The Frame, Part 4 of 4
Read time: 5 minutes
Under the Hood is a weekly look at what's really driving your health, fixed 1% at a time.
Today: the six movement patterns, the three levels I use to test them, and how to find the one that's holding you back.
I played pickleball this week and I'm glad I didn't get hurt.
It's funny, these days I'm a lot more cautious about getting hurt because my livelihood depends on me being healthy. Same thought goes through my head every time somebody invites me to play basketball. Lol.
I say that because a lot of guys don't walk off fine. I'm sure you know someone this has happened to, and it sucked. That may even be you. An Achilles, a sprained ankle, a knee that never really felt the same. A back or a shoulder that changed how you train from then on. Happens all the time to men who figured they were in good enough shape for a pickup game.
Look, proper athletic training doesn't make you injury proof. Really, nothing does. But it moves the odds.
And getting hurt doesn't mean you stop training. You train around it, and you go work on the weak areas that probably helped put you there in the first place.
Here's the part most guys have never heard. An injury is what happens when a tissue or a joint gets asked to handle more than it has the capacity for. It exceeds what it can take, and it breaks down.
And it doesn't happen all at once. It builds. Micro traumas, the same movement over and over, stress the body never got to recover from. Then one Saturday it shows up as a pop on the pickleball court and you call it bad luck.
It wasn't bad luck. It was capacity.
That's why I train myself like an athlete and coach my clients like athletes.
THE DEEP DIVE
First, the gap you can't see.
When I was 22 I interned at EXOS down in Florida, back when it was still Athletes' Performance. One of the most elite places to train in the country. Everyday joes to pros and everything in between.
One day I was training with a bunch of the other guys in the program. The guy next to me had a sprinting background. Extremely athletic, extremely fast.
I was working up in sets to something heavy on back squats. I looked over at what he was doing and he had a barbell on his back too. But not on two legs.
On one.
Bulgarian split squat, or rear foot elevated split squat. Same weight I had. Somewhere around 350.
I was amazed. And somewhere in that moment it dawned on me that this was something I needed to be doing, because up to that point in my training career I'd spent way more time on aesthetics than athletics.
From that point on I changed my training and never looked back.
It carried over to sport and to everyday life. I noticed it most on the basketball court. I used to sprain my ankles constantly and I haven't sprained one since I started training this way. Knock on wood. My speed went up. So did my power, my agility, my athleticism.
One of the patterns all my clients hate is the lunge. That's exactly why I program it.
What you hate is usually what you need. I tell every guy who trains with me the same thing. I'll give you what you want, but I'm definitely going to give you what you need because that's what great coaches do ;)
I get it, I skipped it too. It wasn't until I saw the carryover to sport, strength, power, and athleticism that I stopped treating it like it was optional.
Then, the rule that matters more than the numbers.
Here's the thing about that day at EXOS. Nobody could have told me my single leg strength was a problem. There was no number to look at. My squat was strong and I was putting up great numbers. But I was missing things that would have made me a better athlete.
That's how most men are training right now. Not badly. Just unevenly, with no way to see it. They're blindly exercising with no plan and no way to know if they're actually improving.
A few years back I came across another strength and conditioning coach named Dan Stevenson, owner of Ideal Strength. His work builds on Dan John's strength standards.
Dan John is one of the most respected strength coaches alive, and decades ago he boiled training down to five foundational movements. Push, pull, hinge, squat, loaded carry.
I train six. His five plus the lunge, which is exactly what I was missing in Florida.
What I took from Dan Stevenson isn't the exercises themselves. It's the framework. A way to test our clients in each of the six patterns we train, the same six I gave you last week.
Every pattern should sit within one level of the others.
If your squat is strong and your lunge is two levels behind, that gap is where you get hurt.
Just because you've got a strong bench doesn't mean you're athletic. Don't get me wrong, Monday is international chest day and there's nothing wrong with training the show muscles, what I call the emotional muscles. But I'd say it's just as important, probably more important, to train the lower body. Especially the lunge pattern.
Same thing goes the other direction. If you've been benching for fifteen years and barely rowing, your shoulders are going to let you know about it eventually.
Being strong in one pattern doesn't help you much when life asks for a different one.
That's why at Transform Athlete we believe in a hybrid approach. We blend Olympic lifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding, CrossFit and Hyrox style training, conditioning, and endurance work. All of it in one program.
More movement options means a body that's ready for whatever life throws at you.
If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. Right?
Then, the Frame Check.
If you're not assessing, you're guessing. So here's how I test it.
Six patterns. Squat, hinge, lunge, push, row, carry. Then a seventh test, the dead hang, because grip is the gauge nobody reads and you know how I feel about that one.
Three levels for each.
Foundation is where you start. Real training, real load, learning to own the pattern.
Strong is the goal. This is what I want for every client, year round, for as long as he's able. About a year of consistent work gets most guys here.
Everyday Athlete is the top of this card. Guys who've trained for years get here and it means something when they do. But I'd rather have a man sitting at Strong across all six than a guy with one Everyday Athlete score and two holes.
These tests I've put together over years of coaching. The way they're organized into levels came from Dan Stevenson. I tailored it to my own clients.
One thing before you look at it. There are no age adjustments here and that's on purpose. Your age matters less than your training age, meaning how long you've actually been under a bar. A 60 year old with four solid years of training will out-lift a 40 year old who started in March. Every time.
Two things about how to use it.
Don't test all seven in one session. Squat, hinge, lunge one day. Push, row, carry, hang another. Don't test tired. Make sure you're fresh and give yourself plenty of rest between the tests.
And don't chase the top row. Find where you score lowest and go train that. The Frame Check isn't a trophy. It's how you find your weak link.
I tested myself and most of my clients on this last year and they did great. We're running it again in the next 30 to 45 days.
My goal for every client is Strong, year round. And for guys who've been with me a long time, we can often get them to Everyday Athlete.
QUICK HITS
FUEL — Don't run the Frame Check in the middle of a hard cut. Weak numbers from an underfed week will have you chasing a problem you don't have.
TRAINING — Three days a week of full body work covers all six patterns for most guys. A fourth day is where the extra strength and accessory work goes. Not the same thing harder.
FAMILY — Every sport your kids play is single leg. They cut, they land, they push off one foot. If you want to still be out there with them in ten years, train the way they play.
MIND — If you tested your dead hang after last week, go look at that number. Thirty seconds is Foundation. Sixty is Strong. Two minutes is Everyday Athlete. Most guys land between 30 and 60, and it's the fastest weak link on this card to fix.
ON THE WALL
When one of my middle aged clients first came to me, he couldn't do a basic lunge. Not a loaded one. A basic one.
So we didn't load it. We held it. Isometric work, just owning the position, building strength somewhere his body didn't have any.
That went on a while. It isn't glamorous and it doesn't look like much from across the gym.
He's an Everyday Athlete in that pattern now. Insanely strong in a position he couldn't hold at all when he walked in.
He's still got a love hate thing with it. The difference is he knows what it's buying him. He plays tennis, he golfs, he runs, and he feels it in all three.
He didn't get there by adding weight to something he was already good at.
THIS WEEK'S 1%
Pick the one pattern you avoid. You already know which one it is. It's the one that's not in your program because you don't like doing it.
Test it this week. Just that one.
Then hit reply and tell me which pattern you picked. I read every response.
If you know a guy who squats plenty and never trains one leg at a time, forward this to him.
Your body is worth stewarding.
Go become 1% better. 🔧
— Coach Joshua
Educational content, not medical advice. Partner with your physician, ideally one who believes in proactive care.
New here? Every issue lives in the archive. Last week I made the case that you're only as strong as your grip.