Martin Rios

"Tight" and "Weak" Muscles Don't Exist (technically)

When I was in PT school, I was taught that tight muscles pull you into bad posture and weak muscles don't hold you in good posture.

And technically ... that's true.

When you have bad posture, there are muscles that are overactive, muscles that are tight, and muscles that aren't working like they should, muscle that are weak.

But here's what they didn't teach me: those are symptoms of bad posture. Not the cause.

Everyone says anterior pelvic tilt is caused by tight hip flexors, a tight low back, and weak glutes and abs.

But it's actually the opposite.

The anterior pelvic tilt itself is what doesn't allow your hip extensors and abs to work properly because they don't have good leverage in that position. And it's what causes your low back and hip flexors to be overactive and tight, because they're compensating for that position.

The muscles aren't creating the problem. The position is creating the muscle behavior.

Tomorrow I'm dropping a free training inside my Skool community where I go deeper on this: what's actually causing bad posture and how to fix it for real.

Link to join 👇
skool.com/rios

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1 week ago | [YT] | 131

Martin Rios

Free Training In One Hour 🚨

Hey guys, dropping a free training in my skool community in an hour where I go over why your pain keeps coming back no matter how many stretches and "corrective exercises" you do!

Be sure to join here: skool.com/rios

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 47

Martin Rios

Your posture isn't just about how you look. 🤯

Most people assume bad posture is a flexibility problem.

It's not.

It's a breathing and movement pattern problem and it's silently wrecking your performance whether you feel it or not.

If your body is stuck in the wrong compensation pattern, you're training harder than you need to just to get less out of every session. Your joints can't move through the ranges they need. Your muscles can't fire the way they're designed to. And no amount of stretching is going to fix it because stretching doesn't change the pattern.

I just dropped a free lecture in my community breaking down the two global compensation patterns I see in almost every active guy I work with.

You'll learn what they look like, why your body ends up there, and why the standard corrective approach makes most people worse not better.

If you lift, train, or just want to move and feel like an athlete for the long haul, this one will change how you see your own body.

👉 Watch it here: skool.com/rios

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 136

Martin Rios

Free Training Tomorrow!!!! 🚨

Hey guys, I'm dropping a FREE training tomorrow where I go over why your posture isn't fixing and dive deep into swayback posture and anterior pelvic tilt.

This is happening live tomorrow in my FREE community, join HERE: skool.com/rios

PS: If you can't make it the recording will be in the community after :)

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 59

Martin Rios

Why You're Training Wrong for Your Posture Type 😨

Most people in the gym are training hard but either seeing no results or making their posture worse. This has nothing to do with them being lazy but rather they don't know what their posture type is and doing the wrong exercises.

There are two 'Global Compensation Patterns' that require completely different fixes. If you're doing the wrong one or don't know which one you are, you're wasting your time. Here are the two types

Type 1: Swayback
Your hips shift forward of your shoulders, your upper back rounds, and your pelvis tucks under. You have lower anterior compression of your thorax and posterior lower pelvis compression that must be addressed.

Type 2: Anterior Pelvic Tilt
Your pelvis tilts forward and your lower back over-arches. You might notice your stomach poking forward even when you're lean, or chronic tightness in your lower back. You have posterior rib cage compression and an anteriorly tilted pelvis that must be addressed.

Once you identify which one you are, you fix it, then address any asymmetries you may or may not have.

Although addressing ROM is the best way to tell which one you are. Take a picture of yourself from the side and compare to the pictures down below and see which one you are. 90% of solving the problem is awareness, so understanding which one you are is vital!

What to do next:
I'm dropping a FREE training in my Skool community this Friday where I go in depth into both of these patterns. Be sure to join HERE: skool.com/rios

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 131

Martin Rios

Elite Runner Coming Soon! 🚨

Just ran for 1 hour to start off my 8 week endurance block. I recently started going to run club and actually ran super fast just based on my normal routine so that inspired me to start an endurance block and see how fast I can actually be and how great my endurance will become.

Right now I'm focusing on building my aerobic capacity (how much oxygen my body can utilize during exercise) and then in the last 8 weeks I plan on shifting the focus to aerobic power (how much power I can generate using my aerobic system).

I'm also doing 2 full body lifts per week just to maintain muscle/strength so I don't take away from my endurance training.

The amazing thing about doing an endurance block is that once I get back to weightlifting my recovery will be much better both in between sets and between workouts.

If you're someone who's bored with their current workout routine I suggest trying an endurance block!

If you want to build incredible endurance whether it's for your sport, to support your training, or you just feel like doing an endurance block, join my free community HERE: skool.com/rios

1 month ago | [YT] | 63

Martin Rios

Stay Active Fellas! 🚨

When most people graduate high school, they stop moving!

At best, people will lift weights ... and that's it

Aka they turn into a gymcel 😭

Yes lifting weights is great, but doing that alone is a recipe for stiffness or even worse pain and injury.

There's a common saying: Use it or lose it

If you don't move your body in unique ways, you're going to lose the ability to move well.

Poor movement = compensated movement = injury

If you only care about aesthetics, poor movement often leads to poor posture as well.

Let this be a reminder to stay active OUTSIDE the gym and even a reminder to do things outside and with other people.

I've recently been active in a run club (absolutely wiped the floor with everybody cause im that guy) and have been playing some sand volleyball once a week (also whooping people cause i'm a unit) and it's been a fantastic way to get outside and get my body moving in different ways.

Train in the gym athletically

AND live an active lifestyle 🙂

PS: If you want to build an aesthetic and athletic physique, get into the best shape of your life, and join a community of like minded people, join my free community HERE: skool.com/rios

1 month ago | [YT] | 162

Martin Rios

The Barbell Bench Press SUCKS!

The barbell bench press is a terrible exercise ... or at least that's what many people in the fitness industry claim.

Why?
It's not as stable as machines
Doesn't allow for a maximal stretch at the bottom of the movement

But what if I told you that both of these statements are, to put it in a respectful way, RETARDED.

Is the barbell bench press as stable as machines? No, but that's actually a good thing. The instability of the barbell bench press more closely replicates the environment of sports/daily activities so it transfers over better and because you aren't locked in to a fixed path, you improve stability and movement variability better than if you used a flat pressing machine.

The barbell bench press is also not an inherently unstable movement to where you can't take the chest close to failure. This explains why we have powerlifters benching +400 lbs. An exercise hitting more than one muscle group is not a bad thing and the bench press hitting a greater amount of muscles is actually a positive.


Does the barbell bench press stop you from getting a maximal stretch at the bottom? NO!!!!! The reason why many people think this is the case, is because they either compensate at the spine for more ROM or they compensate by rolling their shoulder forwards, both of which are not range coming from the chest.

If you keep the stack (neutral spine) and only let the range of motion come from horizontal abduction (stretching the chest at the bottom), you will likely not get stopped by the bar and will get a better stretch of the chest as you can get proper rib cage expansion from this position.

Individualization is very important. Your personal preference for an exercise is a variable you should consider. But the claim that the barbell bench press is a bad exercise for hypertrophy is completely false!

Ready to build an athletic aesthetic physique? Join my FREE community here: skool.com/rios

1 month ago | [YT] | 110

Martin Rios

Can You Build Muscle And Improve Endurance Without Sacrificing? 🤔

Recently I've seen many influencers make claims like "The fitness industry tells you you have to pick between building muscle and improving endurance, this is how you do both without sacrificing!"

So this begs the question, can you actually build muscle like a bodybuilder while pursuing other goals at a high level? Do you actually have to sacrifice one for the other? Have these dudes actually found the secret method?!?!?!

If you're a beginner, you can likely do this to some degree. This is due to beginners not needing much volume or intensity to see amazing progress.

A beginner can make amazing gains lifting 3 times a week and even great aerobic gains by just doing 2-3 conditioning sessions per week. The interference effect (the hypothesis that endurance and strength training sends conflicting signals to the body thus blunting gains in both areas) is also minimal or nonexistent for beginners.

For intermediate to advanced fitness goers, improving 2 things at once at a MAXIMAL level is impossible. This is due to you now needing a higher volume and intensity of both adaptations to see significant improvements. This leads to interference, worst training due to fatigue, and overtraining.

Imagine lifting 4-6 days per week INTENSE and doing 4-6 conditioning sessions per week (endurance training requires a high frequency). You are demanding so much out of your body.

Getting into better shape requires ENERGY. Building bigger muscles? You need energy. Improving conditioning so you can deliver more oxygen to working muscles? You need energy to develop that.

We don't have unlimited energy which is why this idea that these guys have found a secret method to where you don't have to sacrifice gains in any area is just dumb and misleading.

If you want to maximize hypertrophy, the only way you can do that is to focus all or nearly all of your training efforts on that.

If you want to maximize endurance, the only way you can do that is to focus all or nearly all of your training efforts on that.

I preach athletic bodybuilding which is my training philosophy that focuses on building muscle while improving movement quality and posture. Is it going to be as good for building muscle as a pure bodybuilding program? NO! It's not because I have you prioritizing free weights, often picking exercises that force your core to stabilize more, and do unilateral work which are not as loadable as other alternatives. I don't go out there and claim that you will build muscle like a pro bodybuilder though because it's simply not true since you are focusing on other things as well.

To clarify, I am not saying you can't improve multiple things at once. You can. But you do have to make some sacrifices. Anyone that tells you otherwise, is a liar. :)

PS: If you want to build an aesthetic AND athletic physique, join my free community! Click on the link to join: skool.com/rios

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2 months ago | [YT] | 227

Martin Rios

Is Exercise Variety ACTUALLY Important?

Exercise variety is often a source of debate. Some people say never to switch them, some people say to always switch them around. I'll be honest, I haven't articulated this point the best in the past so I want to go over it again here. My opinion on this? The sweet spot is in between, let me explain 😏

There are 2 end of this spectrum.
1. Never changing exercises
2. Always changing

Starting off with the most obvious one of the 2, always changing. This is suboptimal as doing this causes a person to spend too much time developing motor skills (learning the movement) with suboptimal loads which is bad for growth.

The next is never changing exercises. This is also suboptimal as the current body of research suggests that systematic exercise variation enhances regional hypertrophic adaptations and maximize dynamic strength PMID: 35438660. Another way to think of it is that regular exercise variation is needed to fully stimulate all fibers within a muscle and thus maximize the hypertrophic response.

Exercise variety is also HUGE for movement variability so we don't move like stiff bodybuilders but rather athletic athletes!

So yes, exercise variety is important but you must do it smart!

Beginners should stick to exercises longer as strength improvements are primarily from an improved neuromuscular response (your body gets better at the movement). So beginners want to maintain exercise variations for a bit longer so these patterns become entrenched in the subconscious.

Trained lifters can vary exercises more freely as the movement patterns are much more ingrained so even after a lengthy period of not doing a particular exercise variation coordinated movements are still maintained.

The point I just made is something I feel many people online do not mention. Trained lifters DO NOT have to completely relearn movements when returning to them. In addition, similar exercises, like going from a back squat to a zercher squat for example, actually facilitates retention of neural patterns over time. So the claim that returning to an exercise forces you to "relearn" the movement pattern is simply not true for trained lifters.

General rule of thumb:
Beginners should maintain exercises for longer, trained lifters can vary more freely.
More complex movements like compound movements should be maintained for longer while movements that require less skill like isolation lifts and machines can be varied more freely.

Exercise variety is important, now let's do it right! 🫡

PS: If you want to build an aesthetic, athletic physique, join my FREE community here: skool.com/rios

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2 months ago | [YT] | 160