of it.

0:33:28 Brennan Ghassemieh: When it comes to the clinical side, what you guys do, I think it’s amazing the type of test that you guys can do that. It’s just so simplistic, and show people that, “Hey, this can be in our head. This is a guarding mechanism of some sort. We need to figure out the root of why you’re guarding this area.” And, I’ve had back injuries and even hamstring pulls where I’ve had those tests of just pull the skin like you guys do. And it has taken away a lot of that sensation. For me, in my own experience, I am realizing that people are just, are gonna hype, have a lot of sensation there and we’re gonna perceive it as tightness. When really the body just moves all the way up sometimes.

0:34:11 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

0:34:11 Brennan Ghassemieh: Sometimes.

0:34:12 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, I think what I learned is that, seeing like you hit your knee onto a coffee table, you immediately grab it, rub it.

0:34:20 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

0:34:21 Sebastian Gonzales: So it’s a… I think it’s an immediate thing for us to do, but I don’t always think it’s… Like rubbing it is not gonna do anything. And just to recap on that, the testing thing that you said, there’s… Like we have, I don’t know if Cody talked to you about this at all, but we talk about buy-in sometimes. And you guys did talk about it?

0:34:44 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh. The whole concept of trying to create that buy-in from what you guys do…

0:34:50 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

0:34:50 Brennan Ghassemieh: Please continue.

0:34:51 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, ’cause it’s very… It’s interesting that even though there’s a lot of validation out there, that stretching of that region, let’s talk about hamstring then, is not needed, people continue to do it. Like most people do it. So I guess our goal with that is that if we can get someone in with those sensations that change with something other than stretching, we’ve created a trigger in the brain like, “Holy shit, it could be something else?” And then we push ’em down the path of doing something else, like what you guys do, or what you do. I guess there’s only one of you here.

[laughter]

0:35:26 Brennan Ghassemieh: What we all do right here. There’s a lot of people in the back.

0:35:28 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a whole crowd back there, there’s a whole grandstand. So I wrote a list of random questions that I was really trying to… I haven’t dumped this on everybody, but I believe Cody’s gonna get a bunch, he’s gonna get worse ones than this.

0:35:42 Brennan Ghassemieh: Good.

0:35:42 Sebastian Gonzales: Would you rather have no knees or no elbows, and why?

[chuckle]

0:35:49 Brennan Ghassemieh: No elbows because I feel like I need to be able to move my lower body. I need to be able to be motor, like have a motor, and travel a lot more. I feel like if I don’t have knees, I can’t really do that as well. And also, you can do something with this. As long as the shoulder moves, I can grab something, I can get something done.

0:36:11 Sebastian Gonzales: I guess so. Well, I don’t know, I feel like if you… I mean I was recently on crutches, so actually it took out… Well, taking the leg out, took out the arms out, too. So I tried to go shopping and pick up like a water bottle and it wasn’t working. [laughter]

0:36:27 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, I’ve been on crutches a few times. It’s the worst. You feel debilitated, everything’s slow, trying to move, but I still would say no elbows. That’s a great question, though.

0:36:40 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

0:36:41 Brennan Ghassemieh: No, I gotta move, I gotta move my legs around, for sure.

[laughter]

0:36:45 Brennan Ghassemieh: I’ll be too sedentary, I’ll lose my mind.

0:36:47 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. You’re gonna probably having those… What are those? I don’t know what kind of capacity people have, like dexterity of fingers to like change channels and like… So how would you deadlift? How would load a hip hinge with no hands?

0:37:00 Brennan Ghassemieh: How would I load a hip hinge with no hands? The Good Morning is something that I don’t program too often for people. But banding around the neck…

0:37:11 Sebastian Gonzales: Oh, yeah.

0:37:11 Brennan Ghassemieh: And having a slight band. The GHD is always a pretty solid option, if I’m not being able to hold anything with my arms. How else? I gotta find some sort of a back strap for that person, like…

0:37:28 Sebastian Gonzales: You’d have to invent something. [chuckle]

0:37:28 Brennan Ghassemieh: Like band it around their back, put it around the bar and just pray to God I’m not gonna injure them.

0:37:35 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah, right? Like think of all the compound movements that you couldn’t do anymore. I guess you can push, I don’t know how you’d pull.

0:37:40 Brennan Ghassemieh: I wouldn’t do hip thrusters and bridges with them until the cows came home, I guess.

0:37:45 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah, right?

0:37:46 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I would have to hold their weight on the barbell, but at least they can get some sort of posterior chain exercise without having to grip anything.

0:37:55 Sebastian Gonzales: You can almost just sit on them instead of the barbell. [0:38:00] ____ It might look a little weird. [chuckle]

0:38:00 Brennan Ghassemieh: I think we’re bringing up other issues that could put me in trouble. But I guess, if worse came to worst, I’ll sit on them. Add some weight. I’m heavy, though.

0:38:09 Sebastian Gonzales: There’s been a couple of patients here, that in the beginning I’ll feel comfortable enough to where I’ll… We do a face-down test called Sorensen’s, I don’t know if you heard of that one. They’re face-down, imagine like a… So they’re hanging off of a table, with their belly button off, and then just have to hold basically a reverse plank position.

0:38:27 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh.

0:38:28 Sebastian Gonzales: But I don’t wanna hold them, so I sit on them.

[laughter]

0:38:32 Sebastian Gonzales: So it’s just some of them.

0:38:33 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, that’s kinda funny, actually.

0:38:36 Sebastian Gonzales: So you said posterior chain a couple times, so let’s go down that route and just explain what is encompassing the posterior chain for people that don’t know.

0:38:44 Brennan Ghassemieh: I consider the posterior chain actually starting up from the middle back area. It can even be the entire back muscles if you wanna include it, but middle back all the way through down to the calves. The calves, again, I still would consider, but from the hamstring to lower mid back is a main area that I’m talking about if I start to bring up posterior chain for people. But everything back there, everything that you can’t see in the mirror.

0:39:13 Sebastian Gonzales: Okay. I just went straight to tattoos for some reason. [laughter]

0:39:19 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, no. Obviously the posterior chain is gonna come all the way down from the Achilles and everything, but I’m considering more main muscle groups, hamstrings, glutes, erectors.

0:39:33 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. I guess I never really think the calf or the… I hate saying calf… Backside of the leg. Oh shit, I can’t say leg either. That is leg, thigh.

0:39:44 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah.

0:39:44 Sebastian Gonzales: Okay. I don’t think of the calf as being posterior chain, but I guess you’re right.

0:39:48 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, it’s not something that I’m actually talking about if I bring up the term “posterior chain,” but I guess it goes into consideration, at least. But what I’m addressing, if I’m saying, “Hey, we’re trying to work on strengthening your posterior chain,” we’re talking hamstrings, glutes, erectors, up to the middle back, so that the lats can be addressed, too.

0:40:11 Sebastian Gonzales: Do you ever think anybody can be posterior chain dominant?

0:40:15 Brennan Ghassemieh: I’ve seen a lot of athletes…

0:40:17 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

0:40:18 Brennan Ghassemieh: If anything… Not too much general population, I guess. I think you can be, but I think that would take a lot of time and not a lot of sitting or knee flexion movements, I guess. They probably have a pretty flared up open scissor-like posture, if they were overly dominant on the posterior chain. But I haven’t seen it enough for them, for people to be like that.

0:40:47 Sebastian Gonzales: I see… I’ve noticed a lot on… I was talking to… Do you know Richard Ulm? He’s a…

0:40:53 Brennan Ghassemieh: I don’t.

0:40:54 Sebastian Gonzales: Cody will know him. But I had him on a podcast, we were talking about extension dominance, or extension compensation, rather. But he was mentioning with lifters, especially like Olympic lifters, cross-fitters, they don’t wanna round, so they overemphasize too much extension. But then he said they were saying that something that can control that is internal pressure. So the breathing mechanics of it. But he was the only person I ever heard say that, and then I’m like, “Oh, that’s pretty interesting.”

0:41:26 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. Yeah, and I can definitely see that with like a weightlifter or somebody like a recreational cross-fitter, they are almost fearing the [0:41:40] ____ lumbar dump and the spinal flexion, so they’re gonna overly correct. In athletes, I see it a lot in a receiver, and more of the track style receiver that typically has trouble changing direction, actually, because they’re so here and they’re almost pushed back and like open scissoring forward rather than being able to create any sort of a knee drive. Their back recovery stride is extremely long.

0:42:11 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah, they can kick their heel to their ass.

0:42:13 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah. But if you have them now starting to drive their knee up during acceleration and all that, you’ll see a lot of trouble. And it’s almost because they can’t find any sort of a brace in their posture.

0:42:28 Sebastian Gonzales: So most people in general, they would fall into that first category.

0:42:32 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

0:42:32 Sebastian Gonzales: Okay. I just wanna make sure anyone thought they were exceptions, make sure to be clear with that.

0:42:37 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

[laughter]

0:42:38 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, we all wanna be… Everybody’s an exception, but in general, stereotypically, it’s a lot more anterior chain dominant.

0:42:50 Sebastian Gonzales: So when you are… When you’re watching people move, and I know originally you said that assessment is basically is watching them move, what types of things are you… Are you just having them just walk about the gym, are you having them sit down and grab something, or is it actually like, “Okay, show me your best squat. Show me your best this. Show me your best that?”

0:43:11 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, when it comes to the assessment process, the way I start most programs are gonna be at those baselines that I create. The one assessment tool or I’d say the two assessment tools that I can involve with that, to begin with, before I start working with somebody is gonna be a posture analysis. I may not see too much when it comes to their hamstrings, or to any assessment, but if I see that their frontal view posture is gonna be off maybe as an anterior tilt to posterior tilt, I wanna see that done in the FMS. So, first off, general population, if your trainer doesn’t put you through some sort of a movement screen or at least an injury screen where they create their own movements outside of the FMS, then you should worry because they’re about to load you.

[chuckle]

0:44:02 Brennan Ghassemieh: So let’s make sure that you’re able to move without pain and without an over dysfunction that’s gonna leave you up for risk. But after the FMS, doing different movements that involve their mobility of the hip with core stability, is gonna be a lot in my hamstring assessment as well. So a single leg RDL to reaching to a box is one that I wanna see pretty early on. Any sort of squat variation, and it’s usually gonna start off as a goblet squat for people, but I’m watching their body weight squat. Not even as the overhead, like in the FMS, I wanna see how they just body weight squat. It’ll tell me a little bit about their hamstring. And actually, one that’s not as typical as the Koichi Sato lateral squat.

0:44:56 Sebastian Gonzales: Oh, yeah.

0:44:57 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. If I just see them naturally lateral squat and they’re sitting forward, their knees really forward, they may be on their toe, then I know again there’s some sort of perceived tightness there. If they’re able to sit back and hold stable, then that’s a really good sign. And usually because it’s the unilateral movement or a side to side, then I could see some sort of an asymmetry with that. I don’t want to, but you could at least see some sort of hamstring strength go into play there.

0:45:26 Sebastian Gonzales: I found it interesting on that, with… I don’t know how you end up going down the route when you teach it. But I feel like people’s first thing with the lateral squat is that they push their hip out further, or at least over their… I said hip, right? Hip over their foot. So I think they’re trying to make it into a really deep movement. And then the toes [0:45:51] ____ stay down, heel comes up and so on. But I feel like when you teach it to ’em, aside from having some random things that they could possibly have, I feel like they get it, at least. So I guess what I’m getting at is, I don’t know if they always know what they’re looking to do before they do it, with that one.

0:46:11 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

0:46:11 Sebastian Gonzales: It’s just a foreign thing that people don’t do anymore.

0:46:15 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. Really good point in the depth thing that you brought up there is really true, because we almost attribute that type of movement to when we stretch our groin out…

0:46:26 Sebastian Gonzales: Yes.

0:46:27 Brennan Ghassemieh: Which is a pretty common warm up movement that we’ve all done. And so we wanna see how far away we can get so the opposite side groin can stretch out. But it’s really important for people to feel where they are at their best position, on controlling the frontal plane. If they don’t have the awareness and the ability to understand like, “Okay. Where can I stop and where do I feel very stable at,” then using the lateral wedge, so pushing against the wall, is at least a good introduction to creating some tension and creating that tension from the opposite leg. But it’s a movement that takes just a little bit of time. It’s kind of a funny movement because there’s not too much range of motion with it, overall. And like you said, people are almost trying to force more when it’s not really about the depth that you can create in the lateral squat, it’s really just about the tension that you can create going back.

0:47:28 Sebastian Gonzales: I’m gonna put some videos of these for everyone, in case they’re wondering. It’ll be on the show notes. So since lateral squat is probably the most foreign thing that you said to everybody, why do they need that for competency of the hamstring or just as a person?

0:47:47 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, so we’re talking about the frontal plane, therefore our side to side stability is very important for everybody, regardless if you’re just a recreational person, you wanna just get in shape, or if you’re full blown trying to be a Weekend Warrior Marathons and things. And it’s really about, when we’re talking about the lateral squat, we’re trying to build our stabilizers, things that hold us together in more sagittal-like movements, like walking and things. So with the lateral squat, what I’m trying to build is the outermost muscles with some stability here, so that the stabilizers can do their job, so that the moving type muscles, like our gluteus maximus, our quads, those larger muscles that propel us forward, can just focus on moving. Because if somebody doesn’t have, let’s say, stability or control in that area, then if they’re running, then there’s most likely some sort of an overcompensation of your larger muscle groups, while those little muscles that are just there to stabilize us more aren’t really doing anything. And over time, we’re just repeating poor movement patterns without awareness. And it’s really important for the general public to find that type of stability so that we’re not leaving ourselves prone to any sort of hamstring injuries. So does it create hamstring directly? Not too much. But does it help the hamstring do its job better? Definitely does.

0:49:23 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah, I totally agree. I know that with the general population or at least with people who don’t understand, so you said frontal plane. So there’s basically three planes of movement that humans do. And we need to do all of them but we spend the most time in the forward, backwards.

0:49:37 Brennan Ghassemieh: Just going forward and back, yeah.

0:49:39 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah, so with training then, I’m sure that… When you program for people, you probably include a bit of frontal and rotational. Right?

0:49:48 Brennan Ghassemieh: Definitely.

0:49:49 Sebastian Gonzales: So what are some examples of ones you would give on that, that people that… Maybe they’re not educated about the planes of movements or the importance or so, they would look at it and think, “This is such a waste of time. Why am I paying this guy to do this thing?” So can you give me some examples of those exercises?

0:50:06 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah.

0:50:07 Sebastian Gonzales: Let’s give power to those exercises. [chuckle]

0:50:09 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So let’s go down the line of where they would be involved. So like movement prep and warm ups, I wanna get them moving side to side, not just for activation of their stabilizing muscles and… But I also want them to get some more coordination and some more self-awareness. I don’t believe in building somebody’s proprioception, it’s kind of impossible. But during movement prep, some good examples would be a lateral band crab walk. So they’re banded on either the ankles, the knees, the toes, and they’re walking side to side. Most people, as long as they’re not feeling their quads, like, “Oh, the outside of the glute is really firing up there.” The lateral squat is something that I use either for movement prep for a back squat or a goblet squat, or in the actual exercise. From a rotational standpoint… Oh, actually another one that is really a mainstay to me is the side bridge. So it’s like the glute bridge if I’m facing up here, but now I’m just lying on one side and repeating the same motion. It’s creating the same hip hinging motion, that’s the sagittal movement, but with all of my tension coming from one side, obviously.

0:51:28 Brennan Ghassemieh: Other ways to train it, at least with the frontal plane, is your Pallof press, that’s at least giving you some sort of… It’s anti-rotational, but there can be some sort of aspects where you need to hold some more frontal plane stability. But moving to rotational, I love chops. Anti-chops, sometimes you bring it into a rotational chop, as long as they’re able to bring their lower body into that motion. When it comes to movement prep or strengthening exercises, a curtsy lunge or rotational squats. So a curtsy lunge is like you’re doing a curtsy, stepping behind your working leg, and even bringing it into a transverse lunge where you’re actually turning around or turning to a 90 degree angle. Those ones are always great because you’re just adding a little bit more challenge to somebody’s day-to-day movement, but creating a little bit more absolute strength in all planes of motion.

0:52:35 Sebastian Gonzales: As you were saying all that, I’m sure you see I’m writing it all down. So, I’m gonna link to [chuckle].. I half-heartedly say this because I’m gonna link to these videos, but I’m realizing I’m gonna have to make 10 videos. [chuckle]

0:52:47 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna need to help you out with just sending you some videos of this so that viewers aren’t extremely confused like “What is this guy talking about with the side bridge and all that stuff?”

0:53:00 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. I think, definitely there’s some up there that are already done, but I didn’t mention to you, but I think I said it in prior podcasts is that… So this year, I’m trying to make one video a day on my YouTube channel to correlate to these.

0:53:16 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh, nice.

0:53:17 Sebastian Gonzales: So you just gave me a bunch of content to make, which I like but I hate. [chuckle]

0:53:22 Brennan Ghassemieh: “This is a good thing, thanks for the work, Brennan, but it’s a lot of work.”

0:53:26 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. I think you’ve given already more work than any other person I’ve interviewed so far.

0:53:30 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yes! Yes, that’s what Cody told me to do.

0:53:34 Sebastian Gonzales: What an ass. So would it be possible to do a little video shoot? We’ll just blow through all of these, give some cues and then we’ll…

0:53:42 Brennan Ghassemieh: Of course. Yeah, I’d love to do that.

0:53:43 Sebastian Gonzales: So everyone can see Brennan featured on the YouTube channel.

0:53:46 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yes. [chuckle] Looking good.

0:53:48 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. So with those exercises then, do you ever load them? And how much of a load? ‘Cause I know with sagittal plane movement, squats, deads and so on that it can get higher. How much do you typically load those, or are they just movement prep or warm-up?

0:54:05 Brennan Ghassemieh: I will load them if there needs to be a repeated frequency of this. So for just activation purposes, if I need to get them up for more of a sagittal strength exercise in the beginning of the workout, I’ll load ’em, but it’ll be pretty light. Usually, through a cable because those motions require a different line of pull than just the up-and-down gravity weights that we use. So I will load ’em in a cable, but it’s typically not that much because as we know, the sagittal plane is naturally stronger for those motions, so I’m not doing 200 pound lateral squats with them. I do tend to use a lot of my power and higher threshold exercises with athletes and general population, using a medicine ball or light type of plyometrics. I will use those and to me that’s loading it a lot because we’re talking about higher threshold, therefore more landing mechanics, more eccentric loading for these people, regardless of if it’s general population or our athletes. I feel as though that’s the highest threshold that I go, even if it’s not direct weight load.

0:55:24 Sebastian Gonzales: Make sense. This question is a little bit of a tangent, but I can’t finish with you until we ask this anyways. So because people, I know there’s many different types of exercise, strength training, HITs trainings, blah, blah, blah. What would you prefer for someone… Most people, that aren’t actually Olympians, or making money off their bodies’ performance and so on, is there a high-reward, low-risk thing type that they could do, if you could generalize a little bit?

0:55:56 Brennan Ghassemieh: So just to clarify this is for general population, if I were to just suggest a certain approach for their exercise?

0:56:05 Sebastian Gonzales: Let’s say like a 30 to 40-year-old… I mean, I think the people that I graduated high school with, they’re, like “Oh I’m getting a little pudgy, and maybe I should lose some weight.” And, “I think I’m gonna go do… I’m gonna Olympic lift seven times a week.” Or, “Do I need to do burpees ’til I’m a puddle of water on the ground?” ‘Cause there’s obviously some things have high reward, but also high risk, is there a certain thing that people, when they’ll ask you like “Hey, can I have these exercise tips for this type of population set?” What’s a good go-to? Does that make sense, the question?

0:56:41 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah. And my go-to with this is, understand the general movements that we all need to do. Squat, so push/pull in the lower body, push/pull in the upper body, both going up-and-down vertically, and forward and back horizontally. And core and carries to me, if you can find movements in those, even if it’s just one movement in the squat, dead, and push-and-pull type categories, find a way to master those, find a way to build strength in that. So strength is something to me, if you wanna lose some pounds, and if you wanna just get back into the gym and make this kind of a general thing, rather than trying to go balls-to-the-wall, you definitely need to gain your strength, and you also need a lot of endurance, or some sort of conditioning aspect that can not only bring active recovery, so a low steady state type of endurance, but changing up the intensities on your conditioning. So strength and conditioning, are the two things that I would always recommend for people.

0:57:52 Sebastian Gonzales: Is that where that word comes from?

0:57:53 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, it’s so weird. [chuckle] I’ve actually had somebody asked me that, he’s like, “What should I focus on?” I said “Strength and conditioning,” without even thinking that strength and conditioning is like, “Oh, wow. That’s why it’s called that.” Awesome, yeah.

0:58:07 Sebastian Gonzales: I don’t think we break it apart as a… We don’t break it into two words often, it just flows into one.

0:58:13 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. It’s just “strength and conditioning”, SSC coach. But I want people to focus on the general movements that don’t cause pain and that will kind of translate over to real life in some form.

0:58:29 Sebastian Gonzales: Makes sense.

0:58:30 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. Those basic movements are really key for me to master for people.

0:58:35 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, good. I like that. It sounds good to me and very clear.

0:58:38 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. [chuckle]

0:58:39 Sebastian Gonzales: Now, I’m gonna ask you, you have a tattooed ring on your finger.

0:58:42 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh, yeah.

0:58:42 Sebastian Gonzales: How did you pick that design? [chuckle] I don’t know if it’s close enough, I think you need to gonna punch it over there.

0:58:48 Brennan Ghassemieh: There you go.

0:58:50 Sebastian Gonzales: I’m guessing that’s a marriage ring?

0:58:52 Brennan Ghassemieh: Uh-huh, yeah. So my wife and I… This is Kaela, is her name. So that’s kinda where I got the letter from, at least the design. We’ve planned on doing a little one right here, it came off to the side, not too noticeable. And the tattoo artist, when I went in there, he just drew this on with a pen and it was pretty big. But I don’t plan on wearing a ring at all when I’m working just ’cause of how often I need to grab iron, and those rubber rings are great, but for me, it’s just I can’t stop fidgeting with it. Yeah, so I decided to just get it this big on. And my wife has one too, but it’s small enough to where her ring actually covers it.

0:59:34 Sebastian Gonzales: Oh, really?

0:59:34 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. But she’s a nurse too, so at times, she has to take off her ring.

0:59:37 Sebastian Gonzales: Oh, yeah. The gloves.

0:59:38 Brennan Ghassemieh: So it’s kinda nice. Yeah. It kinda works out well.

0:59:41 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, have you ever worn a band at all for a period of time and then… Because my experience with it was, you wear a band, and it feels like you can’t shut your fingers the entire way. It is like the most annoying thing. And I never wore one of those other little bands, those rubber ones, but I thought I’d be better, but shit, it’s still kind of in the way.

1:00:03 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. Oh, that’s the worst, especially because the ring I wear is made of wood and stone, so there’s just not too much give to it. And yeah, you’re right, I always feel like I’m just opened up like that and I can’t stop fidgeting with it. A watch is one thing ’cause I’m not constantly using my fine motor skills and aware of my watch, but when it comes to the ring, yeah, especially with what we do where it’s really hands-on, if I feel that, it’s gonna distract me a lot. And even the rubber rings were starting to do that too. I was starting to feel like I couldn’t stop focusing on it.

1:00:40 Sebastian Gonzales: I don’t know how you can set proper tension on… You can’t white-knuckle a bar, and you can’t crack a walnut if you got that thing in the way. Tension’s screwed up, man.

1:00:49 Brennan Ghassemieh: I know. A quick tangent, sorry, my last client that I just had was really upset ’cause he actually lost his ring while water skiing. And to be honest with you, it felt really loose on that morning and all I could think of is like, “Why were you wearing it? You were water skiing, man.” I feel like that’s one situation, it’s like, “Let’s take that off,” but some people, it’s glued on there and they don’t even think about it after, but for us we’re always aware of that.

1:01:18 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. Well, I can definitely… I connected with what that guy said, there was… I had a ring, I was married at one point, not anymore. So I was on a mud run, and I thought before, “Should I take this off?” I’m like, “No. I’m fine.” And they have one of those really sticky mud pits, and I’m pretty sure it’s at the bottom there somewhere ’cause there’s a suction when you take your hand out. So I started thinking, this is at Irvine Lake, and I’m like,”Every year, you should go back and just dig up people’s diamond rings in this mud pit.” I bet they’re all there. [chuckle]

1:01:49 Brennan Ghassemieh: There’s gotta be at least five or 10 there. Somebody like you who’s like, “Oh, it’s not gonna fall off.” I mean, our rings, our guy rings are worth what? Like…

1:02:00 Sebastian Gonzales: 50 bucks.

1:02:00 Brennan Ghassemieh: 300, 500 bucks tops?

1:02:01 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. Oh, mine were like $50.

1:02:02 Brennan Ghassemieh: $50?

1:02:03 Sebastian Gonzales: It was a tungsten, I think. [chuckle]

1:02:04 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I think I was like 200, and that was even like “That’s kind of expensive, Kaela.” But her ring is, obviously, the female’s ring is a lot more. So look for the diamonds, rather than just the guy rings.

1:02:18 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. Yeah, totally.

1:02:19 Brennan Ghassemieh: Tungsten.

1:02:20 Sebastian Gonzales: Your second option was to wear that around your neck on a necklace maybe, like Frodo.

1:02:25 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. [chuckle] And at Equinox, we have name tags like lanyards, like name tags that hang off. I’m not gonna lie, hopefully, my bosses don’t hear this, even though they see it every day, I don’t wear a name tag because, again, it’s a focus that I don’t need to have, like if I’m hip hinging to see better form and have a better view of things and it’s just kind of hanging off of me, I feel like that ring would do the same thing.

1:02:54 Sebastian Gonzales: Oh, I’m sure it would.

1:02:54 Brennan Ghassemieh: How did Frodo go through all that in all of those movies and not have just the necklace fall off?

1:03:00 Sebastian Gonzales: He’s a bad ass, but I don’t know how he got it off his necklace so quick and put it on his finger when he needed to. It’s not very accessible.

1:03:05 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. That’s a hole in the story that they need to address. They need to make another movie just for that.

1:03:11 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. I can see, they’re gonna be listening. We need to figure out how Frodo actually gets that off his neck. [chuckle]

1:03:17 Brennan Ghassemieh: If you guys are watching this, address this to us please. We’re really concerned about it, so.

[chuckle]

1:03:23 Sebastian Gonzales: So as we close up here, how can everyone reach you? I didn’t find a lot of stuff of yours on websites. I saw Instagram, but I didn’t see much else.

1:03:34 Brennan Ghassemieh: I wish I was a little bit more proactive in sharing of knowledge, but I’m kind of apprehensive because I’m such a learner that I want to more just be the person to apply everything. However, Instagram is a tool that I like to use from time to time, I guess, more in my personal life is on there than anything educational-wise, Otherwise, my email and my phone number and things like that are always available for people, if you’re able to post that maybe.

1:04:06 Sebastian Gonzales: I can post that.

1:04:07 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I like to talk to people more on a face-to-face basis because when I think about the population that I may be outreaching with anything I put out there, I don’t want it to be misconstrued, and I don’t want it to be kind of misapplied to somebody as this is the sure fix. As a personal coach for both… And my athletes are in a pretty small group, so everything is just on that N equals one basis, and I think that’s been the reason why I haven’t been able to really share as much knowledge as I see. And I’m also just a follower of people like you that, you guys teach me enough, I don’t feel like I need to share it anymore.

1:04:50 Sebastian Gonzales: I think you got some good stuff, and I think everyone’s got their unique way of teaching, or I always say that you have your own unique advantage, the way you say things to people, so.

1:05:04 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. That’s a great way of putting it. Yeah, you just have your own perception of things, but I love when people actually reach out to me to inquire about something, and even if we’re able to meet face-to-face, or if they can give me more of a detailed aspect of what they’re looking for, then I’d be more than happy, anybody that is curious or in the area and wants to meet with me, then be more than happy to give my time up and answer any questions, or just assess [1:05:34] ____ work with ’em.

1:05:34 Sebastian Gonzales: So this is Orange County… You’re in Newport?

1:05:37 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. I’m at the Equinox in Newport Beach. And yeah, I’m local so I’m everywhere around Orange County in LA.

1:05:44 Sebastian Gonzales: Okay. STARS is up at Anaheim, right?

1:05:46 Brennan Ghassemieh: Uh-huh, yeah. It’s at the American Sports Complex, have you ever been there?

1:05:51 Sebastian Gonzales: No.

1:05:52 Brennan Ghassemieh: It’s huge. It’s amazing there. It’s so many volleyball courts and everything, but that’s an amazing place for youth athletes all the way up to professional to really work on their performance.

1:06:02 Sebastian Gonzales: I spoke with… Do you know KG?

1:06:05 Brennan Ghassemieh: KG?

1:06:05 Sebastian Gonzales: Coach KG. He was over there and he was in the beginning of it, I think.

1:06:09 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh, really? Nice. I started off as an intern a few years ago. So I feel like maybe I just missed him.

1:06:16 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. I’d spoken to him before. I don’t think he’s there anymore, but I don’t know if you knew the same guy.

1:06:21 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, I wish.

1:06:23 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, cool. So everyone needs to reach out to you. And do they need to be a member of Equinox to be trained by you?

1:06:29 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. To be trained by me at Equinox, we do need to have a membership. Obviously, that membership comes with a lot of different perks. So, I guess, I’m kinda selling Equinox right now, but…

[chuckle]

1:06:40 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, we’ve gotta figure out how to get people to be trained by you, though.

1:06:43 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, yeah. So be a member at Equinox. If you guys are in the area, and you’re trying to find the right gym that has a better environment, I can’t think of anywhere better for the general population than Equinox because the environment that you’re in, and their investment to health, and what they wanna do for their members is pretty incredible. And they really put in a lot of work to not only educate us so that we know what we’re doing, they reward us for that, but the type of services and resources they provide the member base through our magazine, Furthermore, or just through their newsletter that they send out, it’s really a place that facilitates people’s own growth. And I think that’s my biggest why, why I’m doing this and why Equinox is such a great place is I’m able to be a facilitator for somebody’s own choice to grow and change however they needed to. So I think Equinox is kind of the environment that helped me do that, too.

1:07:48 Sebastian Gonzales: Nice. Well, you’ve already reached the apex, so you can’t go higher than that gym.

[chuckle]

1:07:53 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, I know, right? I mean, after that it’s… [1:07:57] ____ Access is an amazing gym, but unfortunately, they are pretty selective about where they’re at, too.

1:08:02 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah, I think you got to go to Arizona or something, right?

1:08:04 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. But other than that, yeah, Equinox is probably the apex. So I’m a really lucky guy.

1:08:10 Sebastian Gonzales: I always used to tell people that there was… Some of my friends have been, they’re college athletes, and now they’re kind of doing regular stuff like normal people, and I just tell them, “You peaked too early in life, man.” [chuckle] “Nowhere but down here.”

1:08:27 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh, man. I was that guy too. And even as a trainer, I was like “I can’t squat anymore ’cause my knees. Can’t overhead press anymore ’cause my shoulders. Can’t bench anymore ’cause my shoulders.” I was kinda getting out of shape for a quick second there, and it was ’cause I was so scared and fearful of those past injuries. And as a college athlete, you wanna un-tap it, but some people can go overboard with that. They want to get back to their college days, like, “Take it slow. We got a whole life ahead of us. You don’t wanna peak again in four years and have to fall to down to where you were at.” Any former college athletes that are listening to this, trust me, take your time. You’re an athlete, you’ll figure it out, but don’t rush back into it. We’re never gonna get back to our college bodies.

1:09:13 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

1:09:13 Brennan Ghassemieh: Just work on the basics, really.

1:09:16 Sebastian Gonzales: So any final words you would like to tell to those hamstring people before we close out?

1:09:25 Brennan Ghassemieh: Definitely, listen to your body. Without a doubt, if these certain tell-tale signs that I spoke about in the beginning are starting to come to light, or if you’re starting to just become more hyper-aware of the way you run and what you’re feeling when you’re running, or walking, or sitting, then go see a movement specialist, go see either a trainer that’s really trained in opening up more proper movement, or somebody like Sebastian that works so deeply and so specifically on these things. But my advice is listen to your body. If you have any questions or any sort of fears that this may relate to you, then get it addressed now before it’s too late and you pull something and then you’re forced to be in here. There’s nothing wrong with proactive care. It really isn’t. I get checked up by Cody all the time just so I can avoid potential for knee injuries, and it’s just ’cause I don’t wanna just suddenly hold a blind eye to it and then it’s too late.

1:10:26 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. And I know a lot of people, I think, they’re afraid to look ’cause of what they’ll find, but sometimes it’s not… I mean, there’s thing they can do to make it better, it’s not like it’s a death sentence by any means.

1:10:37 Brennan Ghassemieh: Exactly. And also, when you’re seeing somebody, try not to see somebody that is on the high end of the spectrum, where they’re just gonna want surgery or an MRI. Go with somebody that’s gonna move you first, and let them refer you out to the appropriate person. So try not to go with the worst case scenario, just inquire, for sure.

1:11:00 Sebastian Gonzales: Go with someone that strokes your hair.

[chuckle]

1:11:02 Brennan Ghassemieh: There you go.

1:11:02 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on. That was amazing.

1:11:06 Brennan Ghassemieh: Of course, yeah. Thanks for having me. I had a lot of fun.

1:11:08 Sebastian Gonzales: I’ll have to you on a panel sometime, I think, you’d be good on a panel.

1:11:11 Brennan Ghassemieh: Oh, that’d be great.

1:11:12 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

1:11:13 Brennan Ghassemieh: I’d love that. Just have Cody next to me, so I can annoy him a little bit.

[chuckle]

1:11:17 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, I was thinking before about how many people I should allow on one panel ’cause we have one coming up. There’s one gonna be released in April, it’s three people and I’m just the moderator. So I’m not really gonna do any input. I’ll do a little bit, but it’s mainly just posing a question, let ’em fight each other. But in a good-hearted way.

1:11:35 Brennan Ghassemieh: May I ask who’s the three? What career focuses?

1:11:40 Sebastian Gonzales: Discipline? So these ones, they’re from… Have you heard of functional neurology?

1:11:46 Brennan Ghassemieh: I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know much about it.

1:11:48 Sebastian Gonzales: Functional neurology is… I wanted to have them on ’cause I’ve had all three of them on independently, and they have all had really good ways of saying things, and also to looking at the state of the vestibular system, or like the eyes in relationship to, let’s just say, lower extremities injuries. If your body doesn’t know where its at, then we have a problem, you might misstep and turn something, right?

1:12:10 Brennan Ghassemieh: Totally. That’s great.

1:12:11 Sebastian Gonzales: So the work’s a little bit… Yeah. So they’re the kind of person I would send a concussion patient to ’cause I don’t deal with those much.

1:12:18 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

1:12:20 Sebastian Gonzales: So I wanted them to, since I feel like even with what I know, not that I know everything, but when I am interviewing ’em I’m like “Huh, there’s lot of holes in here in my knowledge.” I feel like an idiot, so I’m like “Why don’t I just put them all three right there, and I’ll keep having them say the same thing a different way. So everyone can understand little better.”

1:12:38 Brennan Ghassemieh: That’s cool!

1:12:38 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

1:12:39 Brennan Ghassemieh: I like that. And you’re putting their own company against each other a little bit. That’s kind of fun.

1:12:44 Sebastian Gonzales: Right. Well, I don’t know how to do it with like… What if I had people that had conflicting ideologies, and then I don’t know what the… ’cause I kinda want the end-all to, at least, there to be some type of conclusion not like… The listeners like, “I don’t know what to think next.”

1:13:00 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. And I think, blending the disciplines can be a great way of maybe bringing in that final conclusion because we’ll all consider different things. Yeah, our ideologies may be different, but if my ideology is different than yours, I should understand you’re in a different discipline, so you’re seeing this through a different lens than I am, and therefore we should at least come to some sort of consensus of what should the general listeners and audience, overall, understand and take away from that.

1:13:34 Sebastian Gonzales: No, I totally agree ’cause it’s basically the art of co-managing and communicating between professions. But I almost wonder with… I’m a little hesitant to do it just too, ’cause I think the people on the other side have to understand that their way is not the only way, or there’s gonna be a holes in what they say, and they have to be humble enough to have a calm discussion about it. So I’m picking people that I think would be very much like that and that we would come to a roundabout conclusion in the end.

1:14:03 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. And that’s a great way of putting it because in this field too, with all this uncertainty that we have, and how it may work for one person and it definitely doesn’t work for this person, it kills this person, all that stuff, I mean, we gotta understand that there is no answer for this. It’s really individual basis and I love the fact that you wanna find that type of person that at least can just have an open mind and “This is what I do, but I can see how the other side of the coin is valid there.” So it’s cool.

1:14:40 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

1:14:41 Brennan Ghassemieh: I’d love to be on that. That’s lot of fun.

1:14:43 Sebastian Gonzales: Well, good. Yeah, they’ll be amazing. I’m thinking about getting… So there’s two more mic slots in here. Just get them all at the same time, and then just have a beer and just go at it. [chuckle]

1:14:53 Brennan Ghassemieh: Shot for shot?

1:14:54 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

1:14:54 Brennan Ghassemieh: Something like that. Just make it little bit more rowdy.

1:14:57 Sebastian Gonzales: When someone stalls for an answer, as soon as they stall, they have to take a sip. I don’t know if I’d last very long with this shit… So actually, I don’t know if Cody told you, so we go out and have beers, and we discuss stuff like this, and actually it was kind of like… The flow of that is something I kind of wanted for these podcasts ’cause it’s… I learn something every time. I don’t know if you learned anything, but I think we get through a lot, and I told him this recently that the… ‘Cause I wanted to have him on again ’cause I think he’s an interesting dude and he’s got lot to share and he’s like, “Well, I don’t have as much to share, I don’t think, as I think.” And I’m like, “No, you have a great stuff. You have great knowledge and then you share in your own unique way.” And so I get around to the story that there was one time that we had… So I’m like 155 pounds right now, he’s like 225, right? So he can handle a lot more alcohol. So I’m always the one that gets trashed first, if I get trashed at all. So I was that time, ’cause we drink heavy IPAs.

1:15:55 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

1:15:56 Sebastian Gonzales: Cody, I hope I’m okay sharing this, by the way? Too bad. [chuckle]

1:16:00 Brennan Ghassemieh: He’s okay with that. Cody can suck ’em down.

1:16:02 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. So, at the end of it all, he mentioned intra-abdominal pressure, and I’m like, “What’s that?” And then so he just gave me a little bit of a hint of what it was ’cause we were kind of at the end of the night and it wasn’t… And I think he thought I knew, and I didn’t, I had no idea. So after that, I woke up and I’m like, “What’s intra-abdominal pressure?” And I went through this whole thing, and this is kind of how it really molded how I practice today, now.

1:16:29 Brennan Ghassemieh: Really?

1:16:29 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah.

1:16:29 Brennan Ghassemieh: That’s amazing.

1:16:29 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. So something that I think that we might think is easy to understand, even you might think is, “Holy shit! That just changed my life.” And then, him, the same thing.

1:16:40 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. It’s amazing. Kind of going off of that, there are times where I’m re-watching or going through the same types of lectures with the same people, and I’m always coming away with something new that I have learned before, but I didn’t retain it and apply it. And like you said, it’s like, “What is intra-abdominal pressure?” We’re not gonna catch everything, and I think that’s why we share insight because we don’t have to have all the content, we just need to be able to openly discuss things, and you never know what we learn from that, for sure.

1:17:18 Sebastian Gonzales: Yeah. Good.

1:17:19 Brennan Ghassemieh: That’s Cool.

1:17:19 Sebastian Gonzales: I’m glad I didn’t turn the mic off.

1:17:22 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah.

1:17:22 Sebastian Gonzales: That was good stuff.

1:17:23 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah, right?

1:17:24 Sebastian Gonzales: Alright. Well, officially, thanks for coming on.

1:17:25 Brennan Ghassemieh: Yeah. Thank you, for having me. I appreciate it.

[chuckle]

1:17:28 Sebastian Gonzales: Everyone, that was Brennan Ghassemieh. He did not have a ton of contacts, but if you’re looking to contact him or get in touch with him, especially if you’re in the Orange County, Southern California area, if you’re looking to go in and train with him, you should. You really should. He’s a good, good guy. He’s honest and he knows his stuff very well. I’ll put all of his contacts into the show notes, which you can find at p2sportscare.com/podcast, and then pound or slash/pound the session number you’re listening to. So this is 71. So it’s gonna be podcast/pound… Sorry, it’s pound… Or, yeah, I said pound, not hashtag. So pound 71.

1:18:04 Sebastian Gonzales: So any of the correlated videos and exercise videos that we spoke about on there are going to be onto the show notes, though. That is a huge reference for you guys to use. Now, don’t forget that these podcasts come out every week, please subscribe. Share with your friends. Share with your colleagues and your patients. I mean, I really think patients and clients really need to hear this stuff, too. We try to break it down real easy-like. Go to the YouTube channel as well. If you don’t know where to find that, if you just search Performance Place or Sebastian Gonzales sports injury or something of that nature on YouTube, you’ll find it. There’s a ton of videos. We have one coming out every single day for 2018.

1:18:45 Sebastian Gonzales: And next, if you’re still looking for those posters, as well, that I mentioned in the beginning, all this is part of a huge, I call it modernization of patient education toolbox. So go onto there, those posters are… The graphics that are the web versions are completely free. So just go on there and contact me, and I’ll let you know how to find them. They’re all formatted for social media, and I don’t think there’s any reason why we can’t share these types of things with our clients. Now lastly, the golden rule, all that stuff applies, leave others better than what you found them, and be good to each other. See you guys next week. Talk to you guys next week.

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