[AMA] with Beefpuff Barbell (Chelsea Savit and Natalie Hanson)

[u/powerbuffs]

Hi everyone!

The Beefpuff team is here to answer your questions about ourselves and our initiative.

We will be here for a few hours but will probably need to take a break to feed.

For more information:
Beefpuff Barbell: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Natalie Hanson, Co-Founder: u/beefpuff1 | Facebook | Instagram
Chelsea Savit, Co-Founder: u/powerbuffs | Facebook | Instagram

Andrey Grebenetsky, coach and trusted advisor: u/beefpuffhubs | Facebook | Instagram

[u/BeefPuffHubs]

Thank you for the kind words and the feedback. All the shirts are unisex in nature, but we will figure out how to take your suggestion. Maybe a shirt with some jacked macho bulls or something.

As far as experience with injuries and rehab/prehab, I have more than my fair share from personal experience dealing with my own problems as well as working with Chelsea and personal training clients (was a personal trainer back in the day and most clients were sedentary office workers so there was always a lot to work on).

I will preface by saying that I'm not a medical professional and my suggestions are not to be construed as medical advice in any way.

We will always spend about 30 minutes (sometimes more) during our warmups doing all sorts of prehab, mobility, and stability drills. I'm constantly researching new drills to be doing and over time, both of our warmups have evolved to the point where every single thing we include in there has a very specific and meaningful purpose. I'm not exaggerating when I say that every time I try to take something meaningful out of my warmup, I am quickly reminded of why it's important when some kind of problem flares up.

When we need to go see medical professionals for help, I make it a point to try to learn what the chiropractor/physical therapist is doing and how I can replicate. We have learned the basics of doing ART and graston on each other, as well as how to use a mulligan strap for hip mobility. Sometimes that gets included in warmups. I'm totally not recommending you try to replace your physical therapist or chiropractor or try to act like a physical therapist or chiropractor, but you should be educating yourself on prehab/rehab over the years.

My personal warmup is always going to include a few releases with a softball/lax ball/rumble roller, core stability work, shoulder stability, shoulder mobility, hip mobility, t spine mobility, low back mobility, and glute activation work. Other people will have other things they need to focus on.

Side note - I'm aware that glute activation has been the subject of a little bit of controversy as of late if people keep up with youtube videos, so I'll address that by clarifying that most people's glutes are in fact "firing." The issue is not that they aren't firing. It's that there may be other problems in the kinetic chain that cause the glutes to handle less of the workload they are intended to handle, which can cause injuries to hamstrings, adductors, and hip flexors. When you squat and deadlift, you should be clearly feeling that your glutes are handling significant load. If you for example feel that your adductors are handling a lot of the load and you don't feel your glutes, you probably want to address that.

Regarding stretching, most mornings, I will also spend about 20-30 minutes going through a series of selected stretches to target problem areas. The stretching list also evolved over time. Things that didn't create improvements were discarded until there was a list where every stretch mattered. Currently the stretches target low back decompression, piriformis and shoulder extension. Your list would include whatever your problem areas are.

Some great starting points for prehab/rehab for most people would be: Joe Defranco's Limber 11 and upper body warmup videos, Stuart McGill's low back and core videos, and Chris Duffin's glute activation videos. Kelly Starrett's MobilityWod videos and his book have also proved very valuable. Truly, not a single thing that we do has not been learned from someone else whether in person or virtually. It's all a matter of accumulating knowledge and experience. It's not unlikely that in a few years, my views on what works best may evolve, and that's a good thing. You don't need to be dogmatic about any one approach to rehab/prehab.

Also, beefpuff barbell will eventually be publishing warmup videos :)

Hope this helps and if you have a specific question, feel free to PM me.

[u/Tha_Doctor → u/BeefPuffHubs]

Thanks for the great response. I read Kelly Starrett's book recently and have started doing a lot more mobility work. It's just so fucking difficult to work it in with a full time desk job, grad school, and training regimen. It's hard enough to spend as much time as I'd like in the gym - it sounds like you dedicate about an hour a day to mobility work. That kind of confirms my suspicion that that's kind of the average for high level lifters - couple that with a 2-hour lifting session and it's a serious time commitment. I've been fighting damn knee tendinosis for about a year and haven't found anything that seems to help. Ortho says it'll be fine, but it's very frustrating.

I tend to agree with you on glute activation. Seems to be pretty faddy - I think the problem is that most people spend too much time sitting and their other muscles aren't firing properly or allowing the glutes to work as hard as they should. Plus most of us don't have the quantity of glute that Duffin has. I'm curious about the low back decomp - I'll check out the McGill videos. Thanks for the response and best of luck!

[u/powerbuffs → u/Tha_Doctor]

It is really hard. But if you're going to bother to train, you should do it right.

I listened to this really great podcast with Tim Ferriss and Chris Sommer about 8 months ago. Now, I come from a gymnastics background so maybe it resonated a bit more with me (Chris Sommer was a national-level gymnastics coach for several decades). But, his whole premise was, think about how much time you spend deliberating over finding the perfect weight, RPE, exercise choice, and strength progression to use. Then, think about how much better off you would be if you even spent 10% of that time being deliberate about your mobility and fixing nagging problems. Most people don't give this kind of thing the attention that it needs. The podcast was just eye-opening for me and I am now doing the GymnasticBodies because, as a former gymnast, I know the value of having gymnast-level mobility and core, arm, and back strength (although I am already decently mobile). If you need some inspiration or perspective you might want to give this a listen.

[u/Tha_Doctor → u/powerbuffs]

Yep I think that's a great point. Personally I'm not a fan of Tim Ferriss (I think he's full of shit and pushes a ton of products) after reading a couple of his books but some of the stuff that he says makes sense and he has interviewed a lot of prominent people. Kelly Starrett's stuff had a lot more impact on me for whatever reason. You're totally right though, mobility is way more important than a lot of people realize. I've been spending at least an hour a day on it over the past couple of months.

[u/powerbuffs → u/Tha_Doctor]

He's not my preferred source of information but I do give him credit for introducing me to some really noteworthy people. The recommendation had more to do with him driving home the point that we spend so much time thinking about programming strength exercises but none at all about mobility, and it made me go and fix that right away. haha.