What IS Functional Training & How Can It Help My Clients?
Michael Hughes
Hey Gymnazo podcast listeners, Michael Hughes here, founder of Gymnazo. And I want to bring you into a conversation that another coach and I were having about this big topic of functional training, and the back and forth that is being talked about in our industry. This coach is very important coached me, CJ Kobliska, he is our Director of programming, dear friend, and someone who I really respect on this topic because Gymnazo we train functional training in its essence, as we see it. And we have some very polarizing opinions on it, and wanted to share our conversation, we started to get into it. And we realized this would be a great podcast. So we flipped the mics on and you’re going to come into our conversation, where CJ is telling his story of how he got into this thought process. And now what he does as a full time job as a career, and you’re stepping into his story, as a high school wrestler, and an amazing, uncomfortable situation, he got himself into where he dislocated his shoulder severely on the mat, and essentially carried off the padding. And he’s now in physical therapy, his assessments been done. He’s getting into his range of motion, and he’s into his treatment. And this is where you jump into the story and our conversation unpacking physical training. Now in this whole mix of what we call functional training, and how we believe everybody who was a more practitioner is a functional trainer. So let’s see what you think, and enjoy the story. Welcome to the Gymnazo podcast where you get to peek behind the curtains have 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
By mental state, like I need to get back to wrestling. Before that, I had to be able to shower, wash my hair, put my shirt on
Michael Hughes
ADLs ADLs. Without pain,
CJ
right? So I, there was no talk of how to do that better, you just had to figure it out. Don’t move too quickly and do as little as you can with that shoulder. So atrophy, weakness, pain, when you you know, you forget how you reach for something, you just subconsciously go to reach like I shouldn’t have done that essentially out a couple of days. And then you you’re able to come back. And it’s a lot of ups and downs. But I was just pissed off, most of the time I was doing physical therapy, it was, like I said, boring. And it didn’t feel like I was getting any better. It just felt dumb. And so when the PT said just you’re not supposed to go to training, wrestling or do anything else except these motions, I basically said, Well, I’m not going to tell them what I’m doing. I’m just going to tell them what to do exercises because that’s what I was doing. But I found myself going into kneeling positions going into senior positions going into prone going into side planks. And basically just seeing what my arm could do in the state that it was in without taking it to full training. They say typically take a few weeks before you get back on the mat and just do some light work. And that’s what I did. But I spent most of my time through the day, paying attention to my shoulder and pay attention to how the rest of my body was working with it. And I noticed that as I started to move like a little kinks in my back, I get a little ping in my knee, I’d get some neck discomfort, I have to sleep different I have to sit up and so I was making a lot of these adaptations to my daily life not really thinking too much about it except for that I need to make sure I don’t hurt my shoulder and that it heals properly. And long story short, I got back to wrestling six months, did a little summer camps and probably went back into a little bit too early. Didn’t really do my full functional spectrum movements and get back into wrestling to go back and like oh man I could have been it’s such a better experience and gotten back and maybe even stronger. So I think back to what I did to kind of heal myself In that process, because I didn’t feel that my physical therapists or any of my trainers could really assist me it was more so on my own, figure out how to move and function in daily life. That didn’t put me down into a downward spiral, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. What can I do was when I found myself asking. And to this day, I feel like that was the best call my shoulders continues to get stronger, and my body continues to get stronger around it and really wanted to share that experience with others who may have been going through similar injuries, pains, discomfort that have been told, you need to do this and follow the protocol. And don’t do anything else. Be afraid of doing other stuff, because you’re gonna hurt yourself? How can we flip that script? And that’s kind of been my mission, since that day is since the that injury was, I want to help people heal better, so that you can heal faster, you can’t raise physiology. But you can do it in a better environment, you can be more intentional with it, you can bring more purpose to how you’re healing and how you’re performing. Yeah,
Michael Hughes
yeah, real quick, you said that you can’t, you can’t necessarily speed up physiology, but you can certainly maximize what physiology and your biology has. And I think that’s, that’s a big, big, big point. Big point, you’re, the body’s going to go to heal as fast as it’s going to heal from from a chemical biological process. But there’s certain things I think we do more often that slow it down, that we don’t even realize they’re slowing slowing it down. Move anyways, I can jump into whole holiday tolerate that. But I think that’s a big, big, big, big point. Is that what can you what can you do? Because essentially, I can say very simply put, bringing blood flow to the area is going to help it heal again, under this premise, not faster, just more optimally. And that’s the kind of concept of what he says like, what what can I do? Versus what can I do it limit motion your limit blood flow? I just from a simple standpoint. So I like that look primarily
CJ
at that animals. And if they’re, they get hurt, do they just sleep it up and continue to do nothing? Or avoid finding food, finding shelter and taking care of their own, they’re going to, they’re going to find any way shape or form to continue living? Right? They have to do what they need to do not get it done.
Michael Hughes
So, so was that did that lead you into a thought process? That now is your daily job? Like, did you like so going back to the sitting in, in CJ shoes, you know, several years ago? How does it make you kind of question what functional training is now? And having the opportunity to like, Okay, how’s it maybe misunderstood? Or how is it? Or how would you define it as like, what would you say? Someone sitting in front of you right now saying, Michael, like I am, I guess, say Do you like, see what is functional training? Like what is
CJ
its training that has purpose? It’s that’s to the simplest degree training, it has purpose? Well, you got to ask, what’s your purpose? What are you trying to do? What is your function? And so to answer, what is function, I can only answer for me, I can answer for a general human population, which is we could generally more general group, no specific sport, no specific injury, just want to be more fit, want to exercise want to be healthy. So I mean, a big question asked is, What is your function? And there’s really one function, except to live? Yeah, but it’s also how are you going to enjoy your life? How do you want to enjoy moving in your life, if you don’t move, you’re not going to do anything you got to get from A to B, you got to get up in the morning, you got to take care of business you got to get you got to get from A to B. And so it starts with like, kind of locomotion, I guess, is function for humans. If you don’t, you can’t locomote How are you gonna do anything else? Just gonna sit in one spot and drink beer
Michael Hughes
and ice for a time being ready to go. But you right, you should think about I mean, think about those those clients and athletes that are using the term clients and athletes as as one meaning in a sense. I want to train for life. You kind of stare at that and be like, crap, how many different sports is that? Gosh, you know, look, motions running Okay, gotta be lifter to man, you gotta be able to kneel down and I gotta go up or down. You know? It’s like, wow, okay, so then you got to go from maybe a fast pace to a slow pace. And then you got to do that for Coach. How long is your game? Oh, it’s for 16 hours. Oh, that’s a long game. How many days weeks that every? Every day? Okay, you had a submaximal load. To me, it’s almost similar to like, I play baseball for a three hour stint maximum. You know, maybe three and a half hours. That’s a long game. Cool. What do you do? Well, I swing and I play first base. Oh, great. Well, how often do you leave first base? Wow, you know the bunt a few times. Got to do quick load, you know, done. Oh, cool. I can really niche that down into some specific Move in patterns that we should probably, you know, essentially? Well, you know, as we say, you know, wire together to fire together and vice versa versus daily life, you’re like, wow, and you have no idea what’s going to come to you, you have no idea who your opponent’s going to be, you have no idea. Okay, maybe that’s a higher caliber trainer in this the way that I look at
CJ
to consider as light functional trainers, yourself a functional trainer. You gotta be ready for any possibility. Right?
Michael Hughes
And there’s no seasons, there’s no offseason. Seasonal I guess you could die. That’s your offseason. But you know, you know, you can take vacations not long, long story short, so why do why is there this? But you know, why is there so much chatter about functional training? Why is there so much in a sense, it seems to be this polarizing topic of I love it, or you’re an idiot, if you do it. What’s it mean mean to you,
CJ
it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. It’s so easy with all these possibilities, all this potential for movement, your human bodies give us things that we don’t even we don’t even know yet. We’re still finding things that, you know, people do a lot of like circus tricks or fun little things with their body that they’re functional for that it’s figuring stuff out. But I think functional training can be get caught in that bucket of it’s just a bunch of tricks. Depends on what how you’re training, what’s your purpose, are you trained to be able to just do random things with your body. Or if you’ve got somebody that you’re training, your training is more about tricks and finding little weird ways to contort your body. But you’ve got an athlete coming in, who, let’s say is 60 years old, hasn’t done a lot of intentional physical training, but they like to travel, they do laundry, they have stairs, to get up to their house, they have to step up into their truck, they’ve got little grandkids, you’ve got to consider all those little motions and positions that they will potentially be experiencing. And also the training access into new positions if they have been so D trained, they may have fallen into dysfunction and path of least resistance is that are leading to pain, leading to back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, I mean, you can talk about any kind of pains. But it’s typically from a lack of intention in their training, or just they haven’t ever trained before. And so as a trainer who trains functionally, you’ve got to define a few staples for the people that you train. And so you can get lost in the variety. And just like let’s just try a bunch of random stuff that may carry over to some results, but may lead to dysfunction and pain, because you’re just unaware of what you’re actually assessing and movement. Or you can put them into buckets and buckets out to use are the ability to squat to lunge to push to pull to reach to lift to locomote, and to vertical or jump. And think that’s pretty much everything we can do in the simplest manner, global movements, things that are a compound, that if you’ve trained more traditionally, you may have isolated versions of a lunge versions of a squat versions of a push and pull. But you might have been focusing more on the muscle muscles versus the actual movement. And so I think that’s where there’s a big disconnect. And what functional training really is, is that it involves global compound movements, and we’re training those for people so that they can get better at those things. Where I think on the other side is we’re going to train the muscles to do those things better. But there’s a lack of carryover when you isolate and don’t globalize the motion.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, it’s coming from you know, Bush with both some Bachelors of Science in Kinesiology right, you know, learning those, you know, spending a decent chunk of our life at that point, learning all that different standpoint, you really, you really pick up on this fact that muscles move bones right? To me, that’s it that was very clear. That was very clear. muscles move balance and I’m not disagreeing with that. But that’s kind of where the story stops. You know, it’s like well, wait a minute. Wait, so what moves muscles then? And you gotta say oh, we have one of those yellow things are on anatomy charts. Oh, nerves. Got it. Okay, and then what are nerves do well, it’s to me it’s like it’s an Ethernet cord. It carries a signal so how those things get fired up? Oh, there’s mechanical receptors that actually sense right? They sense rotation they sent pressure they said stretching under the Gush and keep on you know, hot cold but it goes on everything you do to tissue right. It will kill what makes those guys fire up. movement right yeah, movement, right. Yeah. So how do you get movement? You start kind of reverse engineering is things like well, how do you get movement? Oh, I guess. Go gravity. Right. Oh, I guess moving happens once you move you keep going Momentum. Okay, cool. And if you don’t weigh anything, well, then a gas grab is not going to do anything for you. So you got to get this, you know, this hobby Summit, right? There’s got to be some some weight to it, right? So it’s like, Oh, wow. Okay, so if you break it all down, it’s really this whole concept of physics. And if you understand physics, you know, just plan out physics, you know, then you can really start to build this process of the thinking about like, okay, so why have these, these these kind of parameters that we all kind of eventually agree upon which we could talk about the theory of gravity? But you know, then
CJ
Does it even exist?
Michael Hughes
Then if you can understand that, oh, so this turns on the nerves, finally get the nerves going, then I guess what am I really training, I’m just training a muscle to do something that I tell it to do. Therefore, it’s going to get better at doing that thing. And only that thing. So basically, I sitting down right here, with a notepad and some nice cold beers in your hands, we’re getting we’re training right now we’re, you know, working out right now, we’re trying to sit down with our right hand or your left hand and have a good time. So we’re going to get better at that. Because we do that more often. Just like I found the take up a barbell, I’m gonna be very good at holding that, you know, seven and a half feet of steel are the cases and throwing it up in the air and catching it. And that’s a pretty cool thing to do. But I’m only gonna get good at that if I do that. So I liked this whole concept of like, wait a minute, you got to train for other small, very significantly insignificant pieces, in a sense, to make this whole global chain happen. Because we aren’t training muscles to do something, then I think we’re really missing the boat. That it’s much more than that. It’s the founding much more than that. We do it subconsciously
CJ
unconsciously to our training, like what you said, sitting sitting here, right now. We’re training our bodies to sit, maybe a hunch? Are we aware of our body position? Also? Where do you typically put your beer on the table? Do you always put it on your left side? Well, do you always grab with your left hand, or now you might be isolating a joint? What happens if you reach across your body with the other hand, you’re creating a new chain reaction in your body that if you haven’t held a beer in your left hand many times, chances are the beer is gonna end up in your right hand most of the time.
Michael Hughes
It kind of feels awkward, right? It’s like, what’s the whole beer thing? Yeah.
CJ
And that’s, I get somebody coming in and going, Man, I just reached the wrong way. And I laugh at a statement like that, because
Michael Hughes
it’s not about the state. But I
CJ
reached the wrong way. Is there a wrong way to reach? Is there a wrong way to do what you just did? I think that’s where we run into a lot of discrepancies is that we think there’s a right way to do
Michael Hughes
it. There’s no wrong way to Right, right.
CJ
And so if there’s a right way, that means there’s a wrong way. But what if we consider there’s a lot of right ways to do something. And we start gifting opportunities to your body to train those other options. And I think that’s where functional training can be very powerful is that it helps to reveal what can your body do? And what currently cannot not do? Because if we find something that it can’t do, you may initially say what’s wrong, or I just can’t do that? Well, we either need to make some kind of change or tweak to what you’re doing so that your body can do it, find success, and then work towards what it can’t do. Or, you know, figure out why your body is not able to do it, is it a cueing thing are you sequencing off, are you not linking together the chains of your hand to your wrist to your elbow, to your shoulder to your thoracic spine, when you go to reach if your peers on your left side, you’re gonna reach your left hand, there might not be very much motion happening or thoracic spine, but you take it another hand across, and it requires your thoracic spine to rotate, right? If we haven’t trained thoracic spine rotation, you might just isolate your shoulder. And now you may have pinged a certain tissue that lengthen beyond its state that it enjoys that it prefers normalcy pinches, now got a kink in my neck for a day. Well, okay, that can happen one time, but what if that starts happening more often? And in other parts of your body? Most people write it off as I’m getting older. It’s just part of Old Age Insurance. Yeah, but I mean, what do you what do you typically say to somebody who says I’m moving wrong? Or I’m getting older? I can’t do that are very similar statements.
Michael Hughes
Yeah. My if someone says my Prakash is just I’m getting older, I say not your body just moving away that it’s not very good at. And that’s kind of my general statement. It’s like, what do you mean they’re not not very good at? Like, well, how often? How often do you know this is this is a very kind of profound, you know, thought that says, like, gosh, I thought my back picking up a toothbrush. You know, it was like, it was out of nowhere. And I kind of, I looked back and said, well, let’s let’s What do you do that day? I did nothing. Type Sidama desk you know, it’s on in the middle of COVID. It’s like, exactly, you know, you didn’t do anything, you did a lot of stuff. And what you do the day before that, and the day before that, and it’s just, it’s this even even I’m guilty of this as much as like we, we don’t realize that we’re always doing something. And our bodies always keeping score. And it’s always there. And, you know, I got to bring in this this amazing word called fascia. You know, there’s it’s always being related, like, I always picture there’s this, there’s a spider or this group of spiders always crawling over our entire body, laying new web every given moment of the entire day. And I love that morning, you wake up and you do this nice little stretch. It’s kind of your body just contorts though I don’t tell it to do that it just does it. And I lean this way, and it feels amazing. Go the other way. And if it’s like, I didn’t tell it to do this, reciprocating, you know, coil type fashion, it just did it and it felt good. And I didn’t know until relatively recently that that’s the fashion of the Delete ripping itself in ripping it, you know, but remoulding it itself. And it’s like, Oh, what’d you do for last eight hours, was probably in a semi fetal position, sleeping. Oh, my son. And I just broke it all up. And that’s like that layering concepts like, Yeah, I’m getting older now. No, you’re just training yourself in a particular way. And you just broke that pattern in a pretty profound way. And your body said, I’m going to protect you, I’m actually going to protect you. Especially with like, the lower back getting stiff, you know, subluxation of your shoulder. That necessarily wasn’t my protection. Yeah, different. Yeah. Right. But I think that’s a very, very, super profound comments like, oh, wait a minute. So the more I trained in versatile LSA, and the more contained versatile Li, the more I can, therefore have unsticky moments, where if you shoulder if your spine doesn’t rotate enough, right, you have enough range of motion in your shoulder. Or if you do have a, let’s say, a super heavy weight to lift, and you do have to rotate in a significant way. Your body says, Wait a minute, that’s not new to me. I can compromise. Right? Compromise is not a bad word. It just kind of can’t compromise in a way that’s it’s successful. Right? Does that make sense?
CJ
Yeah. Take it back to the the old age comment. It’s somebody specifically who sits a lot. And they’re training their body daily, but they don’t consider that their training, they consider themselves sitting. And that’s not true. Not training, you’re training 24/7 you’re training yourself to sleep, you’re training yourself to wake up, you’re training yourself into patterns of daily living, that the more you live that same pattern, the more you fall into that attractor well, more you fall into that path of least resistance, how likely it is to be going through your path of least resistance, comfortable until it’s broken down until you’ve strained the tissue that you’ve been using over and over again. Are you sitting 234 hours a day at a time? Are you sitting for an hour at a time are you standing in a certain position, it’s not that sitting is bad. It’s not that standing in one position is bad. It’s not that sitting into one hip or leaning on a certain hip is bad. It’s that we become so unaware and conditioned to be that way that we don’t realize there’s another way to be, which is more functional. If you’re falling into your path of least resistance, that may be your function, but you are limiting yourself to that function. If you define yourself as your age and that you define your pains as part of age, and you define these things as things that cannot be changed. You’re denying a crucial part of life, a truth of life that is we are adapting evolving daily. And we’re setting ourselves up for success or for lack of success is one of the ideas you’re growing or you’re dying kind of thing. Are you walking and getting better at walking? Or are you walking in getting more damaged? Does walking two miles hurt your feet? Does it hurt your knees, it hurt your clients feet and knees. It’s not the walking. It’s the lack of priming in access to certain tissues, certain parts of our body that’s going to limit our success. And so I get somebody who comes in that sits a lot and I say what do you think your back pain is coming from that gap getting older? Yeah, you’re getting older and doing the same thing. How about if we change something which is to do anti sitting motions, let’s get into a stride. Let’s not work on your back pain. Let’s work on giving you access to your hips, your thoracic spine and your feet in such a way that when you sit you know that when you get up you’ve got feet knees, ankles, hips, a spine, back, although back right, but those areas that hurt they’re gonna ping you and you’re going to become very aware of them that you are going to put blame on those spaces. It is my back that hurts. It is my feet that hurt. Well, sure. It’s that there hurts, but consider the cause.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, and I like it, we say it considering the motion that you do. So let’s go to like a golfer, right? Which I love. I love golf, personally, it’s a great sport, you hit one good shot in 100, that’s about me, but about 100. And I’m good, I’m good, I got this, it doesn’t lift me. But you constantly swing the same, essentially the same way, you load the for me, I loaded my right side, and then unloaded my left side. And if I do that, on an amateur level, at least do that, just to keep the numbers simple 50 times, you know, at least 50 times because putting a little different, you know, so even though the numbers bigger than that, but to keep math simple. And then if I do that on the daily, that’s 50 times seven, right? Because I’m out there every day just practicing not playing, but just practicing. And you do that for a career. Right, and that’s a super low number, you know, anyways, that’s a lot of wear and tear, in the same way I would look at it like that’s a car tire that you’ve never rotated. How’s it going to wear, it’s always on the front left side? Well, the weight on the front left side of that vehicle is different than it is the back right side. It just says different, the loads are different, the stresses are different, that tire turns on the front left side, it doesn’t turn on the back right side. So to use a little bit differently, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a wear pattern that’s consistent to that front, left tire. I’m pretty sure you should rotate your tires. Why? Or to get longevity out of them. Right? So it wears evenly, not consistently. And, you know, it’s it’s a whole concept like, yeah, you’ve keep moving the same way over and over in the place of like, sweet, I’m good at this. And because I’m good at it, I’m gonna keep doing it. And I’m going to try to do that even when you tell me subconsciously not to do I’m still gonna try to do it that way. And I hope I don’t reach my, my theoretical limit, right? You know, not physical limit. That’s a rip in a tear. But you know, you get that back spasm. That’s a theoretical limit revised. A year you read lines, you didn’t blow the engine gasket, you read myself, but
Unknown Speaker
yes, yes, give me attention.
Michael Hughes
So most people in the world experience that. I would say 99% of the world experiences that what we just said. So it’s function training an answer for that. Or its function just ridiculous. Sending on a weird contraption. Like how does functioning fit into that commentary that every single human being experiences?
CJ
Well, let’s let’s talk about this. What’s something that every should say? Most people do? And we’ve established this as the beginning. It’s gate
Michael Hughes
right? Look 100% So let’s say that’s biggest exercise.
CJ
That’s miles. You’re right, you get a walk, you gotta get up. Even if you’re just walking to the bathroom, you walk into the fridge, right? Combat your couch, especially in desert COVID. You might just be walking around your house. But you’re walking? Is your aware pattern going to continue to wither you away? Damage you create dysfunction? Or is it going to make you more resilient, more aware and continue to evolve and adapt your ability functional ability? It’s one or the other, right? Every step you take, hurting you harming you? Or is every step step you take? Helping you grow?
Michael Hughes
Knowing that it actually is only one or the other?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, it’s one of the I can’t Why would it be in between? Right,
Michael Hughes
right? Exactly. Yeah, it’s either getting better, it’s getting worse.
CJ
And I think most individuals who don’t have a good coach, or don’t consider how they move as something important to how they live their life. They’re going to end up wearing in a way that leads to some kind of dysfunction and the list goes on. But most commonly, it’s gonna lead to broken down meniscus, plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, hip impingement, low back pain. I hear we hear all the time. Every trainer has heard their clients talk about one of those. And generally, I hear that it’s a blame on walking or running that caused it. Interesting. And I’d argue that that’s not what caused your pain or dysfunction. I’d argue it’s the lack of awareness and symmetry that your body has in loading that’s causing that. And it’s your lack of training out of that asymmetry. Back to symmetry, even though you’re not gonna be perfectly symmetric, like everybody does. Right?
Michael Hughes
You’re good enough.
CJ
We’re not all ambidextrous. We can all kick with both feet. We don’t have two very, very strong legs that are equal. There’s some kind of imbalance always but functional training helps to acknowledge the imbalance, acknowledge the asymmetry, and respect it noticing your asymmetry doesn’t mean you’ve got a bad side. And a good side means you’ve got to the side that you’ve biased and you’ve got an attractor well and a path of least resistance towards way of loading, where the side may be lacking a path that’s consistent. You may be right leg dominant. And somebody might pose a right glute pain after a four mile run. And they think the right glutes are at fault. But upon assessment, we find that their left anterior hip ms quite a bit limited. And we find that every time they take a right foot step forward, their right glute goes into more loading than their left side. So how can somebody make the argument that it’s the walk that caused the pain versus the walk was just kind of a mechanism to bring about the symmetry? When we started working on the left front hip, and how did you write but pain go away? That’s functional training. That’s,
Michael Hughes
is that snake oil? Okay, can look like it? Right? Because it’s not it’s not it’s a lot of people think it would argue that’s not directly connected. But you’re like, wait a minute, you know, I have to say, dissected a human being before. And last time I checked. Yeah, it’s connected. Pretty well. Yeah, seriously? Like, yeah, like it’s directly directly connected to everything else to eggs. Exactly. So you start, right, truly. But that’s, that’s interesting, because it doesn’t make sense. Because it hurts on my right, or my left glute, whatever, right. And even, and I just want to rub that, you know, I want to foam roll, I want to stretch it, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, right, roll. That’s right. Right. But that’s instinct, I’d say, yeah, that’s definitely instinct. So how, how would the general population understand that more than likely, a non impact injury has nothing to do they think that that actually hurts? How they know that? If seriously, I’m asking you. I’m asking a trainer to a trainer here. Yeah. Like how would they? Is it our responsibility to do that? I think most certainly no. is it functional trainings, quote, unquote, responsibility to make people aware how their body actually functions? I would say so. And then I’d also admit that we don’t fully know No, absolutely not.
CJ
Why did that left tip make your right buddy that Why did you let him do that in the first place?
Michael Hughes
And how long has it been there for?
CJ
That’s man speculate a lot. I think that’s where traders can run into trouble is being definitive on what why it is the way it is, because we may not really know. But by assessing, strictly looking at the truth of human movement, what does this person come in with, in present, if we do a spherical assessment, and I mean, looking at how does their body move in a sphere around them, you’ve got a front, you’ve got to back you’ve got above, you’ve got below, you got to your right and left and you can twist in between. If they don’t know how to do that with their foot or their hands. It’s our job to expose where those weaknesses where those inhibitions may be. And it does make your athletes and clients feel very vulnerable, because they might be moving in ways that are so unorthodox, though our body can do it. And I think that’s also where the disconnect is in functional training. Is that because it looks weird? It’s wrong? Because it looks scary. Yeah, wrong. Because you’re not keeping your spine in neutral. It’s wrong. Our body has the ability to move through a lot of different directions and motions and things that do look scary. And a lot of times what’s scary, it creates injury.
Michael Hughes
What’s kind of funny, scary, what’s scary, is here’s what’s taught to you. Scary is
CJ
or what nature don’t do that you’re gonna hurt yourself. Don’t get up on that wall. It’s you’re gonna fall off and hurt, is it? It’s training, it’s trained and conditioned into us from a young age.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, I’m scared to go in front of a bunch of tigers. But a tiger trainers not. I don’t know, just I just thought that right now.
CJ
I bet there’s still a little freaked out.
Michael Hughes
But as always, but me picking up a 75 pound bag that’s, you know, just how to have some fun with these numbers. You know, 44 degrees rotated off my center. That doesn’t scare me from the ground
Michael Hughes
because I know how to access my ankle rotation. I know how to access my hip rotation without accessing my knees limited rotation and know how to access my thoracic spine rotation. And I know how to brace this tension network to act like a spring or rubber band. Not as a mechanical hydraulic system that forces you No, no, it’s elastic. Yet I understand that
CJ
think it’s, I interpret them wrong, but probably because you switched from purely machine based training, to more free weight training. Yeah, you started to expose your body, it’s gotten out of
Michael Hughes
agreement. Right, right. Yeah. A machine, I would hope, I hope at this point from the basic understanding of most professional movers, right? Movement practitioners that a machine trains that range of motion that that machine can go in, you know, the typical, traditional, you know, machine you see in any any gym, right, it’s only going to train that motion pattern, and you’re gonna be really good at that motion pattern in the position that you’re in performing that motion. And I’m gonna, I can keep it going. Like, even if you’re stumped a little bit, you’re gonna get better as a slump, you know, the whole thing is your body is only good as exactly as where it is. Which is really cool. If you’re a professional, or a, you know, a highly competitive athlete. Because you just get better at that. And I really, I really like to pick on, because it’s such an amazing skill of a Olympic lifting. It’s an amazing skill. super impressive. super powerful. Really amazing what what numbers people can put up. But if you’re really good at that, are you how, how good are you going to be at something else? I mean, if you’re really good at that, right, like if I’m really good at swimming. How am I going to really be really good at football?
CJ
I got a story for you. I was a kid. I got a neighbor who’s bodybuilder. Big dude. Jacked.
Michael Hughes
Like, look like look like on a cover magazine guy. Yeah, like
CJ
full on did the whole diet plans for years? Sure. He’s on steroids.
Michael Hughes
Like that big. Yeah, he’s big dude. Gotta build
CJ
your do doing yard work in the backyard. Putting some gravel down. Got a steep driveway. It’s only about 15 yards. But then you got to go to the back and around the pool and then dump the gravel on the back.
Michael Hughes
Well few twists and turns
CJ
on like 12 years old fill the wheelbarrow up we loaded up the driveway balance run in the back and on our way, come back out refill it. bodybuilder guys walking by as I guess need some help. Yeah, come on, help us out. Do you feel about the wheelbarrow a little bit too heavy, like just, he’s built those like, yeah, he will be
Michael Hughes
fine. But he can lift it vertically though he lives close to skids off real easy went
CJ
up that driveway and the first time you put a little more weight on his right foot. Gravel went flying over his like how you guys do with this like a little bit less in there. You put a little less in. Same thing coming back up other side foot. He couldn’t level himself out. He was like he was working hard to stabilize. But it was like he was trying to keep a isolated approach, bicep curl, walk straight ahead. Any slight deviation, lack of control loses it. And I’m not saying all bodybuilders like this by any means. But I think it’s just a prime example of if you trained in straight lines. Anytime you move outside of that line and try to curve it, try to rotate, you’re gonna swing a baseball bat, you’re gonna throw a ball, you’re gonna run, you’re gonna, you’re gonna move one foot in front of the other, and you don’t train a lot of rotation, you actually do anti rotation, you’re going to be preventing yourself from being fully functional. If you choose to do yard work if you choose to go for a run. But if you’re training these lines, and you say that I’m going to this is helping me get better and everything you’re lying. You didn’t you’re lacking purpose and intent. If you’re telling me that you’re doing it to build build this muscle group up, yes, it’s functional for that. But I really think that it comes down to does your training carryover to what you do outside of those lifts? Are you training curls to get better at curls? Or are you training curls so that you can feel better biceps but also so you can lift something from your hip to your chest also, so you can stabilize that. But then also be able to walk while you hold? Are you just training with your feet together? Well, if you just put your stance a little bit, it’s going to carry over a little more functionally to get to walking to a split stance. If you do deadlift, neutral feet. That’s fun for for deadlift, maybe for lifting something off the ground. But I’ve lifted a lot of things off the ground with my feet not together just not thinking about it. I pulled my shoes up off the ground. So when they go yes, shoes don’t weigh anything. I’ve had a lot of people come into I’ve been trained functionally and they said yeah, I was bending over to put my shoes on and I hurt my back.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, it’s a lot more
CJ
slowly picking up your shoes and putting a shoe on. You got to be worried about that and sneezing and it’s just there’s all these fears that come up from lack of functional training. And I think there’s a there’s a very simple way is to just start to integrate principles of human movement. So that your lifting for shirts and make you look good naked, too. But you’re also going to be able to serve Have your community serve your family serve yourself without having to be fearful of slipping a disk? Because you’re old?
Michael Hughes
So, so slipping a disk. So you’re saying you should be able to rotate and spin and lift? Well, doesn’t that Dermott? Doesn’t that ruin knees? Doesn’t that ruin lower backs? Doesn’t that ruin, etc? Right? Yeah, that’s common. I get often it’s like, how are you doing? You’re going to damage your clients knees. It’s true comment I’ve gotten. And I look at them. And like, first I was like, Okay, it’s a fight. But then I realized, well, wait a minute, I thought that way, too. I did. And my current education limited me from my new education. You know, I only had a certain pair of glasses on. And I just couldn’t see anything else. So therefore, it threatened me and what I knew. And deep inside, I kind of had a little therapy session about this, it threatened to be who I was, and I don’t want to feel threatened. So I defend. And in reality, I wasn’t open to it, because I didn’t want to think I’m stupid. So therefore, I think the other person is stupid. And hit you will use word stupid, because no one’s really stupid. It’s just that lack of understanding about what is truly the breadth of the scope of the spectrum. And we have this tool, right, this spectrum tool that kind of allows us to see Oh, Judas on this side, man. Don’t, it’s all right. All right, I’m on this side. Oh, you’re on that side? Well, you know, he That’s right. You know, I’m on that side, too. And okay, so let’s see where we are actually all functional trainers, you just have a function that’s unique to that specific motion pattern. All right. Do you wanna do something outside of that motion pattern? Not really. Oh, great. Cool, then I don’t think then you can just keep on doing that. But don’t expect to move that wheelbarrow. When asked for some help. Right? As an example, right. So how would you how would you kind of kind of bring this circle back and be like, okay, so what does that spectrum? Yeah. How do you think about what functional training is? Answering? Why that low back actually can rotate with load? Truly, and how it’s inside and touching the low back? Like, if that’s a big issue that people they think about? Like, you shouldn’t do that you should stay spine spine, which was one of the most commonly used phrases I’ve ever seen. That’s why and why is that maybe limited, right? Not wrong. It’s certainly not wrong. But why is it limited?
CJ
Yeah, I’d love for us to get beyond You’re right. You’re wrong. As a training community. It’s, there’s so many right ways. And it’s easy to just say, Well, I’m right. And this is why, right? Okay, we’ll have a reason why at least and 100 Forfarshire about it, because there are going to be things that we consider as trainers that other trainers will consider different to and depends on. Whoa, what was your training leading up to where you are today? What types of certifications have you done? What kind of sports have you played? What kind of coaches have you had? Masters have you talked to there’s a lot of pieces that go into making you right? And so I think you bringing up the spectrum is so important because it’s not about right or wrong. It’s about minding the gap of where you are in function. Because ideally want to do something that’s exactly what we’re trying to train for. If you’re training for wakeboarding the best way to get better, wakeboarding is probably to wakeboard. If you want to become a better pitcher, the best way to become a better pitcher is to pitch and to do
Michael Hughes
it, I guess that’s true functional training. Right? It’s true. Right? It’s not the definition. Yeah, I
Unknown Speaker
think that’s functional training. I
Michael Hughes
think that just is function. Right? So it’s better for inside our facility here is really not that functional training. No, no, no, in the grand scheme of
CJ
training for baseball, we don’t have a baseball diamond here. We don’t have a mound, right? But we have a box that can simulate a mound, we have space to simulate 90 feet and so forth. So we can we can simulate these environments. So I think environment becomes a very important part of the spectrum.
Michael Hughes
So it’s simulation training. Got it? Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about now. Okay.
Unknown Speaker
We’re in the same programming simulation.
Michael Hughes
That’s true. We’re code writers in the simulation. So
CJ
I guess swimming swimmers, especially with COVID right now they shut down a lot of pools. So how does the swimmer get better at swimming? Cash, you
Michael Hughes
gotta get in the water. You gotta get the water. But
CJ
what if you can’t get water? How do you simulate the environment? Well, it’s tough to just create buoyancy in space. But pretty hard, you’re prone or supine, maybe a sideline. So those are some ground ways to train. When you’re in the pool, and you’re assuming there’s also this kind of figure eight. There’s, this involves the use of the shoulders, your spine, your hips. So if you maybe can’t simulate the environment, what other parts of and swimming, can you simulate? Well, you’ve got positions that you can consider, like we just talked about. You’ve got your mass and momentum. Let’s say you’re carrying yourself forward and you’ve got a flip turn or something you can consider your momentum. What kind of motion is occurring? Is it just one dimensional? It’s just one joint, or using multiple joints and are using three dimensions. Okay, well, so now we can start to think about what are the motions that the person is going through in swimming? Are we going to isolate it to just an internal and external rotation of the shoulder? Or we’re gonna look at flexion, extension, AB adduction, abduction, and then transverse plane motion as well? How can we combine all three? And now add some load that builds stronger movement? In the swip? Is it a freestyle stroke? Is it best breaststroke? There’s a lot of things to
Michael Hughes
not just show but let’s have a check the shoulder connects to the scapula and flick the scapula connects to the thoracic spine, and right in the scuffs. And it makes to the right, right dysfunctional right is that yeah, that seems like so I doing going back to your original story, you’re pinching that towel against your ribcage, you know, because it engages more muscles, and then doing your drill of introduction, rotation, etcetera, etcetera. Doesn’t seem like the scapula is moving that much. Nor is a fast spine moving at all.
CJ
And didn’t give me things to do while I was in my sling. So there was still time that I could have been training but done nothing with my shoulder but incorporated some kind of movement with my rest of my body
Michael Hughes
because your scapula didn’t have surgery on it. Right. And you can move your scapula that moving, you’re gonna join right.
CJ
And it was stabilized in a sling. So
Michael Hughes
interesting.
CJ
Why could I not move that tissue? I think it’s just, it’s dangerous. But life is dangerous. So we’ve got to kind of step outside of this fear of don’t do this. Don’t do that. And say, Well, what can we do right now, obviously, there’s some of those motions that the PT gave me that will probably very important, that are very important, just in the initial healing phase to build some initial strength. The problem was, as soon as I got to a certain degree, uncleared, I’m still in pain, I’m lacking range of motion, I don’t feel confident. Cash I preserve
Michael Hughes
a whole topic of basically, the medical side of movement clears you via via insurance, to get to your ADLs. And again, activities of daily daily living, it does not get you to actually any threshold of performance, and performances of amusing that in a broad sense, can you brush your teeth? Can you go to the bathroom? Can you drive your car? Good. Insurance says, Okay, we’re gonna stop paying. See you later, PT thanks for doing your job. And to all the PTS out there saying like, Oh, man, there’s a lot more going on there. But that’s the only way I’m gonna get paid. I’m not sure you know, you get cash now. It’s a whole different topic.
CJ
That’s why it comes into like, why are you in your third ACL surgery? There’s something that’s not working, right. It’s not your ACL. It’s the rest of your body, putting all the stress in your ACL. There’s instances where it’s like an impact injury where you’re like that was unavoidable. But there’s integrity that can fill in the whole rest of your body that creates a whole new path of least resistance
Michael Hughes
I can at least minimize it will minimize least, right. But it’s tough
CJ
because it’s like, you drive your car and you don’t wear a seatbelt and you never get in a car accident. Of course, seatbelt doesn’t do anything for me. Okay, well, what about that one time? Well, well, my seatbelt and I got whiplash. Okay, what if you didn’t wear your seatbelt? Would you’ve gotten more injured. And I think that’s where it’s like life is dangerous training is dangerous. We can start training in zones of motion that your body may just lack awareness and freak out and brace and you strain something or pulling muscle where if you trained it, you’re now not going to strain the tissue you just you feel you feel like they’re the muscle may have worked a little bit too hard. But how do you know that the functional training helped you just feel that little bit of a little bit of a tug that saved you from a tear or a rupture? It’s it’s tough to study that it’s the it’s the what if scenario, and I think that’s why functional training as a concept doesn’t get a good rap is because it’s tough to prove the beauty of what it can do for you. And I think it’s more of qualitative experience. It’s even says fun in the word functional. Like it’s not about just doing fun things. But knowing there’s a purpose behind what you’re doing that’s going to make you more resilient, more adaptable, and more aware. And more set up for evolution of your own your own body and your own potential.
Michael Hughes
You made me think of something you can’t the study, right? Oh, show me that. Show me the results. Right. Yeah. Not results in a human being on a piece of paper. Right? Show me the study that says says that. And I started looking into a lot of studies to actually make a study a true study that somebody will actually read in a journal, you have to have a controlled environment replicatable data that flies in the face of ADLs flies in the face of activities of daily life that flies in the face of any sport, any activity. Really, if you break it down to just the nuts and bolts, you have to have replicatable data, wait a minute, and control parameters and data? Wait a minute, that’s not what life is. So there’s the study is already biased towards something like you have to do the same thing over and over again. I guess we’re not studying functional training anymore. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s such a small thing. I realized. The whole aspect is that maybe you can’t do a study on this, you can only actually look at individual results as it Yeah, on my pants gone. Or look at my posture. It’s different. Or I haven’t had an ache and pain in years. And I typically throw out my back every six months. Subjective, right, it’s all subjective. But isn’t isn’t enough subjective results objective? In a sense, I don’t know, I really look at this whole thing. The themes that we’re looking at, right, you know, it’s like this is, yeah, maybe this is if you’re trying to, if you’re trying to get a stamp of approval from a journal, peer reviewed, double blind study. Maybe the study is the problem. Not the topic.
Unknown Speaker
I think there’s a lot to be gained from studies didn’t Don’t get us wrong, I think. Absolutely.
Michael Hughes
Absolutely. Not on this topic. Not on this topic. You know? Yeah. Good. Because that’s, that’s how I was educated. I was educated that show me the show me the journal. Cool. Great. Well, therefore, if you do, I did a whole certification on how lifestyle equipment traditional machines now equipment, reduced knee pain and edited, edited. And they had results
Unknown Speaker
get any study to show exactly.
Michael Hughes
I know exactly. Because it’s a replicatable products. And it just, I know someone who does studies is going to say, Well, Michael, you’re missing this point, this point, but am I really missing the essence of what is of what a of an actual laboratory quote unquote study is, and I don’t think I really am, because they’re not going to verify it. And therefore, the result is in the person’s hands. And therefore each individual last time I checked is an individual. And the only way that functional training or training of any nature that is individualized must be Besley, programmed, coded, right, is based upon the individual’s wants and needs, functional capacities, range of motions, etc, etc. So therefore, protocol in any nature is going to be there for much more limited than it is going to be anything else.
CJ
In principle, it is in parts inhibited, right, you’re lacking the full picture, right? It’s giving you a picture, but it’s giving you a little frame of the big picture,
Michael Hughes
like the bell curve, in a sense, but you’re not looking at the rest of the curve. That’s true.
CJ
You’re looking at a piece of it that in this specific population on this specific day with these specific parameters that this specific thing happened if you do this, and this in this order, this is the result you’re gonna get. And many cases it just it’s, it doesn’t make full sense because you’re regarding that study as truth versus life as truth. As soon as you put parameters on life, you’re not looking at the truth, you’re looking at a part of the truth. So how can we as trainers come to an understanding that what we see is true. The more you see movement, the more you see movement, and the more you’re looking at a specific thing, the more you’re going to see it?
Michael Hughes
No, because I definitely feel definitely I feel I definitely know that human movement has specifics to it. Not not guarantees, but specifics, like the ankle joint has certain specifics of angles of motion, but not all joints. The knee has only so much, you know valgus and Barisan depending on the person, right, etc, etc, etc. So we know that the foot should load and explode in a certain way. And I love this big topic of coming out of how should you train the best athletes in the world? Well, let’s look at the best athletes in the world. What do they do? Ooh, that may be counter to what pronoun you know, you know, I know I’m going to a bigger topic here. But is that is what is function. Well, let’s look at the best in the world. Let’s look at you know, when I was working in golf We’re working with a junior, junior golf academy. And everyone, Tiger Woods has blown up that event. And everyone wants to swing like Tiger Woods. So they would pull on the TV screen, say, Here’s Tiger Woods his swing and see how he does that. I want you to do that. And in my heart of hearts, I was like, but that’s Tiger Woods. He’s six something, you know, a buck 90, you’re 14 and a five, two? Yeah, you’re gonna have different mechanics. And but it almost was like, no, no, no, no, just do what tiger does. And I realized that that I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I think there’s a lot of like merit towards that, like, yeah, you need to mimic that pattern because it’s successful. But again, at what point? Are you just gonna start chewing up that that junior golfers back? Because they just don’t have the same structure that Tiger Woods have?
CJ
Right? And that’s like, it’s like, foundations like, where do they start it? There’s a whole process behind the scenes that’s unfolding to get to that state? Was it a protocol that they went through? I think that’s where we get caught up is like I did all of this. Here’s what I want you to do. But it’s not on the trainer that they share. They’re sharing a valuable, or an athlete, they’re training, they’re sharing a valuable piece of information. Right, exactly. But it’s not necessarily the right path. Everybody has their own. And if we just stick to a protocol, like the medical field is a path, right? So whether it be this you got to be paid this what you do you get this surgery, it’s what you do, you got this penance, which you do without considering their lifestyle, without considering what are they actually going to do without having the conversation of Do you understand why you’re doing this? Or how you got there? How you How did this happen? Oh, you just had back surgery. So now your back is good. Okay, we need to consider why even the back surgery in the first place. Right, because you’re gonna end up getting another back surgery or knee surgery, a hip replacement, if you don’t go to the cause, that surgery may have been a band aid for something that’s going to be even bigger down the road, and that band aids is going to get ripped off. If you don’t get back to what caused that initial injury. We may not exactly know what caused it, but we know what the path that led to that. And if we’re going down the same exact path, same exact path of least resistance, the same movements, the same patterns of life, you’re gonna end up falling into the same trap that leads to the same place dysfunction, or the good old saying, from, from some professionals, just don’t do it. Okay, I’m an ultra runner for life. And you’ve told me I can’t run anymore.
Michael Hughes
And off pretty much,
CJ
I’m gonna keep running, keep running, they’re gonna get the other injury and lifting with it.
Michael Hughes
Either I don’t do it. And I have now a mental problem, that from my physical problem, or I keep doing it, and I have a worse of a physical problem. And then I built a mental problem.
CJ
I got Achilles pain, and I just stopped doing stuff. And now it’s gone.
Michael Hughes
You’re right, it’s right. Yes, yes,
CJ
we need to figure out the thing that you love doing that led to a huge discomfort? How can we balance you out? How can we better size you to take some pressure off that Achilles? Is it even your Achilles? Is it your hip? That’s making your Achilles do more work? Right? We can, we can start to kind of, again, reverse engineer how that pain was created and get down to the culprit of it. It’s not part of your body that’s dysfunctional, necessarily. It’s something that we’re unaware of that’s causing a dysfunction.
Michael Hughes
Right? So if I’m saying, Listen, this podcast, something, you know, these guys maybe have a little bit of sense. Maybe they don’t? Is the question I’m asking. So therefore, my client should be doing this. Does you know what client does this benefit? What client? Does this not benefit? Is there a client that should not do what we’re talking about? Should not not a good idea?
CJ
Honest to God, truth, you’re already already everybody’s doing functional training? Whether you admit it or not, you’re doing something for some function, there’s a purpose behind what you do, and a function is training with a purpose.
Michael Hughes
I’m tensional training,
Unknown Speaker
it’s intended for training,
Michael Hughes
I’m intending to do something.
CJ
Do you know what you’re intending to do? Or are you just saying it and putting a wall up the deeper levels? Because if you keep asking, you’re gonna have really a lot more options and a lot more confusion. But you’re going to have a lot more results.
Michael Hughes
That’s like that. You don’t want to be confused. Don’t ask questions.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, no, it’s functional.
Michael Hughes
Questions, you know, just Yeah, so that’s true. And what have I said, hey, guess what, if you’re a trainer, you’re doing functional training, because you are, I’m sorry,
CJ
sorry, are you finding the gap of right what you’re doing versus what you’re trying to do?
Michael Hughes
Right. If you have a client who has a want and you train for that want you’re training for their functional desire? Is that functional desired meeting their need and their need? They don’t verbalize that need. They can, they can actually write Yeah, I have I, my need is to feel better. Okay, how do we get there? Oh, I may have a need I, you know, it’s it’s really sad actually, when people walk me say my need is to not have pain in my knee anymore. That’s I mean, the to get to that level, you could really have had suffer for that for a long, long time. Most people don’t go at that level yet just deal with it. It was gonna be I’m gonna keep on going or it’s not that bad, or it should be there because I’m now in my 60s. Sport should be there. Because I was a catcher all through my teens, and I’m in my 20s it should be there. And that’s that’s the hard part. Yeah, so I think I think what, what we believe and what we feel is that the need of the clientele is being lacking likely? Well, that’s a fun way to say that is being not addressed as much as it should be in functional training is the answer to that. This is essentially the wants Oh, sure. Go for it, bicep, curl it, do whatever you want. Do the weirdest, or the most traditional movie you can possibly think of
CJ
better yeah, train to lift, you better lift better also know that stuff, you’re probably not getting better at right that you might fall into the trap 10 years from now. And I think that’s where it’s tough to look that far ahead. Because you don’t want to consider what if I’m in pain? What if I’m hurt? But as soon as you ask yourself that question, what if I’m in pain? What if I’m hurt? What do I do about it?
Michael Hughes
And do you as a trainer continue to benefit from that. And I don’t mean benefits from someone’s pain? I mean benefit from the standpoint that you can continue to have that client in front of you earning your business? And if you can’t answer that need, if you can’t answer that need, then who suffers? Actually, both you suffer you the trainer suffers because of business anymore, and be the client suffer because they maybe don’t have an answer that they’re accustomed to finding answers with. So they gotta go somewhere else, and build the whole trust cycle all over again, to get in the scheduling all over again. And that may take weeks that could take months. And that
CJ
builds a distrust for the system, not just for the trainer, like you’ve got a client that’s seen three different trainers, and none of them have helped. Now they don’t trust any trainer.
Michael Hughes
Potentially, that makes sense to me.
CJ
I wouldn’t if I was in that in that same Publix, I’m not going to train anymore, I’m gonna go to a specialist specialist of some kind, right? that I hope will expand my mindset.
Michael Hughes
Right? Well, I hope we’ll get me back to where the trainer can manage me. You know, and I think that’s, that’s the passion piece right there. Right, that’s the passion is where I feel that the trainer should be the health care provider. Therefore do functional training. Again, for the for the need of our clientele the want have fun with the guys, I really mean that have fun with that. But for the need, which everyone has a need, eventually, right? What I really love about how we train because we do train in three dimensions, we do train high low, we do train mid range and range, not joint capacity and and range for those people who can you know, but from a performance range. And what I kind of say about it to most people is like we if you have any sort of dysfunction, it’s only a matter of time before we or you feel it in these walls. If you’re looking at like, what am I going to get injured here, so you’re gonna get better. And eventually your RPM gauge will be limited at five. But you know, with more physiological adaptation, you can get to eight, but that knee joint stops at five, your shoulder, thoracic spine hip are already at six. They’re gonna be at seven soon, that knee is going to want me to catch up and it has its limiting movement capacity. Is the news fault. More than likely not, you know, etc. So yeah, welcome, we welcome that need to come up. You don’t have it in the beginning. We’ll find it for you. And we’ll take care of it for you. And that’s why oh, man, I want every trainer movement practitioner be like yep, I got you covered, at least to the basic level, versus like, let’s just change the action, who we got to stop training. Dang it or let’s just never do that sort of movement again, and hope that that gap that we’re now not filling never comes up which is impossible. I don’t know that’s that’s my kind of heart and soul poured out like we have I think we’re capable of this. Because physical therapy is not necessarily doing it nothing against physical therapists. It’s it’s a system of physical therapy.
CJ
I know some great physical therapists that are expanding how they’re serving and it’s beyond the protocol in the most positive ways. Absolutely. At the heart of learning and partnering with the person that you’re serving. It’s, you’re not just here’s the paper I’ve seen so many. Just you got the intern up. You did exercises. Okay, good to go.
Michael Hughes
You cleared this part of that says international partnership.
CJ
There’s no learning about this person. If you don’t know who the person is in front of you, at least to a certain degree where they want to be where they’ve been. You can’t walk along A path with them. And if you’re not walking on the path with them, you’re kind of just setting them on their way and saying good luck. And now you’ve been cleared. And now you’re going to the real world. And hope it’s okay. It’s like you’ve never drank alcohol before and you go to college. What’s gonna happen? You’re
Michael Hughes
gonna have a good night.
Unknown Speaker
Maybe the secretary between a wall and a toilet damaged? This is rough.
Michael Hughes
But yeah, and again, you know, I want to emphasize this, for those for those listening. It’s the system, I believe, is the issue. You know, no one goes into human services that doesn’t have a heart of gold. No way. You just can’t manage. You just can’t stomach it. Because you’re dealing with one of the most complicated things in the world, because the human body. I think we know more about space than we do our own brain anyways. Yeah, it’s a it’s a crazy, crazy, crazy topic. Alright, so, um, how long it’s been, it’s been awesome. What’s, what do we do about this? What do we do about functional training? What do we do about this concept that say that no one disagrees with us whatsoever? Right? Unlikely? I hope no, no, I hope not. Because we’re, we’re not that smart. What do we do about this? You know, what do we do? What do we do about this concept of recovery? functional training is at least defined by us by how we just describe it and pass our what do we do about this concept? Like, okay, so here’s how we’re going to progress it. And is there a limit to it? Like, is there a point in like, okay, hey, hey, you know, stop closing your eyes, put a ball on your nose and standing on a BOSU ball, you know, come on, you know, like, where does that limit? Or is it limitless? It’s just our own capacity to understand physics, in relation to the human body.
CJ
I think the science is changing so fast, because we’re becoming more open minded. At the same time, more people are gonna be coming close minded. So there’s this bigger gap, that it’s almost like functional training is on one end and non functional is on the other. It’s like, well, no, it’s this. It’s a spectrum, we need to realize that you’re not on one or the other camps, you’re on the spectrum of functional training, always. And are you looking at things more one dimensionally, more as isolated pieces and looking microscopically at movement? Or are you looking at it very globally, almost to expanded to much variety, too many options. And it starts with just minding where you are on the spectrum on that gap. If we realize that every single trainer is on the spectrum, and we trust that now we can start to collaborate, now we can start to understand why people do the things they do. Because if you see somebody having client rotate, and it looks like their form is off, do you know where that client was a year ago? You got to consider there’s a lot more things that we don’t see. And if we’re so bombarded by what’s on social media, what’s on the videos on YouTube, what’s on what this than the other, if you’re not plugged into the environment of where these things are happening, ask questions, versus assume and call out. This really is a is a field that needs to expand as one, as a group of trainers as a group of individuals who are here to serve their community and their people. It’s a lot of competition. And a lot of I think testosterone masculine energy in it of this is right, this is wrong and kind of have the logic and reason so much involved. And we end up on just the study side. And we only trust studies, if it’s not a study, we can’t do it. Like, well, there’s a lot of things that we don’t understand, and we can’t study, I think most things started with how to study, there’s no tools, essentially to gauge that level of success or gauge the results, potentially, for certain things. Like I said that and so to level up and evolve our level of thinking, versus relying on the tools we currently have. Because our thinking will make the tools evolve, you’ll make the results of all like we need to start treating the person that’s in front of us. Consider the truths of human movement, consider what humans can do. Generally, if you don’t know that, start asking, start asking yourself, What am I capable of? You’re not going to have one answer. You shouldn’t have one answer. Maybe I’m capable of living. Okay, get straight there. What does living mean to you? Yeah, what’s successful? Let you define that because you’re gonna learn a lot about yourself and that five minutes, two days, 10 years of asking that question, and it’s going to it should continue to evolve. Because we if we’re fixed and saying, This is the way to do things, and we’re waiting for the studies to show what we can and can’t do, we’re missing an opportunity to serve the person in front of us. We’re treating it like a transaction. If we’re just saying, Oh, this is what you do. Here’s what you’re gonna do, and you do it.
Michael Hughes
And hope you don’t question and say it’s not working. Right? Because then you’re like, Oh, what do I do that?
CJ
There’s a study something that said that just coaching verbal cues no matter what they Were made the person feel more successful and want to combat he was just verbal, being verbal with your athlete, telling them what you see, and telling the truth. It’s easy to assume and say what you think is the cause or what you think is going on and regarded as truth. And if you’ve got a claim in front of you hasn’t really had a lot of trainers, they might just regard you as authority. And now’s when there’s trouble because if you say something, and they get hurt, it’s your fault. Everybody’s got a mind, everybody’s got a body that they can pay attention to. And if we can start facilitating a conversation that allows them to ask those questions. What do I want to do? What can I do? What currently causes me pain? Well, now we’ve got to at least a starting point to pull them into more function, which is, this is causing me pain right now. How can we get out of it, pain is not a bad thing. Pain is a signal telling us that something is dysfunctional, something’s off. There’s Mayday, mayday, mayday, we’ve got to change. We’ve got to become aware. Sometimes pain just pops up. But if it’s reoccurring, becoming more aggravated, you’re going down the dysfunctional scale. If you’re feeling stronger, more resilient, very subtle growth and results, you’re on a track to become more adaptable, and more capable.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, gosh, what I would love to see is people post results. posts like, Hey, this is what I had on day one. I don’t care if it’s day 100. I don’t care if it’s day 1000. And here’s a result, a cabin. And here was my methodology by mindset and what I did. Oh, cool. I liked that. I liked that. Let’s talk about that. Versus here’s a picture. And someone say that, what f are you doing? I cannot believe you’re doing this? Well, wait a minute, you don’t even know. YouTube? You know, you didn’t
Unknown Speaker
ask my questions stuck out there, do you? But
Michael Hughes
there is a question I know. But these ask the questions like, why are you doing that? Oh, I’m doing it because this this, this, this this? Now, I’ve certainly posted a few things because I know you’ve posted a few things like, that looks weird. Yeah, it just raises the question how? Yeah, ask a question. Because the true stupidness is if they don’t have a reason why not comment stupid, right? That should be there. Sometimes you
Unknown Speaker
just do stuff and you don’t know why you’re doing it, but I get it, but at least you at least you know,
Michael Hughes
you don’t know why you’re doing it versus you think you make something up? I think that’s most important is that having that background intention of saying I’m doing this to try to get a result of of a of an ex? And here I go, Let’s study
Unknown Speaker
together? Let’s be the study, right? Asking the question, right,
Michael Hughes
because again, it would it comes down to it like, I’m gonna say this, again, I’m gonna say it over and over and over again, the functional trainer, quote, unquote, therefore, if you’re moving practice, or in any shape or sport, you are the next wave of healthcare. I just passed from the depths of my body believe that, and I believe you should be earning six figures. And I believe you should be working not 80 hours a week, and that’s a lot, you know, sick, you know, if you could have a holiday, she’d be having time off, you should be leveraging your time to a point, and you should be the front lines of health. And doctors should be the ones who are fixing the crazy problems. And when someone is sick, yes, you go for it. And we shouldn’t we should de stress the medical load the medical system,
CJ
if it’s a movement dysfunction, a movement specialist. Should management.
Michael Hughes
Right, right. And, you know, there’s $660 billion dollars annually every year that gets paid on muscular skeletal disorders. And the training world sees zero of that. I don’t know about that doesn’t make sense doesn’t make sense to me when nine out of 10 cases are non surgical in orthopedic offices. So that means nine people we could help. Just if we ask questions on what is function, what’s their function? I don’t know. I like it. I’m excited about
CJ
it. Be that light and somebody you know, be that light in your members eyes be that light that helps them say like, there’s hope, because hope isn’t the solve all. Hope is simply a way to get back on track. Then you got to actually have results right?
Michael Hughes
You got to have a methodology.
CJ
But if you’re still in pain, you’re just lying to yourself.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, hope is square one, which is critical. Never remove that. In the dive into it. All right, guys. CJ, thank you so much. This is great, everybody. Hope you enjoy this. Feel free to leave. Leave a comment. Find us on Instagram. Find us on Youtube gymnazo.edu CJ’s handle is movement exploration. channel channel. That’s right on Instagram, 3d underscore athlete and we are coaches at this forward maybe crazy place called Gymnazo to the next. Hey y’all. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. And if you did, please share 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 this 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 inspired 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 a passion and we’ll talk to you soon.
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