What are Transformational Zones and How Can They Help Your Athletes Improve Performance
CJ
Welcome back to the Gymnazo podcast. I’m your host CJ Kobliska and I’ve got a lovely individual here with me that I’ve been coaching with for years. She’s a critical thinker, an immediate applicator, internal and has internalized his movement like I’ve never seen before. She’s able to relay complex content to all athletes effectively she’s a badass soon to be mom keeps me honest and always striving to achieve excellence. Not to mention a decade plus high school coach of soccer and a full time senior level MDMC movement specialist and female course specialist what a title My goodness, I’m so stoked to talk with you Kaleena.
Kaleena
Well, I didn’t intro I don’t know, I don’t know how I go from here.
CJ
I had to write that all down. So I didn’t forget what Uh, hey, I had a lot more I like to get through more pages to write. But we’re gonna be talking about transformational zones and chain reaction biomechanics, specifically for a general population, and then even more so into sports specific movements for all sports, even ones you’ve never even heard of. Even athletes, you’ve probably never even met before that we have had the pleasure of working with them to get them better in their sport, whether it’s a question whether it’s lacrosse, badminton, foosball, all those good things. There’s transformational zones in all walks of life. And, and I mean, in every walk of life, we’re gonna talk about athletes and how it’s not just about sports, but the sport of life, and how every person moves through their own transformational zones, there’s common ones, and there’s ones that aren’t so common that are more sports specific.
Michael Hughes
Welcome to the Gymnazo podcast where you get to peek behind the curtains of what it takes to create and run a seven figure fitness facility that ranks in the top 5% of boutique fitness studios for revenue. But to be honest, that’s the least important thing about us. Founded by me, Michael Hughes, Gymnazo has created an ecosystem of services that blend performance with restoration techniques, and attracts top coaches to its facility hosted by its owners, Paden, and myself and our top coaches, this podcast shares our best practices on everything, from how to build a sustainable fitness business, to how to program for maximum results, to how to build a hybrid training module that’s online. And in person. We have marketing secrets, movement, innovation, and breaking down trends in the industry. If you’re a fitness professional, or fitness business owner, this is where you learn how to sharpen your skills and to see maximum results.
CJ
So to get us started, I want to talk with you cleaner, a bit about your past history, just in terms of injuries and injury prevention and the sports that you’ve played in kind of your process, getting injured and getting out of those injuries and back to sport and where you are now. So if you don’t mind telling our listeners a bit more about your history and movement, and specifically to you. Yeah,
Kaleena
well, I am a lifelong soccer player, I started you know, just like anybody else, little baby, five, and still, well, prior to COVID and pregnancy. I’ve been playing all the way through adulthood. I played all through high school played collegiately and then I started coaching right afterwards and still got to keep playing which is pretty awesome. Um, I went through a plethora of injuries, like ups and downs, nothing severe enough to where I required surgery, but I certainly tore and sprained my ankles. I had multiple ligament tears, partial tears, between ligaments and some of the tendons in there, I think seven between both my ankles combination, where I’ve had to be on crutches like almost to the point of surgery, and then I tore both my MCL as minor tears. They’re like four to six weeks recoveries. So for all of those injuries, I was you know, lucky enough to never require surgery and did minor physical therapy with those. It’s kind of interesting reflecting back on what that process looks like because in high school, so I turned my first MCL and there was no physical therapy. They were just like, yep, you tore it it’s about four to six weeks it’ll heal on its own don’t do it doesn’t feel good and then like the high school trainer will pretty much like clearly you to go play again. And they gave me a brace fitted for a brace and they just like yep, okay, go through this and the the testing I mean, I My memory is not super great, but it was nothing to where it was dynamic movement. It was can you run can you balance? Can you hop on one leg? Can you do like plyometrics you know, like hopping forward and backward line hopping laterally over the line, there was nothing in rotation, get 100% guarantee that nothing in rotation. And it went from straight line running to moderate cutting. Okay, you’re cleared to play. And it was kind of the same process in college, maybe even a little bit more physical therapy. But it was still so like basic linear like nothing, nothing in the training facility. Nothing in in the weight room. or the training room resembled what soccer actually looked like. Like, you know, you would think even like a leg swing, right? You kick a ball. No, no that no like maybe a little bit on like a physio ball or like the balance pads, like unstable surface do a little bit of balance work, but it was like, okay, brace yourself and then throw a volleyball against the wall. But there was no like single leg hop, change of direction on an unstable surface in any way, shape, or form. And your ankles, were just kind of like your ankles was like, well, we’re going to tape them up and tape them up till they don’t hurt when you run and go. There’s a lot of like stem water ice. And that was kind of it. I don’t feel like there was there was no like manual joint manipulation, there was no like, hey, let’s look at your calf. Let’s look at your hip. It was all just there’s nothing wrong with your hip or your calf raises your knee and your Yeah, it was just like, yeah, it was mind blowing. So you probably just have weak ankles. So that was kind of the return and then to no surprise, I would just keep reentering those bits and pieces, my ankles are probably the worst. I remember finishing college. And you cut the tape off after your games because your practice because it was so thick, you couldn’t even unwrap it and I had probably a quarter to a half inch worth of tape wrapped around my ankles. They were not very mobile. But I didn’t I could play still didn’t hurt didn’t hurt that
CJ
I just shoot you put enough tape on there you got the stable this joint there is needed this
Kaleena
support. For years after college it I would have my ankles would be incredibly sore after just like a hike or I could barely play like with the high school girls, if I was running around with them. It my ankles would be sort of have to like, ice him down Advil up, you know, just to kind of recover gets the inflammation down. But since Jim Nazo, I don’t have I don’t even have to say my ankles. I have not rolled an ankle, I’ve rolled an ankle but like have bounced out of it. And just been like, oh, okay, keep keep going and keep playing.
CJ
Yeah, I want to back up for a second cuz I want to address something you’d brought up, which is that the attested day as in like the therapist or your PT or your doc, whoever is saying, Hey, you can do these things. And now you’re cleared. The process of saying you can do something is different than saying you can do it? Well, you’ll know and you can do it well enough to go play in the fact that you can they say you can do something like run leg hop, jump and swing or whatever. And then they clear you because you can now do these things does not necessarily mean you’re going to do them very effectively when you’re on an uneven surface and your game speed and you’re having to react. So what do you feel was missing? From that? That whole experience when they said Alright, you’re cleared net looking back now because then you’re like, Okay, I got cleared, I’m ready to play. Like now coach put me in, but I’m still in pain. But I’m cleared. I guess it’s just how it is. What do you feel is missing? And what was your experience being
Kaleena
cleared, dynamic progression, there was certainly like a level like every athlete wants to get back on the field as soon as possible from an injury and you’re willing to play through a certain amount of pain. You know, even if you can’t move perfectly, if you can play you’re going to try and play. But there wasn’t necessarily a dynamic build up to getting back to playing it was like, Oh, you can go from straight line running to lateral cutting to lateral cutting all of a sudden was okay, you can get back onto the field and start moving all over again. But we know you know, the soccer, it’s not just it’s not linear, you don’t just all of a sudden cut in straight lines. You know, there’s a lot of variables, there’s a lot of single leg balance to the sport, there’s the physical sport, you know, that’s not something that they train you in, either in rehab is how to adjust to another person hitting you, you know, like with stability, or how do you how do you react to not just like me hopping, like, but having a trainer like push you and then having to hop and control that extra momentum? That wasn’t necessarily a process that would have been super beneficial to say like, oh, no, you’re it’s like, it’s like weight training for your ankle, you know, like adding that extra load and resistance from somebody else pushing you. But there wasn’t there wasn’t a dynamic build up that certainly prepared you for the actual game of soccer at the clearance was very much like well, can you do it? Does it hurt? You can do it? Yes. Doesn’t hurt. No. Great. You can Yeah, go back out there and just give it a whirl. But there wasn’t necessarily a very critical analysis of again, do you do it? Well, and can we make this dynamic? Like if I put you into the toughest setting possible? Can you still do it?
CJ
I think that’s where it’s really tough to I mean, even in this day and age right now, decade, decade later and plus looking at, well, when is somebody clear then and what is that protocol saying Right? Somebody’s coming in. They had an injury or a tear and let’s say they didn’t have any surgery. We just strengthened some stuff around the glutes and around the calves. Great. You’re you’re approaching Other areas to strengthen, but not necessarily addressing what caused that injury, because maybe it was impact. Maybe it was you stepped on a little divot in the in the grass and rolled your ankle a little funky. Maybe it was somebody pushed you and you started running, and then you just couldn’t stop that momentum. And so it’s like partial impact, but also your body’s inability to decelerate there. And I think this is where the transformational zone talk comes in. Because it’s about your body’s ability to load and explode. transformational zones actually come from the great Institute. And honoree, this definition from great Institute, Gary Gray, has all squad, a tizzy transformational zone is a zone of movement that begins with the deceleration of a motion, which is load, and continues until acceleration of the last motion or the explode. And so you’re looking very dynamically at different motions. That not it’s not just a stride, it’s not just a swing, it’s not just a lateral cut. That’s also reaction, it’s getting pushed from different angles from behind you in front of you to the side of you at different angulations. And each way you get pushed for each way you cut or change direction matters. And not necessarily one carrying over to the other, you might have to address a sagittal plane dominant motion and a frontal plane dominant motion and a transverse plane dominant motion to actually get a full view of how you’re able to decelerate and accelerate. You know, if you get pushed on the backside, can you go forward and then move laterally? If you get pushed from the side? Can you move sideways and then forward or rotate? There’s much more pieces that are involved here that I think this is where what we do comes in, in the sense that we have to look at multiple assessments or multiple different dimensions of your TCS, if it’s running, if it’s kicking, if it’s throwing a ball in, if it is recoiling after getting bumped a certain way, we have to address those things. And gratitude also goes into training, action biomechanics, see me chain reaction, biomechanics, meaning, you know, the biomechanics and what happens, what flexes the knee what flexes the ankle, what abducts the shoulder and all that good stuff. But how do all those parts play together? And when a hand reaches, it’s not just the arm, it’s moving. It’s pulling a thoracic spine, it’s pulling a hip, it’s pulling a foot. So if you were to, to kind of break down in layman’s terms, what a transformational zone is and how we address it. Got Gymnazo. What would you say?
Kaleena
I say what a tz is, I mean, the gray Institute beautifully explained that but I would say it’s it’s continued motion. It’s hard one continued motion but like the ability to, to load to explode to transform from one motion to the next. So even like a basic squat. Loading down getting into your squat. That is one tz standing up is the second tz does a bit the bit most basic way I think I can relate that to people who who have no idea what a tz is. But if we’re talking about a leap like loading on one foot, tz exploding off that foot tz landing on the other foot none other tz like there’s so many different transformational zones that we could go through. And how we do that a gym Nazo is so dynamic we put you through like the weirdest teases. You know, we hear that so often like this is This feels weird. Like, yes, it is you’re doing it right. But that’s, I think so important for us to recognize, especially as athletes, and trainers who train athletes, we don’t typically get hurt in your normal safe transformational zone, we get hurt in the funky transformational zone. Because your body goes I don’t know how to do this. Or I don’t have the stability, I don’t have the mobility to get into these T z’s. So we sneak it in there. In what we consider a safe environment. It might feel weird, but at no point is like, it doesn’t feel good. Or I feel like I’m gonna throw something out, you know, as I go through that.
CJ
So yeah, it’s it’s I think it’s important to mention that you said, you know, it’s a funky one, it’s really just an oh, shit zone. It’s like where you land on a rebound and your knee goes a one way and your upper body goes the other way. And you’re like, you look at that on TV or on camera and like how did that person not get injured was probably because they’ve trained their body to stabilize in these funky positions or in these Oh, shit zones in a safe environment. So what they’re when they’re going game speed, and they’re in a reactive environment now in that game against an opponent, and they land their bodies and freak out and just collapse and tear an MCL and ACL rolling ankle, pull a hamstring, all these things that could go wrong based off of funky position because, like you bring it back to getting cleared and saying, alright, you can run you can hop and you can do all these things. Well, those are like perfect conditions. But if you train for perfect conditions, when you get into an imperfect scenario, are you going to have the ability to bounce back? And then if you do get injured, there’s no way to really prevent injury avoid it. You could do nothing with your life and you’re probably gonna get injured walking, or you could do some craziest But your life and you’re probably gonna get injured being chaotic or in a crazy environment, like you can’t avoid it, you can’t prevent it. But you can start to bulletproof yourself in the sense of, I’m going to prepare my body for any scenario in any angulation at any speed at any range of motion. And I’m going to feel confident internally, not just in your mind and in your brain, but proprioceptively Your body knows it can handle stress in funky positions. Now, I’m not saying go rotate your spine to a max degree at your lumbar spine and then go kick your foot and throw a medicine ball at the same time and intentionally try to put yourself into an a very dangerous position. But you may want to position yourself in a zone of movement that you might end up in, let’s say you’re you’re getting a rebound from a basketball from the hoop, and you land on a right foot and your knee goes to the left and your upper body goes right. And so your knees pulling in one way, and it’s tapping into that medial layer and your upper body is like I’m trying to pull you in one way is your body have the ability to come back to center successfully, because you’ve diverted from that center point, or you’re trying to brace and the more you brace, now, that’s going to be a more dangerous tear, because you’re trying to hold that motion, or that position versus just allow it and bounce yourself back. elastically. And I think that’s where the load to explode is super important to understand in every single movement. So when is it useful? When is easy, useful? Literally, for everything, always, physically, always take me, I want to make this more relatable to all levels of individuals, coaches, athletes, people who have never picked up a weight in their life. What’s like the, if you explain your morning routine, from the moment you move in your bed and you wake up, what are some transformational zones you go through in that first 30 minutes. By the time you wake up,
Kaleena
just getting out of bed, getting out of bed as a tz you know, like you throw the covers off. You know, now my tz is a little bit different because I get that 30 pound weight vest on my gut.
Unknown Speaker
You’ve been wearing that for a few months now. That’s crazy.
Kaleena
Yeah, for listeners, I’m almost 31 weeks pregnant now. So it’s not just my COVID but beerbelly. But you know, getting out of bed is like rolling out of bed. You know? Like, how am I going to do this. It’s interesting now because it might tz changes and how those mechanics change. Because definitely more of like, swing legs out, push myself off the bed to get up and out of bed as opposed to this like springing up right kind of motion that they get to. But like getting out of bed as a tz the standing up, like immediately stand up and you do like a stretch, right? You do active tension, like Oh, stretch the shoulders, extend the arms, okay? Bathroom time, cuz that first thing you do when you wake up, up, like walk over, there’s no functional squat. Just like getting getting up and down off the toilet. I gotta go brush my teeth gotta get my clothes ready. I mean, at this point for our viewers who are pregnant or even if you just ever had an injury, like putting your pants on, it could be a struggle like pregnancies
CJ
single leg balance, pull vertically, it’s a row, that’s a row
Kaleena
it is like I’ve very intentionally noticed, like how you know, because when you’re pregnant, like your balance just shifts every week, because your body is changing every week. And it’s like being mindful, like, No, I’m still going to do this single leg balance, I’m not going to sit down, I’m not going to let my husband helped me put my socks on. I’m gonna keep doing this. I’m gonna figure it out though. Because, you know, putting putting your clothes on, those are T Z’s he had to put for ladies, we got to put his sports bra on, you gotta like, you know, adjust your shirt, get your shoulders going. Sometimes they’re a little bit tight, you know, fresh out of the dryer, shirt, you know, all that stuff, brushing your hair, brushing your teeth, going to get breakfast, you know, gonna get the pans out to make to make eggs. You know, there’s all of these funky transformational zones that we don’t think about as necessarily being transformational zones or like it’s work getting in and out of a car. Like rotate like people always look at us. Like we’re crazy when we want to do like a rotational lunge or rotational squat, but I’ve never even in pregnancy if like backed up at it perfect 180 into my car sat down to the perfect squat and then swiveled in, you know, you just swing a leg and you get in the car. And that’s the more single leg hip stability is
Unknown Speaker
a rotational rep. It is. Yeah,
Kaleena
that’s a rep get external rotation of the hip joint. Like Good lord, watch out, guys, but I’ve never torn my ACL getting into my car.
CJ
No. I want to break down some of those teases you talked about because you literally just did like a whole year long of workouts in an hour. You know, the first 30 Yeah, no,
Kaleena
it’s crazy first. So
CJ
I mean, you get tz if we’re breaking this down into simplistic terms, it’s a full body thing. Like even if it’s just your leg, stepping out of bed, your leg is attached to your pelvis is attached to your spine. And a lot of individuals I hear come in, typically the over the age of 40 or 50. As me even as people in the 30 saying, like I’m getting older, you know, you get that like my back is just really stiff. And that that initial tz is some loading that’s going through inner thigh that’s attached to a spine and those tissues have been dormant or asleep, while you’re while you’re sleeping, right? They’re not working, so nothing’s turned on. So your transformational zone proprioceptive ly, you’re not utilizing everything inside of your tissues when you wake up in the morning. So depending on how you’re training, what your day was, like the day previous, what your week was, like, the stress level, when you wake up, those can all influence your transformational zones. So it’s it’s biological thing. It’s your body. It’s a behavioral thing. Where’s your mind at when you wake up? Are you focused on getting out of bed? Are you focused on like, I got to do a bunch of shit before I get to work. And most people are in that second. It’s like, I gotta get the coffee going. And it’s like, a mindless gap from you getting out of bed to you start in the coffee pot. They’re like, I walked. I squatted I reached, I lifted something. I think I like jumped out of bed a little bit. No, my calf is cramped. Like there’s lots of different actions that occur. And everybody’s everybody’s life. And we like to consider everybody an athlete because life is the sport is a sport, and you’re playing it just by being alive. And so super important to realize that teases aren’t just sport specific in terms of an athletic event. But in terms of just ADLs activities of daily living. And we need to assume that that’s the most important thing to every single human that walks in here. Because we got to address what is it that you do every day? And can we train that to make it easier, so that you don’t injure yourself getting out of bed, you don’t injure yourself putting something back in the fridge, you don’t injure yourself sitting down to get on the toilet to take your morning shit, you know, you’re like, Okay, I just have to be aware of what I’m doing. And if I’m training and I realize okay, I squatted in my move in my training session, I reached for something, I pressed something overhead, I pulled a pulley and I threw a medicine ball like those carryover to sports as much as they carry over to everyday life. And I think that’s where it’s like, oh, shit, you know, I, I’m starting to get this, I start to realize that squats just start making better at squats in the gym. Squats allow me to live my life a little bit easier and a little bit more enjoyable. So I’m not worried about hurting myself, when I walk up or down the stairs, or walk around the block.
Kaleena
I love when people come back in to the gym, they’re like, you know, that move we did last week do that I was I was going to bend over to pick up the dog. And it was the same thing. It was the same motion, like my feet were funky. And I bent and twisted this way and then pick the dog up. And I was like, Whoa, I just did what we did in Gymnazo last week. And it’s killer because they feel so accomplished. They created this awareness but they go that’s why it’s relative. And that’s why we do it. Because even though it’s not with a 50 pound sandbag or a viper they go, I still went through that same exact transformational, so they recognize that transformational zone and they see the benefits of it.
CJ
So rad. And that is injury prevention, when you’re kind of prevent an injury from occurring. But by training movements more intentionally, like you have tension, you know, you have a foot and ankle and knee and a hip and a spine and shoulder, elbow and wrist, and you have a mind, that all plays into how you move, it starts to change the game a bit. And you start to realize how powerful your training can be in the gym to make you stronger in real life. So if we break this down a bit more for the coaches mindset, and even for the athletes mindset, let’s say you brought up a squat earlier, like there’s two transformational zones of a squat. So let’s say somebody comes in, and they have pain when they squat, like anytime they put a load on their body and they squat, they have knee pain. Now I think a traditional mindset would be like, okay, as a trainer, you’re experiencing lower body pain, we should probably just work your upper body and core now we should avoid putting yourself in more pain, which is a very safe route to go, but doesn’t make the person any better or feel any more able and empowered to move through their life. They think I’m just not I’m not supposed to squat. Or they go to the doctor and they say I have I have knee pain like well, wouldn’t you have knee pain? It’s like, well, when you squat when I squat, okay, well don’t squat with load more than 10 pounds. Now, when somebody comes in and says that to us, where does Where does your mind? Go? And how do you steer the conversation to empower the individual?
Kaleena
Yeah. Great, great topic. I think like you said, it is easy for trainers just be dismissive. Like, okay, well, I’m gonna go the safe route. And I’m not going to do that. But the way we know how the body works, if it’s not like, there was no acute injury, right? I didn’t I didn’t tear anything. It’s what we call like a musculoskeletal disorder. It only maybe bothers me at a certain point in motion or a certain action, like I get to this range of motion and then it bothers me. So my first question is, okay, well, let’s see what it looks like. And when it’s knee pain we go I know it’s not the knees fault. So what’s what’s not working? What’s not holding tension, what’s not lengthening, what what’s not working, that should be working and why is the need pissed off because of that? So you know, the first thing we do is we run through our our tests and we see like what should be working what shouldn’t be working? Or like okay, we’re
CJ
test looks at loading, loading tissues and being able to explode that so you want to want to go into that first before we get back into the
Kaleena
Yeah, So so we have some knee pain with deep squats, okay, let’s set them up no weight, obviously to start and let’s just see what they what they’re working with to start right off the bat. And they go into that deep squat. And usually the second question is as well, when you squat, does it hurt on the way down? Or does it hurt on the way up so we assess which tz is hurting, because it can be it can be both, it can be one or the other. And we’re going to recruit, we know we’re going to recruit different muscle groups, depending on what we’re trying to do. So what should be decelerating the body in tz one as we load into the squats? Like we know, so what should be posterior chain? Right? We’re going to look at glutes and hamstrings, we’re gonna look hip flexion, we’re gonna look at ankles, even we’re gonna look at the feet, do they? Do they supinate to the or do they not? Or do they pronate? Do they not? Even you know, every little bit, or maybe maybe it’s a form thing, maybe they’re bending too far forward, maybe they’re pushing their knees way over their toes. Maybe they don’t even know how to use their glutes to get into that
CJ
you’re sending gotta think about all these things when somebody’s doing a squat all these things,
Kaleena
right, all these things? And if we do see some of those caddywhompus dysfunctions, again, do we do we? Is it just a verbal cue? Oh, my gosh, that took me knee pain away? Or is it a proprioceptive? dysfunction where they don’t know how to hit those. Those recruitment areas? Like do they not know how to do that. So it could be soft tissue work, right? It could be like, you know, that just it runs out of room. And then everything after that range of motion just looks bad, because you don’t have that range of motion. So maybe we do some soft tissue, maybe we do some mobilization, maybe just foam rolling, and then we just go back and retest. That’s an so that’s kind of the cool thing. Because what we do is you look at the T Z’s and see where the TZ doesn’t look good. Do some problem solving, like reverse reverse puzzle effect. And you work your your theory essentially, go back and retest. Did it get better? Did it get worse? Did it stay the same?
CJ
I want to break down some of those concepts. Because I think I think it’s important to understand like, okay, there’s all these things we need to assess, well, how do we how do we see it, you know, as coaches and the more you coach, the more experience you have, the more you’re going to find common themes, why people’s knees hurt, and maybe it is a lack of strength, but most of the time, it’s probably just a lack of awareness proprioceptive ly, and a misunderstanding of what a squat is. And they’ve been told away too many ways to not do a squat that now they’ve been doing a squat one way to keep their knees behind their toes and their spine in a very straight line and to squeeze their core and flex their glutes and grip the ground. And they’re going like, I got to memorize all these things, my squats like no, just when you go to pick something up off the ground, how do you do it, you tell yourself to square up, toes slightly out, turn your knees outward, flex your glutes flex, you know, you’re not doing that, I hope you don’t do that. If you aren’t doing that, please stop and just let yourself drop down. What we’re really looking at is we are most ability complex, or there’s mobility, and there’s stability. And we know that there are more mobile joints in the body, and there are more stable joints in the body. And the sense that the continuum is basically your ankles are a little bit more mobile, they have access in three planes of motion to dorsiflexion, plantar flexion, a little inversion E version and an internal external rotation. We look at the knees, they don’t have that kind of availability, they’re more so designed to flex and extend or move more sagittal base, but they can still deviate inward or outward. And we see that a lot in squats, right? We go up one further and its hips and they’re able to flex extend AB dot adduct. internally externally rotate. We keep this going lumbar spine, more stable thoracic spine, more availability, all the way up through shoulder blades, more stable on shoulders, more mobile, and so forth. So we can understand that most ability complex, if we’re looking at somebody doing a squat, we might see their knees are giving them too much movement, like they’re deviating inward or outward, and maybe because their ankles or their hips are unable to give them that rotation. So their knees are trying to get that rotation. Maybe the best of all time, I think is when somebody’s a squat and their knees don’t bend. It’s all it’s all back and they’re like my back hurts like well, you’re not squatting, you are lifting with your back. They’re staring at the ground. It’s not as it’s yet so So understanding where that trade off is between those joints and understanding that there’s no one joint responsible for a squat. But it’s every single joint, your body communicating even through your elbows and your wrists and your shoulders in a squat. Like if you’re rolled forward, that tissue that’s attached to your shoulders is also attached to your lats and attached to your pelvis. So if you’re rolling forward, and you try to drop down, if you’ve already pre lengthened your upper body, you have less tension to take from your lower body. So there’s a lot of pieces that were were looking at in that load. And then in that exploit and you had mentioned, the question you’d ask is when is our pain? Is that when you go down in your squat? Or is it when you come up? Is it in the load? Or is it in the exploit? Because a lot of times that can tell us more? Well, is there a problem with the tissue not lengthening, like you said we foam roll it, stretch it and then we come back all the pains gone? Fantastic. Let’s keep mobilizing first, but if it’s on the way up, is it because there was a lack of loading Another over contracting a tissue or is it because on the way up, their body has like an energy leakage and doesn’t take a similar path on the way down. And as a way up, it takes a different path. And so it’s a constant game of given taking him hot and cold of where the body’s putting too much effort not enough. Typically, we’re going to find knee pain, low back pain, neck pain in the squat. A lot of times, sometimes it’s in the in the ankles, because they just lack the mobility or hip mobility and they have impingement. So that that goes into jumping into deadlifting into every every lift over at pressing Olympic lifts, there’s T z’s in every movement. Some of the more complex ones that we look at, it’s something that we do everyday life and we don’t even realize it. It’s like gait like walking transformational zones down the stairs, how would you explain the transformational zones of walking in a simple way?
Kaleena
Come on, transmitters, I mean, one from the other. That is literally a tz like planting with the right, pushing off the right landing on the left, pushing off the left. And I mean, that’s just the lower extremities, thoracic spine, that should also be doing an out of sync like we should be getting out of sync motion, you’re going to rotate towards the leg this forward, so hips go one way trunk goes the other way. And you get this, this ambulation, like this whole, and this undulating ability to just like flow through motion, walking should not be stiff and painful. Walking should be this fluid motion, we get this beautiful spiralization of the body as we go through gait. And as we walk in as we run, and it’s kind of it feeds into each other, you can think of it like like a rubber band, that’s a helix, that kind of loads to explodes. But it feeds each motion feeds into the next. So the loading of your right foot stepping into the ground, right and chest rotates to the right, you get this loading of all that tissue, that specialization. And then it should like a like a spring, it just fires and you unload and go into that next phase. So you can say walking is like a very, very, very minor, very elastic version of load to explode. And you can see it more powerfully like through sprinters and runners, but it should be kind of this nice, easy flow, we have an easy time doing that. But you’re still going through a load and explode. It just depends on how much intensity you’re putting into it.
CJ
Yeah, we have so many people that come in with like, after they walk for, let’s say 30 minutes, their lower back hurts, or their ankles hurt or their knees hurt, or something just doesn’t feel comfortable with. They literally don’t enjoy doing that anymore. They’re just doing it because it’s good for them. So and now every rep they take every step they take as a rep, are they leading themselves more towards those MSDS and musculoskeletal dysfunctions, or they lend themselves to more resiliency and teaching your body how to load and explode even better. And as we age, we have that potential, we may not be as fast or as powerful in that load to explode. However, we still utilize the same transformational zones, and depending on different stages of life are pregnant, that’s going to change our T z’s. You have an injury to a foot, it’s going to change how you walk, and then you are cleared to walk again. And now you’re like I feel better. But now something funky starts happening in your other side near ankle, because you didn’t address the dysfunction that was originally starting when you had original foot injury. So it gets it gets to be pretty complex when somebody’s in a later stage of life in their 50s 60s. And they’ve been moving a lot because their body starts to find new pads to meet old paths of least resistance that now have been ingrained. So much so that their body doesn’t want to take another path. So they know how they walk. They know how they throw, they know how they squat, they lunge they lift, they do all these things. And when they are exposed, exposed to something more novel or like in a different plane of motion, or somebody involving more complex patterning, like a foot and the thoracic spine and a hand reach. We just know it’s simulating gait but they’re doing like I can’t figure out how to do this and it’s like, take your left foot forward, swing your right hand. Like what it’s okay, wait, take a left, just just walk and be like oh, and their body does it so they have a path that they know. But what our job is, is as movement specialists and as MDM seers is to kind of break down not into isolation, the parts of gait, but see that gait as an entire hole as a foot as an ankle as a knee as a hip as a thoracic spine and see where that give and take is so that if you have had past injuries that you haven’t been thought about for two decades, that can still be inhibiting your ability to flow smoothly and elastically as you walk so what are some common things that we had alluded to a little bit but the common things that pop up like in somebody’s running when they experience pain because running is similar to gay it’s just now got a flight phase and a lot of people rely on their running shoes to support their whole body which is a whole nother story. Go but check out the Barefoot podcast. We won’t go into that but think like what’s what’s a common thing that you experiencing somebody’s having pain with running and then how do you address it in terms of T z’s?
Kaleena
Yeah. Well, again, when when do we experience running? Is it like right off the bat? Is it maybe just a lack of a warm up? Is it prolonged is it endurance running, like are things just fatiguing over time we talked about like gait and following paths of least resistance, well, we know we get tired things don’t load or explode as well. But say you have like a nagging, you know, foot injury, maybe you start to swing your foot and swing your hip around the body, like instead of like powering through and like driving the knee up to land in that you start to swing that hip out and around, that’s going to create its own sort of dysfunction. Because now when your foot hits the ground, you’re not you’re loading through a different tz, you’re kind of creating this whip effect through your leg, and that’s going to load differently. And now all of a sudden, your knees having to decelerate all of this, you know, external to internal rotation, all this DISA is gonna have to load differently. And also you’re like, My knee hurts all of a sudden, I don’t know why we will. Your hips, not actually, you can’t get extension out of your hip and you can’t get good flexion out of your hips. So you’re just swinging it around to trail it out there
CJ
under utilizing a sagittal plane movement over utilizing a transverse plane or a frontal plane movement. Yeah, that was overworked.
Kaleena
Yeah. And so now you’re gonna see some sort of dysfunctions. And then, you know, my step is like backtrack it. Well, why is the hip not working? The what is the way that it’s supposed to get? Is it proprioceptive? Or is it like, is it the ability to load? Or is it the street mobility issue or that hip doesn’t, doesn’t do the right thing. So you might have to literally reteach it, how to actually pull through, you know, instead of swing through, even like talking about like walking for long periods of time, I get that way as like, the old bad athlete, like walk like you scuff your feet, but I’m not pulling my hip there anymore. I’m just swinging my leg off. To hang my knee hurts. I wonder, Oh, this is why, but you know, train it and train it with load. So if you’re going talking about like running, like a trail runner, okay, you want to load up that hip as much as possible. But teach it how to decelerate in all three planes of motion teach you how to decelerate with different angulations at the foot and ankle joint. Because you know, with trail running, you’re running uphill, you’re running downhill, you’re running sideways, you know, it’s just difficult terrain to handle. So how do you teach that but knee, ankle, hip, thoracic spine to decelerate, and all of these different variable options,
CJ
you could do it in a very perfect condition, which is in a stride. You got a big right leg forward and just go up and down with the load on your chest or a barbell on your back and your work in squats or work in lunges. A lot of forward motion? They are runnings forward, right. But maybe we’re over utilizing our sagittal plane in terms of our quads, and in terms of our calves. And now why do we see so many common injuries like Achilles tendinitis, plantar fasciitis, meniscus tears, warned arthritis and the knees from runners who have been around for a long time. It’s like I’ve been running. And that’s why it causes like, Well, yeah. But I also know a lot of runners who are older than you that don’t have any of these issues. So what’s going on? And what’s different? And a lot of it comes down to the intentionality in your running and do you want to make it better when people don’t care about it? Like, I’ll just deal with the pain and that’s more power to you. But for those who write the narrative that like, oh, it’s, it’s because I’m getting older is because I ran so much, that that’s why I’m in pain, it’s like, that’s not why I think that’s, that’s, that’s not diving deep enough. And understanding like your body has chosen an attractor, well, that loads the quad the same way they kept the same way. And you’re maybe under utilizing your foot muscles and your calf muscles and your hip muscles in the transverse plane. Because if you look at running from a top down view, yeah, they might be moving forward and backwards, but you’re seeing Asian T spine, twist, arm, twist, hip twist. And there’s a lot of talk about anti rotation in the spine and bracing the center which is really important, I think in heavier lifts and on Olympic lifts definitely is, you don’t wanna hurt yourself with that. But when you’re running, it’s submaximal. It’s very minimal loading compared to the way that you put on you. So if we’re focusing on just trying to get good at moving forward, we might be missing a big point and a big bridge to this gap that is the transverse plane that we need to teach your thoracic spine, your arms, your hips and your feet to decelerate a rotation one way and accelerate so deviating through your center and actually moving away from your center line. But then being able to decelerate that so that you’ve got a great tz and rotation that then propels you forward. And I think the greatest thing about the transverse plane there’s no gravity affecting it like that’s why it’s so powerful in every sport rotation, but why in the gym the sport of gyms is there no rotation and it’s bullshit, you know?
Kaleena
And got it yeah, we that’s a whole nother topic that we can get into
CJ
Yeah, but so we got we got to address every plane in the TCS like TCS aren’t just like when we’re looking at a squat. We’re not just looking at hip flexion ankle flexion or ankle dorsiflexion and knee flexion. We’re looking at your body’s ability to decelerate internal rotation of the hips as well as you come down your muscles are being affected in all three planes of motion. So as MDM seers as multi dimensional movement coaches and and movement specialists, we have to have an understanding of what every joint in the body is capable of doing. And then are they capable, can they decelerate and accelerate at different ranges of motion in each of those planes. And I think that’s what’s missing from the therapeutic side of getting somebody from in from an injury, or maybe just, it’s nothing too severe, they just pulled something. And then to build them back, instead of just strengthening in one plane. And in one isolated part of the body, like just doing hamstring curls, or just doing calf raises, or just doing high knees, we’re seeing more dynamic stuff pop out, but I was just talking to an individual yesterday, a buddy from the Bay Area, and he had a big ski accident and stabbed his knee with his pole. So I mean, you can’t prevent that. And you, no matter what kind of train you’re gonna do, that thing is gonna go through your knee. And he had torn his meniscus and a couple of other things. And he was he was a runner, he wanted to get back to running. And I had asked him how his PT went. And they went through some pretty dynamic stuff and cleared him. He’s got a few more sessions. He said, Yeah, go run, you know, start jogging lightly, and then see how it feels. And obviously, don’t go further if it hurts, but also, there was nothing like to do about it, it was just like, alright, if it jogs, stop doing it. If you’re jogging, and there’s no pain, well then ramp it up the next time. So I asked him, like, what was what was the last thing he had done? Before they said, Alright, go, go try jogging. And it was jumps, just vertical jumps, and anterior and posterior jumps, maybe some lateral jumps. But running is a split, it’s a single leg, it’s a leap, it’s a hop, you might, especially if you’re doing trail runs, or something else funky, you’ve got to be able to bridge that gap from not running to running, and jumping yet impact. And it’s better than nothing. And doing it three dimensions, it’s great. But you also have both feet that are loading and exploring at the same time to the hips. What happens now on the laser compromised, when we’re in a stride stance, and what we would how we would apply T’s ease to this and hope that non physical therapists would would do this, or at least find somebody to then pass that athlete along to is, let’s put them in a stride stance. Now let’s do those same jumps forward, back, sideways rotationally. And see if the hip the ankle, the thoracic spine can decelerate that sagittal plane, that frontal plane that transverse. Now let’s do it on a single leg, leap matrix, you know, we leap forward back for it, we leap lateral. So now we’re getting that single leg capacity to load and explode. And then we start to travel into, well, you’re gonna work uphill downhill, to just start running uphill, downhill, you could, but a lot of people go too hard too soon. And then they’re like, I’m hurting. And this is wrong. Versus let’s just keep ramping it up. Now, let’s go, hop onto a box. Now hop off of a box or leap off of a box and just start to progress those pieces. So it’s not necessarily linear. It’s just where that individual find success to get to do what they want to do. So let’s let’s want to kind of continue this conversation in terms of when somebody comes in with pain. The question that we ask is like, what would you do? If you weren’t out of this pain? What do you do next? Let’s say somebody like wants to run and they’re, they can’t even jump? You know, what kind of positions are T Z’s would you put that individual in? And what kind of exercises might you do that get them from a place of I can’t run? I’ve been told not to do it. My body is killing me. And you they’ve never even done a stride stance work. Like what kind of positions and activities might you have somebody do if you want to give them like a, say a for exercise circuit? That is a solid progression from doing nothing to now they want to get back to running where they feel like, oh, this actually feels like running. But I’m not running yet.
Kaleena
Yeah, yeah. Yes. Great, great questions. Like you said, it’s, I love that we can sneak exercise in there that don’t necessarily look like running, but you feel like you’re running, because you get that whole body fluidity to it and that spring load textbook, but doing like a lunge, pivot, just very basic. Like you want to start somebody off with something comfortable having to do a lunge, pivot lunge all the way forward on the left, and then take it into like a posterior lunge or big toe touch and reach back. So they’re getting that kind of the gait motion, like okay, the leg forward, like back, I got one leg locked into the ground, though. So I’m not doing any jumps, switch outs, I’m not actually ambulating anywhere, but I’m getting this lunge switch out. And then building reaches to that. So lunge for the left, reach at the right. So you’re getting that that thoracic spine, loading that hip load in the ankle loading and then switching it. So you’re building that coordination of in sync and out of sync trunk and hip rotation, sorry, out of sync out of sync trunk and hip rotation, loading into that and exploding out of that you good progress that med ball throws like one of my favorites is just put somebody ladder up the wall, put them in a stride stance, and have them rip the ball into the wall. So they’re throwing over their front legs. So you’re really loading them into the kind of that that tz one that landing into that tz one forces
CJ
that deceleration of the internal rotation of the hip while at the same time they’re having to decelerate to the right spine, mitigating the injury of spine rotation potential, you know, like their example to decelerate it, find their zone of success.
Kaleena
And then building upon that because they just think they’re doing a med ball, like tossed into the wall, right? Having stayed lateral to the wall again, now make it a step, make it a step and throw. So they’re having they’re still getting that we just combined the action number one with action number two, but they’re lateral at the wall. balances. I think that’s such a good one. I love throwing a viper in somebody’s hands more than nine pound Viper and having to do single leg balance. Yeah. Having to do single leg balance and have them do a 3d foot reach with an out of sync Vipers swing. So they’re having to counterbalance that. But now we’ve just tested their foot, their ankle, their need their hip, their thoracic spine through the biomechanics of running and said like, Okay, where did you eat shit? And where we like that fell easy are where did we see some bailouts like where did they just completely lock up because they don’t have that fluidity to get through their man and ropes. Nick is just did the podcast on ropes and slash ropes, and how you can actually really involve the thoracic spine into the running and the fluidity of running without having anybody moved, like putting them in stride stances and having just literally flow from one to the next, you know, going this figure eights going dragon rolls going Matadors, just having them actually flow through that, but it shouldn’t be rigid. That’s like the beauty of those cars running doesn’t look rigid. Like you’re like driving down the street and you save your money like God that looks like it hurts. Like they don’t have that fluidity. And you know, they probably have knee pain or joint pain. Those are those people who are like, Well, I’m just getting older like he jacked Dude, you’re stiff as a friggin bore, you can’t you have no ability to decelerate motion. But with the ropes, you can provide somebody this opportunity to focus on that fluidity and smooth motion. And then translate that into running like, do you feel easy that flows from side to side with the rope. Great. Now do that with walking great do that with leaving,
CJ
like most people are missing, when they come in, and they got pain when they’re walking or running, if they’re missing their whole upper half and their run and they’re putting away too much in their arms, trying to keep their spine stiff. And like with it with the arms, the ropes from whack method slash ropes, those guys it’s, it’s restoring that spinal engine, respiratory, that spinal lateral bending rotation, extension and then propelling like, you can make somebody better at walking without them even standing up and throwing the rope really low.
Kaleena
That’s free energy that you get when we talked about like locking in your core when you run and just that bracing, that’s constant tension, but locked into one spot. But like, if you just if you just have a rubber band, and you’re trying to launch that rubber band, you don’t just you don’t just like hold it and hope that the for the best. Like it’s going to fly out there. Yeah. You pull it back, you load it. And if you even just like minute rotation, you’re going to create tension through your cork running. And you throw the shoulders and now it becomes that fluid. Do that tension. Fire the rubberband trigger. Yeah, exactly, exactly. They talk about Conor McGregor with his, with his whole full body undulation. But he’s just like whipping his shoulders around that’s like, you can see those those torques and those tension lines where it just, it just throws his body, even if you’re if you were boxing, if you’re boxing, and you go get your left foot for it and you’re about to throw fists right with your right hand. The first thing that moves is actually your right hip. You throw the right hip forward, and that’s going to create that, that rotation through the trunk at that point because you get hip rotating forward, left rotation, trunk is still in right rotation and you get this core elasticity, this free load and that then you get that proximal acceleration. Throw that hand through because the hips gonna whip everything around. So and you get more force out of it than if you just stood there and tried to throw with just your shoulder.
CJ
There’s got to be degrees of freedom from your hip from your like your peloton, kilos, we’re talking about your pelvis, your trunk and your scapula powerhouse for everything you do. Hips attached to your legs, hips attached to your torso, get those hips movement if they are missing motion in any, any tz whether it’s squatting, lunging, locomotion, verta motion, just things that involve your legs, your upper body and you’re not able to transfer that force. There’s something that we’re going to find in one of those T Z’s that is causing you pain. That probably is not the is not where you experiencing pain as the source of it. You know, if you’re if you’re experiencing low back pain, it’s probably somewhere else. Yeah, that’s not doing the job for what your what your low back is now doing. Whatever is hurting is probably overworking or being underutilized in some way, shape or form that we’ve got to figure out where and rest of your body is here. Are you not getting that access to that proprioception. Yeah, and I mean, T Z’s are there for it’s not just for performance. It’s not just for restoration, it’s for fitness. Like, that’s what we’re talking about with individuals that just come in and want to work out making, bringing more purpose, to their exercise and to their practice. It’s not just putting them through lifts, it’s putting them through things that they’re going to be doing in real life. And making it fun with load, maybe changing up or enhancing capacity for those things. And a lot of times, it’s just opening up availability. Because as the fiber guys say, the best available, the best ability is availability. And once you have that availability, now it’s time to enhance the capacity, be stronger, where you can already access. If you’re trying to build strength and you can’t access it, you’re going to break down, you’re gonna get beat up, and they’re gonna have a good time. Yeah. I don’t know. Where can people learn more about TCS?
Kaleena
MDMC
CJ
multidimensional movement coach brought to you by Jim nozzle edu We go deep an application not just education, but transformation.
Kaleena
And grades to angry Institute. Yeah, it’s just so powerful. I mean, how many people deal with even minor injuries on a day to day basis, and trainers just don’t have the tools or education to know how to treat that. The only more doors you open for yourself to be able to say, Hey, I think we can get after this looks like let’s try this. Let’s go after that. Does this still bother you? Does it feel better? Because we know not everything is like acute trauma and acute injuries? They could just be like a deficiency in mobility deficiency instability, can you but how do you learn to identify that?
CJ
And what do you do about it? Once it’s identified? I think that’s the hardest part, like, Okay, I know, I recognize that. What do I do?
Kaleena
Yeah, but you just open up so many more doors for yourself. Because it can be sometimes they’re super complex issues, like no doubt about that. But if you have somebody who’s young and fit and healthy, and maybe they were just riding in the car, they did a 24 hour road trip, right? And they come back and then all of a sudden they have knee pain. They’re like, Dude, I don’t know what happened. But I want to fix this, like, oh, I can’t, I can’t work out for two weeks until it like relaxes, you’re like, oh, let’s just try this. And you fix that knee pain in 10 minutes. And then you go back to just living your normal life and working during normal workouts. Like that’s just it’s mind blowing. And it’s so powerful.
CJ
on bringing some case studies to a new we talked about a few of them, but I’m working with an individual right now who has been walking with a cane for quite some time. And just recently, actually, you know, slowly becoming less and less functional, unable to move, came in, needed the cane to walk and was in tremendous hip pain had basically like, hip replaced two knee replacements, ankle reconstruction, shoulder reconstruction in a matter of 10 years. So it’s a lot of healing to be doing. Yeah, just made of made of metal metal. And I initially had a tough time of just seeing this and go, Okay, where do where do I start? You know, if we can’t walk, it’s tough to stand. Oh, what do I do? And you got to look at the T Z’s of Alright, we got to get him up and walking again. So if we can’t stand without, you know, assistance, okay, we’ll use the cane reasonable now that we brought in some more stability, we can do that too. But for how long can we sustain that before we’re going to sit down and take the rest sitting down and and get back up? Or can we do stuff while we’re sitting down, that’s going to now work the thoracic spine shoulder so that when he stands back up, now those tissues assist the lower half tissues, there’s better support, there’s better integrity and his better a conversation proprioceptively with the upper and lower half. And in four sessions for session, he walked for two yards, with no cane, and then walked for two yards to the other way, with no cane and got his truck and I said, My gosh, it’s beautiful. Like that’s, it’s so simple. But as trainers, we can see that and go like ah that I don’t want to work with that. That’s way too much work. I don’t know what to do. Or you can look at and go, that’s a good fun challenge. And I can offer something that’s going to potentially change this person’s life altered the course of their future because of addressing the other parts of somebody’s movement that they may not have available to them currently. So you got to start with success. And you got to consider if you can’t integrate the hole, how do you isolate the parts so that eventually you can integrate them back into the hole and they can keep moving? Do you have any any case studies off the top of your head right now have you not it’s all good,
Kaleena
great, great little little one on one and she chronic low back pain, chronic pelvic pain, especially with sleeping but her two big things that she wants to garden she loves working in her garden but all the squats reaches the bug and but she loves hiking, loves to hike that’s her like main form of fun exercise I guess like she wants to get out we live in a beautiful area like who doesn’t want to hike around here? But she would just fatigue so fast and she would have back pain walking uphill and downhill and do we you know, took her to TCS okay why does back hurt? No hip extension. She can’t actually like rushing off uphill. It was these short little steps and she’s leaning forward, and she’s just totally pushing through her low back. And her stability was bad. She’s just like, we know we have some pretty rocky areas. And she’s like, greatest fear is, and this is super common for all of our clients who are aging, their greatest fear is falling, like the falling and breaking your hip is just life altering. She doesn’t want to fall and so that limits her and like what she can do when she can do it and how long she can go for. So you know, her doing some, some homework, have her doing some hip mobility, back pain immediately drops off, she’d get more extension, and working on some just this 3d, very functional that out of sync. Foot reaches, trunk reaches. So having her just balance, three foot reach out of sync trunk reach. And it was great. She pulled up this video on her phone and said, Hey, check this out. I usually send a video to my son of the dog, and she’s on a hike with the dog. And she knows she’s just kind of talking to her son. And then all of a sudden the camera just goes haywire. It’s like, oh my gosh, Apocalypse Now. And it’s all over the place. And I was amazed she said I would have been swearing up down and sideways. But then she like Ken Robinson comes down. She you know, she says like, Oh, I almost ate it right there. And she was so happy that she showed me she goes all of this stuff is working because she felt strong. And her big thing was not only did she not fall but she stumbled caught herself and she didn’t hurt afterwards. She’s like that was powerful to her. And that was that was pretty rad.
CJ
That’s the magic right there is saving yourself from a fall it’s it’s like you never wear a seatbelt. And you never know how bad it could be until something happens like you wear your seatbelt. Nothing ever happens. Like oh, I was safe. Like Well now you’re wearing your seatbelt in an accident like that could have been gnarly. Yeah. So you work those TCS that was your seat belt and got back in action. And I’m trying to think of other individuals. I’ve worked with that. I was working with somebody the other day who who had bad shoulder pain. She couldn’t put deodorant on. Talk about a tz Yeah, yeah. So let’s break it down. Let’s let’s look at this like, alright, you can’t put deodorant on. It’s too tough to lift the arm to put the deodorant on she had to like just leave her arm down. So the TZ was based on her arm going to that a reduction. And her shoulder blade couldn’t couldn’t do that couldn’t support it. Now she’s had a passive really bad shoulder dislocations just like has connective tissue funkiness going on. That’s just hyper mobile. So she could it when she was younger, she could dislocate and re relocate, reattach her shoulder back in. But it caused a lot of a lot of harm. And she played some extreme sports, like volleyball, lots of overhead stuff, and slamming and tennis and swing and things like that and was just afraid to use her shoulders, she was told, don’t know move your shoulders in that way that that hurts you in for one and don’t dislocate your shoulders. But another thing is like don’t scare the shit out somebody because they have a hypermobility somewhere, how what do you do to help stabilize that? So we addressed those things and said, right, the shoulder is just scared to go through those motions. And internally, it’s protecting and bracing, like creating a frozen shoulder. And so over time that can develop into a very chronic injury to not be able to lift the arm like that. So over time, it’s just gotten stiffer stress started building up and getting even more locked up. So we’re like, okay, how do we? How do we provide that shoulder with more support? How can we bring more friends to the party to help that shoulder, so the shoulder doesn’t gotta do by itself? Well, we know that the lateral core can bend, we know that the hips can move, and there’s parts of the lower body and the feet can step in a certain way that create similar relative motion up top and the chain. And so Grandstream taught us a lot about real and relative motion that even if you don’t see any, or if you see movement occurring in a joint relatively it might not be moving or relatively it might be moving in a different direction, different speeds. And that’s, that’s something we dive into an MDMC course as well. Just how to see that movement, but basically we did is over over the course of about two months, and meeting about every two weeks. So I think we have about six, six sessions. We started to just start lower body like don’t move your shoulder. Let’s just keep you’re sort of locked in and safe. Let’s see where the shoulder can go. And then let’s just like not go any further than that. But let’s get some motion from your foot to step laterally. Get your hip to drive laterally, get your ribcage to lift and just lift your shoulder itself, not the whole arm because you lift your arm out. Now there’s a long lever arm it’s very heavy. And so we started to restore just that lateral motion to put to elevate the ribcage and we found that her ribcage is very locked up. So every time she went to lift her arm, the ribcage wasn’t proprioceptive ly communicating to the rest of the arm. So once we got her core fired up, we did a little coiling core some LFV from whack method. And I did a little FMR on her hate on her on her shoulders. kind of guided that shoulder blade through movement. So she didn’t have to do it, but her body can experience the motion. After those few months, those six, six sessions, she’s like, check it out. She could like get her elbow to shoulder height now, but her arm couldn’t fully extend, she’s like, if I go any higher, it pinches. So then we went from just that position, stabilize it with a mobility stick. Thank you for that device. So freaking cool. You hold that and now move the rest of your body. And then I created some more motion with my hands on the shoulder and the hips and thoracic spine. And we did some not lateral motion, we did just rotational stuff and sagittal plane stuff that she could do. Like she could lift her arm up above chest height in front of her. But when it goes to the side stops, so we use sagittal plane and transverse plane. And then after about 15 minutes of doing that we came back and had her as I hate Rachel, I’m overhead and she was like, What the What did you do? What did you do is this doesn’t even hurt. You know and we saw you built up some strength and once we had that availability, build some strength and now we’re starting to work on a prone and working on the things that that shoulder was scared to do. So yeah, it’s powerful just to consider the other parts that go into those T z’s. When you do have to isolate make sure you reintegrate if you just try to go all integrated you may end up be doing too much the whole body so there’s time to isolate there’s time to piece it apart. But you got to put it all back together into the function. She’s like I put deodorant on yesterday with with without having to leave my arm down I was like Oh, that is such an awesome when you’re when I smiled so hard on that because those are the things that can change people’s lives. They know people don’t bring that stuff up. They don’t tell everybody like I couldn’t put deodorant without with my arm was lifting my arm. People won’t talk about that. But now that can change your day you start the morning like I can reach my arm up. I’m so stoked.
Kaleena
We we talked about how we take movement for granted until it’s it’s taken away and then it’s like those little things like that. There’s just so detrimental. So Kenzi who if you guys haven’t listened to the podcast that I did with with Kenzie Kitson on her her spinal fusion back surgery, she fell doing some rock climbing and shattered her l one has to be fused from the T six down. But she’s been working with for just over a year. And she was in a place where she couldn’t just like she couldn’t walk across the room from A to B without pain. And they got a sweet text from her last week. That was a screenshot of her Strava. And she did like 5.4 miles. And it was she goes this is the furthest I’ve run and the fastest I’ve run ever prior prior to breaking her back ever. And she’s like she’s 30 she’s young. And she was so stoked. And her biggest you know, with with this with a rod and her spine, we’re gonna have limited range of motion. But because she’s had this injury, she’s been so used to bracing her body and everything moves together, like out of sync motion was so challenging because it felt like I’m going to snap because her body has been protecting itself for so long to not move that way because she’s
CJ
going to get a run that says don’t it says don’t.
Kaleena
Yeah, it’s gonna limit it at some point. And she was told she was gonna have to log roll out of bed for the rest of her life like literally like, like so you got to like stiff board it and just enroll out of bed. She was like, yeah, that’s like that sounds like you like that’d be hard for a normal person to do let alone like we can figure out better ways to do this. But we’ve been working for the last probably six months on improving her artistic motion, not necessarily trying to go and range but working within her threshold because running is out of sync. And just giving her that fluidity and having her hips and her core be able to work together to do that like nice little beautiful load to explode. Or she’s got free free energy that free rubberband snap to push into that next phase. And she’s been crushing it to like her age Mojo has improved so much to where she can get like so much thoracic spine extension for what her body is capable of.
CJ
She’s got to use other parts of her body to make up for what her are lumbar and the lower thoracic cannot do Yeah, so as long as you’re doing it intentionally in teaching now your shoulders your upper thoracic, your shoulder blades your hips or hit your lower body how to assist that and recognize that oh shit zone where now the back is saying no way will you learn to push that a little bit right push this push the center further and further away and be able to return versus staying at center and never being able to do the out of sync motion you’re always just walking around like a like one solid Ron’s Yeah, straight line.
Kaleena
Yeah. And so she’s I mean, but that’s another thing like she was never thought she’d be able to run again. And in a year. Not only is she running again, but she PRT from before she even broke her back
CJ
and say, Yeah, that’s so rad. So what, what do you need to know? In order to use TCS or do not have to understand TCS and apply them to your clients? Is there anything that you need to do or can you just start doing it?
Kaleena
Yes and no, it depends. It depends If you’re more, you’re more complicated cases, like if you look at somebody, they’ve got knee pain, they got ankle pain, they got back pain with doing a squat, you need to know biomechanics, you need to know what’s supposed to be happening at the foot, ankle, knee, hip, thoracic spine, left ear lobe, like you need to know what’s going down so that you have the tools to say, well, I can look at that and I can identify what should be happening and what’s not happening. But if you’re looking to train somebody who’s healthy, who wants performance, your athlete maybe it’s your just your everyday Joe who wants to get better at pickup basketball, you can start training tz is yesterday, and start just making it my favorite one a great Institute sayings. It’s like your exercise should look feel and smell like your sport. And it should like you should be going through me this well, this like feels like basketball but it’s not basketball like I have, I might have weights or would just might be like a med ball press, you know, somebody who is somebody who’s just powerful that that has the elements of what your sport looks like, and feels like and be able to do that in the gym because you’re gonna be able to move better outside of the gym. Like if you want to get better at surfing. Why would you just do regular burpees to do a rotational burpee do literally do a pop up both ways. Do some balance work, do some stability work we balance every day. Like I can’t tell you how many times I’ve not fallen? Like yes, thank you Gymnazo. So my ankles don’t hurt. I thought I like broke my ankle on a run. I just like hit a little pothole and like post, like I almost went down. And I had this gnarly thing in my ankle where I know like 10 years ago, I would have been on crutches. We’ve been on crutches and now I’m like, No, like my body was rocked right out of that. We said nope. We got you. Power the next one. So yeah, yes, you can start applying today. And yes, you can always learn more.
CJ
Yeah, I think just critically thinking of what your what is your athlete want to do, when they’re feeling great. If they’re already feeling great, consider what they need to access in terms of positions in their sport or their ADLs something that they want to do in life or they want to get better at, its throwing, if it’s kicking, if it’s swinging, if it’s, I wanna be able to play really softball on Wednesdays and not throw my back out. Look at the look at the positions you’re going to be in, put your athlete, put yourself in those positions and feel it out first. I mean, that’s the best way to do it as a coach is to put yourself in their shoes, literally not their shoes, but as if you’re in their positions in their shoes. And and consider like how you move from that position. And what are things you can do. If you’ve been doing barbell thrusters. And a split stance, maybe try widen narrow feet, if you’re doing overhead presses with a dumbbell, maybe try a stride stance, if you try a kneeling position, if you try it from seated and and understand how that puts more torque in the system, and how that can contribute to better movement overall integrated whole in that actual movement. If they if it is they do want to be able to squat into a full range of motion, we’ll consider the other things that are needed in a squat, which is ankle dorsiflexion, which is knee flexion, which is hip flexion, which is thoracic strength and extension. You know those those little parts and then retest the motion they were trying to make better, and simply just bring purpose, more purpose to what you’re already doing. And don’t say just the movements you’re doing in the gym, how purpose they do, they’re making you stronger, and we have aesthetic appeal. But can you also develop that by making somebody better at what they’re doing in life? And the answer is yes, visit the positions, visit the intentions and then make it fun, you know incorporate some different equipment. Also, I mean to learn more about TCS just checking out our Instagram through gymnazo.edu, Gymnazo. To clean his Instagram, my Instagram, Goose’s Instagram Michael, we are all pretty active on there and doing some funky movements. And I encourage you to ask questions. When you see something that looks ridiculous, or looks like it might hurt somebody. Think about what goes into that movement and the intention behind it versus just it being some funky thing that we’re doing most of the time, there is some purpose to it. And there’s a lot of sensations and intentions behind what’s going on in that motion. So check those out, even check it out. Jim doesn’t need to use YouTube channel. Lots of information, informational videos there. And then we had mentioned the MDMC course, there’s many versions of that. So if you want to do the full course that’s a little more expensive. It has all the bits and pieces and good little partnership, mentorship involved as well. And if you want to just kind of dabble a little bit, there’s portions of that course that you can take that involves the science, maybe the proprioception, maybe just the movements and the programming, maybe the behavioral side of it. So check that out. I encourage you to reach out to us and leave a leave a comment on our pages. I’ll review this podcast and give us some love. We’d love to hear from you. Any closing remarks Kaleena? Before we shut down today?
Kaleena
train those to you Jeez, man, you’ll be infinitely better for it.
CJ
And know your OH S T Z’s oh ya know where people get injured because one more piece will add. You start with success. And then you keep pushing that envelope until you don’t make them fail but you find a point where you’ve got to continue to, to strive for more success and to, to tweak out tissues, use a glute, and then try doing a squat without your glutes. It’s much tougher, you’re not talking about reach out, we will help you discover the truth behind transformational zones and chain reaction biomechanics. Until next time, peace
Michael Hughes
Hey all. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. And if you did, please share it with your fitness obsessed friends and peers who are also navigating this world of fitness and trying to succeed the trends and misinformation. As you guys can see, this podcast is basically a masterclass for trainers wanting to level up in their coaching skills, and their fitness business model. We launched in 2020. Because you and your fitness tribe deserve to see an unfiltered look at all the aspects of what it takes to stand out as a next generation coach, and build a successful fitness business. So share it far and wide. And please, when you do do me a favor, take a screenshot of this screen and share it to your social media accounts and use the hashtag Gymnazo podcast that’s hashtag Gymnazo podcast that way we can see you and share your posts with our audience. And finally, when you’re ready to go to the next level as a coach, or in your business, and to reach more people, please go check out gymnazoedu.com. We have put together the best 90 Day coaching program on the market for trainers wanting to become a masterful practitioner and build a business that gives them the freedom and impact. So let us help you do just that. We have online training and one on one coaching to guide you through a full 90 Day certification. We even get you training our clients live because it’s always better to work out your kinks on someone else’s clients than yours. But we promise you this, your clients will be blown away by the transformation our program will help you make you’ll be masterful at a whole new level and part of an incredible community of coaches worldwide, taking their skills to the next level. So if you thought today’s episode had some fire to it, and inspires you to take action, wait until we see what we deliver on this program. So just go to gymnazoedu.com. And we’ll see you on the other side. Remember that turning your passion for fitness into transformation and sustainable business is critical to reaching the people and lives you were put on earth to help it matters and truly can make an impact in other people’s lives. So hope you do that. Keep sharing your passion and we’ll talk to you soon.
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