Nsima Inyang — True Athleticism at Any Age, Microdosing Movement, Rope Flow, and Why Sleds Matter

Regressions: The Key to Fixing Chronic Pain and Building Real Movement

Nsima Inyang shares how movement regressions -- scaling exercises down to pain-free ranges -- transformed his knee health after a meniscectomy and years of pain. He credits Ben Patrick's ATG system for getting him from unable to sprint to fully pain-free running through patient, progressive work starting from the simplest versions of each movement.

"If they ever use that machine, sparsely. They use that sparsely typically. And that ends up being a very weak link. Just for people who might wonder, because those machines are very popular and they're usually monopolized by any, not to paint with a broad brush, like a few women are just sitting on there for like hours, it seems working this stuff, right? Why is that a weak link compared to doing something like a Cossack squat or something else? You do get some tension on those tissues when you're doing a typical squat, but not an insane amount. When you're doing a sumo deadlift, you also get some tension on that area, but not as much as when you're isolating it in a bilateral fashion with a Cossack squat. Along with that, in the Cossack squat, you get more length of those tissues when you get to depth of the Cossack squat than you would. I'll give another bad visual for people. So people are like, what the hell are they talking about Cossack squat? So imagine the most stereotypical Russian dancer, arms folded, kicking out from side to side, and then freeze frame on the ground where one leg leg is fully extended to one side and he or she is basically squatting like ass to the other heel on the other side. Okay. Cossack squat. Yeah. Yeah. And one thing I find interesting about that is for a long time, I was really trying to get good at Cossack squats and it wasn't until I was allowing myself to breathe when I got down to that position that I actually got there safely and came out. What have you found most effective for improving ankle mobility, right? Because for a lot of people, if they try to do a Cossack squat, well, do you have heel up or heel down? Heel down. Heel down. Okay. I have heel down. So for a lot of folks, if they try to do that, they're going to fall backwards if they don't have the ankle mobility, right? If the knee can't travel kind of over the toes. Any thoughts on developing that? I think that a great conversation for you would be Ben Patrick too. Okay. All right. Because what I'm going to tell you is this is why I find that I've been so lucky to learn from so many people because the only reason why I'm able to first have the level of mobility I do is because of a lot of things that I've learned from these different people. So for example, the ankle mobility you're talking about right there, some things that helped with that were the ATG split squat that I was telling you about, which is a movement that again, he popularized. But that front leg, I hope that when this podcast comes out, maybe there's an image of an ATG split squat that can be pulled up so people can see that the front leg that's doing the split squat over time, there are regressions to that movement, by the way. So everything we've talked about, if you find that you're not getting there, regress the movement, regress the range of motion. Tell me if I'm getting it roughly right. And also I have his ATG device that is like plate loading for wrist work, extensor work, grip work, which is fantastic. What does ATG stand for? ATG, his company stands for Athletic Truth Group. You think it stands for Astrograss, but yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I didn't, didn't see it coming. Okay. Got it. Athletic Truth Group. Athletic Truth Group. All right. Got it. Yeah. And Ben is a guy, one of the reasons why I appreciate Ben so much is because he's a very open-minded individual. You'll run across so many people in these different fitness spaces, and they're so dogmatic, gung-ho about their system. And if you do this system, this is what's going to happen when you do this. It's not good. And this is what's going to happen when you do this. It's like everything is their system. But the people that I tend to really appreciate are the people that they may have some things that they do, but they can also see the strength in many other things, right? And Ben is that type of person where he's also someone who continues to learn. He has what he's done, but Ben is continuously learning and applying new things to the people that he works with and himself and finds benefit. And it's one of those things where he's in the constant growth rather than finding the negatives of everything that everyone's doing. Right. To protect his predefined fiefdom. Yeah. Yeah. So let me, let me throw out something. Tell me how close this is. So there is an exercise of all places. It was actually given to me by a physio in Sweden who I chanced upon. It was like, because my back has been bothering me for so long and everybody to me, it's like, oh, you got to try my friend's blah, right? Or this person can do this. Or you have to try my friend, the acupuncturist. Like everybody's got a suggestion. God bless them. But it ends up after a while, you become a little tone deaf to it. Cause I'm like, all right, look, I can talk to your tarot car reader and I can talk to your Qigong person. I just not sure it's going to do anything. But this physio ended up working with a lot of professional fighters. That's not me and professional soccer players. And he really knew his stuff. I just lucked out. Cause this drunk guy at a party was like, you should meet my physio. I'm like, yeah, I'm sure I should meet your physio. And then I just had to wide open the day the next day. And I was like, fuck it. All right, sure. I'll meet your physio. And Sebastian's his name ended up being excellent in Stockholm. And he gave me some very basic exercises again, with the intention of remediating some of the back pain and strengthening. And one of them was elevated front foot split squats, very lightly loaded, going fully down to the bottom position where the front knee is way over the front foot toes and basically ass is on the heel. Three second pause at the bottom, back up and doing like sets of six to eight. That's a regression for the ATG split squat. That's a regression for the flat ground ATG split squat. And to go back to what you're asking about the ankles, why is that really good for the ankles? Do you know that the position that the ankle gets into is this deep position that you can, when you own that position, you lower it to the ground. And now when you own that position of the ankles, you apply that to a caussic squat, you're able to get to full depth of a caussic because of where the knee is over the toe and you're in deep ankle dorsiflexion. That's how these things work. Yeah, dorsiflexion, just pull your toes towards your nose. Exactly. Yeah, toes towards your knees. That's dorsiflexion. The thing is, when you find that you don't have the mobility for a specific movement, there are so many ways to regress it. With a Cossack squat, you could do a Cossack squat with a wall behind you. So the wall can help guide you down. Unloaded, wall behind, caustic squat. You can even angle the foot outwards a little bit to allow yourself a little bit more give with that knee. You could also add some heel. You could also put it on a box if you need to, and then slowly regress it down. And I want to mention the concept of regression is what got me out of knee pain, is what got me out of pretty much all pain. But specifically, I want to mention knees because when I was in my early 20s, I had a meniscectomy. Partial meniscus removal, I can't remember which knee now. I think it was my left. It's something that happened in jujitsu. I also, when I was younger, I had Oshkod Slaughter, and I was a soccer player. So when I got into my early 20s, I couldn't sprint. I felt like I was probably going to have trashed knees for the rest of my life. I couldn't run without pain at all. So let alone run, absolutely couldn't sprint, couldn't jump. I was doing squats and stuff, and there was some pain I was having, so I was using knee sleeves. So I was pretty certain that at this point, I just need to make sure to keep them pretty strong, but sprinting, et cetera, it's not going to be part of the system for me. That's when I came across some of Ben's stuff back in like 2019 or 2018, I think. I came across some of his stuff on Instagram, started regressing it, doing like the simplest regression. So at ATG splits going on a box, there's this pulse movement that you do where you just have this very small range of motion with the knee where you're just putting yourself in slight knee flexion coming out, pulsing it, driving a lot of blood to the knee area. And I would progress these things over time. After four or so months, I was able to get into full deep knee positions that I was never able to get into without pain before. And then when I started doing things like running, I was able to run without pain. And then I started sprinting without pain, but it started with regression. So the reason why I'm saying that is- That was a very princess-like sneeze, Mr. Large Man. I didn't want to let it out. If I let it out, it would be disgusting. So when you hold it in, it turns into this mousy squeal. Let's keep that in there. Let's keep that in there. If I have to sneeze again, I'll show you what the big one looks like just so I can save myself. My gosh. But I say this because regressions are the name of the game for all this. If you have pain doing something, there is a way to regress it and you need to own the regression before you progress. I just want to underline this because this chronic back pain has been one of the biggest challenges in my life. I've always seen myself as athletic. I've always been able to take a kicking and then get back on the horse and get back to athleticism. This experience where this pain at such a pivotal cornerstone piece of your body is tied into every movement. When you sleep, there's no escaping it. Psychologically, physically, emotionally, it has been such a difficult experience and given me so much sympathy for people in chronic pain. It's like, if you have not been in serious chronic pain, it is impossible to understand what it's like until you're there. And I would say the one mantra of sorts that has allowed me to start digging out of that hole, and I used a different term for myself. I don't remember where I got it, but it was just like scale it down. And it's the same idea. It's just like, okay, let's just say hypothetically, I might need this surgery in the elbow. Okay, great. I can't do X number of pushups. Okay, fine. Do one-tenth of X number of pushups. Okay, you can't do whatever it might be. Well, barbell puts too much torque in the elbow. Okay, fine. Let's use dumbbells. But the rule is like, you can't do nothing. You have to scale it down. And maybe you omit exercises, sure. But it's like, train it, train around it, train around it. And it's like, for instance, the box squat, great example. Jersey is like the alt Jersey Gregor, who I keep mentioning is like the ultimate master of regressions to use your word, because he'll have someone like they'll do a squat and like, they'll go down eight inches. And he's like, that's it. And they're like, no, but I do below parallel in the gym. And he's like, you shouldn't. You shouldn't. Exactly. And he's just like, okay, your max depth is whatever. I'm making this number up, but it's like 36 inches off the ground. And they're like, that's a joke. And he's like, that's your assignment. He's really funny too. Because at one point I was like, so you're suggesting? And he's like, no, I'm not suggesting. I am telling you. And it feels like a waste of time to start off in where he would start people. But as they develop the right mechanics and then pain-free progress, and it takes weeks, maybe even months to get back to where they think they should be. And then lo and behold, they're so much stronger. They own the position. All these aches and pains go away. so the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the months to get back to where they think they should be. And then lo and behold, they're so much stronger. They own the position. All these aches and pains go away. So you can't do nothing, but you can scale it down or regress it, right? And the other thing I'll mention just for people who may be in a similar position to myself where they have a lot of low back stuff, the other reason that Sebastian prescribed the front foot elevated split squat was to avoid hyper lordosis, right? Like overarching of the low back. I have a lot of thoracic mobility issues. So I tend to flare out and arch and he was like, okay, let's mitigate that by elevating the front foot. All right, cool. Dig it. I want to mention, Ben, he has an app. And on that app, he puts all his stuff there for monthly payment for people. So if you guys are into... Ben mentions that people can do this. So I'm going to mention this too. You could go on there. You could screenshot the movements. You could cancel. Literally. I have a program there too in this martial arts section. And you can literally go there and you can just take it all if you want to. But the reason why I mentioned that is because all of the regressions are right there. If you're looking for a way to regress all these movements, that's all there. There's also in that school community, but just take the regressions and be patient with those regressions. Because one of the reasons that I was held back for so long was because I thought I was better than I was. I've been playing soccer for like 16 years. I've always seen myself as an athlete. So going to do some of these things and these simple regressions, I was just like, no, I can move on to the last chapter."

Sandbag Training: The Ultimate Real-World Strength Builder

Nsima argues that everyone should own a sandbag because its irregular, shifting shape teaches the body to organize safely under unpredictable loads -- unlike a perfectly symmetrical barbell. Starting light and progressing from floor deadlifts to shoulder throws to squats, a single sandbag offers a complete training system you can keep by your desk.

"What are some exercises that you think, I know this is such a maybe trite question, but just really incredible bang for the buck exercises. And for instance, for me, and I'm not saying I'm any paragon of exercise expertise, but the two-handed kettlebell swing is just, it seems like you get so much from that exercise performed consistently with progressive resistance, whether that's in terms of loading through higher volume or increasing the weight. I mean, it is just remarkable how much I get out of that exercise, even once or twice a week. It's just astonishing to me continually. Anything else that you would throw into that type of category that come to mind with the condition that you can get somebody to the point where they can perform them safely, reasonably quickly. I think everyone should own a sandbag because picking up a sandbag off of the ground, starting light. So you get yourself, let's say you get a 75 pound bag, you fill it up to 50 pounds, you get yourself to lifting that without any type of discomfort. And one of the reasons why I think that is so beneficial and so useful is the way that one will bend down to pick up a sandbag. Because when you bend down to pick up a barbell, it's this implement that's perfectly symmetrical. Only way that the hands are involved or when they're gripping like this, you have to get yourself in this neutral position and you hinge forward. It teaches you how to be a perfect hinge, a perfect lever. But whenever you lift a sandbag, every sandbag lift has its own, it's never the same because of the nature of the implement. It's this shapely thing that you have to, first off, you have this open palm grip, you have to grip around it, and then you have to organize your body to lift it safely. Anybody can lift a light sandbag safely while breathing. Over time, you increase the weight. But I think that if people learn to lift sandbags well, that will be something that will actually prepare you to lift well for life because your spine isn't in this perfect neutral position as you're doing it. There's slight curvature and you learn that it is safe to lift something with some slight rounding of the spine. Of course, with a barbell, you don't do that often unless you're doing something like a Jefferson curl, which I think they're pretty solid, especially if you don't load them to a crazy extent as you're progressing it because some people get focused on the load. By the way, what a Jefferson curl is, it's a purposeful rounding of the spine to lift a barbell off the ground. It's actually the antithesis of, I think I'm using the word antithesis of the correct, but it's the opposite of what you're taught to do when you deadlift to create a neutral spine. You're literally rounding your back to lift the barbell off the ground. It sounds like a joke, but it's to ingrain in your body that my spine is okay getting to this position, lifting something. But I think a sandbag would be money for people. Just for clarity, are you picking it up and then dropping it? Yeah. And then picking it up and dropping it? A base thing that you could do is literally pick it up, surround your stomach, bring it back down to the ground. You can either drop it or you can lower it back down to the ground. Then there are progressions where now you pick it up, launch it up to your shoulder, bring it down to the back of the ground. So you could drop it or you can bring it slowly back down to the ground. And then you could pick it up, throw it over your shoulder, pick it up, throw it over the opposite shoulder. It's inherently a rotational throw when you become adept with it. So there are progressions, but the base progression would be literally just, the first thing you would do is you would just do a sandbag deadlift. Then you would do a lift to the stomach. Then you would do a lift to the shoulder. Then you could do a throw. And then there's a bunch of things. You could do squats. You could do split squats. You could do caustic squats. You could do lunges. Caustic squats is another one. Typically, I've just done that with like a kind of a goblet squat type of hole on a kettlebell. But just remarkable how much you get out of that exercise as you slowly, and you know, wild about it to me what a funny name number one is i was using it as a warm-up for some acrobatic stuff that i was doing way back in the day i was just using as a warm-up but i noticed i was getting stronger yeah and so i started adding a little bit of weight yeah a little bit of weight and i got to the point where i was doing gossic squats and it's not like this isn't that ton of weight, but it's like with a, I don't know, 70 or 80 pound kettlebell. And again, the transfer, I was just like, wow, I wasn't even treating this as part of my workout. But just over time, because I was doing the acrobatic stuff very regularly, so I was like never doing it to exhaustion, just that greasing the groove. And I was like, what the hell is going on here?? It's remarkable how much it transferred. It's a money movement. So I mentioned all those movements because these are all things that you could do throughout the day with a sandbag that you keep by your desk. You could do squats. You could do some quick lunges. You could bring it up to your shoulder. You could do some quick caustic squats. You could do a reverse lunge. You could literally do all these movements with a single sandbag. Are you just bear hugging the caustic when you're doing the caustic? Yeah. Yeah, you can keep it right there. Yeah. And then you go into a caustic squat. You could do a reverse lunge. You could literally do all these movements. Are you just bear-hugging the caustic when you're doing the caustic squat? Yeah. Keep it right there. And then you go into a caustic squat position. Yes, absolutely. And with the caustic squat specifically, it's particularly powerful because most people, when it comes to training the adductors, they mainly do that with the machine in the gym. Yeah. So adductors guys inside of your thighs. I mean, that's very super like Suzanne Summers thigh master."

Microdosing Movement: Sprinkling Exercise Into Your Day

Nsima explains the concept of microdosing movement -- keeping equipment around your living space and doing brief bouts of movement throughout the day rather than formal workouts. He advocates for normalizing spinal flexion through progressive Jefferson curls, Cossack squats for adductor strength, and setting up your environment with sandbags, kettlebells, clubs, and grippers to encourage spontaneous training.

"I don't think my form was the worst in the world, but we were talking about 96 when I was probably my biggest and strongest and arguably fattest, but wasn't that fat. But I was doing 400-pound-ish back squats for a set of 10. Now, in retrospect, should I have been doing that? Probably not. and when I mentioned earlier, I was like, oh yeah, probably three, four years ago, whenever it was in that back squat workout, when I hurt myself, I was probably going too low and having that change in the spinal position with like a butt wink. And I think that probably contributed to it. And I'm sure there are people out there who are like, Tim Ferriss can't even do a goddamn squat. I knew it. That guy's an idiot. What I would say is you could be right, number one. Number two is get video of your technique and have somebody who actually knows what they're doing, like a very high level competitor, look at that technique. And chances are it's not as good as you think it is. Do you know what I mean? And then there comes a point where it's like, all right, I've bent the paperclip so many times, boom, I have an injury. And now it's just a wake-up call. It's like, all right, let's start from scaling it back from the fundamentals, swallow my pride, take my ego down a notch, and work it back up, which is very hard to do psychologically. Really tough. And it's like many parallels that I see here. It's like with Jersey, it's like, man, you have to check your ego at the door because you might walk in. He doesn't care. He really does. He's so salty. He's just like, you could be world champion in X, Y, and Z. And he'll be like, okay, you're going to start with 20 pound dumbbells. And you're like, what? And he's like, yeah. It's like 20 pound dumbbells. He goes, yeah, you shouldn't be doing this with more than 20 pound dumbbells and you're like what and he's like yeah it's like 20 pound dumbbells yes yeah you shouldn't be doing this with more than 20 pound dumbbells and people are just like what you know it doesn't even compute but then with these micro progressions as he would call them it's it is incredible like i was saying to you uh he had this vietnam vet with a number of fused vertebra who had been walking around on body brace, could not bend in any direction, got him to the point where he's doing stiff-legged deadlifts with 315 off an elevated platform and continued doing that for decades. I mean, it's unreal. And similarly, and I haven't seen this because I haven't really been doing this term in the notes that I had for this conversation. It's not my term, but I like the term, which is microdosing movement. I've only played with that with a few things like slacklining. And it is incredible what your body can end up doing with like three to five minutes a day of slacklining. You do not need. In fact, one could argue you shouldn't do really long sessions. What are some other examples of microdosing movement? Because as I get older more and more, yes, you want to be strong. Yes, I agree with Pavel, like strength is kind of the mother attribute in a lot of ways. Yes, you want to have muscle mass because of sarcopenia and all this stuff as you get older. That's all true. And fundamentally, we are evolved as bodies to move in space. Our brains are evolved to manage that interface. And I find myself hungering for more and more athletic movement. So what are some other ways to microdose movement that might kind of produce benefits, and you can take that however you want to take it, that are surprising to folks? I think one of the simplest things one can do is start introducing different shapes of your spine, primarily a shape that I think many of us are scared about, which is like spinal flexion. Spinal flexion, reaching over, touching your toes with a rounded back. Exactly. But let me actually just rewind real quick because I want to mention, you know, Pavel talks about greasing the groove. I got introduced to microdosing by a friend of mine, Corey Schlesinger. I think he's like- Just to be clear, microdosing movement. Mic, not micro, not microdosing psilocybin, although that's fun, but microdosing movement. Corey is, I don't know if he's working with the Phoenix Suns now, but he was like the director of performance, I think for the Suns recently. So I know he's working with an NBA team, but he, when he talked to us about it, he, you know, he was having a lot of his NBA athletes. He would have them do a little bit of movement before games, a little bit of movement after games, and you'd figure out ways for them to have movement sprinkled into their day so that they always felt good. Because what happens with some athletes is they have to have this extensive warm-up routine to get their bodies ready. And these are athletes, by the way. So if an athlete needs this extensive warm-up routine to get ready for game day, somebody who's sitting at a desk or just working or whatever, the amount of prep you might need to get ready to move is far too much. The goal of microdosing movement, or greasing the group as Pavel puts it, is to make it so these different movements just become a part of who you are and what you do. You don't need to prepare to bend your spine down into a flex pattern and pick something off the ground because you're just healthy and safe. You feel healthy and safe doing it. Now, the thing I'll also mention here is that there are many really smart people who are against some of the things like Jefferson curls, like Stu McGill doesn't like it. Stu doesn't like it. And I would agree to the sense of people who haven't regressed the movement enough. If you just rush into something like a Jefferson curl that we were just talking about, where you had deep spinal flexion, you pick up a barbell or something off the ground, that's going to cause you some issue, especially if you don't feel safe doing it. You're going to hold your breath. You're going to force yourself into that position. And then you'll tweak something and then you'll say, this is a bad position or a bad movement. But when you learn to breathe through movement with no weight, like I was talking about, let's say you decide that I'm going to pick that ball off the ground a few times a day, flexing my back and going down to the ground. I'm going to inhale when I go down and exhale when I go up. I'm going to make myself own this movement. Doing that with no weight initially for most people is going to feel fine. And then as you improve that, you're like, okay, can I do that with a six pound kettlebell? Can I do that with a 20 pound kettlebell? Can I do that with a 30 pound kettlebell? Can I organize my body to lift this safely in this position? And then you own that position because it's no longer foreign to you. Now you're no longer flexion intolerant. But when you're someone who has avoided these different ranges of motion with the spine, whether it's deep flexion, extension, et cetera, and then you go into a workout or you try doing some weighted rotational movement and then you tweak something, you think that these are bad movements or bad ranges of motion. But the thing is that you just didn't regress it enough and you didn't spend time with the most basic forms of those movements. So when it comes to microdosing, one of the ways to make microdosing easy for you is to make your environment serve you. This is why, and some people might just think I'm some fitness nut for this, but I keep equipment around my area, around my desk. I have a kettlebell sitting there. I have a club sitting there. I have a 100-pound sandbag by my desk, by my work desk. I also have a gripper on the table so that if I'm doing something on my laptop to one side, I can hit that gripper up a little bit. I have these things just sitting around to encourage me to touch them because if they're not in front of me, I am not going to do them. All this hand stuff, you give me that compliment on my hands, bro. It's because I have grip equipment everywhere. I have it in my car. I have it at my podcast desk. I have it at my work desk. I have it in the kitchen. I have it everywhere. I can't wait for you to, I think you already saw the video, but to take another look at the Abrahangs. Okay. Emil Abrahanson. Yeah. Because then you could just have, I mean, you could do it off the back of like a set of stairs. That's what I do at home. But if you get like a hangboard and don't overdo the hangboard people, that is the perfect way to blow apart your tendons and ligaments."