[0:02] Squeaky-creaky joints are not just a
[0:04] normal part of training. And if it keeps
[0:06] coming back, problem isn't your muscles
[0:07] or bones, it's your tendons.
[0:09] >> It's the number one thing that causes
[0:11] people pain.
[0:12] >> Today, I'll show you the two biggest
[0:13] mistakes damaging your tendons and the
[0:16] exact [music]
[0:17] exercises proven to rebuild stronger
[0:19] ones in as little as 30 days. Think of
[0:22] tendons as the cables that make your
[0:23] body move. Whether it's lifting your
[0:25] forearm up during a curl, pulling your
[0:27] arm across your body during a bench
[0:28] press, or swinging your elbow when you
[0:30] hit a tennis ball. But movement isn't
[0:32] their only job.
[0:33] >> Imagine that you jump down off of a
[0:37] couple of stairs and you landed on both
[0:38] feet. Well, when you land on the ground,
[0:40] you don't want your muscle to take on
[0:42] all of the load.
[0:43] >> That's Coach Q Wiley, a physiotherapist
[0:46] who spent years studying tendons and
[0:48] applying this research with professional
[0:50] athletes.
[0:51] >> So, tendon can be very protective of
[0:53] muscle in that it can basically stretch
[0:56] out quite a bit in a very fast, short
[0:58] period of time that allows the muscle to
[1:00] not have to extend as quickly.
[1:02] >> Which just means your tendons need to be
[1:04] absurdly strong. And even though lifting
[1:06] weights is great for building your
[1:07] muscles,
[1:08] >> [music]
[1:08] >> your tendons need a different type of
[1:10] training.
[1:11] >> The biggest thing that we're discovering
[1:12] now and is that tendons don't like what
[1:14] muscle likes to get stronger.
[1:16] >> That's Dr. Keith Baar, a professor at UC
[1:18] Davis whose lab has produced some of the
[1:21] world's most cited research [music] on
[1:22] tendon healing and strength.
[1:24] >> And so, there's a big difference in the
[1:26] types of loads that we do to optimize
[1:28] tendon
[1:30] versus when we're trying to target our
[1:31] exercise for muscles or our heart.
[1:34] >> So, if all your training builds up your
[1:36] muscles faster than your tendons, it
[1:38] creates a big gap in strength, which
[1:40] explains why
[1:41] >> it's the number one thing that causes
[1:43] people pain. So, I do a lot of work with
[1:45] professional sports team because 70% of
[1:48] their injuries are related to the tendon
[1:50] and it either the tendon or the muscle
[1:52] that was associated with it not being
[1:54] perfectly aligned.
[1:55] >> This is actually why guys who hop on
[1:57] steroids are usually more likely to get
[1:59] tendon injuries. Their muscles outgrow
[2:01] the strength of their tendons. And we
[2:03] see the same trend in professional
[2:05] sports. 1990s
[2:07] baseball where everybody was injecting
[2:09] himself with anabolic steroids,
[2:11] they would get big muscles and then they
[2:13] would tear the the tendon. Their
[2:15] performance would go up and then bang.
[2:17] And you know, statisticians can go back
[2:19] and and determine who is taking steroids
[2:22] based on their stats because it's that
[2:23] predictable. But you don't need to be on
[2:25] the juice for this to happen. And even
[2:27] if you're not in pain, there are warning
[2:28] signs that some of your tendons are just
[2:30] not as strong as they should be.
[2:33] >> Oh my god, that's loud.
[2:35] >> Hear that? When a tendon is experiencing
[2:38] any kind of sensitive thing, it it will
[2:41] get a little bit fatter. You know, it's
[2:43] a chubby tendon, if you will. And so now
[2:45] in the shoulder, particularly, you're
[2:47] asking that tendon to move and slide
[2:49] through very, very narrow joint spaces.
[2:51] And so just a little bit of a fatter
[2:53] tendon, now you may feel that tendon as
[2:56] it pops and rolls.
[2:57] >> Now, clicking alone doesn't always mean
[2:59] your tendon is weak or damaged. But when
[3:02] it starts coming with pain, that's a
[3:03] different story. And one of the worst
[3:05] things you can do when that happens
[3:07] >> [music]
[3:07] >> is rest. The doctor says, "Well, just
[3:09] rest it."
[3:10] But a tendon isn't a tendon without
[3:12] load.
[3:13] So if you're just resting it, it's never
[3:16] going to fix itself. Unlike most
[3:17] injuries, tendons don't respond well to
[3:19] complete rest. The pain might
[3:21] temporarily go away because nothing's
[3:22] stressing it, but the actual problem
[3:24] isn't being fixed. In fact, the healthy
[3:27] parts of the tendons start actually
[3:28] getting weaker while the damaged part
[3:30] never properly rebuilds. As a result,
[3:33] >> as soon as you start doing anything
[3:34] again, the pain is going to come back
[3:36] cuz you didn't actually fix the problem.
[3:37] And this only gets worse as you age.
[3:39] When we're young and healthy and we're
[3:40] doing all of these activities, those
[3:42] little injuries never go away unless we
[3:45] actually fix them. That's why a lot of
[3:46] people who are super active and are
[3:48] training really hard, And they'll get
[3:50] into their 40s and they'll have a lot of
[3:52] kind of muscular musculoskeletal pain.
[3:55] >> Okay, so rest doesn't work. But before I
[3:57] show you what does, the exact exercises
[3:59] for each joint that can get rid of pain
[4:01] instantly and rebuild your stronger
[4:03] tendons in as little as 30 days,
[4:05] >> [music]
[4:05] >> you need to understand the two biggest
[4:08] mistakes causing your tendon problems in
[4:10] the first place. The first and most
[4:11] common one is poor load management.
[4:14] Think back to a time when you suddenly
[4:15] increase your activity, whether it's
[4:17] more bench pressing, running, or new
[4:19] sport.
[4:19] >> It feels fine at first until after a few
[4:21] weeks
[4:22] >> something gives.
[4:23] >> It's less about being an overuse-related
[4:26] injury, it's more of an more is just
[4:28] more.
[4:31] We can adapt to more, it just takes a
[4:32] long time. Tendons
[4:34] take a little bit longer to adapt than
[4:36] muscle.
[4:37] >> I actually experienced this myself. I
[4:39] ran a 60-day experiment where I trained
[4:41] one half of my body with really heavy
[4:43] weights for low reps, and the other half
[4:46] with light weight for high reps. By the
[4:47] end of it, I got tendinitis on both my
[4:50] elbow and knee on my heavy side. Now,
[4:51] it's not because heavy weight is bad,
[4:53] but just because my body wasn't used to
[4:55] that type of training.
[4:56] >> If you're increasing volumes or
[4:57] intensity by more than probably about
[5:00] 30% that you're potentially running the
[5:02] risk
[5:03] >> of injury.
[5:03] >> So, if you normally do four sets of
[5:05] bench per week and hop on a new program
[5:06] that has you doing 10, that's a recipe
[5:09] for injury. A 30% jump is at most adding
[5:11] one to two sets per week. And the same
[5:13] goes with load. If you're coming back
[5:15] from time off and 100 lb feels easy,
[5:17] don't jump straight to 150 the next
[5:19] week. Go closer to 130 and slowly build
[5:22] from there. And you can also apply this
[5:23] concept to any exercise or sport you do
[5:26] outside of the gym, too. But there is
[5:27] another more subtle mistake that almost
[5:30] everyone does that damages their
[5:31] tendons.
[5:32] >> When we're lifting a lot, what happens,
[5:34] especially as we're trying to up our
[5:36] weights, is that we have a tendency to
[5:38] use more momentum.
[5:39] >> Momentum is what you use whenever you
[5:41] bounce the weight off your chest when
[5:42] pressing, bounce at the bottom of a
[5:44] squat, or even hit a tennis ball or
[5:46] swing a golf club. That's the stimulus
[5:48] that's going to be detrimental to our
[5:50] connective tissues. We're doing the
[5:51] things that are actually introducing the
[5:54] type of load that is hardest on our
[5:57] tendons.
[5:57] >> Now, even though Olympic weightlifters
[5:59] use momentum all the time in their
[6:01] lifts, their tendons have adapted to it
[6:03] over time. Yours hasn't. So, as a
[6:05] general rule of thumb in the gym,
[6:07] >> [music]
[6:07] >> if you don't have specific power or
[6:09] strength goals, control the bottom of
[6:11] the rep. It'll not only be easier on
[6:12] your tendons, research also suggests
[6:15] it'll grow your muscles faster, too.
[6:17] But, even if you manage your training
[6:19] perfectly, tendon injuries still happen.
[6:22] And luckily, there is one type of
[6:24] exercise proven to be one of the best
[6:27] ways to heal and build stronger tendons.
[6:29] >> What our work has shown us is that when
[6:31] we do isometrics, we maximize the creep
[6:35] in the tendon,
[6:36] and we get equal signal for that load
[6:39] through the whole tendon, including the
[6:41] scarred area. By 2 weeks, almost
[6:43] everybody is is like, "Oh, yeah. I I
[6:45] don't I can do pretty much everything
[6:47] again."
[6:47] >> An isometric is any exercise where
[6:49] you're contracting a muscle without
[6:51] moving it, like flexing your bicep with
[6:52] your elbow stuck in 90°.
[6:54] >> So, the reason that we use isometrics is
[6:58] because if I pull and hold, what's going
[6:59] to happen is that's going to cause creep
[7:01] to the healthy strong parts of the
[7:03] tendon.
[7:04] And as they lengthen, the next strongest
[7:06] part gets load. Then the next strongest,
[7:09] then the weakest part will get it. So,
[7:11] if we hold it about 30 seconds, now the
[7:13] whole tendon gets a signal. Now, we're
[7:15] going to get collagen synthesis, it's
[7:17] going to happen in a line fashion, and
[7:19] we're going to make that tissue
[7:20] stronger.
[7:21] >> As for what isometric exercises are
[7:23] best,
[7:24] >> whatever motion doesn't feel good,
[7:26] you're trying to find a way that you can
[7:28] load that motion very hard, um, or hold
[7:32] a position. So, for example, if I had a
[7:33] problem bench pressing, [music] I'm
[7:35] going to probably use something pretty
[7:37] similar to a bench press, and just do an
[7:39] iso hold there, because that's the
[7:41] motion that's most sensitive, meaning
[7:43] that I know that that's probably the
[7:44] motion that that tendon is getting the
[7:46] most load. Let me show you what this
[7:48] looks like for each joint using
[7:50] exercises we actually just added to our
[7:52] fitness app. Starting with the shoulder.
[7:54] If chest pressing is what bothers you,
[7:56] set up a bench press, Smith machine, or
[7:58] chest press machine with enough weight
[8:00] so that you can push hard against it
[8:01] without the weight moving.
[8:05] Another option too is just using a
[8:06] lighter weight and holding it halfway
[8:08] through the rep. And if you're training
[8:10] at home, you can do the same thing with
[8:12] a push-up hold or by pushing hard
[8:13] against the wall. But pick one of these
[8:15] variations, hold the position for at
[8:17] least 30 seconds, and repeat that
[8:19] [music] for a total of three sets.
[8:21] Whereas if your shoulder mainly hurts
[8:23] during overhead presses, try these
[8:25] instead.
[8:26] And if it hurts during lateral raise
[8:28] movements, then try these. And before we
[8:30] move to the elbow, just keep in mind
[8:31] that while you should feel temporary
[8:33] pain relief right after you do these
[8:35] exercises, you might actually feel some
[8:37] pain as you're doing them. And that's
[8:39] perfectly fine, as long as the pain is
[8:41] not more than a three or four out of 10,
[8:43] and as long as it doesn't feel worse the
[8:45] next day. If it does, that's a sign you
[8:47] got to ease back by using less weight or
[8:49] just not pushing as hard. Now, as for
[8:51] your elbows, if it's mainly your biceps
[8:53] that hurt, pick whatever type of curl
[8:55] bothers you the most and hold the middle
[8:58] position of it with lighter weight. And
[8:59] do the same if it hurts during
[9:01] pull-downs or chin-ups. Whereas for
[9:02] triceps, [music] do these if it hurts
[9:04] during push-downs, and these if it hurts
[9:06] during overhead extensions. As for your
[9:08] knees, knee extension machine is
[9:10] probably just the most simple, uh most
[9:13] accessible. If you didn't have a
[9:14] machine, getting your toes to be the
[9:17] only thing that are on the floor and
[9:18] your back and your bum are now up
[9:20] against the wall and simply sliding down
[9:22] the wall with your back and and letting
[9:24] the knees come forward is also going to
[9:25] recreate a very similar knee extension
[9:28] type thing. So here is the full plan to
[9:30] completely heal and rebuild your tendons
[9:33] as fast as possible. First, pick one
[9:35] exercise based on what joint is
[9:37] bothering you and do three sets of it
[9:39] twice a day, [music] once in the morning
[9:40] and once in the evening. Your pain can
[9:42] go away in as quick as a week or two
[9:44] just from that. But to then fix the
[9:46] issue for good, Keith recommends [music]
[9:48] continuing to do your exercises three to
[9:50] four times a week for at least four to
[9:52] eight weeks.
[9:53] >> If they feel like, "Oh, yeah. Hey, it's
[9:55] better." and then they stop doing it,
[9:57] it's just going to come back. So, that's
[9:58] why the ones who really get rid of the
[10:00] pain permanently are the ones who can
[10:02] say, "This is something I want to keep
[10:03] going with." But again,
[10:05] >> don't stop there. If you want to keep
[10:06] your tendons healthy for good and
[10:07] prevent future injuries, you can spend 5
[10:10] to 10 minutes after your workouts to do
[10:12] these exercises or just allocate one day
[10:14] per week. But if you want a step-by-step
[10:16] plan that takes care of all that
[10:18] guesswork for you, we've actually added
[10:20] these tendon rehab exercises directly
[10:22] into our app along with joint-friendly
[10:24] exercise [music] alternatives based on
[10:26] the specific area that's bothering you.
[10:28] That way, you can continue training and
[10:30] continue building muscle while
[10:32] rebuilding your tendons at the same
[10:33] time. Now, the app also coaches you on
[10:35] your diet and you can try 2 weeks
[10:37] completely free by scanning this QR code
[10:40] or heading to buildwithscience.com. Give
[10:42] this video a watch next if you want to
[10:43] learn the fastest way to put on muscle.
[10:46] Thanks for watching and I'll see you
[10:47] next time.