What Do You Base Your Training On? Results or Research?

Posted on December 10, 2022

CJ
Welcome back to the Gymnazo podcast. I’m your host, CJ Kobliska, the director of programming here at Gymnazo. And I have two amazing multi dimensional movement coaches, movement specialists that are on our senior coaching staff coach Jonathan and coach Kaleena with us. And we’re going to be discussing kind of the deep dive into what is strength? What is movement? What is science look like, in real time. And so I’m going to start us off with just a question posed to you guys, and I’ll answer as well. How do you define athleticism? What does it look like?

Goose
That’s a very good question. Recently I’ve been thinking of it of, or thinking of it as an ability to navigate tension through the system. So athleticism is ability to know where tensions out in your body, where are you holding tension? Where are you intentionally or unintentionally holding that tension? And can you navigate it to a spot where you’re able to react or respond or perform in a certain way that provides outcome that you’re wanting, so more so kind of navigating the tension through your body or through the system?

Kaleena
For me, it athleticism, I just go right back to sports. When we talk about people who are super athletic, they can play not just one sport, but multiple sports really, really well. And that sports can look different, like being a great basketball player looks very different than being a good baseball player, or being good surfer or being good snowboarders. So for somebody, we talked about being a good athlete, it’s being able to be multifaceted in your movement, practice and being multifaceted in your like, talent ability, how well do you perform in each of those areas? And how easy is it for you to transition through each of those?

CJ
Well said, I’d say it’s a lot to do with skill acquisition. So not just being able to do what you do very well. But being able to do something you don’t do very well practice it, and do it very well. And then be able to continue to use that new skill or that new technique and integrate it into your own style. So if you’re me, I’m gonna go from a wrestling background. On my end, you can learn all the basic techniques, and be really, really good at those. And then you’ve wrestled somebody who’s been wrestling for years, who was who had knows all the basic techniques, and then has chained them together in such a way that turns into much of a flow, where you’re there, three or four moves in, you’re still on the second move. And they already know what they’re going to do with the next. I think it’s a lot about the integration of your intention like Jonathan had said. And then being able to navigate you know, different forces mass, momentum, gravity, ground reaction force, and then you’ve got an opponent on you as well, who’s got their own intentions, and being able to, to dance, express yourself through those motions.

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, Peyton 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 a fitness business owner, this is where you learn how to sharpen your skills and to see maximum results

CJ
what kind of athletic background do you have Kaleena?

Kaleena
I grew up playing soccer played Division One collegiately. That was my main sport, but I also grew up surfing and snowboarding and golfing. Those are still kind of my main my main sports Yeah, and then lifting strength conditioning.

CJ
Would you say that each one of those sports was individual you trained individually for each one of those sports? Or did you train in a gym or in some kind of facility that made you better at all sports? Or did one sport feed another? Or did your mind go with that?

Kaleena
As a teenager? No I trained for soccer that was not what that was my sport all the others were kind of just hobbies. Were super active like kids like you know scooters, skateboards, running around outside like jumping in the pool like anything we could do active we did active at the beach all the time. So it’s kind of this natural flow into some of the other sports that I did or the activities, calm activities and did like activities. Only really in the last four or five years today really start going oh wait, I’m gonna train in the gym to do things that I want to do outside the gym, and taking kind of those transitions like how do I get better at swinging golf club, and then programming for that in the gym, which was like, you don’t need to do bench press to be better at swinging a golf club.

Unknown Speaker
You never see me play golf.

Kaleena
All muscle, no finesse. Or even like, you know surfing, like I took forever off of surfing like big, big bouts of not surfing in between, then you go back to it, you’re like, oh, my gosh, I’m so rusty. So definitely remember before going back to surfing, I would like one day I was like, Oh my gosh, that was atrocious. That was like so hard on my body is like, okay, I can do things to get better this when I’m not in the water. And even doing like, transverse plane burpees. So instead of just doing pop down, pop up, pop up like you’re getting on the surfboard. And just training that a couple of times a week. It literally means getting up on a surfboard, like infinitely easier, like, oh, yeah, we know how to do this. So yeah, only really, in the last probably couple of years that I really started training intentionally for doing those things. Even trail running. trail running is different than playing a sport than playing soccer and just straight running for five, six miles is different than soccer. So it was just having to incorporate transition zones and different variables into my in facility work.

CJ
What do you think it was that transition that mindset from just going and playing those sports to going, Oh, I can train outside of the sport, come back to the sport, the activity that I was training for? And now I’m going to do it better? What was it a coach? Was it yourself? Just a thought? Was it?

Kaleena
Yeah, well, it was just being here and like our methodology, you know, what, what are we training people for? What is rotational training? What does lateral treat training do for us, and it prepares you for all the weird stuff that we do outside of the gym, because, you know, we’re gonna hang snatch some frickin plates to go put them away and in the cabinet. Just squat down and bend over and pick them up. But you don’t think about your form unnecessarily. And when you’re playing your sports, when you’re doing all that you don’t think about Super proper rigid form. But all of traditional strength says like, brace here, you know, load here, this is these are the degrees you want to get into. But you can’t account for that when you’re trail running, and you slip off a rock or you have to go down some sort of weird angle or weird Hill. So it’s like, well, if I train my body to do the weird angles in the gym in a controlled environment, where I can like do them safely, then I shouldn’t have any issues transitioning. And yeah, it worked. 100% to go, Oh, my body knows already how to do this. I coached youth soccer for a long, long time. 10 years. And the theory was if they can’t do the movement without the ball, they can’t do it with the ball. And that was proven over and over again, in our in our practice in our training. Like, if you’re going why can’t they kick with their left foot, and they can’t step forward and back with their left foot like open like they’re passing and you’re like, Oh, well, no wonder you can’t kick the ball, you can’t even create that motion with your leg. So if you just train that and like proprioceptive ly turn on athletes to turn to as muscle memory, and you train that muscle memory and train that proprioceptive awareness, then all of a sudden, they could friggin kick the ball their left foot. So why would that not translate over to functional strength and conditioning training and it for me totally works. 100% in literally trail running in surfing and golfing and snowboarding absolutely translates over.

CJ
You said something. That’s I love hearing this word to you. Because I was told no, you’re absolutely dead wrong, you know, muscle memory. Yeah, my muscles have brains. Right? In that, but he’s actually you also said proprioceptive awareness. And that’s, that’s something that we integrate into our training every single day, we don’t necessarily talk about all the appropriate receptors and what they specifically do and where they’re located in different joints and tissues and what they’re doing in your body because that, in and of itself is a whole nother study proprioception study. But what we do see is that the more we have our athletes going through similar patterns, or angulations, and different momentums that they might see in real life is that now they’re able to do those things better in real life, because they’re being exposed to them in a in a safe environment, a protected environment where they don’t have to react as much. It’s not dangerous, necessarily, but it is going to put some stress on their body that they’re going to be exposed to in in real life. And there’s a saying that we have here terminology, that’s what wires together or what fires together wires together. And so as we’re getting a foot to move with a hip to move with a hand and that kind of brings these complex patterns into fruition is that they’re getting exposure and getting reps in very complex patterns that you could study individually and look at each actual pattern. And what it’s doing it every single muscle and every single joint and every single system in our body. Or you can just provide the experience for the athlete to go through this and let their body self organize it, right where studies try to break down a little bits and pieces and take it away from its most natural model or description, and try to break it down into these little pieces that then try to define what’s actually going on. But in all reality, there’s a lot more going on than we can actually see. Um, so that was just as powerful. You know, what fires together wires together, and that is muscle memory that is proprioceptive awareness. It’s just an exposure to a stressor or to an environment that we’ll be seeing in real life, but we’ve already practiced it. So when we get into it, it becomes more fun, less stressful, we don’t brace We don’t fight, we don’t get scared. We just explore and express ourselves use I want to come back to you. What’s your athletic background?

Goose
So grown up played a lot of baseball, a lot of basketball, and a lot of football, and then a little bit of water polo in high school. But for the most part, it was those three sports of football, basketball and baseball, most of my life. Which one you stick with most basketball? Yeah, man, I miss football. Probably the most. But stick with basketball the most still?

Unknown Speaker
Would you enjoy about

Goose
everything man, just being in that gym, like high school times that you just think the shape of the shoes, the socks, the flair, the swag. No, just being with the team, like the team was always like super, super close knit, I feel like of all those teams probably basketball and baseball were the most like close knit buddies that I had in high school. So always hanging out with those guys get a chance to just go out there and perform like, similar to what price soccer was for Kaleena what wrestling probably was for you like that was my basketball, you just get out there get a chance to like prove that all the hard work you’ve been putting in, was going to pay off like all those practices, all those long hours, all that extra effort staying in the gym, you know, way after practice those kinds of things. Then finally, like you get the time to show I put in this work? What do I got so little test for yourself,

CJ
looking back now, and all the practicing and the training that you did to make you better at those sports and the community that you had and the testosterone that’s building in that locker room and

Goose
the swag. Exactly

CJ
what is what is something you you wish you would have brought into that experience or had in that experience that would have made you better or stronger or just more aware of what you were doing?

Goose
I wish I’d had an approach to movement more. So like I do now. And that’s easy to say now having like the knowledge that we have. But thinking back, there wasn’t a whole lot of training outside of practice that was geared towards performing better in that sport. Like maybe sometimes you’re in the gym, but you’re doing like the fundamental stuff of benchpress deadlift, like a power clean squats. But there was no real like variability to the training to where you could see it translate in real time. Like, this is what this is going to feel like when I’m in this position in this sport. Like we’re just saying, the other phrase that I thought of was like, you want the thing to look like the thing, like you want the move to look like the move you’re going to be like training for like if I’m doing some funky move in a weird position that I’m never really going to truly like find myself in, there’s gonna be a time and a place for it. But I’d rather have the variability of the in sport moves that you’re going to find yourself in. So wish I had a better awareness of global like my own global movement in all 360 degrees versus just going so linearly. There was never really like any of the in between gaps focused on it was very linear.

CJ
It’s very well said, bro, all I wanted was my name upon the weightlifting wall that I hit that that PR hit that hit the 200 Club, right at the launch press don’t wanna weights to undercloud to interclub on the cleans. You know, that too?

Goose
I mean, that’s definitely part of it. And there’s a lot of fun of that, but didn’t translate

CJ
Gemini that clean it Do you guys have like, you had to hit certain weightlifting milestones. As a team,

Kaleena
we did not as a team, but we do have there’s definitely like the competitive edge of lifting, especially in college, you know, and I’m five, five, I’m not super big, but I always wanted to hit the big round numbers. And I was successful most of the time. But even back then I was really frustrated with our lifting program. And it didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t know why. But the women’s soccer program had the same exact lifting program as the football team in college. And I was like, I don’t need to look like a lineman. And you know even now we would go well why does the linemen have the same workout program as the wide receiver because those are two very different you know, those require very different bouts of athleticism. Like we used to joke in Tom goose this morning. Like winter, that was like your bulking season was like Say goodbye to your jeans ladies. those suckers aren’t gonna fit because you’re gonna bulk you were just gonna go balls the balls like I was back squatting, you know, 225 deadlifting 225 Plus like, it was just all about how much you could muscle you could put on weight. And then looking back retrospectively, I got hurt every spring. So the one thing that like, yes, there is a I think there’s a point to strength and conditioning in those traditional aspects. I still love back squats. I still love deadlifts. Like there’s nothing wrong with those. But I didn’t get hurt. On the soccer field, I got hurt on the soccer field, right? I didn’t get hurt on the soccer field doing a deadlift or a squat, I got hurt because my foot slipped in the mud, and my knees would and just broke. Or I went to slide my ankle rolled, you know, I didn’t get hurt doing all those things. So it was really frustrating because I couldn’t be in the best physical shape strength wise. But that didn’t help me be an agile mobile soccer player. So it was it Yeah, it was kind of frustrating because at the end of the day, all I wanted to do was be really good at soccer. And I didn’t need to be really good at lifting but that was what we were encouraged. And what we were told would be best for us was to bulk up put weight on to be as strong as you can possibly be, but it wasn’t strong in the areas that we needed to be.

Goose
I don’t want to piggyback off that. I want to change my answer. If I can if I was an answer that need to be changed. I needed I need to change this a little bit, guys. I wish that I would have known more about restorative work in high school. Like at all any of it. The we didn’t do foam rolling like no stretching really after the game. Like post water polo match the Aygo swimmer 50 Real quick that’s a cool down alright, pop out of the pool. You’re good. Post football game, take the pads off, walk to the locker room, meet somebody. Alright, we’re out of here. No cooldowns ever. And now you got away with it. Because I guess you’re just like you’re young tissues resilient can bounce back. But had you had the foam rolling the stretching the recovery stuff? I can only imagine how much better I’d probably feel right now. Just having that an earlier age.

CJ
I had a traumatic experience telling myself that it was just growing pains. Oh, geez.

Kaleena
But you weren’t growing? I

CJ
was No, I still. You said you’re you weren’t that big at five, five. I’m

Goose
big at five, four. isn’t that big.

CJ
But you should have seen me like in high school like we the strength training worked. The progressions worked. I gain muscle you gain muscle. Sure you gain muscle. Some point you probably were bigger than you are now. Right? significantly. Yeah. In terms of like muscle muscle density, right size. But when it came to the sport, specifically, that strength mattered your your big you could fend for yourself. You could you had the endurance, you had the strength to handle what the sport needed, except when it comes down to those dynamic OSTC is, as we call them, the OSHA transformational zones, those moments when you land when you’re getting a rebound when you plant and there’s a divot in the field. When you find yourself in a funky position, and you’re like, Oh God, I did not feel good. We don’t ascend to train those movements. But training to those positions and realize, we need to have that muscle memory, we need to have that awareness proprioceptive ly, that our bodies subconsciously can handle the force going one direction or mask going one way and your body going one way and another at the same time and instead of tearing itself apart is able to be be more resilient and come back to that homeostatic space, that homeostatic balance. Because of your exposure. And the training,

Kaleena
I like to explain this way to people too, is your body only does what you train it to do or your body is only good at doing what you train it to do. And if you only train it to be rigid, to constantly hold tension to only lift with a neutral spine and you only train in the sagittal plane, you’re gonna be really frickin good at that. But when you go to bend over to pick up a five pound box, and you’re not thinking about your form, like I think this is the common misconception is like oh, well I just bent over I didn’t have good forms. And well you don’t bend over ever like that. So your body just didn’t know what it was doing. And if you’re constantly holding tension, and then you go to relax those tissues and they don’t have that ability to relax. It’s gonna get pissed. And you’re gonna throw your back out you’re going to tweak something in your knee. And like we said, like we don’t get hurt doing traditional things we get hurt doing in those oh shit transformational zones. So it’s like you have to your body’s gonna go through it at some point. Why not train it that way? As an athlete, I know there’s like everybody has that moment. You’re like, I have no idea how the fuck I just did that. Like I don’t know how I got that ball. I don’t know how I don’t know how I did that. But you just your body just did it. And those are the areas where like, hate sometimes you do it sometimes you get hurt. And it’s just like, your body’s either prepared for it or it’s not. But more likely, you’re gonna get hurt when it’s not prepared to do those things that you’re asking it to do. Like I work with a lot of moms and who get freaked out in the gym, when you tell them, hey, I want you to, like, bend over with this weight and reach to the outside your knees, you haven’t like rotating, reach out, like, oh my gosh, why would I ever do that? Well, if you’re nursing a mom, like toddlers come up, and they wrap themselves around your legs, right? They’re like, scared who grab on to Mom, I’ve never seen a mom, like shake their kid off, like, get off, and like, come to the front. And then like do this proper squat, you just bend down and scoop that sucker up, right? Like if your kid goes to trip and you want to like catch him, you just bend over and do what you have to do to do that. And we don’t think about that. But like you pick up your kid, it’s 25 35 pounds right there. And you’re rotating and you’re flexing and all these weird positions to pick your kids up. But then as soon as you come into a gym setting, it’s like, Nope, can’t do that. Like you do that every single day.

CJ
The best best statement I hear. And Jim and I mean this. So sarcastically is you’re doing that wrong? How do you know I’m doing that wrong? I’m meaning I’m meaning to do it this way. You know, you come back with that be like, Oh, wait, no, I was doing something I didn’t mean to do but I think that’s a, that’s a relevant question to ask somebody is like, what are you intending to do? And I’m asking this question, you guys and also to our listeners. How would you approach somebody coming in who wants to train physically, and they have no goals, necessarily, except they want to look good, they want to feel good. And they want to get stronger? Like they want to physically feel stronger and look stronger? Where do you start with somebody like that?

Goose
Well, I feel like if they’re just going for general, kind of just feel good, look good, be able to move well, things like that you’re going for like a very global approach. Like I’m sneaking in think if you’re asking like actual exercises, like I want like things like lunges in any given direction. I want to see how they can tolerate that. I want to see other balance balances. Can they reach like where’s their initial, medium, and and range of motion? Can they get through all three comfortably? Where does pain light up? What feels great, like, where’s their success at? Finding that line of success, I guess would be the first thing that you find that threshold of success, play with that line, where’s too much where it’s not enough, and then kind of hover around that area and then build from there. But I would try to hit I mean any different like environment. I want people prone, supine seated, standing, kneeling, lunging, squatting, reaching, pushing, pulling, is hidden from all angles, and just see what they got. And as soon as something lights up, where it’s like, Ooh, what do you notice? I felt really good. Awesome. I don’t like that one. Okay, let’s go back. Let’s revisit that and find out where that’s going on. Because even if they come in feeling good, maybe we explore their potential enough to or something pops up like, oh, I never really found myself in this position. Actually, that does feel a little bit funky. Alright, let’s, let’s address that. Get that dialed in first and then build from there.

CJ
So your approach sounds like starting with movement first. Oh, yeah, understanding getting a picture of how this person’s this person’s body can move through space and handle simple actions that every human can do. Right, right. We’ve got we’ve got our observational essentials and we’ve got our actions as as multi dimensional movement coaches, that is a great starting point. To get an overall image of somebody without having to ask them their whole life story, though it is important to know somebody’s history, it’s important to know how how are they right here right now today? In front of me some movement, but you cleaner.

Kaleena
It’s similar to goose I mean, if they have no goals other than like, I want to look good. Like what do you do? I sit at a desk all day. And then I just I want to go out to the bars and look good at night. Solid very rarely do these curls. But you know, they’re on some functional movement. Like everybody wants to look good. Like nobody’s walked in the gym is like, I want to look like crap and what like like I always say like when we do squats and lunges like I don’t want to do that and Leno like everyone’s a good ass. Nobody’s walked in here and like on a flat ass, please like my jeans and just slide right down. So building, you know, we have all these good foundations like helping build hypertrophy. How do you do that, but it could be other than just as a straight bicep curl. You know, we know how to manipulate the tissue to get it to work in ways that it hasn’t before. Tissues 3d If you just train it in one plane, you’re missing out on another 66% of potential muscle potential muscle growth there. So it’s not just finding how much weight somebody can do. But then where do they where do they maybe need a little extra help like people think lunges they always think sagittal plane lunge anterior lunge, but hope blow your mind throwing a lateral lunge there Burr and rotational lunge. All of a sudden, like I’m so sore. I’ve net my muscles are so sore with bodyweight, right? Yeah, bodyweight you don’t know how to do any weight. But muscle soreness is muscle growth. Like when we even with hypertrophy or just doing bodyweight that soreness that we’ve feel afterwards is like a minor muscle tear. It’s your muscle having to regrow and rebuild. So you can do bodyweight and just different planes and motions exercises that you don’t typically they do and you’re gonna feel crazy different like like push ups. You know, you can take a traditional move, how do you tweak a push up to bring in different muscle? Well, they sell them as those little, the little wrist attachments that you know, you sit on and you can like, turn them this way, turn them now, like you just turn your hands, you know, you don’t have to buy these fancy, like, the pegboard looking ones. Yeah, this paint boards like you don’t need that you could just literally like, turn your hands out or turn your hands in and like have one in front of each other. You can put a hand up on a box, you know, change your elevations, and all of a sudden people are like, wait, what you know, it’s it’s finding where they’re good finding where they could move better. And finding what challenges that only you can be really good at a normal strict push up. Man, have you seen this one, all the yogi’s super good at like a narrow Chaturanga push over the elbows tucked in, hey, take those hands, take those hands little wide, and they can’t do it. They’re like, because those muscles those those pecs that chest, they don’t have either a the mobility or be the stability because they’re like, We never do push ups like this. And then they’re, you know, they could do 100 Chaturanga. As they don’t feel anything. They do 20 wide grip push ups, and they’re dying. They’re like, I’m so sore the next day, you just even subtle tweaks like that make a big difference for somebody who’s just coming in for looks, tweaking tweaking how we work the muscles?

CJ
Yeah, a lot. I’m glad you brought that up. Because a lot of times we get people coming in and just have way too much variety in your training, like what do you guys even working on, but like you said, there’s push ups. And then there’s push ups. And then there’s other push ups and there’s other push ups and other push ups. And they’re all push ups that are all looking at strengthening your triceps and strengthening your pecs and getting your deltoids firing and building a relationship with the ground. That is not a right or wrong way. It’s simply how are you pushing up. And I want to make this clear is that when you when you switch up your hand position, you’re not just adding variety, you’re switching up your how your body’s interacting with the forces around him, right, you go from a narrow push up, taking your pecs out of the mix and putting a little more on your triceps. And then you widen your hands. And now the pecs all sudden are being asked to go into more length. And now it’s extremely difficult set proprioceptive awareness, your body knows that can go wide, right. But you’ve also built that you’ve hypertrophy, that tissue that hasn’t experienced that level of loading. That’s not any more weight. It’s simply the leverage of your body. How are you interacting with that actual pushup, because now you’ve got to, you know, you can do a narrow push up, but you can’t do a wide push up. Some people are the exact opposite. But it’s the exposure of those other positions to get your muscles to load up not just in one movement pattern. But now to understand a an intention, which is a push up. What are the things we do like that that you think others might look at and you’re like, oh, there’s adding variety or trying to get too too crazy with it and just become a circus act.

Goose
What is like changing drivers around like you go, like I was saying like lunges and stuff. You could do a lunge where you’re reaching your weight, like down towards that lunging foot. And maybe you’re trying to like activate more of the hip get more like rotation to the pelvis, or you’re gonna add a big reach up top and you’re pulling the shoulders and you’re lengthening through the core, maybe get a little more of the front hip now. So changing drivers like oh, you’re just doing an anterior lunge, like reaching out your foot, versus oh, now I’m reaching overhead. Oh, now I’m rotating over my lunging leg. Well, you’re just adding variety. No, I’m, I’m going after like more of my posterior glute, outer glute. I’m going more core going after the soul as like opening that up. So there’s always like a rhyme and a reason to what we’re doing. And I think that’s what’s so cool about it like we make, it just makes sense. We make sense of why we’re doing stuff. And we’re doing stuff because it makes sense. If that makes sense.

CJ
Maybe we bring some clarity here, we see every individual that we coach as a case study, there is no protocol that says here’s how to do a push up. Or you ask a kid to do push up, you want to tell them to keep the back straight, head straight, body and line hands beneath their shoulders and do a push up. That’s great. But what about the other millions of ways that a kid could do a push up? I think that’s something that we are all our own case study as well. You know, we’ve all been a kid and some of our churches, bigger kids. I’m the same size I was as a kid. But I know a lot more than I. But we’ve all experimented. We’ve all observed our own motion. We’ve all jumped over stairs, we’ve all skinned a knee we’ve rolled an ankle a thought our leg was completely broken and thought we’re gonna die and need to go to the hospital right? But we get better and we get healthier, we get stronger and we start to become more aware of how our bodies interacting with the space around us. Some may get driven into a fear of don’t do this, don’t do that you’re gonna hurt yourself, put some shoes on put a jacket on, you’re gonna you know we’ve we’ve got our parents that are there to protect us or guardians that are there to help us out. But they may be layering on these things that prevent us from fully experiencing our physicality, because we’re not we’re afraid of doing something that’s going to hurt ourselves and I think that stays with us until the day we die until we realize we have a coach that goes try it this way. And like I’ve been told never to do that, that will hurt me. And he asked him why, why would this hurt you, you know, and you start to get into kind of the, the finer weeds of all these things, the deeper details of every single person having their own behavioral side to their training, they’re not just here to look good and to feel good. They’re actually here to overcome a fear that they had of hiking down or running downhill or jumping on a box, or, you know, we see so many people that are in their 50s 60s 70s that are fearful of doing motions that their body can do. But they’ve been told that they’re gonna hurt themselves. So how do we kind of see, see each individual that we coach, what are some questions that you might ask or get a better gauge, not just of how they’re moving, but where they find purpose in their training, where they find like, they can open their box of what they’re capable of?

Goose
One like, one question we all like to ask is like, what do you what do you like to do? And I think that’s like, a very good initial question to just kind of see, like, where their goals lie. What’s their activity? Like? Why are they here? And for what purpose? So understanding what, what drives them, like, if so, and so really loves hiking, and just kind of understanding what their relationship is with hiking and how maybe that’s been maybe they had a passport injury, or maybe they were on their hike, they rolled an ankle one time, way back. And now they’re kind of hesitant, but they still really love, or they really love hiking, now you have a kind of a driving force, and you’re, you’re bridging the gap between what they love and what they’re trying to do, and how you can get them to that spot. So I think starting off with this, what do you enjoy doing? What what do you do? Well, what are you about, and kind of understanding that is a great first place to start.

Kaleena
Most people come to the gym to do something better outside the gym, you know, or there we see people who come in because they’ve been in pain, and they don’t want to be in pain. And you mentioned protocols before earlier, and it sparks it’s like protocols are almost limitations. Because we’ve worked with people who say, you know, like, I’m recovering from a shoulder injury. I can’t do that. You know, my my doc said, I can’t I can’t do that. I can’t lift weight there. And usually my first question is like, it’s just a pull, you know, like rotator cuff tear, tuck the elbow in really tight. You can do banded, you know, internal external rotation. Not there. Like that’s all you can do. But don’t reach out and don’t pull stuff like don’t pull away. Don’t pull Kaiser. So I get that. And then it’s kind of like I’m gonna go. You drive here today? Yeah. Did you open your car door? Oh, yeah. Okay, well, how’d you do that? How did you grab that door handle like you reached and you pulled? Right? Did you open the door to walk in here? Because it’s not a sensor, like it opens. And so you know, talking about like, what do you do? Well, you do a lot in your day to day. But when you’re told you can’t do it certain ways, or somehow in a in a gym setting that all just goes out the window. There’s strict protocols for gym. But there’s not strict protocols for life because nobody had the nobody had the physical therapy office at the doctor’s office said, don’t open your car door without hand. But we don’t think of that as weight. We just think of it as functioning and going throughout our day, or like getting up and down out of the car oil, all that. So I totally forgot what your original question was. But

CJ
this is the name. This is the name of the game tangents the transverse plane nature of the beast.

Kaleena
Yeah. But rotated. rotated, though, is when? Gosh, we’re talking about things that people say that we do that are varietals that are not safe. The transverse plane lunges like the big one, when you get people who have never seen what we do. And they come in here and are like, hey, I want you to do a rotational lunch open, open that leg up at like 135 degrees. No, like, what? Why would I do that? And, you know, like, Well, how do you turn around in your house? Like when you’re at your sink? How do you step out of your car? Yeah, like how do you start? How do you step out? Exact nobody pivots, hold on, let me keep my feet together. And just quick, sharp. I

CJ
see it actually rotates for me. But like, you,

Kaleena
we want legit case studies, right? We want data. So here’s a fun one. Girls are 80% more likely to tear their ACL than boys are. Kid. It’s not just like we’re not the we’re not the weaker species. Let’s get that clear. But hormonally.

Goose
We’re backing up on that one. I’m,

I’m out. I’m out like you are the three or the three. All right, I’ll be back next time.

Kaleena
That’s right, this Elizabeth ladies, Cindy Kay. But we get we go through more hormone fluctuations that influences our tissue tension tissue ability, especially for adolescence girls, so I coached soccer for 10 plus years, and I implemented rotational training and just that transverse plane lunge. Immediately into our warm up just how they moved, how they ran, how they transitioned, like a carioca rotational step to open up doing quick feet and having to do what we would call like a pivot like a drop step. will drop step is essentially a transverse plane bunch. We just depending on your range of motion, we call it a step or we call it a lot Andre or how you weight shift. So in the 10 years that I coached soccer, and then all the years that I practiced 3d rotational training for those kids, I only had two ACL tears. And I’m talking club soccer and high school soccer. So I was coaching year round, doesn’t have probably hundreds of girls in that regard. And most ACL tears are non contact. So we’re talking, it’s a mobility and stability issue. Right? If we’re saying it’s a non contact issue, it’s not force. And the two roles that I had the ACL tears contact. So you say there’s, there’s some great training practice right there and how rotational training can translate over does rotational train doesn’t, you can train it with load, you can train it without load. If you do something really, really well. Without load, if you start gradually adding load, don’t you just get stronger doing that?

CJ
Well, then we can also consider that load isn’t just a tool, you can add speed that adds momentum that yeah, gives your body the sense of load, or you can squeeze something like we use in the FCC classes. They creates a tension, it creates force there and you’re you’re becoming more aware of how to decelerate or accelerate. Yeah, force, right? Yeah. It’s powerful. And when you say transverse plane lunge, just kids that clear transverse plane lunge is a transverse plane lunge. Because we’re taking our body, every single joint to the transverse plane, as much as it can, or as little as it can, or just whatever we specify that range of motion to be meaning the ankles, rotating your knee, yes, it’s rotating a little bit relatively, we’re not trying to force it in rotation, but we gotta admit, it does rotate, we got hips that rotate, we got a lumbar spine, thoracic spine, and cervical spine, we got shoulders that can rotate. When we got, what, six different lunges, sit two in the sagittal plane to the frontal plane to in the transverse plane that target the 66 vital motions that our body’s going to go through at some point in time in our sport or in life. We know the ankle has six motions, we know the knee has six motions, though we’re taught, it only flexes and extends. It also needs to decelerate the other two planes of motion, we got a hip that can move through six different motions, we got a lumbar spine, yes, the lower back moves through six different motions, though it’s a much smaller level. But it’s got to be able to decelerate that, and stay braced. But then we’ve got a thoracic spine that can go through six motions, cervical spine and go through six motions and a shoulder that can go through six motions. There’s other joints too, but we’re talking about big functions and closest to our, our center of our body, we’ve got to be able to access those 66 motions 11 joints times 666 motions. So why why wouldn’t we? Why wouldn’t we visit all these planes of motion? What? When would we say let’s focus strictly on like a traditional lift strength, more sagittal plane? Dominant? Why don’t we choose that over going for the degrees of freedom in the movement,

Kaleena
your sole goal is to just load up and just move as much weight as physically possible. Yeah, the less variable you have, the more you’re going to be able to do in that motion, like a back squat, right? Like the less variable it the joints, the more strength or tension that I’ll have that I’ll probably have or it’s a safer position, right, there’s less, there’s less room for error at that point,

Goose
safer and air quotes, by the way.

Kaleena
But that would probably be the one time or the the more strategic time, I’m going to say at the strategic time, which you’re trying to do that.

CJ
So go when you’re trying to win, try to lift some heavy mass and also maybe gain gain mass. When you say yep,

Goose
well, then it’s interesting too, because if you go back to traditional lifting with like, the knowledge that we have, like the trade off is not different. Because we could go back to like traditional deads, traditional bench, traditional squat, and just do those three things. But now having the understanding of like the other movements, I feel like we would kind of, even though it’s not similar to the other movements, in a certain regard, you can still kind of tie in the gains into that. So there’s like a weird trade off of like, it’s not the most efficient way of going about doing something, but it’s like, a way of going about doing something you’re just missing some of the pieces. Like I’d be curious. This is like more of a self kind of a thing, I guess. Like if I went back to just doing like the lifts I used to do in high school. How would I feel same restorative work still go through like a good warm up hit and all the planes of motion, but then go back to like traditional stuff? What would that trade off be? Like, that’s just like a rhetorical question. Or if it’s like, body rocking,

CJ
like you said efficiency and then to like, give the you know, the eyebrows, you know, like experience experiential versus about just the just the game of strength right now. Now how you see strength, going back and doing this traditional lifts, knowing what you know about those vital motions and knowing about the three planes of motion and dynamic loading strategies that benchpress becomes a whole nother experience. Because you’ve got depth and a wealth of knowledge that goes into like this benchpress is not just making my pecs, big, my triceps strong, get my name up on that wall.

Kaleena
Thick Goose,

Goose
man Dance Dance muscles row.

CJ
Let’s now how can this benchpress facilitate my better throwing, you know, or we’re better blocking or catch myself when I trip when I’m trail running? Right? There’s your your mind is in a different place.

Kaleena
And we talked about this all the time. Like, it’s really what is your intention behind the motion? What are you trying to get out of it? Some people don’t want to trail run better, that’s fine. So you don’t have to train that way. But we know that biomechanically, what you’re asking your body to do, you need to train that in that regard. You know, if you want to look good, like, you go back to traditionalist goods, you’re gonna just like butter, get triple XL, and that sweatshirt care for triple XL, and you’re just gonna get

Goose
yoked a lot of traps on this side, guys, a lot of traps so much traps.

Kaleena
But the trade off might be like, you don’t move as well. Right? You know, you’re gonna be really good at pushing one way, but not going the other way. I think. Most people that we see they want to move better in general, they want to move better. They don’t necessarily want to look better. I mean, how often do we hear women say I don’t want to bulk up. But they want to look toned, or they want to look athletic, depending on what level like of athlete they want to look like so that their goal is not to just do a whole lot of strength. Here, it’s all the time to like, people want to look like pro athletes. Like I want to look like a pro athlete. But those athletes don’t spend necessarily four hours a day just doing strict gym workouts, they you get better at your sport by playing your sport, you know, they spend, would you say that you spent more time on the football field than in the weight room? Yes. Would you say they spent more time wrestling on the mats than in the weight room? Yeah, yeah. And like I spent more time on the soccer field than I did in the weight room. And I was a better soccer athlete, but you like there’s body types, right for that. And it’s not necessarily like, we could have all lifted the exact same way. But our body types still would have looked entirely different. Because you wrestled and you played basketball and I played soccer, like that was always kind of the you can tell like TJ walked in his first day at Gymnazo. And I’m like, I’m a brand new coach and I look walks in, they go, Oh, this guy’s a wrestler, you just knew you just knew based on his body type, and how he looked like he wrestles in that that was just like, the physique that you were going for. But, you know, you practice how you want to perform. So if you want to move better, we can move intentionally multi dimensionally, and you’re gonna end up moving better.

CJ
I think that’s an important statement. Because yes, there’s, you gotta be you gotta be moving, you got to be focusing on your physical logical adaptations to outside of the sport that you’re doing. If you want to become the best in that sport, you got to put in the extra time to, but without a foundation of movement, and understanding your entire sphere. Like if you look at your body, and you imagine all the ways that can move, if all you see is a deadlift, and a squat and overhead press and a clean and a Nordic curl, and all these traditional sagittal plane type of lifts, you’re going to, yes, you’ll be really, really good at those. But then as soon as you need to do a rotational step, or somebody trips you, somebody pushes you over, you’re not going to catch yourself in a Nordic curl, or a deadlift, you’re going to catch yourself in some kind of split stance, kneeling sideline posts and a hand on the ground and experiencing that kind of stress. That if you haven’t been exposed to that, that movement, or that transformational zone, or at least had your joints moved with force in all three planes of motion, your chances of getting hurt are gonna be much higher, or you’re going to continue to brace and it’s going to be those dozens of repetitions hitting the ground or moving in a certain way that new like man sometimes can come back and then you go into your heavy lifts, and you don’t do anything to negate or neutralize that effect, or bring you back to this dynamic balance. You’re just reinforcing that bracing that rigidness that strength while at the same time you’re making the gains of what the progressions are designed to help you adapt to, you’re missing out on a key element, which is having access and availability. And then building capacity upon that availability. Yeah, there should be some more focus maybe in traditional lifts if you’re trying to put on a lot of mass, but it shouldn’t be taking up the majority of the time. Right, we should be thinking about loading up submaximal loads in rotational movements in lateral movements in those OSHA transformational zones so that your body realizes how to find a homeostatic stability, mobility or balance in that position where you’re not scared and freaked out in your body’s fighting it going like what gets me out of this. It goes oh, I’ve been here before and that we went on the field. Well, you might still get hurt, you’re probably still going to get hurt. You can’t avoid injury, you can’t prevent injury. but you can do your best to set yourself up for more success and availability. So that going into that you’re not avoiding certain things. You’re You’re unshackling yourself from the potential of what could be, though you may be good at certain certain lines of motion, certain patterns. Those other athletes that are that are high level, they’re, they’re playing their sport more. They’re having fun, they’re playing, they’re moving in all three planes of motion without really saying, I’m going to transverse I’m going the frontal, they’re just experiencing those motions. And I think it’s our job as coaches to invite those opportunities into a gym setting. Because in sport, they’re going to happen no matter what. But as soon as you said like you said, getting into the gym, it’s all stiff and rigid, don’t do it that way that’s gonna hurt you. We immediately remove ourselves from what it’s like to be out in the field which is fearless. Even still that fear in them.

Goose
I think that’s an important like thing to touch on too is that it’s not saying that like this is like the solve all of like, you’re not going to get hurt. But I can say like, from personal experience having shifted my training and my personal practice, more towards the like movement flow kind of side. Significantly less injuries, like I think since I’ve started here, so about three years. I’ve had like one time where I was like, oh, like shit, my knees, my knees pretty jagged. And that was because I was trail running way too much and not foam rolling at all or stretching at all. So it was all on me.

Kaleena
You were in your no spring chicken no more.

Goose
Dude, I’m getting up there. to five. It’s crazy. But no because then I think back I think back to like, like football days of like lifting heavy even college days. You’re just trying to be like that that sold out bro in college. At least I was like back would hurt knee would hurt like you go to do some you might know like you roll an ankle playing basketball now. Like I’ll trail run, don’t roll my ankles. Like I rarely fall unless I’m skateboard and you’re wearing sandals while you’re doing it or no shoes at all.

Unknown Speaker
That’s the craziest thing. Yeah, we’re

Goose
in sandals or no shoes just running around. So I think I just speak so like it’s not it’s not the Savile obviously. But like from personal experience, they what we do obviously works for me. And most,

Kaleena
I’m a much better all around athlete now than I was in college. Although I was playing I was playing a lot of beer pong in college, it was a really good beer pong player that was the offseason sport

Unknown Speaker
but if you my right hand overhead

Kaleena
that elbow extension. But I moved so much better now. And like it’s way easier for me to transition between trail running and playing soccer and golfing, which are all like super different or surfing. You know, those are all entirely different facets of athleticism, but it’s way way easier and I don’t feel like I’m struggle busting it. Transitioning in between each one. And now like golfing is just I keep getting bigger. For listeners. I’m currently pregnant. So yeah, my husband’s gives like, Well, can you swing a club like fucking if John Bailey can swing a club, I can swing a club, I just got trained for it. Like, you will just move stuff out of the way. But yeah, if you just keep doing it and keep, keep adding that in, it works. Like there’s no doubt in my mind that what we do works to make people better athletes or to move better.

Goose
Well, I think to like, and maybe you said, and I just missed it, but I feel like you could take a break now. From like, whatever your movement is, like, I haven’t surfed in a while. But when you get back out there, like you’re back in it pretty quick. versus maybe prior to this. It’s like, Ooh, this is gonna take me, you know, a few more sessions to get back into it, we’ll have a kick a soccer ball in a while might be a little rusty. The rest is shaken off after like, a few little kicks, few little shots, and you’re good to go. Just because you’ve been so well versed in all those different moves.

CJ
Also, you’re a little smarter going into it. You don’t just go and kick that ball as hard as possible. You become aware that like, Okay, I probably need to do some dynamic warmup sooner, like round a little bit, get some smaller kicks in and then like, oh, it’s feeling so like it kicks into high gear and then you’re back at it.

Kaleena
Right? That’s like as we age, like it’s called the like the old man warmup where you just get out there and you just hands on the hips, you stretch

Unknown Speaker
out, stretch up the hips. Like you just woke up. Yeah, do a little do a little leg lift. You’re

Kaleena
like, Alright, let’s go play on Sprint. And like I was like, How’d you pull a hammy? Oh, I was trying to 10 yard sprint didn’t warm up and oh, I sit at a desk all day.

Goose
I’m you sprinted a decade. Oh, my God, so I was gonna hurt you

CJ
get some cobwebs in there. But you touched on some? What do you say Coach? No, no go ahead. Gives you touched on something about paying like your own pain too. And we are young we are resilient and we do heal a bit faster. We can’t rush the healing process. But we can set it up to heal better or more effectively and understand and communicate with our body in such a way that we don’t go like I hurt myself. But I hurt myself I’m I’m taking I’m taking a week to recover which doesn’t mean laying on the couch doing nothing. Typically it means figuring out something else to do with your body, in the meantime until you get back at it more primal and a sense of not not just getting permission to be lazy for a week, two weeks, six months,

Goose
10 years, an entire pandemic.

CJ
Yeah, you gotta make a call. But it made me think of something about pain. And we deal with a lot of people who are in pain, people that are that are aging, there could be 20s. And in pain, they could be 70s and in pain, and some of them have really bad injuries and in pain, and some have no injury at all, but they’re in severe pain. And let’s dive into that pain a little bit. Because as coaches, I know where mindset my mindset was, before I was an MDM seer, and it was like, if somebody’s in pain, well, we’re gonna switch the activity, we’re just gonna change it. And hopefully, they go see their chiropractor or physical therapist or doctor and get it figured out. It’s out of my control, I can’t help them with this, but I can still give them a workout. Now it’s changed to such a point where anybody who walks in with any pain, it’s movement related. I’m biased, man, you’re in pain while you’re moving, or going to fix it. And I’m not gonna do the fixing. I’m gonna do the communicating to help you figure out how to fix yourself. I think that’s our mindset here. Where does your mind go when somebody walks in with, and I’m being super broad, because it could be any kind of pain, it could be joint pain, it could be tissue pain, it could be mind pain? Where does your mind go? When a client comes in with pain and says, Train me?

Kaleena
Man, every is a little bit different. It depends. I know that damn phrase depends. But, you know, we always ask like, what are your goals? What are your goals, like you’re in pain? What is the one thing you want to do? That pain is limiting you from or that you’d like to do? It doesn’t even have to be like, and because most people will just like push through it. But even for us, we think we take being pain free completely for granted completely. When someone’s in chronic pain or like God, I just want to be able to walk up the stairs without pain or sit down like there is a one point when I was working here and it was my feet was my shoes. But my knee I will hurt so bad I couldn’t do I couldn’t do a lunge. I couldn’t squat on that knee. And it was just like I get home at the end after being on my feet coach and six, seven sessions literally break down like just after months and almost probably like two years on and off of just chronic pain. You just cry, it hurts. It defeats you. Because there’s so many things that you tell yourself you can’t do or that you physically can’t do because it hurts. So my question is like, what would you do that is pain free and something is literally as simple as walking up the stairs or just sitting on the toilet without having that chronic knee pain? And then, you know, where do we go from there? Figure out the biomechanics of it, what’s supposed to be working, what’s not working, that’s potentially causing that pain, you know, taking you through our 3d movement assessment is one of the biggest tools not even even even how to do a 3d movement assessment as far as like the exact protocols for that. But taking you through any movement assessment that says this action causes pain, K, but this action doesn’t like that’s the beauty of actually having a variety of lunges. Because if you say an anterior lunge pisses me off. But a lateral lunge, no pain, transverse plane lunge, no pain, you’re like, great. So what’s going on in that exact transition, though, that is pissing your knee off. We call them musculoskeletal disorders MSDs, musculoskeletal disorders, it’s when there’s no knee tear when there’s no slip disc, but you still have pain, what’s causing it. And you know, we’ve had people come in, who’ve gone to physical therapy and they didn’t get the results that they want. And they’re still in pain because they didn’t treat it as a musculoskeletal disorder. They didn’t treat it as on an individual basis as to you know, what’s working, what’s not working, they just have, hey, this is your generic shoulder pain. This is what you’re supposed to do.

CJ
They treated you as a knee or as a shoulder or as an ankle, not as a human being.

Kaleena
Yeah, and we know, it’s not like that. So we have to we have to do some investigative work. I friggin love puzzles to people all the time. Like, if something’s not working the way that it’s supposed to, I’m going to figure it out. There’s like a missing piece of the puzzle. We’re going to figure this out so that we can, you might not be completely pain free. But you damn well bet I’m gonna have you 10% Better by the time you walk out here and for some people 10% Better is life changing in that moment.

CJ
But how do you how do you make the call if there’s all these studies on pain? And what to do about it? How can you make a sound decision a I mean, you’re a tracker and loves data and stats, but all the data says that pain like it’s subjective, right?

Kaleena
Yeah, pain is not empirical. So we can’t measure your pain on a sliding scale. It differs from individual to individual. My level of a nine is going to be different than your level of a nine. So when you go abroad like case study, that’s it’s really hard to Compare and saying like, has it been for each individual person, again, 10% better or taking somebody from a nine to a three is crazy for them. We talked earlier, you know about chronic pain, and how it just becomes like, it’s just always there. And what that does for not just your body, but your spirit is is so sad to see. But you know, now somebody who started their chronic pain was at a nine, it’s or you know, or their acute pain started as nine now it’s chronic pain, that’s just their state of being. So they’re like, that’s just like my five, that’s just I’m constantly like

CJ
this acceptance of the pain, and then it becomes a part of their identity. Yeah,

Kaleena
because they can’t, or they they’ve tried to find answers, but they couldn’t find answers.

CJ
And so many people that come through, and I don’t want to put down PTU doctors are the authority figures who have licensing in the in the medical field. However, I will say that they are governed by protocols and having to do things a certain way where we get to treat each individual as their own protocol, their own case study, like we had mentioned earlier. And it becomes a deeper conversation about not necessarily the why they’re in pain, right off the bat. It’s just like, what, what, when do you feel it? What does it feel like and just open up this communication where it gives them a chance to express what’s going on. And many times, it starts to relieve itself just in that conversation, because now they have somebody to hear them for that pain. That is not them. It’s just something they’re experiencing. And as, as coaches who are listening, we’re able to now start to problem solve, when in their life, this may have started, right, especially if it’s chronic pain, somebody’s experiencing chronic back pain, it’s easy to say I’m just getting older. But it’s also easy enough to realize you may have been sitting for the past decade, and not really doing anything to anti sit. And then we get the opportunity to educate how sitting compresses a lot of your front hip tissue and spine tissue and over time becomes plastic that then prevents you from being elastic. That then now you wake up out of bed with back pain every single morning without ever realizing how to mobilize your front hip that mobilizes your so as to detach that your spine causing your low back pain, right? It’s like, we get to critically think with each individual’s pain that a knee pain for somebody is different for somebody with this similar space in their knee, but they experience it entirely differently. Somebody can have knee pain and go run, somebody can be a knee pain and not want to walk. Right? And it’s opening that conversation as coaches and knowing that there’s nothing really we can do to get them out of pain, except for create a supportive environment for them to explore how to get out of it, how to unweave maybe what caused it initially, many people are in pain that just aren’t aware of what their how their foots turned, when they’re doing a lunge or how their eyes are like, piercing forward at the ground. And they’re always bent over. Versus like, Hey, bring your eyes up. They feel unbalanced for 10 seconds and they go oh my pains gone. Oh, I never have looked up in a lunge. I’ve always looked down. It’s like all these little things that we see as coaches come from no specific study. Except for the individuals that we’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of the hands on experience and open conversation. What would you say to somebody who’s who’s new to training or has been in training for a while that is working with people in pain? Any advice you could give them or or incite

Kaleena
MDMC hit up the MDMC program. You just get so many tools for how to tweak up tweak down to treat people. I think that’s a the other common misconception with fitness or being hurt is if it’s just like well stop doing that. No, like squats hurt my knee. I stopped doing that. But what if we just tweak the feet and you just if your right knee hurts, hey, just put your right foot like six inches forward. Try that squat again. Oh, no knee pain or else you know how stoked people are to say I can do a squat with weight mid doesn’t bother me just because I moved my foot six inches forward, or towing mount or telling them in and that’s valuable information. That’s not always like we just don’t think of that. That’s not like a it’s a untraditional method, but it gets incredible results.

CJ
Well, we also hear like, Towson squats is bad. Don’t be pigeon foot. Don’t be duck footed. You have to be straight ahead. You have to be neutral. So well how are you going to find success in this individual’s body. We might all be built of the same materials, but how we’re placed and organized and are aware of those tissues. That’s an entire that’s a whole nother conversation.

Kaleena
Well, and training women we’ve talked to we’ve had this conversation like biomechanically, women have wider set hips, they tend to be externally rotated through the femur more often. And that’s just what and have an anterior pelvic tilt, because they’re biomechanically like that’s not anything What’s wrong with them, that’s just how they’re set up. But traditional training says you can’t have those things and then still train. You know, we talked about doing a squat and how we say spine neutral, but chest up. For some women who have a crazy anterior tilt, they go do that. And that you get the anterior tilt combined with compression. And it just their lumbar spine is just PIs. And they’re always like, I can’t do squats, it hurts my back, because they’re trying to arch through their thoracic spine, and just compress everything, you know, because they’re trying they think to them, that’s spine neutral, right? To stay that upright, rigid. But hey, just tilt for it. 45 degrees for me. And all of a sudden you take them out of this lordosis you take them out of that crazy low back arch. Mind blown. Oh my gosh, right. Just infinitely better.

CJ
Just four doesn’t mean you’re flexing your spine. Yeah, if you’re doing it from your hips, right? Correct, you’ve got that is where then you know, those little cues like flex your core, flex your glutes or grip, your grip your toes can be important to set the foundation, I think the problem is that we end up relying too much on those cues as being perfect versus those cues are helping to create a position and an experience that is not painful. It’s not moving against our body, we’re moving. As we’re embodying our motion, we’re embodying our training versus trying to embody a squat or embody a lunge. It’s like it’s not about the squat, it’s not about the lunge, it’s about the person who’s doing the squat and the person who’s doing the lunges. And then saying, Yeah, I’m so much more aware of this space that I can move in around me, now I have options, I have accessibility, I have availability, and just saying that came from Viper Pro, those guys over there, the best ability is availability. Without availability, you’re not gonna be able to increase the capacity on multiple fronts, you’re gonna only have your 12, same lifts, that you’re enhancing the capacity of that, at some point. Boredom is a real thing. And you will start expressing yourself through different movements, but without some kind of organization or understanding on how to just be and move and give yourself permission, you’re always gonna be moving stiff and rigid, because that’s what you’ve been teaching yourself. Every single rep is to be stiff to be strict. Or you’re on the complete other side, which is completely anti that. And they’ve got all these other movement, dysfunctions that pop up from lacking the strength, you might have all this movement ability. You know, we’ve seen people that are hyper mobile, and they can put themselves into positions that like, yeah, I can get in this pretty easily, but they’re not aware of how they’re doing it, their body just allows it. And they might need to be focusing more on some traditional type string stuff, so that they can balance themselves out based on their body type. Would you say use about advice for coaches working with people in pain, discomfort, especially when they’re having that movement pain, while they’re or that pain while they’re moving?

Goose
I mean, same thing that Clint was saying mdmc. But like, the reason I’m saying that is work within what you know, because if you’re just if you’re using the tools that you know, obviously, I’m on the buyer side of MDMC to give you more tools, more knowledge for you to use. But if you work within what you know, you’re more likely to be successful. Keep it simple. Listen to your clients. Because if you’re listening to what their needs, what they’re experiencing, then you’re better able to tailor it to that person, or thing is a big point, all the case studies, all you know, the data, all the stuff all you know, the research is awesome, it gives a really good outlook on like the general idea. And maybe that’s going to help you be super successful. But it’s at the end of the day is going to boil down to the individual. So you need like you have to listen to your client, you need to listen to the individual and understand what’s going on with them and how you could help them be successful. But again, work within what you know, don’t see, or don’t try, you saw someone else doing something funky, I’m gonna I’m gonna try that with my client like No, no, understand what you’re doing first, and then apply. But understand it first.

Kaleena
You spent expand upon that, but keep expanding your box of knowledge. Because we have so many there are so many certifications out there and you might take one or two and then we stop. And you think that everybody just fits within that box of knowledge. And that that’s the only way to treat pain or that’s the only way to train. But again, every client is going to be different. And if you get stuck, at least you have other tools and resources to pull from. That’s kind of the magic behind being a great trainer is having all of these options to tweak to modify to pull from different strategies, whether you’re training for hypertrophy, and looks or whether you’re training for sports, you know, have these tools available, even just to think a little bit differently will change how you view you don’t have to take everything that you learn in every course and just strictly apply. If you don’t agree with something you don’t agree with something do you have your reasons for that? But again, being able to think outside of just your bubble and just your box as to what works and doesn’t work. Is such a big help. You talked about that. hypermobility, we had a girl come and actually one of my former soccer players who chronic like upper thoracic spine pain between the shoulder blade and went to PT and they, you know, like we said listen to your clients she didn’t feel like they listened to her like she was doing these exercises she said these hurt and they’re just like we’ll just keep doing them. And she came in and you know we assessed her we’re looking at stuff like anytime she was going into like a plank or push up position like she just get that pinching in the shoulder blades and I’m looking at her and I’m like, like, gosh, she’s like double jointed through her elbows and there’s no tension in her systems like Well No wonder her freaking shoulders are killing her because there’s no tension anywhere in the musculature. It’s all to the joints. But thinking outside of that box of it’s only strength based or it’s only only do this exercise I mean we put her in different positions to see what felt good right when she said that hurts. Okay, we’re gonna switch this and find a different position might trigger the same muscles and go oh my gosh, you’re hyper mobile. She didn’t even think that was part of the problem. Right? We don’t ask that’s not on our assessment are you hyper mobile by the way but to see that in like that was the only way I would have known or seen that was to actually see her in a plank position. Before you could see that jeans like double jointed that are elbows you know, you just see like, gonna snap. But just being able to think outside the box and going immediately going, oh my gosh, it’s not a mobility issue right now. Now it’s a stability issue.

CJ
I can’t wait for our next conversation. Oh, is more fun Have you had have you guys enjoyed this conversation as much as I did? Oh, yes, thank you cleaner. Thank you so much for continued push the envelope on science movement. And treating every single one of your clients like a case study. Every single person is an individual, every single person has their own abilities and capacities. And it’s our job to help guide that to its highest potential, their highest potential as well. If I could leave you with one statement world, to leave no rock unturned. And to prepare for all scenarios,

Goose
you’re a warrior

Michael Hughes
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