Strong and Lean Quotes

“I realized that when a joint is in the middle (neutrally aligned), all movement options are instantly available, and thus you can develop the most strength. Most strength-training programs don’t consider this, and you therefore lose a lot of joint functions. Heavy squatters, for example, often lose internal hip rotation. Too much bench pressing gets you stuck in shoulder protraction with a forward head posture. Your body adapts to hard repetitive movements by increasing the tension of the muscles in use, which gets your joints stuck in extreme ranges of motion and pulls you out of ideal alignment for everything else. That’s also true for hard bodyweight exercises if not balanced properly.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“As you’ll see, different movements require different positions to build true strength. But these four habits always apply to get you into ideal alignment: 1.  Keep your feet parallel to each other. Make sure your toes do not point out at all. Imagine a line going from the center of your heel to the center of all five toes. Place your feet so these lines run parallel. This may feel strange at first, but it’s vital to proper alignment. 2.  Keep your knees pointing in the same direction as your toes. (These two control your hips, ensuring they are neutrally rotated, meaning neither externally rotated nor internally rotated, which is essential to safe and efficient locomotion.) 3.  When your legs are elevated, fully dorsiflex your ankles (pull your feet and toes toward your face). (This allows you to more easily see whether or not your feet are parallel. It also strengthens your shin muscles while improving ankle mobility.) 4.  Maintain a long, neutral spine. (A neutral spine is in the middle, neither flexed nor extended.) Don’t worry, we’ll get you into correct posture step by step. You’ll soon have an intuitive understanding of where the middle is and how to get there.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“And here’s how you’ll continue to make gains: 1. Increasing the reps of each exercise. 2. Increasing the quality of your movements. Controlling every body part and keeping it in its precise, proper place drives progress. Again, perfect performance = perfect physique.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“This is a primary reason people spend far too long working out, not getting the results they want—because their posture is not perfect. Remember, performance is efficiency. It’s amazing how little you need to do to achieve your best body, if you do it with perfect posture. I cannot emphasize this enough.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“I’ve seen again and again, even the seemingly simplest exercise is difficult if done with perfect form.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“THE BIG 3 The movements are split into the Big 3: FLOOR EXERCISES • MOBILITY EXERCISES • STANDING EXERCISES”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“Each nine-minute workout day is also preparing you for the next. I’ve distilled it down to nine minutes, progressing from three to five times a week, in six-week cycles.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“TOTAL FITNESS, NO LIMITS, IN NINE MINUTES The objective is achieving your best body through efficient locomotion, which requires the ability to move your arms and legs around a neutral and stable spine.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“Make performance-related goals, not weight-related ones. It’s all about body composition. Not weight. You will be replacing fat with muscle. Muscle is smaller but heavier. So a scale reflects progress poorly, especially in females, whose weight can fluctuate by six pounds daily due to factors like water retention.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“No one but you will create time for you to work out. There will never be the “perfect” time and condition to do a workout. You have to create it, just as we all create a hundred excuses not to work out. But later will never be easier than now. Right here, right now, this is your time. The world can wait nine minutes.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“Nothing I say here is going to change your motivation for long. Instead, results will be your motivation. Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated, especially when it comes at a low cost.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“Think of your body as a long radio tower held up by cables going to the ground. If all the cables are perfectly proportioned and taut, the tower stands straight and strong. But if a single cable is unstable, not in tune with the others, the whole tower can topple. When this happens in your body, your brain sends out pain signals (in your knees, back, hips, neck, shoulders, etc.), and your posture starts going awry. The key is not developing crazier exercise machines and routines but developing a program that actually strengthens and integrates all these “cables.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“So, too, we must combine the isolated functions of our joints into whole-body movements. But it doesn’t stop there. Just as sentences combine to form language, Strong and Lean then merges those whole-body exercises into dynamic, flowing movements that lean and strengthen your entire body most efficiently.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“This is how I learned to build the best bodies—by drilling only the movements that accurately duplicate what we need to move like athletes as efficiently as possible, and then stringing them together in the perfect progressions.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“So if you only get good at what you do, then how is it possible to create an exercise program that effectively prepares you for just about everything? This is the functional training riddle that has gone unanswered for too long. The answer: by isolating the precise, specific fundamentals that are needed for locomotion, and only focusing on those. This would mean with only a few minutes a day, you could indeed get better at everything.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“THEN HOW DO WE IMPROVE LOCOMOTION QUICKEST? By simplifying. And that’s the secret to this program.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“I realized that when a joint is in the middle (neutrally aligned), all movement options are instantly available, and thus you can develop the most strength.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime

“We find the most capable body the most beautiful. Because we’ve evolved to desire most those who not only survive but protect and take care of us. Therefore, the most functional program produces the best body.”
― Mark Lauren, Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body: No Equipment, Anywhere, Anytime