Why the Transverse Plane is Crucial for Unlocking Your Client’s Full Movement Potential
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 senior coaches here with me. In fact one’s my boss, one’s another boss of mine, his name is Michael Hughes and Goose, the trend has been Tiger Pereira. Today we’re gonna be talking about the transverse plane and the power of rotation. And we’re gonna pull you into the danger zone with us because, as you may or may not know, I have two trigger words in my life and one is transverse and the other is plane. And when they’re both put together, I am immediately activated and I’m ready to rock and roll.
Michael Hughes
Welcome to the Gymnazo podcast where you get to peek behind the curtains of what it takes to create and run a seven figure fitness facility that ranks in the top 5% of boutique fitness studios for revenue. But to be honest, that’s the least important thing about us. Founded by me, Michael Hughes, Gymnazo has created an ecosystem of services that blend performance with restoration techniques, and attracts top coaches to its facility hosted by its owners, Paden, and myself and our top coaches, this podcast shares our best practices on everything, from how to build a sustainable fitness business, to how to program for maximum results, to how to build a hybrid training module that’s online. And in person. We have marketing secrets, movement, innovation, and breaking down trends in the industry. If you’re a fitness professional, or fitness business owner, this is where you learn how to sharpen your skills and to see maximum results.
CJ
So I think the best way to get this started is to define what is the transverse plane? Michael, you want to take it away?
Michael Hughes
Yeah, it’s a plane of motion that I really had no idea about, except for the first page of the Kinesiology book that I had. I don’t know the title of that book. But that was it. And I realized it was cutting the person in half from top to bottom. And I’m like, okay, that’s what the transverse plane is. Move On next page, and realize that has nothing to do with it whatsoever. It’s rotation in movement. It is a spiral. It is the up and down translation, it is the one plane of motion that is not affected by gravity that the body uses to maximize power. That’s, that’s my answer. That’s what the transverse plane is.
CJ
That sounds powerful. I can’t wait to dive in deeper. Goose, what you got for us.
Goose
I mean, he said it better than I possibly could. But it’s the power plane is that plane of motion, like you said, isn’t really affected by gravity, really rotational? And did you generate power, use it for everything from walking to biking to everything. It’s literally implemented in every single motion that you’re doing.
CJ
For those of you that don’t, you’re not very familiar with anatomy, physiology, and haven’t opened up a textbook that has the planes of motion in it, Michael had mentioned something about the body being split from the top to the bottom, and how it’s, it seems so abstract, like just to be cut in half like you, when you see this in the book, it looks like there’s a piece of paper going through the person’s body. And it’s saying, alright, you have an upper half and your lower half and basically, you’re horizontally twisting, so the upper body can rotate on top, the lower body can rotate beneath. And there’s not very much information beyond that, except for All right, now here’s how the joints move in transverse plane, like the hips, internal external rotation, right, and shoulder, transverse plane, a reduction in transplant adduction, it starts throwing all these words in here that just don’t really make any sense to real life. It’s just foundational stuff of definitions, trying to put something into a corner into a box that doesn’t really actually define it or express what it truly is. When you first heard the words transverse plane, and we’re taught about it, what kind of things have stuck with us since that original time of learning about it? Or how has your, your idea of what the transverse plane really is? shifted, and I want to go too deep into this but more of a high level here.
Michael Hughes
The first time someone told me to think about doing movement in three planes of motion, I was like, like anything that like pretty much like anything, like just general speaking global motion. So the first time I applied it to myself was a plank. I took my pelvis and went up and down to my pelvis one side aside to a pelvis and spun it, like literally just right pocket down, left pocket up, right pocket down that pocket up. The whole old thing was like, Oh, cool. That’s like rotating. And as I’m like, my first like, oh, I applied it to myself for the first time in training and conditioning, but not realizing that you swing a baseball bat. Right? You roll, you flip, you do anything like that. That’s all rotational motion. But then it gets like, then taking that next level real quick, like diving into it’s like, it’s called what you do when you walk and run like as big tracks. Don’t call as to use word TrackSTar.
CJ
I’ve seen you I’ve seen you sprint track
Michael Hughes
athlete and realizing that if you don’t have good rotational movement to the pelvis, antastic spine, like you’re working too hard as it was, it was like, the more that you can get that counter rotation. And was Lenny who brought that up? No, no man, he’s like, if you don’t get that counter rotation, then you’re you’re just working too hard. Like, you can be fast. But you you pumping your elbows forward and back forward and backward and back. I know that works well, but you’re missing. And that was like, Okay, wait a minute. And it says, if you’re working transverse plane in open and open chain, like not foot cannot connect to the ground does all the PT have ever been and I worked in PD for like three years, all open chain? Oh, my God. Anyways, I’ll stop there. But that was, that was a big aha moment for me that you can actually purposely isolate a body in the spinning pattern, and train it in a way that’s pretty much unknown in most traditional settings.
CJ
But you, Goose
Goose
the back, probably baseball would be like the earliest kind of ideas and not really knowing what was going on. But always seeing like an anatomy and biology and all these classes and stuff. Whenever they talked about transverse plane, they showed a guy swinging, like they would have that same kind of cross section cut guy with a baseball bat in his hands in that kind of positioning. And seeing those, I think kind of like, Oh, dude, so swinging a baseball bat as transverse plane, but never gotten like the hip drives or the lunges or anything crazy like that until I really got here. But more so implementing in baseball, running, throwing, and like you’re saying with locomotive patterns, and with gait and stuff, that efficiency of that load just made sense to me, once you guys kind of broke it down a little bit. Like why wouldn’t rotating one way load you up enough to spring you back the opposite direction to essentially feed this kind of back and forth. transfer of energy or just efficient motion. So trans was playing for me was always baseball and stuff starting off, but then come in here, I’ve really admitted it more in gate, trail running and things like that more intentionally.
CJ
Yeah, if we if we break down the biomechanics of gait a bit just so it, it paints more of a picture of really what’s going on, because it’s not walking and running isn’t just forward in terms of like, okay, if we’re going from point A to point B, if we’re looking at the breakdown of like, what’s going on at each joint to create that forward motion? Well, if we’re looking at, from a front view of somebody running at us, or let’s just say they’re walking at us, what we’re going to see is typically like a little sway of the hips side to side, there should be a little bit of it, you know, some people have more, some people have less, but you’ll typically see, you know, an aging population, somebody who hasn’t trained in three dimensional, intentional ways that their hips may not sway and they may not rotate. So we’ve got a frontal plane motion where your hips can slide side to side, right, kind of got that little bit of your swag in your walk. If we look at it from the side, so somebody’s walking in front of us, and we see them pass by, we’re gonna see also that their hips are getting a little bit of like flexion. And extension, like one leg is behind them, extending that hip, one foot, stepping forward and flexing that hip. So we’ve got a frontal plane, that tilts the pelvis side to side, we’ve got a sagittal plane that we define as the hip flexion hip extension, what we don’t really see, except for maybe like a diagonal view, but even more so from a top down view. Like if you’re a bird’s eye view, looking down at somebody, you don’t see forward and back side to side, you see, one arm swinging forward, and the opposite foot stepping forward, which is showing a spine rotating one way and a hip rotating another. And that’s that power of the transverse plane that we’re looking straight down seeing, is somebody able to rotate, or are they preventing themselves from rotating? Or do we need to bring that rotation out in them somehow influencing a hip drive rotationally, or maybe a hand reach a little bit further, is what I’m saying is walking is a triplane. Movement. gait is sagittal plane, frontal plane and transverse plane. But typically, when gait is trained, I think the transverse plane is one of those that’s undervalued and underutilized and misunderstood, really. And you know, so many people, so many people come in saying, my doc said, I shouldn’t be rotating. Or they say, Hey, rotation hurts me. And the easiest thing to do is say, Okay, well just don’t rotate it or say, Yeah, rotation is bad, don’t do it. And what’s totally missing, I think, is this, this more of a context of, of, well, what’s happening in your rotation, right? I mean, if you had to consider other variable variables, when you’re coaching somebody and saying you want them to show you how well they can rotate, what are you looking at in terms of the variables or the observational essentials? And then how can you find somebody’s success or where their lack of success is?
Goose
Well, I think with like transverse plane, just because this is pretty fresh in the mind, still talk with the client earlier this week and chatting it out with you guys. There’s so many different variables that you need to consider because in this specific case, hey, They can’t rotate. They can’t go split stance, they can’t do this that the other thing. So well, they can because they walked in here and they did most of those things just walking in here. So is it a load? Is the load bothering them? Is it a range of motion thing? Are they moving too fast? Are they moving too slow? Do they just not really know how to coordinate the pieces. So there’s, I mean, countless outside variables that need to be considered, versus just saying you can’t do this. Because you chances are, you can do that, but only to a certain capacity that we can then build upon. But finding that threshold of success first in the transverse plane in the frontal plane, or even going to other planes goes sagittal, frontal feeder, that transverse plane, because without a doubt, if you work on two of them, then that third one’s going to gain some benefit as well. So there’s a lot of different ways to go about doing it. Let’s, let’s come back to that one.
Michael Hughes
Save that so so I take it super simple approach. Toe in like an XX side position, just stand their toe out xx see foot position, just stand there hands on hips, so you see those elbows flare out. So you have like two markers, stand their toe in, rotate your hips left and right. So you’re already pre internally rotated. So the posterior hip, right, generally speaking, is already pre loaded. And you spin, you can easily see how well they rotate to the right. And easily see how well they rotate to the left. And you can see pretty good distinction if they’re blocked one way, blocked the other way. Balanced, blocked, or both? Yeah, they’re getting some pretty good spin.
CJ
What real is that? Like? What do you how do you know if they’re able to rotate better, right or left? Like, what are you seeing as a movement professional? Like, what’s your vision? Like?
Michael Hughes
Yeah, it’s on the coolest thing about a movement practitioner is your eyes. And you’re just gauging how well did they go one way for us, however, the go that go that go the opposite way? Yeah, you can get a goniometer out there and set it up and put them on a little mat with a little angulation and put some laser beams off the elbows and pointing down to the floor. I mean, you can do all kinds of stuff. But your eyes? That’s I think that’s the easiest part about it. You don’t even need to know. You don’t need to know exact numbers. Is it good? Is it not that good? What do you think they’re in their 60s, that’s pretty good motion, they’re 12, they should probably get more motion, and then a six year old, right? You know, so those are just kind of gauging and having enough data, I’m gonna use this fancy word called empirical data, you know, to realize like, that’s good, that’s not good, that’s good enough, if they’re a golfer, going to have to have some decent motion, they just want to walk and have a good time on a hike, they don’t really need that much motion. Then taking that same concept with the outside, you’re throwing open. And it’s super simple, because you realize what moves what muscles really influence rotational patterns, and therefore what joints connect to it. So if I’m towing open, and I can only see when they rotate to the right or to the left, if it’s there’s an imbalance there. Well, what muscles control external rotation and the deceleration of it, or the resistance of it, or the eccentric loading of it. To me, that’s like the biggest focus, I can really, I don’t want to use the word care less. But I want to make a point, what contracts the muscle I’m not too stoked about. I don’t really care about that too much. It’s what resists the contraction of that muscle. And that’s what I want to free up. That’s what I want to go after. And when I when I first check into into transverse plane assessment,
CJ
something you said is your your eyes are such a valuable tool, a very valuable asset. In fact, maybe one of the most valuable assets besides your your heart, right and able to connect to somebody and relate to somebody, something I always see our senior staff do and especially you too, is that your eyes? Where are you like, where are you looking when you’re doing a toe in toe out. And what I see you do is when somebody go toes in, and you say I want your arms to rotate right to left, where I see you check is not just one place, and you’re looking at how their whole body is able to rotate. So for example, if you have toes rotated inward, and you have their hands out in front of them, and you say, Alright, I want you to keep your arms straight as possible, keep your hands touching and rotate your arms as far to the right, let your whole body help you rotate. And as far to the left. First I see you just analyze or check out how far they’re able to reach their hands back and forth. And when you recognize the symmetry of their range and rotation, the next layer you look at is typically the hips and I see you kind of scan down and so as the rotate right and left like all looks pretty even, they look like they can get to both sides exactly the same. You check in the hips and like okay, I’ve seen both hips move, check the knees, they look pretty stable. They’re not rotating too far outward or inward or bailing out and then you check the feet. And let’s say they had, when they rotating to the left, their left foot was flat, but when they’re rotating to the right, their right foot lifted up, or tried to then actually rotate and go, Wait a second. The arms were able to rotate both ways the same distance. Same way they look pretty comfortable doing it but every time they wrote it to did that right side that right foot lifted and Now I mean, where does your head go, then when you start to see that, because then I see like, hey, like, I think we know where to go next to help you rotate better. I think we know why you’re experiencing discomfort or why you may be feeling these imbalances. What’s kind of going on in your mind if you’re witnessing something like right foot lifting, or actually rotating when they’re rotating, right, even though their arms are going the same distance? What’s the thought process? Like?
Michael Hughes
Can I go? Yeah, I’ll make some and so like, that’s like, we’re looking for these tells, right? We’re looking for these ways that the body’s kind of hinting it can’t do something because the hands are, are basically tricking you. Because that’s what the hands like, what I love about the human body, like even even like dog lovers, which I know both you guys are like, the dog is not the man’s best friend. Sorry to say that it’s second place, the human body is because that dog will do anything, anything to make you happy, it will even probably put itself in danger to save you. If it’s that close of a dog, right? Let’s still second fiddle to the body. The body will destroy itself to make you do something. It’s awesome. The hands like you in your mind’s eye, like the hands got to go both ways this person is watching me. And that inherently does that subconsciously through its own neural net called the brain to rotate right and left equally. But it won’t tell you you won’t even hint at it that your right foot sneaking out a little bit to make it happen.
CJ
It’s the furthest thing away from it.
Michael Hughes
I mean, I know and people don’t even notice it, they don’t even notice it. So to get your answer, what are the other joints that really love to move? Foot Ankle loves to move, knee doesn’t really like to spin very much it can spin but not very much hip a lot of spin. So if the foots doing it, like the actual foot placement, it’s sliding along the ground, right? It’s losing friction, then the ankle probably isn’t doing its job, and or the hip is probably not doing its job. If the arms are going equal distance, semis, the thoracic spine is probably doing its job. And what I mean by doing his job, it’s good enough. Numbers are don’t even matter. It’s just visual look, I think you said it perfectly.
CJ
Yeah, I mean, what I got from that is that, it’s like we’re not just looking at one joint, we got to look at the body holistically. And we’ve got to scan the the mobile spots or the areas of our body that joints that are more mobile by trade. By design, he got your foot ankle, right, they can move a lot more 360 degrees, your knee just wants to flex primarily. But it can go through other motions if it needs to, definitely. And of course, the funny thing, right? Your hips have the 360 degrees, your lumbar spine stacked on top doesn’t really want to move too much. But above that your T spine does want to move. So if we’re looking at all these mobile pieces put together, and one of them’s moving a lot more than the other side. But it looks very similar. We have to be able to then break down even further and extrapolate. Is this a coordination issue is are they even aware of their foot lifting up? Maybe it’s just like a tendency that that foot has a little less proprioception, connection to the ground? Or is there real musculoskeletal dysfunction here, there’s something going on that this person doesn’t know about that over time will develop into something more severe. And I think that’s what’s so important is that right now matters. But we also need to be setting ourselves up for that sustainability and success. And it comes through accessing all three planes of motion in every part of our body to a certain level, right. And I think it was so funny, somebody somebody had said, you know, ask the question, and involve like in gate, does your spine rotate? And it was a true or false question. answered, obviously, it rotates. I mean, if your spine does not if you’re not rotating, you’re not walking. Something’s gotta rotate, you’re in trouble. challenge me on this somebody you know, like, it’s gonna rotate. Somebody had said, I’m really disheartened by your answer from what you guys what you guys are training. Because the spine doesn’t it shouldn’t rotate that much your your rest of your body should be decelerating that rotation, so it doesn’t happen to that level. And I asked, so does the spine rotate? Or are we saying that doesn’t rotate? And I got no answer. But it’s like this. It’s understanding that when you hear the word rotation, it can be triggering in fitness and in health and in more of a therapeutic setting, because a lot of times rotation tends to compress or jam up or break down. Some of those joints like the knee, like the lowers lower back, like the shoulder blades and the elbows like if we get excess rotation in these stable joints, it’s probably going to lead to dysfunction because of the over use of the transverse plane in those joints. So goose you had said something earlier that I think is a good segue to that you can get access to rotation from other planes. You can use other motions to get you to rotate better and more stably. You want to break that down a bit more kind of give us insight into what you mean by that.
Goose
Yeah, yeah. So um, one of the cool comparisons that I think I can’t remember if it was like a gray Institute thing if it was here, or wherever we were, but if you’re limited in one plane of motion. So 1/3 of the three planes is limited. By attacking the other two thirds, you can create more space or create more capability in that third plane. So a perfect example is if you have a stick like a steak, you’ve been playing horseshoes and have a steak driven in the ground, if you walk up to that steak and try to pull it straight out of the ground, I mean, if you can do it, awesome, good for you. But chances are, you’re gonna go for that little wiggle front to back. And you go for that wiggle side to side for a bit. And now all of a sudden, you have that rotational level that’s already kind of forming. And you can pull that stake straight out of the ground. So you’ve created so much space, you’ve created so much in air quotes, like lengthening of that tissue in these other plans, foreshortening, whatever the desired outcome is that that’s going to feed into that third plane, and then feed into more success for that client. And that’s, I mean, again, you want to call me out, call me out on that one, I’m down to argue with that, too.
CJ
I think we’re just looking for a fight.
Michael Hughes
But but also this concept of like, it, people don’t realize that there’s called insync rotation and add a sync rotation. And if you’re listening right, right now and you think like rotation in the spine is bad, just to be favorite, make two fists and take your fists and put them together, like you’re given some fist fist bump, you’re gonna lock those, you feel those, those knuckles lock tight together fit in between each other. Let’s just call that your lumbar spine? Well, let’s call that your knee joint. Let’s call your elbow joint, those joints that really don’t have much rotation in them, and literally take your right hand and your left hand and both spin them to the right or the left. And they move together. Is that rotation? And the answer is? Yes, it is. And that’s how healthy rotation happens through the entire body. Is that rotation? Yes, it is absolute does your body do that every single time you walk locomote 100%, what you’re probably thinking is counter rotation, rotate your top hand, right wrote your bottom, your bottom hand left, we call that a sync motion. If that happens in your lumbar spine, you’re in pain. If that happens in your elbow too far, you’re in pain that happens in your knee joint too far, you’re in pain, there is a difference. And both are super important to understand, don’t get lost that there is called in sync and add a sync rotation. And if I hope that just mind blown a few people there, because that’s what the industry really needs to understand is it’s both rotation, but the context is very dependent on what the sport what the action is, and how injury really kind of happens in those joints.
Goose
And with talking about that kind of rotation, one thing that did stand out very early on to was the phrase, it’s not your fault. And that’s actually talking about different joints. So if we’re looking at the knee, like a very nice, like rotation at the knee where you’re feeling good, there’s zero knee pain, awesome. Probably hips and ankles are doing really well. But that knee starts to hurt. Everybody goes straight for oh, it’s a neat thing. It’s a neat thing. It’s a knee thing. No, it’s it’s probably a hip or an ankle thing it could be elsewhere, too, could be a T spine thing going on. But we look at these other pieces. And for the most part, like a rotational load at the hips at the ankle, is going to cause something at the knee if you don’t know how to load in that plane of motion. So that’s why teaching transverse plane in motion loading is so essential because we do it so often. And if we don’t know how the body forgets how somehow, then that’s when that pain kind of starts coming into play a little bit more,
CJ
there’s certainly a threshold that we need to we need to understand if we simply say always and never, we’re going to be wrong, because there’s always a what if and there’s always a It depends, but we need to be able to critically think, why does it depend? And when is it okay, and when is it not? Okay, no, people say it’s a bad exercise, I think there’s no such thing as a bad exercise. It’s just a poorly prescribed exercise. So there’s some people that may not probably should not be doing a ton of out of sync rotation with load, but maybe with body weight, or with extra stability or ways that they can learn to control that motion. And I want to bring you some imagery into this. On what out of sync and in sync means because it’s one thing to think about actual joints. And it’s another thing thing to think about a task or a sport. So like what are some, we can have a conversation about this some insync rotational sports and I’m going to put one out there, golf is in sync motion, your hips turn one way in your upper body or your thoracic spine goes with that rotation and then your hips turn the other way. And even though it’s more of like a lag time, like it’s a whip effect, your body’s still rotating together, to the right and to the left or to the left and to the right, depending on your your side swing. And then an out of sync. Example as well as is walking, running. If your hips go, when your right foot steps forward, your hips turn left. And that same time your left hand swings forward, swinging your spine to the right, creating out of sync motion. So some people are in pain when they walk because they may not be training. They’re out of sync, rotational motion and maybe something you need to consider to be putting into their program. What are some other in sync rotational movements between the hip and the T spine and some out of sync ones that we can think of
Michael Hughes
punching In throwing the ball
Goose
No, I think you go like, like bat can’t save and tennis you’re going out of sync got hips going one way hands going the other way. baseball swing, you’re in sync hips and hands going that same direction,
Michael Hughes
bowling in sync.
Goose
Like an old western guy walking into saloon and they got both hands on your hips. It’s very in sync right foot left foot kind of rotting together.
CJ
I’d say it’s very insane. Yeah, you might even be lacking a lot of transverse plane movement. I’m
Goose
just saying if you don’t want to walk like that, you might want some more rotation up top.
CJ
Yeah, you ever seen like the the water walk? Where’s the you don’t see any twisting in the chest, like if top down and you just see toes out. It’s like a sumo wrestler stepping out. But it’s so unintentional. Maybe it’s more intentional to avoid rotation, you know, you’ve been told hey, don’t twist or Hey, walk like this, then you start to over utilize and overtrain one plane of movement. And now you start developing, like maybe initially, it helped you out, let’s say like, you, you pulled a muscle from throwing a ball too hard. You’re used to throwing a baseball and you threw a tennis ball. And it was just like, holy crap, my, my spine is kind of a little out of whack. And now you start walking, but you’re like flexing your core a little bit. So initially, taking away some of the out of sync rotation may feel better. But then your body starts to develop an attractor well towards that new patterning, that now you start to feel better. But you have now changed your your gait cycle, your walk cycle. And now over time, you’re under utilizing that transverse plane, and now you start putting pressure on your knees and your ankles. And now your low back has been bracing the whole time. And now it’s been five years and you haven’t realized you’ve been waddling everywhere. You’re wondering why you can’t run anymore, I can’t I can’t do more. That’s because he can’t. Basically those two motions require you to rotate. And if you can’t do it, your body’s going to try to figure out another way to do it. And that’s really the power that transverse plane is it’s understanding, you need it, you got to train it, but you got to know to what threshold so that you don’t overdo it. And if you do overdo it, well, you live and you learn, but you got to be able to learn.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, and also that you kind of look at it from a local and a global standpoint, like globally, like a big rotation is swinging a baseball bat. But locally, you need internal and external rotation capacity at the hip joint itself. And those look to like two massively different things. But we’re still talking about the transverse plane, like we’re talking about both, I think people just need to have that kind of grasp that concept. That if you don’t have the ability to have internal resisting medical golf swing, right, and I’m going to do my backswing as my right hip, if I’m right handed, cannot internally rotate relative like femur is going to go one way my pelvis because my foot stuck to the ground. If you know anything about golf, you don’t want to mess with that right foot. If that starts to roll, lift, you lose power. So that foot has to stay grounded. So your hip has to rotate into that femur, that’s called internal rotation that loads the glute. That’s pretty self evident, right? It makes that glute stretch out that hamstring stretch out on the outside. If that joint doesn’t allow that to happen, and your arms keep going, then another joints gonna have to do it, or you just stop swinging. And if you have some some mass momentum going with you, what’s the next joint that can do that up the chain. It’s the SI joint, which is pretty damn fused anyways. So what’s the next joint, so lumbar spine, it’s your lumbar spine, all five of them. And they have the capacity to rotate a little bit until they run into the next for set up the chain. Well, what happens is you run into that first set, and the next joint runs in that first set and the next one runs up a set, you’re probably going to start encroaching on some nerves. And when the nerves sense that because the body’s your best friend, it’s gonna say, you idiot, stop. And it’s going to put pain in your lower back. And maybe if you go fast enough, hard enough, it’s going to make your back cease, which is actually a good thing. It’s like the body saying no, I will not going to allow you to destroy me. I’m gonna lock down these tissues, so you can’t do it. And I’m gonna shut you down. You’re welcome for not just drawing a nerve. Like that’s how I view it. Does that make sense?
Goose
Absolutely. Well, I’m having that kind of like sight because like you were saying earlier, our eyes are pretty powerful tool, if not our most powerful. But even to the most untrained eye, you could tell us something looks smooth, or in some looks like a little bit off, right? Like I I saw someone like take off for a little jog out and show each other day. And I was kind of well, didn’t really analyze it too much, but knew, hey, something’s off here. So recognizing that and then finding those limiting factors that we do so well now having more exposure to it. So running up that chain, they Okay, watching the hips, looks, you know, not too bad. Oh, kind of get a little iffy up towards the T spine a little bit more than understanding those things and bridging that gap. And coming out of that is I mean, it’s such a key. It’s such a key. So absolutely,
CJ
I think it’s so important to realize is that training in the transverse plane doesn’t just make you better in the transverse plane. We said earlier, it makes you better in other planes. Like when you think about doing a squat. What’s the most like natural way you see people squat? Did they naturally turn their toes in or turn their toes out? Out and like that? That definitely allows you to get more range, because you’ve now taken away some of the preload of your glutes, your TfL, your hamstring, that lateral calf. So now you’re able to get the depth you need. And also able to just feel more comfortable with dropping down into that, that full tension gives you better flexion. Because now you’re not in as much internal rotation. So we’re looking at the combination of in a squat flexion, with a bit of abduction, with a bit of internal rotation. Alright, and sometimes we see the opposite, lot more external rotation, a lot more EB duction, and a lot more of our limited flexion. Because of the other two being limited. Now, there’s not really a right way to squat. But there’s better ways to access your squat, you know, we don’t just squat one way, in everyday life, we might squat one way when we’re trying to go as heavy as possible, with the barbell on our backside. And say we’re looking for the best step. But I think we get so limited in our thinking, because of what we’ve seen, what we’ve seen, what we’ve been conditioned to is that this is the what a squat looks like. And here’s how to do it without realizing that if we only squat this one way, and this is perfect form that we’re now under developing our ability to squat and other foot positions so that when we do go to put something away in the dishwasher, we do go to pick something up off the ground, we do go do some yard work, we’re squatting down and playing with our kids or grandkids, we’re just squatting down to squat, you know, I don’t know, I find myself in a squat rather than standing a lot more often. Because it feels nice. But I know for a lot of others, it doesn’t feel good to hold a deep squat or deep crouch. And a lot of that comes from lack of access into your, your internal rotation, your adduction and your deep hip flexion, which is basically loading your whole posterior and lateral tissues. What are some other movements that you think will benefit from let’s say, internal rotation, hip training?
Michael Hughes
Okay, ready, like traditional type stuff?
CJ
Or other stuff? Ready?
Michael Hughes
I think it’s just gonna be good one. The one moment, if you if you can get more internal hip rotation, you’re going to find that that girlfriend that boyfriend better check this out.
Goose
Okay, I like it. I like it. Check this out.
Michael Hughes
Think about an ad a very, very good looking movement. Right? And where you see good looking movement, where people really trying to sell that they’re looking good, sexy, hot, wear nice clothes, hint, hint, the runway, the model runway, right? They’re looking good. How do they move on the model runway, some swag or some sway some rotation in the shoulders. If you’re a guy, some big old sway rotation in the hips. You can only do that if you have access to that motion. And I’ll fall on your butt. You’re gonna walk on your toes out trying to exactly and you’re gonna look like a duck. Right?
CJ
So let’s go way too much swag.
Michael Hughes
So here’s my theory. If you have good rotation through your body, then you’re going to meet because you’re going to be attractive. And it’s the tractive that survived this long. Zoo. That’s we got to go back man. If we go back several 100 years ago, and you saw some guy waddling in like that, like that country western guy, you’re like, I’m not gonna be with you. You can’t even walk across the room. You’re not going to survive, because survival of the fittest is what got us here, essentially, right? You had to survive against that saber toothed Tiger. So if you can’t run very well, if you can’t walk, so if you see someone like walking well, you’re like, Hey, what’s that? Right, right? They got some internal rotation in those hips. They got some counter out of sync rotation through that thoracic spine. And their genes passed on.
CJ
Dating Tips from Michael here it is right that one guy work on my internal rotation. Swagger walk.
Michael Hughes
Though, I think I’ve been holding on to that common for a long time. I can tell
Goose
this is the right podcast for
CJ
No, I think fans powerful to me, if you if you go back even further, you gotta go hunt for your food, you’re probably not just throwing stuff forward, you’re probably like turning your head as you’re running. Like you’re trying to run away for something or you’re trying to chase something you got through a spear. Maybe you’re just out exploring around and you got to like lift stuff and set it out of the way look under rocks, you know, get get into those funky positions. We don’t have to do that these days. So why train in the trenches might not do it anymore. We don’t get to hunt, we don’t get to throw but we do. Still got I still got a mate still got to make a life for ourselves. We still got to feel good walking, but more. So I think we just need to have access to that range. And if we avoid it, and we’ve been in honestly question yourself, like Have I been intentionally twisting? I mean, a lot of us don’t think about the trends we’re playing. We already are doing it so fantastic. But if you’re intentionally limiting yourself from going through rotational steps, because you’re afraid of what the knees going to do or your low back center hurt, it’s not rotation that’s hurting you. It’s your lack of ability to understand how you’re rotating. What else so we got walking, we got squatting It’s benefits from internal
Goose
energy. It’s everything. It’s everything I could I couldn’t imagine training without now now having it implemented into my practice. First time you see a transverse plane lunge. What the hell was that? I don’t know what the heck’s going on here. But now that it’s in there, and I’ve experienced it translate to my entire life, from Spartan Races to playing basketball to rope flow, and just like shooting the shit with you guys hanging out on a Tuesday night moving around a little bit, I argued that it will help everything. I’ve never not seen you move in the trenches plane, I’m, I’m probably 99%, transverse plane.
CJ
1%, the other to 1%? Tiger.
Michael Hughes
Okay, so. So we get into this factor like that is the plane of motion that I think the body loses first is internal rotation, meaning it loses the capacity to get into it to access it, I think we’ve got to be because we’re talking to we all think the same way here. You know, like, I know, we’re kind of jumping over topics like a course you understand the context of what we’re talking about. But if you don’t, if you lack the access to get into it, or essentially the loading, we use the word loading a lot, what we really mean is the E centric aspect of that muscle, right? The ability to stretch the tissue out under tension, just like loading a barbell slowly is eccentric loading through the bicep, right? It’s loading. That’s what we that’s what we actually mean by it. But that loses that goes away. Then if you look the fibers of the glutes, especially the glute max, they run more left to right than anything else. Yeah, to have some up and down there, but more left to right. So if they attach to the femur, and that femur cannot spin internally, you can’t load them. If you can’t load or move a muscle, you can’t strengthen it. If you can’t strengthen it, you can’t build hypertrophy that you keep on going strength, you can’t access it, the neural neurological function turns off, choose me. That’s too much of a bold word. It diminishes. It slows down it gets quieter, flat, but Senate syndrome.
CJ
Hey, man, I’ve seen a lot of stuff around Instagram that shows you me shows me how to train my glutes and it’s glute bridges. Its barbell, my hips bridge off a off of a bench and just my butt feels burning. What’s What’s that missing?
Michael Hughes
Yeah, it’s flexion. And extension, which is a primary motion of the hips. But it’s not the best one. It’s second fiddle. It’s second place. It’s powerful. No questions. But the glute max is the beast. Yeah, you got the internal on external operators. You got the minimis in media, right. But those are some way smaller, way smaller. I just mean, like I look at when I look at training and conditioning, I’m not looking for good. I’m looking for the best. Because I don’t want to be a good trainer. I want to be the best trainer. And if you just want to do good training, you’re doing good training with flexion. Extension. You’re doing good. But you’re missing out.
CJ
That’s there’s way more to life. There’s attraction. There’s way more
Michael Hughes
Yeah, I think that’s the biggest thing. All you people do all that stuff. Good job. But it is good. It is a B plus. I’m sorry.
CJ
You’re missing? Sorry. Tell them how it is.
Goose
I would even argue it’s like 66%.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, well, you depend on the muscle, right?
Goose
Yeah, I think missing out on like a full plane. And even this one, I might even say like that’s like 34% is the transverse
CJ
Yeah, yeah, without intentionally putting transverse plane motion into your workout, you’re still going to be hitting the transverse plane possible. It’s not like it’s this or it’s nothing. It’s like when we say transverse plane, we’re just bringing an intent to maybe more internal extra rotation. If we’re talking about training in the frontal plane, we’re working with more adduction a reduction. If we’re talking about sagittal plane, we’re talking about more of the flexion and extension. And that’s relative to the joint. And I want to make something clear to like, if 3d maps from gray Institute is one of the most powerful ways to really integrate the planes of motion into movement and training, movement and exercise. And to really assess what your clients and athletes have access into and what they may be missing. It’s going to show you, you know, we say a sagittal plane lunge, we call it a sagittal plane lunge. Because your ankle, your knee, your hip, your spine, your shoulders, everything is moving primarily through the sagittal plane. ng legend, posterior ledge. frontal plane lunge is more of a, you’re moving everything in the frontal plane, your ankle, your knee, your hip, your spine, your shoulders, and then a transverse plane, same thing, we’re moving our ankle or knee or hip and spine, mainly in the transverse plane, but there’s always other two planes that are going to be affecting that other. That plan that you’re mainly assessing,
Michael Hughes
right? It’s a global description of the whole system.
CJ
And that’s what’s missing primarily to is like, we gotta we’re isolating these things. And you know, we’re, we’re looking at aesthetic, which is nothing, nothing wrong with it, but you can train as thetic by going more of a global approach to and then isolating and targeting one planar motion to get a specific muscle group to be bigger and be stronger.
Michael Hughes
And I think actually the bodybuilding or the physique building community gets that the vague but But again, there’s still mountains Anybody? Well, yeah, cuz they, they know how to exactly target that posterior delts, you have to turn your wrist this way, you have to position yourself this way. And I think if people understood that more from all the other joints and performance, not just not just muscle hypertrophy, you’d really get a good understanding of how to avoid a lot of injury, and make some badass on the court. Because if you really understand the biomechanics of how to avoid injury, you therefore know how to make something badass, it’s just the reverse context. It’s if you’re going to break down the chain reaction to help someone not have any stress, then it’s the same thought process to make that knee and therefore the surrounding connective tissue, ankle hip be that much more awesome. That’s my
CJ
Yeah, bring the yin to your Yang, in your training, eccentric, concentric, bring the balance, understand what you’re doing what you’re looking at. But also just express it when we move it don’t avoid certain things, just know where those were the thresholds are what those movements and gonna be okay,
Michael Hughes
yeah, and yeah, and stop looking through a telescope. You know, like, we got to get a fisheye lens going here. That’s, that’s just my whole take on it. Because I’ve been on that body, that’s where I started was physique building, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, that guy’s my homeboy, I read his whole encyclopedia. And I dug it, I really did. But it was about a way of doing something. And, a, by the way, there’s a whole freaking chapter on stretching, which people just missed out on for some reason, I don’t know why, but it’s really like, it’s just this whole kind of like physique building is not fitness. You know, that’s not sport fitness. And I think there’s people have caught up, this caught up like, this is how we got to look. So therefore, that’s the only way to do it. I don’t I’m going off
CJ
a tangent, but it’s fitness ish. It is. That’s,
Michael Hughes
I don’t know, sorry, you’re not gonna be really good on on the basketball court or climbing a mountain. I fully realized this when I like do like a good weight building routine. And then I tried to go dribble basketball, it didn’t work. Like I was less coordinated. But now I do like an RMT rope. And I go do like a sport. I’m like, even better than I’ve ever been this in terms of the movements capacity, the flow of it all. It’s really, it’s really profound,
CJ
it does go so much deeper to there’s so many layers that can go into this just your intent when you go and lift, you know, walk method talks about this a lot, which is like rotational intent for the event. And I’ll ask Alex can alias from landmine University. And it’s like, when you’re doing a standard traditional lift, just add another layer of intent to steer your body. Because when we’re saying transverse plane, you don’t have to be actively rotating, no, decelerating your rotation. And you see it all the time. I don’t know what the name of exercises but you have your it’s like a pulley system, your lateral facing in your hands out in front and you’re decelerating that band from pulling you in. It’s okay, that’s, that’s still incorporating the transverse plane in a sense, and you’re stabilizing. But you got to add some kind of dynamic component there were bodies now having to having a task to complete or accomplish, which is to bring yourself through center not staying center. But you have to you have to go and swing the pendulum both ways. If you’re unable if you only train at your middle, and you’re saying, Okay, I’m working in the trenches playing and stabilizing with this isometric or isotonic motion, then I’m able to decelerate my twist. And that’s the safest way to do because that’s what the studies show, you’re missing out on a key component, which is that you gotta be able to return your body to that baseline to that homeostatic place, not stay there, because life is going to throw some curveballs at you literally make you curve and turn and you’re gonna fall and you’re gonna twist, you’re going to wipe your own ass and you’re going to turn you’re like, Oh, I pulled a muscle on my back. And it’s like, oh, I should have been training that trend of playing that because I was talking about damnit. It’s like, yeah, just incorporate some of these extra rotations and see if you can let your body rotate a certain range of motion a certain speed, return to center, can you do it successfully? Do you still feel stable? Are you adding that intent to these very traditional activities? Chances are you already are. But recognize when you may be avoiding it because of a have a preconceived notion about what the what the transit plan is, and what you’ve been told not to do.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, and even with like flexibility, I realized that I could gain so much more flexibility, muscle literal, like muscle flexibility so much faster. If I stretched in three different planes of motion, take a rubber band in your eyes, from one hand of the hand and pull it apart. That’s called sagittal plane, right? It goes from point A to point B in a straight line away from each other, then take point A and actually laterally shift it sideways, right? Kind of, if you’re watching this on the on the YouTubes away, then laterally shift that’s actually further away point A and point B, and then take those and spin it. And if you’ve taken a rubberband enough and spun it and keep spinning it what happens?
Goose
It’s called max out on pop. It gets in torque. Yeah, but
Michael Hughes
it’s but it also gets shorter, right? It condenses. So therefore, we’re taking point A and point B and actually put Putting, we’re stressing it the max load. Right, exactly. So it’s kind of one of those fancy things like, wait a minute, if I can prove it to you in a rubber band, then aren’t muscles, almost the exact same thing. And I think that’s what we’re really missing out on.
Goose
When it makes sense to like, just to understand, obviously, we’ve done a lot of studying on how tissues lengthen on how they shorten in which direction they all kind of run for the most part
CJ
through actually moving you’re studying is like actually experiencing, this isn’t reading about
Goose
feeling it? Yeah, I don’t read, I just do things. I just make it happen. Feel it? No, it exactly. So by filling it in, by knowing it, we kind of understand that that load to explode which to maximize that load to get a more efficient explode out of it. Just it seems so simple. Why would you not want this tool in your tool belt to load the transverse plane, to understand how the tissues going to be as efficient as possible. And then for whatever your desired goal is, it’s going to make you better at your desired goal. I just don’t understand why you would limit yourself to not have that in there. And I get that there’s like a fear piece around it. But that I think that comes from like we’re saying, a lack of understanding of how to properly or how to intentionally load in this desired way.
CJ
Let’s, let’s also talk about some examples too, because I think this is a great way just to simplify the experience is you can listen to it all day, read about all day, but until you physically experienced this, it’s not going to make any sense. It’s just going to be sitting out there like, Oh, that’s a scary zone to kind of visit. You know, it’s as simple as we talking about loading a tissue. How do you do a hamstring stretch? How do you do a calf stretch? How do you do a quad stretch, I see the same things over and over and over again, with our with our populations more so you know, over the age of 40, and I’m not saying anything special about them, except that they just learned something when they were in their teens and 20s and 30s. And they just kept doing that. So great. Let’s expand upon it. But you see a typical calf stretch, hands on the wall, push your heel backwards. Oh, great calf, cool. We know our calf doesn’t just attach like an inky lead to the back of the heel. It surrounds the tip and fib and so it’s attached diagonally. And then you’ve got your your typical hamstring stretch, you put your leg up on a on a box or a bench and you fall forward. Oh, it feels like wow, my hamstring is always so tight. Okay, that you’re testing it in the sagittal plane, primarily, you do quad stretch, you pull your foot up and you hold it back behind you go Oh, my quads, that’s so great. But your quads, your hamstrings, your calves are all saying You are forgetting about the other 66.6% of this stretch, which is adding some lateral motion, adding some rotational movement. And just like your rubber band analogy, you pull it out, you pull it to the side and you twist it, that’s going to give you a much more thorough sense of how much you can access into now your mobility, not just the tissue. But now you’re stretching a calf, right. And then you start to move your hips side to side and rotational you start to realize how much availabilities in your ankle and your hip, you do a hamstring stretch with your leg up on a chair, whatever fall forward and slide side to side and rotate, you’re going to realize how much now mobility your hip has, or your spine has, or doesn’t have or doesn’t, right, that’s actually probably what you’re going to sense is like, Oh, I’m limited here. But you just keep working at that. And that’s what makes you get success faster and even more effectively. Because now it’s going to carry over to things that you actually do in your real life that you’re not even thinking about your body just does, right? Because
Michael Hughes
that’s the coolest thing is like you realize that the body does do those things. It’s subtle. But who cares? Do it suddenly, then, you know, it make your trinet you know, doesn’t think these it’s it’s really just profound, because we just don’t know, I didn’t know that the pelvis, it literally went through flexion adduction and internal rotation when my front foot hit the ground walking. I didn’t know that. So I didn’t train it could I didn’t know it. And even if it’s a slight bit of internal rotation, that slight bit times 10,000 steps a day, that adds up, I’ll take 10,000 pennies every day. No problem. No problem, hook it up. Because that’s going to add up a lot. And that’s I think what the transverse plane is in daily functional movement. If you don’t, if you don’t count those 10,000 pennies every day, you’re going to be pretty deficient in a few years. And you will wonder what happened. It just happened. My knee just hurt. I was picking up my toothbrush off the ground. I don’t know why my lower back fell out. I do want to count your pennies, buddy.
CJ
A lot of pennies. Great comparison. I’m
Goose
still on that one.
CJ
How else can we incorporate the changes plain into our training? So I kind of provided a visual of some mobility activities, just sliding your hips side to side and adding rotation. What about somebody who’s doing a strength training program where they have a standard squat, standard lunge, standard curl, a press row maybe, you know the standard 13 exercises. What can we do to now make that feel like 1000 different exercises without just adding variety but adding intent to target parts of those tissues in such an intentional manner that you don’t have to worry about it in real life.
Goose
Oh yeah, it comes with it comes with the reps for sure. And I think there’s easy ways to kind of incorporate like the internal and external rotation. But like you’re saying with intent, we just to break it down a little bit, one move could look the same from the outside. But you could be getting more quad on a lunge. And I could be getting more glued on a lunge based on what we’re trying to do for that given movement. So for one, maybe developing the awareness of what that glute loading feels like or what that hip or what that tissue loading feels like. Maybe that’s through foam rolling, maybe that’s through stretching through other stuff. But I think once you get into actual strength programming, you tie that toe in now that you know what that tissue feels like when it has that pressure on it like foam rolling, I think is a great example. When you’re foam rolling a hip we’ve talked about in the past, is it rehydrating, Is it blood flow. Yes, it could be all these things. But at the very least you understand what that tissue feels like now. So maybe you go foam rolling, you understand what that pressure at that level feels like you implement that into your programming. And just slowly start to learn how that rotation being added. Feels bit by bit. The stretching is a great example towing in towing out squats, twist and turn, let the hands be the drivers in rotation. If you’re just just standing still, or you’re staying with your assessment, turn your toes in Rotate Right? Until you feel that right glute rotate left, until you fill that left glute. And now you have an awareness. Let’s add that back into our strength programming now.
CJ
Yeah, maybe start later. If you’re going to 25 on your back with a barbell, you might not want to add a 45 degree rotation yet
Michael Hughes
No, wait. Yeah, exactly exactly.
CJ
What I get from you, Goose is very non straightforward answer which I absolutely love. Because I’m the exact same way it’s explore your motion, explore, don’t be afraid to try stuff. But obviously, the disclaimer here is do it gently, gently, slowly, and give your opposite, give your body an opportunity to experience something novel. If you always squat up and down with toes out. Try it with just a little bit more toe out, try it, which is a little bit more toe in you might find one is a little bit harder. And once a little bit easier. Maybe you try one foot forward in front of the other, which you’ve probably done split stance squats. But have you been trying to keep your hips square vertical up and down? Or have you allowed your body to rotate your hips one way your upper body rotates the other a little bit now creating a little bit of out of sync rotation. And now it’s creating a whole different stress on your spine and on your hip. Now, there’s a lot of people here they’re gonna say, the studies show like Oh, with adding rotation is going to put too much stress on your joints. I totally get it. Yes. But we have to be able if we’re going to be doing it in real life. And with light loads, let’s practice it in our training environment with some light loads and then gradually add progression. This is not a progressive overload type of challenge. This is a progressive understanding of how your body is able to function and work with the natural forces of gravity, ground reaction force, mass momentum, if you’re in pain is not the exercises fault. You’re in pain, because the exercise told you there’s something it’s it’s a threat, something your body’s not used to. And maybe it’s because it’s too heavy. Maybe it’s because too fast. Maybe it’s because it just doesn’t your body doesn’t know how to stabilize that motion. Right? Yeah. Some other examples. Use it to
Michael Hughes
me, I’ll try to go real with as real with as possible. Like if you are not training in a certain pattern, your body is not going to be good at it. It’s just that simple. Like right now we’re all working out right now. If you notice that I’m working out really well. I’m training my body had a sit nicely. I got a little lean on my left arm, tucked back on my right side a little spin towards Jonathan. I’m training my body right now to be a better sitter. Not a babysitter but a sitter. You’re a better
CJ
Senator looking to your right, well, Goose is a better Senator looking to his left. I’m not getting any changes playing here. So I’m gonna just let you go. There you go. There we go.
Michael Hughes
Got it. And my right now my fascia is literally regenerating itself to be better in this position. Like literally spiderweb kind of thing. I got a bunch of spiders caught on my skin laying down fashion lines. And it’s like good. You sit here for eight hours. Getting out of this position is going to be a little bit of tough because a little bit of tough I like that, because I got I gotta break that those fascia new lines, literally connections to get out of that spot. That’s why I wake up in the morning feels so good because you’re like, you’re literally like ripping fascia apart in a good way.
CJ
You’ve been listening to Dr. Fuzz, haven’t you?
Michael Hughes
I love that.
Goose
Well and I think also just as like a cool tangent I think the that fascia is like the most adaptable part of the body. I think that’s now been like said that it makes the most to adjust to what we’re doing. So like you’re saying every single thing is essentially a rep.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, literally towards your body. Right. And that’s why people who sit a lot they’re not very good at standing up and jumping overhead because their fascia their tissues are pulling the opposite direction. So here’s what I’m going to take about this one. If you try and we’re saying I’ll just try it I but here’s the context. Your body is not going to be good at it. Literally, it’s going to fight you. So go light go easy build flexibility, first build mobility first. Try the stretch of that motion before you try the loading of that motion like burning it. Like a dumbbell on your, in your hand or a sample on your shoulder, because it’s gonna feel weird, literally awkward. It feels awkward because your body hasn’t done it before. Awkward is not bad. Pain is bad. But awkward is your body’s saying, wait a minute, this is new to me. Because if we have these things called nerves, and they’re layered deep into the fascia, then fashio, the fashio has more nerves per square, whatever you want to call it, then a lot of other parts of your entire body movement nerves, just keep it simple proprioceptors and it’s going to feel funky. Toe when you’re like, nah, this feels like I’m gonna rip my knee off. Yeah, Broca probably because your post your hip, your IT band is super tight,
CJ
you might be too far toe to toe out is your toe done. Exactly. So
Michael Hughes
this is the same way like I tried to transverse plane, which is bases, you may take like, go ahead and try an ultramarathon. Like I haven’t run a lab run track ever. That’s, you know, take it easy, go for a walk first, get outside, put some running shoes on before you try that ultra ultra marathon, right? It’s really conditioning the body the same way that you would conditioning anybody brand new into your facility in your program. You don’t jump into it, you allow the body to adapt to the environment around it, just like it’s adapted to those person people who sit in a desk for 40 years.
CJ
I’m gonna argue I need to say this isn’t what you mean, it’s just more of a statement. But pain is bad pain is a signal that’s going to let us know that something is we need to pay attention. It’s wrong, right? Something’s wrong. It’s what you gain in pain is actually a great thing. It’s one of the best best blessings in the world, is it? Because it tells you something’s going on? To the people that don’t have pain, they got a disease that hurts like they, you know, well, I mean, you’ve got people that are in tremendous pain that have nothing wrong. Physically. They’re just You mean you do an MRI, you did some movements, and they’re just in tremendous pain. And you got some people who are no pain that have really horrible MSDS and a bunch of imbalances. So pain is something I think we can have a whole nother podcast on, there’s people who know a lot more about pain than we do. But how we use pain is to give us a threshold of success. And if we’re getting pain, and we’re continuing to get pain and strive to get pain, it’s going to turn into some kind of dysfunction. That’s going to be mental, physical, biological, it’s going to be some kind of bad thing. But if we if we pay attention to pain we pay attention to when does it show up? I think this is where where the health field is kind of more confused, like, Okay, you’re in pain Don’t do that. It’s like, okay, hold on. Don’t do that. But what is that it’s, it’s an action. It’s a position. It’s an intention. It’s got speed, you’ve got load, you’ve got a direction you’re going, we’ve got to consider all the pieces that go into when that pain occurred, because somebody might do a rotational lunge and experience low back pain. And they think, okay, I shouldn’t be doing rotational lunges. Hold on, let’s try putting you into a position of a rotational lunge. And just hold that position. Is that fine? Yeah, there’s no pain. So it’s not the rotational lunge that caused pain, it was the act of bringing your foot driving it into rotational lunge. And now having your hips and your spine have to decelerate that motion, and your body just was unprepared for it. And it may only be three reps where you’re in pain, and then your body goes, Oh, I get what we’re trying to do. And then there’s no more pain. But a lot of times, we get caught up in somebody’s in pain, we got to fix it. But we have no idea what’s causing that pain response until we start diving deeper and analyzing the parts. And what you get really good at doing from from working with individuals that may be experiencing pain is understanding that everybody’s pain is different. Everybody’s pain is on a different level. Some people have a high pain tolerance, but what does that mean? Are they able to process that pain and go is good for me? Or is there pain times because they literally cannot feel that, that that stress or that trauma, you know, or somebody who’s not experienced or who is experiencing tremendous pain, you know, how much pressure you putting on them. It’s like a one on a 10. And they’re in tremendous pain, we need to consider what that means. And what, what is pain to them, is it you know, they say like no pain, no gain? Well, it’s like, you should be experiencing some discomfort when you train, but the discomfort should be challenging your motivation? Are you feeling empowered by what you’re doing? Is the pain just more of a mental state? Or are you experiencing physical pain in a specific part of your body that’s getting worse and more aggravated than something you do? mycologist so lovely, which is why I know you see pain, different light than a lot of people do is that there’s a pain scale 1231 being you know, it hurts, but it’s not. It’s not detrimental to my movement, and it’s not getting worse. Two is it’s uncomfortable, and I don’t really want to do a whole bunch of these. And then three being it’s getting worse, right? Is it am I right on that
Michael Hughes
spot on in terms of the context and love it.
CJ
So, like understanding and then breaking it down further of, you know, especially with rotation. This is so perfect in this conversation because most rotation for individuals who don’t add rotational training is painful, but it could be a jamming. And impingement could be a buzzing sensation, a tingling sensation, an electric shock. It’s a numbing thing. Like there’s just all these there. for ways to expose his pain, and I think it’s just a matter of opening the conversation, so that we can make those cues or those changes or tweaks or modifications to their motion, which do come down to momentum does come down to position and really comes down to the intent. And if they haven’t done rotational steps, they probably don’t have an intent. It’s just like, I’m going to step that way. And I’m gonna learn how to do it better and better and better. Thanks for that.
Michael Hughes
my soapbox. And I was good. That was good. Yeah, it’s really it’s really this. There’s so much to it and even us as as movement trainers, right? When we’re talking about movement pain, we solve movement pain, you know, there’s psychological pain, there’s so there’s, there’s there’s spiritual pain, right? There’s a lot to it. But like, when we can understand when there’s a discomfort, a negative stress, a negative stress in a joint that the person knows in their gut is not a good thing they should keep doing. We can start I love what you said, we there’s we have, there’s not just one answer. And we have like several different strategies to start breaking down. Right, our 10, observational, Central’s would be our first starting point. Okay, there’s 10 different things that we can look at, in our memory that would start to say, Okay, let’s change this change that do we change that sensation, whatever you want to name it in that motion? Was the change, good? Was it change bad? Or you don’t know? That’s my answer. That’s what I’m looking for. Just keep gathering that data. Right? That’s it. That’s it. And if they like that change, then you have to trust them. Great. Let’s keep going. Let’s progress a little bit more, until you run to your next roadblock, then you actually did self is exact same question. Can I change? What variables can I change about the motion, obviously have to know the variables I’m talking very top level here, but you have to know what those variables are? Change it? Does it better, was it not, it’s just it’s kind of red light, green light, you know, just keep your
CJ
train rotation to you’re not going to rotate better if you don’t rotate in your training, right? It’s simple as that,
Michael Hughes
right? It’s just a twist the body that’s when the body is so specific. It needs specificity to adapt. It’s
CJ
not to bring an example to this, let’s bring some some in the life like a case studies people you work with, I’m working with an individual who’s just got into pickleball. This past year, she’s in her 60s, and that’s like upper 60s. And she had been working there for about three, four years now. And just singing, you know, stability, working foundations, and just her grounding element of her feet and her hands and working kneeling position, standing positions, and then starting to integrate more and more rotations and things like throwing medicine balls from different positions, using a torque strap on a pulley system that then pulls you into rotation that you’ve got to decelerate. And just in the past few months from working with her, she was getting elbow pain when she first started pickleball and we hadn’t really brought in any momentum into her thoracic spine and her core from a outside of like a neutral foot position. And so she started playing pickleball and came back and said hey, like I’m experiencing some elbow pain. And I really respect when somebody comes in and lets me know how they’re feeling for that day. Because that means that they trust that I will make a modification or change to their program. And so having that that open conversation channel with with your clients and your athletes is so powerful, but you haven’t got to know what to do with it. So what what she had said was like, Okay, I got right elbow pain, she’s right hand and she’s swinging the right arm. I said, Show me like a couple swings like I kind of talked about her and she had a racket and then swing and I noticed it was all shoulder and arm. There was no hip thoracic spine, it was like her feet were ungrounded even though we’ve been working on grounding activities. As she was reacting to the ball, everything braced and in her arm swung. And I was like No wonder we’re getting some this medial epicondylitis or this tendinitis. This tennis elbow in your elbow is because your hips, your thoracic spine and your shoulder are not communicating your pelvic trunk either your pelvis, your trunk, your scapula aren’t creating this diagonal load, you’re just bracing everything. And then over training PEC deltoid and then squeezing in like a forearm so that you can hit the ball. We started to incorporate transverse plane lunges while she was keeping her arms like on a mobility stuck up in front of her. So we started to disassociate or kind of chunk her hip or thoracic spine in her cervical spine, brought in a little bit of that, it started to throw some more medicine balls from like locomotion positions. And I would point out when her hips weren’t moving, her spine was staying straight and bracing, kind of limiting the degrees of, of availability and degrees of freedom rather, and as we started to do this more and more, her elbow pain was going away. She had more grounded stability, and it was more exposure to her pal chunky loaf working together. We intentionally brought her pelvis or trunk and her scapula into diagonal patterns, that then we added speed to it. We added some slams to it, we changed the direction of things. I made him react to it and then she came back and was like, my old pain is gone. I’m playing better pickleball and it was from not addressing the elbow pain directly it was from understanding that you have this whole rest of your body that’s that’s been whipping through your hand and if your whip is just at your Shoulder, you got a small quick whip. That’s a lot of whipping. Same thing that happens to baseball players, they start, they don’t use their hips to decelerate from the mound. They’re pitching, they’re pitching their shoulder out. Well that don’t that thing 90 to 100 miles an hour, and that shoulders come in through. And if that body’s braced, and the shoulder now has to decelerate, think about all that extra loading that you’ve got to put through your shoulder as opposed to your core. In a prime examples are case studies specifics in there that can bring bring to light the transverse plane.
Goose
Well, I know one that I was dealing with, with a one on one client, she was coming in playing tennis a lot. She was probably like mid mid upper 60s and playing a lot of tennis but had some left knee pain. And so got her and did like the 3d map. So did our movement assessment and Charlotte gray Institute. So they’re the movement assessment just kind of saw what was going on and noticed that on that left side, very quad dominant, didn’t really trust sinking back into the hips. So basically, any lateral or like forward motion, that new had really slide over that foot, and just quad would take over start ripping at the knee, and actually found that she was bracing up to that T spine as well and didn’t want to rotate that direction. So quad was working way way too hard. We slowly worked with some foam rolling kind of open up the posterior chain got to doing some lunges, some kind of reaches download towards that same side foot just to kind of see what the hips were capable of. That ended up progressing. We started getting a tennis racket in hand, doing some kind of change of direction stuff used a Kaiser, which is essentially a pulley system working on similar motions you’d see in tennis, and eventually got her to trust that backside hip, trust that rotation through the shoulders, knee pain was gone in about a month, or at least was like almost non existent to her. It didn’t bother her when she played anymore, and just kept coming back and said, Hey, each time I’m playing better, I’m trusting my knee because I was very wobbly. Starting off, you could see like the unstability or the instability. But as she started to trust that backside hip sink into that glute, a lot more power, a lot more stable, and just begin to trust yourself and going to that left side.
Michael Hughes
But love it. Newer client coming in. Very, very familiar with our style of training, moved away, got a new job, all these different things. And I sat down a lot through COVID A lot. And this guy, he’s very used to multi dimensional movement patterns and fitness exercise. He came to me and says like, I may need new hips. I’m bad. I’m real bad. Like, for me a walk to walk 100 meters, I have to think about that. I gotta think about that. Like, is it worth it for me to do that? Probably mid mid 50s. Just last year knocked him down fitness wise, movement wise. And literally took exactly what we talked about. In two hours of work a little bit of soft tissue just to allow things to open up a little faster. foam rolling is really no different. Obviously, there’s some different skill set to it. And literally put himself in right foot in front of left left in front of right wide, narrow toes in toes out feet and took that tent pole steak analogy. Let’s put your right foot in front of your left, go into an anterior hip translation, meaning bring your belly button forward until you feel tension somewhere. Not discomfort, tension, but tension. Then drive your pelvis and the other two planes of motion. Literally hands on hips, left, right, spin spin. And when you’re in sideways, you’re already sideways, you don’t go sideways because you already pre positioned in sideways, drive the pelvis in the other two options forward and back, spin spin transverse plane you’re already spun via the feet. So go forward and back and go side to side. Literally he said I feel like I’m D resting my hips. I said good. I’ll go for a walk. Who feels more free. He had some travel that next week had to go through the airport, you know airports, that’s a lot of walking quick. Check his bag just to make sure you have to lug anything with him. He says man he said myself he said to himself then to me like I thought it was gonna get so beat up but literally walked the entire terminal slow. But that’s that’s like a mile sometimes walk. It’s a it’s a win, man. Win. And literally nothing. No pain, nothing like that. That’s just two hours of training by taking the tent post analogy.
CJ
Love it. Take that foot down any of that sucker and MAN Yeah, and ingredient
Michael Hughes
chemist and move the ways you can successfully move. It’s just all
CJ
of them. Just explore. Don’t be afraid. If you are afraid, recognize it, keep moving.
Goose
Well, it’s wild how fast I mean, not always but how fast results can kind of come on like that two hours and like you’re noticing the difference. Like I’m willing to bet for folks with certain movement pain if we could, if we could kind of figure it none. actually figure out air quotes figure out what was going on. In that instance, being able to do the soft tissue the foam rolling the stretching can alleviate so much by using all three planes of motion. You’ll see it within one stretch people Oh, I do feel a little bit better now. I just so crazy. It’s amazing. It’s magic.
CJ
Just got any you could talk for days on this. I can’t wait till transplant duck number two Is there any, any remarks to to leave? into the ether? For those listening?
Michael Hughes
Yeah, I just made this my personal journey. And I realized that I was really afraid of what I didn’t know. And I only did I only did what I did no, because I didn’t want to hurt anybody. And that became something that I identified with, I’m grilling, I can hurt anybody. And what you do looks weird. So it’s bad, I’m going to avoid it. Because that doesn’t fit with my understanding of what I’ve been taught from all the college I paid for. And it really took this concept like let me really talk to somebody and understand hopefully what the context that we dove into to realize that we just don’t know enough. I’m not saying I’m 100% Perfect. I’ve interests and people no questions, but at least understand why I did it. Not like dang it, man. Like, maybe it’s their fault. You know, like I understand the programming that I need to change. And that’s a big deal because it makes me confident that I don’t I won’t repeat that ever again.
Goose
Excellent, TP Tiger, explore, man. Keep keep experiencing stuff, keep exploring, know where you’re at. So do it safely, like slowly ease into things. But explore what you’re capable of have a lot of fun with it. And just remember how to like feel those moves. Maybe you have to relearn maybe it’s gonna take some time, but relearn what it is to feel emotion, understand your motion, and then just explored you’d have a good time, you can do a lot more than you think you can.
CJ
Here’s here’s something to start with, too. As a programmer, I just want to release some some cool programming, to try this out for yourself. Because it’s one thing to hear us. It’s one thing to read it. It’s another thing to entirely play with it, experience it and be curious about it and that simply be gentle. Here’s my disclaimer. Don’t hurt yourself. If you do hurt yourself. Understand why. Maybe the new plane or motion for a new kind of tension. But next time you go deadlifts, do some light reps chosen. Do some light reps toes out, then go do your heavy deadlifts, you’re gonna go do some overhead presses, go grab a light dumbbell or your barbell, press rotational right overhead rotation, left overhead just a little bit. Then go do your heavy presses. For your squats, grab onto like a sandbag or a medicine ball and just do a little posterior single leg squat with low Turn towards your front leg. So like a reverse lunge, and just alternate back and forth. Then go to your heavy loaded lunges. And then maybe for some core, work, your plank, go do some rotational hip drives, turn your belly button left, turn your belly button right, just do a little bit of it back and forth. thing go try your plank. See how that feels after your workout. And if it didn’t give you more range of motion, or at least more communication with your body. Reach out and tell me that I’m an idiot because just that simple little change can change the conversation with you and your body. And that’s what it’s all about. Increasing your ability to communicate. Thanks, y’all. Join us next time on the gymnast podcast, transverse plane number two piece
Michael Hughes
Hey all. Hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. And if you did, please share it with your fitness obsessed friends and peers who are also navigating this world of fitness and trying to succeed the trends and misinformation. As you guys can see this podcast is basically a masterclass for trainers wanting to level up in their coaching skills, and their fitness business model re launches 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 this episode had some fire to it, and inspired you to take action, wait until you see what we’ll 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 reach 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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