Barbell Shrugged - 75- How To Avoid Injury and Train Pain Free in CrossFit

Episode Date: August 7, 2013

Are you consistently left injured or achey after a CrossFit workout? Are you sick of not being able to train because of shoulder, knee, wrist, or ankle pain? To discover the best ways to prevent and avoid injury, this episode of the Barbell Shrugged podcast goes deep on the subject with chiropractor Dr. Brad Cole. You'll learn why focusing on mobility is simply not enough if you want to make big progress in the gym. We'll also teach you the one thing you're probably not focused on that will prevent frequent injury and allow you to train more often.

This week on Barbell Strugged, we interview Dr. Brad Cole and talk about how to train injury and pain free. Woo! Oh my god! That's good. Here we go. Three, two, one. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Mike Bledsoe, here with Doug Larson and Chris Moore. Hey. With our guest, Dr. Brad Cole. Hi. An actual doctor. A real doctor. He went to school for a long time. Not the made-up ones we normally have on the show.

That's right. Not one of those doctors. That's the people PhDs get. How many doctors? We have three doctors up here on this show, right? Is it just three? Dr. Schilling, Dr. Galpin, Dr. Lonez. Dr. Lonez. That's true. That's right. So four. We're off. We know smart folks. We're off topic already.

Dr. Brad Cole is a chiropractor here in Memphis, Tennessee, and he treats a lot of our athletes as well as me and Doug and honestly treat you guys. Yeah I've been, had a session. Had a session with the ball ping hammer yep yeah and getting exposed. Today we're gonna be talking about pain and how to avoid it but first. Is this a philosophical discussion? We are going to get very philosophical. That'd be fine. I took the right pills for that today. But... No, I didn't.

It just cruised on the past what you just said. No, I didn't. Make sure to go to barbellstrug.com, sign up for the newsletter, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter and all that kind of stuff. Hopefully by now, we have another podcast that we started up, Doug and I did, called Barbell Business.

So if you go to barbellbusiness.com, if you're a coach who is a manager or a gym owner or something like that, you can go to that website. And then if the podcast isn't already starting to post up at this point, it's about to. But you can go ahead and put your email in the newsletter form on that website and we'll make sure to notify you

and you can be one of the first people to hear that podcast. Hear it from the very, very beginning. So we actually recorded the first one a few days ago and we had a really great time doing it. It's not nearly as long as this one by the way. I had a ton of fun recording that podcast. More fun than I have on Barbell Shrugged, truth be told.

Such an asshole. I know. How dare you? Now no one wants to listen to this one. It's not Doug's favorite. Well, Doug, I understand what you're saying because I do the Barbell Buddha one. It's a chance for you to do just what is your niche. Talk more about business. So it's natural. Go with it. Embrace the emotion.

The fittest stuff I've been doing my whole life. And so talking about it, it's not really that novel to me. You don't learn as much, you say. Yeah, So it's natural. Go with it. It's cool. Like embrace the emotion stuff I've been doing my whole life. And so talking about it, it's not really that novel to me. You don't learn as much. You say, yeah, I don't learn as much. I, when I hear someone else's perspective, I feel like, I feel like, uh, oh yeah, oh yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. Like I've heard it all before. It's more of the same, but the barbell business is a little more novel to me because business is a newer thing in my life. I've only been doing it for a couple of years. So I have a little bit more, a little more more driving a little more passion talk about barbell business

stuff so anyway if you want a little more business go to barbellbusiness.com we'll stick to barbell shark for the day and we'll completely ignore brad all right it's the intro dude yeah yeah now the intro is over now we'll get on the discussion we were. We actually practically did the show prior to the show, talking to Dr. Cole. But we were discussing how people, a lot of times, they wait until they're hurt, and they think that the very thing that they did when they started feeling pain was the cause. And you were talking about how that might not very well be the case. I think we touched on that a little bit in our squat episode as well. An argument for building up a good squat is to avoid injury in the future.

Can you go into a little bit, like, maybe some stories of some people that have come to you with some back pain, and then you're like, well, you know, it's because you move wrong. Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, the things, the types of pains that I work with are ones that develop because the movement's off. And so, like we were talking about earlier, and we'll talk about today too in regards to mobility versus stability and how mobility problems. Very different thing. That was the thing we were talking about prior to the show

is how mobility is such a popular thing. People think about chiropractic or physical therapy or they think about Kelly Starrett and mobility law and everyone's like, we got to get these joints into this range of motion. Stretch it, bang it. They really don't think about passive versus active range of motion. And then you were talking about stability, and it's something that I'm quick to forget, too, unless we're talking about core stability.

Well, sure. What are some other types of stability, maybe, in other joints that we want to look for? Yeah, stability is basically controlled movement. It's motion control. So, I mean, from you guys in the coaching world and from people that are doing CrossFit exercises, they're looking at technique, and technique is basically control.

And so when it comes to our movements... Whoa. Yeah. Up in my mind. When it comes to our movements, how we move, if it is not controlled controlled it'll result in pain because something's not you know there's a wear and tear there's inflammation which is causing pain i like the way you said that i've never really explained stability quite in that

way the way i usually describe it is that it's not moving in the presence of potential change it means you could move but you're strong enough not to so like in the as an example your low back when you squat your back or you bend over your torso bends forward but your back position doesn't change you don't hyperextend or you don't you don't flex you know you're not moving your back but you're bending forward you're maintaining a position as the rest of your body moves sure so controlled movement is an interesting way to say that because you're moving but you're controlling how one specific joint position is while the rest of your body is moving.

And that's a good way to think about stability, I think. Yeah, precisely. So through that squat, you're not supposed to be flexing or extending, but with the load, there's a stress across it that you hold stiff. All right, but if you take a step back, look at all the joints in series, all those motion segments

during your movement, we'll stick with squat, there should be a balance of the mobility and stability. And in fact, somebody could even have a good-looking technique. This is where it gets difficult.

Somebody could have a really good-looking squat technique, but the way the muscles are contributing to that stability or that movement is problematic. Or maybe it's not. How do you tell? You got to break it down.

And so we talked about squat. Well, you guys talked about squat a while back. The top, like the number one best screen would be an overhead squat. All right. That shows you everything. And if there's a problem there, you can break it down. So like some potential problems

on overhead squat would be like an ankle's too stiff or shoulder's too stiff or low back isn't controlled or maybe the knees are diving in and not controlled, right? So the knees diving in might be not a mobility issue

at the hips or ankles, but it might be a stability issue. You've got it. Yeah, it could be a stability issue. You've got it. Yeah. It could be a stability issue at the hip. And so from that, that's how you tell you break it down. All right. And so this is what I do in my office. So when it comes in, they say, my knee hurts when I squat. Great. So we just have them squat and look at it. And from that, if it does, if there's a problem, we'll break it down. Maybe the knees are diving in, so it causes some stress to the inside of the knee

as it dives in. We'll break it down and see what's the problem. Is it the ankle not working correctly to stabilize it? Is the hip not working correctly to stabilize it? Or maybe they squat okay, but the quads are too dominant. It causes some extra

compression at the kneecap. And so you can, you know, there's different tests to look at that movement. How would you tell if the quads were dominant? In the office? Sure, sure. You can, you know, having somebody do a movement when they're on their feet

gives you a lot. And then if you repeat a movement while they're laying down, then you a lot and then if you repeat a movement while they're laying down then it changes some of that control mechanism and you can look at it turned off you can see the other ones working in a more isolated sort of like a laboratory almost experiment where you take everything out of the picture and you can see an isolated muscle group working precisely so if you squat while standing just a regular air squat and then you lie on your back and you just basically bring your knees up to your chest you're basically squatting while lying on your back it's a you're you're Z yeah totally

D loaded or unloaded however you want to say if you love your stuff like that I hope we don't debate out here oh you're doing the same movement pattern yeah in an E in a D unloaded environment and you can see if there's any changes you got it exactly okay so the classic example that you're referring to is you know someone can only do like a quarter squat standing and then they land on their back and they can bring their knees all the way up to their chest without rounding their spine all of a sudden they have hip range of motion yeah but then you stand them back up and they can't do it and that's a stability problem because you know they have the range of motion exactly they don't have the stability to do it while standing so their body kind of shuts down

exactly right and it's so sad when somebody's you know pounding away at their hip range of motion because they only have a quarter squat like you said when they're standing well you put them on laying on their back and they've got that extra range right and so then it's a stability problem it's a motor control issue that's that's the uh that's the issue we did a very similar thing uh i came to you a while back and i was having some neck pain and it turns out that my mid cervicals is kind of hyper mobile and so we looked above and below it as you know as you do when you're injured to see if there's any problems with the joints right above the joints right below for mobility or stability and turns out that my kind of upper thoracic and my upper cervical both are a little bit stiff

and so I was getting too much range of motion mid-cervical and then when we tested my thoracic range of motion for my upper back, I could rotate just fine passively but then when I did it actively, I had very poor range of motion. I had a stability problem in my thoracic spine. Is that correct? Exactly right and coming to that

conclusion is a process. And so it all started with us to sit down, you tell me, you know, everything you've done before to try to address it, what made it hurt, what made it, you know, what made it feel better, your strategies for self-care and things that you've been working on. And then from that, I realized that, you realized that you had tried a lot of different stuff and had some successes with some of it, but nothing really sustainable. And so when somebody has gains that are sustainable, they usually look closer at the stability because those gains simply aren't being maintained.

A lot of times when I talk to people about stretching, they're like, I stretch all the time. And what they mean is that they're reaching down, touching their toes, and that is it. They're stretching in one movement pattern, one simple way. They might bend to the side, reach over like this, and that is about it. And they're not thinking about the whole rest of the body. There's so many different places you can be tight. There's so many different places to address.

It's good to get an assessment so you actually know where you're tight. So you even know what to stretch. Most people stretch where they're, where they're flexible because it makes them feel good. I got flexible hamstrings. I stretch my hamstrings all the time and I'm good at it. And so it makes me feel good. My favorite one is I stretch my lower back.

My lower back hurts. So I stretch it. You bend over and you sort of bounce around. Yeah. I don't know about that. Just because it feels good doesn't make it right. Sure.

Another angle on that. There's a lot of things in this world that feel good. Another angle on that is people say I need to get more mobile. I know that when I snatch

I'm not my shoulders are in bad position because I'm so bent over. I know I need to improve that's what they do. They kind of go okay I'll come in the gym

and I just I do all this stuff and yeah I stretched and they did it for five, 5 10 15 minutes maybe but they didn't have an assessment they they didn't understand how's my explaining them here's my eyes looking at you here are the real issues they go i know i need it but they don't they don't take it to the next they don't elevate to the point where they're really making it as important as all day after they put into like learning the snatch itself and that's why the gains don't come because they know't elevate to the point where they're really making it as important as all day after they put into learning the snatch itself. And that's why the gains don't come is because they know they need to do it and they fool around with it,

but they don't really invest in the understanding enough to get at the real issue. Right. So if someone comes to you, say they have low back pain, what's kind of the process they go through or that you put them through rather as a chiropractor looking to fix whatever pain they have? Yeah, sure. Back to what you're saying earlier too if someone spends a lot of time stretching right then you know there's a reason that it's that they have to stretch all the time so asking those questions why and so like that's where i start with somebody you know somebody

comes with that with an active pain complaint and we start saying oh you know what do you do for it what have you not done for it what have you conceded things that you said well I just I can do that ever anymore because of the pain and and those are those concessions kind of tip away into someone's life and they they kind of forget about those things and they they start to learn and live and behave differently because of the pain and so that you know just having that conversation so we can get a really good handle on what's going on is really helpful because time spent in assessment saves a lot of time in treatment. I mean, if somebody comes to their back, hurts, I can tear off a piece of paper that shows them low back stretches

and it'll make them feel better for about 10 minutes every time they do it. But I think that's a poor strategy to manage the issue because the pain's there for a reason if there's a muscle it's always tight and you stretch it all the time well the muscle's tight for a reason it'll tighten again precisely right yeah there's there's there's a certain pattern to it right so actually could you give an example on that why a muscle would be tight for a reason okay well i was at a a race a couple days ago, just talking and stretching people out and icing stuff down and taping stuff up.

Just getting out there. But from my perspective though, it's kind of ironic for me to do that because somebody comes and says, I've got this thing that's tight and I don't really start stretching them, I start talking to them about why you know, why they could be. And so I've got someone out there,

as opposed to simply stretching his IT band, I've got him doing monster walks and strengthening his lateral stability. So he's a good athlete. You know, they're good athletes, and they're moving well, and they're moving hard, and they're very successful. But if there's a pain or a tightness

that keeps popping up, it's for a reason. So a specific example would be somebody's got some lateral knee that keeps popping up it's for a reason so a specific example would be somebody's got some lateral knee pain or maybe it's not painful because they stretch it out all the time they're stretching the it band they're rolling the foam rolling out and stretching all the time right the question is well why would they need to do that and so you put them into a a pistol and you know and they said well i'm terrible at that on the right leg so just on one side i don't do it on the right leg. Exactly. Okay.

Yeah, just like we were saying, if you're not very good at it, it's no fun to do. And so they conceded pistols. Well, we all want to run away from what we're bad at, right? Sure. Of course. I do, too. Don't get philosophical here. Run away.

I'm going to do it anyway. Don't worry about it. That's a fine balance to do as a business owner, like between giving somebody what they want and what they need. Someone comes to you and they're like, oh man, I got really, I'm really tight right here. Can you stretch this for me?

And you kind of got to be like, yeah, no problem. And you got to show them the stretch and kind of like make them feel good. They came to you for a stretch. You gave them a stretch, but you know in the back of your mind, that's not really what they needed to fix the problem.

So you kind of do that and make them feel better. And then you got to kind of backtrack afterward and say, okay, well, now that we've done that, and maybe you feel better in the moment but if you don't want to have to come back again then we need to do these other things and then you can give them other exercises to prevent the problem in the future exactly you're trying to find the not not treat excuse me not treat the symptom you're trying to find the cause of the problem and treat that instead which in their mind might not be

connected to the problem at all sometimes you with back pain you're like well it's your ankle mobility and they're like what the hell are you talking about this guy is crazy i don't get it and so you gotta you gotta treat that one thing and then kind of backtrack and treat the other thing and that's that's a fine balance to to walk if you're if you're trying to keep someone as a long-term client because if you don't explain it very well they might just think you don't know what the hell you're talking about and never come back again yeah yeah and and well that's what i'm there for too i've got a responsibility not only to make them feel better that's the easy part but to also educate right and and i think that that's

what people really want too that they may not know that they need it or they might not you know they might not think about it. Strategies for me to be able to regain things that I've conceded previously, and prevent this from popping up again. The most of them don't even know that's an option. But what I do is explain to them like this. First we get a diagnosis, your back hurts,

and it's not all these scary things. It's a movement related issue that we can address here's how we can make it work better in the short run and so we'll start doing that now and we'll get you feeling better you know over whatever time frame it is and then here's strategies for you to check the movement on your own fix it if it's messed up to keep it from from from being a you know an ongoing problem or you know we can just make it feel better too and that's fine also uh it really has to do with uh with with people's goals you know what they would like to do and um uh you know also you know the overall health status

you know sometimes there's a lot going on and so you can't fix everything at once so mike mentioned the low back pain and and having range of motion at your low back. I need to stretch my low back. And typically that's not something we really prescribe. Like I don't prescribe anything technically. I'm not licensed. I'm not allowed. The man says I can't prescribe anything.

But fuck you, the man. Yeah, right. But you're not really supposed to try to gain that much range of motion at your low back you do need a requisite amount of range of motion at your low back but usually you're trying to get more range of motion at your hips below and your thoracic spine above and in the form of extension and rotation so your low back usually doesn't need that much range of motion as long as it can it can move through a small amount of range of motion that it was designed for usually you don't need to gain much more range of motion people

get tight low backs they think you need to stretch it that's usually not what they need to do can you can you kind of go over like the different types of joints and which ones really need more mobility and really which ones you want to train specifically for stability kind of following a great cooks joint by joint model oh sure oils yeah not Yeah. Not leave them out entirely. Well, there's, there's, there's, there's two ways to think of it. Make it, that makes it really easy. I'm a, I'm a picture person, visual person, and I don't have anything to show.

So just think of it like this. If it's an area that's usually painful, it's one of the looser joints. It's if an area that's usually forgotten, it's a tighter joint. Okay. So, so the loose joint is the painful joint usually usually and so where do people have surgeries where do people have things torn up knees and low backs right those are usually looser joints areas that are usually tighter and and get undertreated thoracic spine their mid-back their hips right ankles so in the case of the knee and the low back, those are usually what people describe as

quote unquote stable joints, as in they're supposed to be stable. Exactly. So if they're loose and not stable, if your knee dives in and it's not only bending and now when it dives in, it's twisting instead of just bending and it's loose in rotation, then it tends to get hurt. Your low back, if you squat down and it rounds rounds you're flexing your spine more hyperextending your spine and it's moving more than supposed to then your low back tends to get hurt too so if you have stiff ankles and stiff hips you're gonna move too much of your knees too

much your low backs and then you're gonna hurt your knees in your low back exactly right and so those are you know those are joint pain syndromes but now let's think about the muscle pain syndromes you know the muscles that are usually irritated those are the muscles that are usually irritated, those are the ones that are attempting to stabilize. So you've got hip muscles that are attempting to stabilize the knee. Let's continue with the knee example. The IT band, that syndrome right there,

it's irritated because the IT band is attempting to help stabilize the knee because the glutes, the deep muscles of the hips, just aren't really doing their job adequately. glutes tie into your it band exactly right so your it band's a big tendon that runs down the side of your leg your tfl when your hip flexors connects to it your glute max connects to it kind of tf on the front glute on the back and if you're not contracting your glutes your knees are diving in. And then that big tendon isn't pulling on your knee joint area kind of in the same line. And then you end up getting knee problems. Exactly right.

You don't have to say what TFL means. I'm correcting tensor fascia lata. Doesn't even sound like a real word. Like a latte? Sounds like a food. Like a latte. Rather like something I should eat. That sounds delicious.

Latte. I know. Who names these muscles? What are we talking? Why do you think people avoid attacking? They wait until their knees hurt or their lower back hurts or something like that. When the problem is the ankles and you go into the doctor and they're going to do a knee surgery. It's like, man, we were talking about the heart health thing.

It's like everyone goes and gets a physical done, and the doc goes, well, your cholesterol's high. You're, you know, we're predicting that you're a good candidate for heart problems. You know, let's start you on, you know, these drugs or something like that. You know, something that's going to be preventative in nature, you know. You should probably start exercising and eating right. They may not tell you exactly how to do that but they know what drugs are prescribed right but uh you know wouldn't it be cool like if you wouldn't got your physical if they did like some type of assessment to find out

if your knee's gonna start going to shit you know what i mean that's a really good idea so like why what do you think it would take to start getting that done like make that comment before you well i'm a genius. I'll take all the credit. When it comes to cholesterol, there's a test for that, right? But what a lot of people don't know when it comes to movement, there's also a test for that.

There's the functional movement screens. A lot of other rehab guys have put together some standards. And previously, the standard was, you know, just range of motion. Can you touch your toes? And they didn't really care how, because that was the only normative values that we've had.

But now, through the work of a lot of good researchers and rehab specialists, we've got things like the functional movement screen, which is, you know, they've taken thousands and thousands of people, put them in the database. And so we know what movement, which is, you know, they've taken thousands and thousands of people, put them in the database. And so we know what movement, not just range of motion, but movement quality norms look like. And it's been tested.

And we know that if you move a better quality, you're preventing injury. That's why they use it at, you know, when they're working with NFL and NBA guys, because they've got millions of dollars riding on it. And they want to predict injury. So they use these movement screens. So go over the functional movement screen,

how it works. There's seven different movements. It's scored from zero if you're in pain to up to three if you do it perfect. Kind of go over how that screen works and then why they know that it works across a wide range of people, the studies they've done on it, et cetera.

Exactly. Well, to give a little bit of history, I'm not part of the organization, but they're a top-notch organization and I've subscribed to a lot of their, a lot of the stuff that they've published. But basically, the Titleist Performance Institute, that's the guys that make the golf balls, right,

realized that they can sell more golf balls if people played more golf. And think about who plays. Whoa. Yeah, I know. This is crazy and think about who plays yeah I know this is crazy you think about think about who plays golf right who plays the majority of golf they're you know they're usually older guys people with money I know that people buy a lot of golf balls and this guy's thinking ahead buy the equipment but yeah they're usually little guys and so well they stop playing golf they stop playing golf because things things start hurting yeah their back hurts yeah the back hurts they've been been riding a desk for for 40 50 years and they you know jump into retirement

so they're playing some golf and yeah they can't really have a shitty range of motion and bad mechanics and there you go it's the recipe for disaster holistically all that money so the titlist performance institute got together and they're they're a multi-disciplinary team of chiropractors and physical therapists and medical doctors and researchers, people who love movement, and basically sat down, put together screens, and they've been testing it for, I guess, almost 10 years now. And from this point, they've got a lot of data about normative values. And so the test has been put together. And there's seven movements that are basic and so if you're an elite crossfit athlete or if it's a if it's a little lady that's just trying to get in

shape start walking better you can still apply the you know this this type of a movement screen and then from that it's graded and scored in a standardized way and it gives a kind of a roadmap a corrective roadmap and the fms was geared more towards coaches and and um uh you know fitness professionals it's not you know specific for the for um healthcare professionals because whenever you get to something that's painful you stop and then figure out orthopedically what's causing a problem there to get that addressed. And they have a whole other assessment for that. Yeah, there's a separate assessment

that basically just goes a lot more in depth. Are they trying to get these assessments out to people who are performing physicals? Because I know that right now, people don't get these assessments done unless they walk into a quality strength conditioning facility or a chiropractor or a physical therapist. They're usually already hurt,

or they're trying to take their strength and conditioning to the next level. That's not most people. Yeah, that's a great idea. I was working with a rugby team and said hey I'll just you know as a public health

standpoint just be a good citizen and say hey I'll do all your physicals but yeah that was the moving screen was part of the physical

because that's where they really got it because these guys these kids high school kids are playing rugby so first we check their heart and lungs

make sure there's no other issues there or risks but then look at movement and wow talk about preventing some injury and and given and everybody had a corrective to go work on oh for sure if you if you go to to the doctor and you have back pain the doctor's really just to make sure that you don't have like a tumor in your back he's gonna do scans he's gonna make sure you don't have kidney cancer and then beyond that you need to start looking at your everyday movement patterns so functional movement screen is cool because it runs you through an overhead squat a lunge you line your back you raise your leg up

straight kind of like like a hamstring type stretch even there's a little bit more to it if you dig into to the to the screen you do a shoulder mobility test where you reach behind your back see if you can touch your hands together and you do it on both sides see if you're even they're always looking for symmetry in the moving screen i think gray cook says that beyond uh beyond a previously a previous existing injury movement asymmetry is the number two predictor of injury so you've been hurt before you're likely to get hurt again in the same way but if you move differently side to side then you're likely to get injured the way i usually explain to people is if you go for a full speed sprint and you have tight wrangler jeans on one

side and loose running shorts on the other side you're gonna run those wrangler jeans give me every time yeah i mean you're gonna move differently side to side right think of the chafing we should think of the chafing we should test that it just seems like we should experiment waiting to happen but Can that be the... Oh, that should be the intro. You got tight wranglers around? Can you wear some of your wife's wrangler jeans? Tight business pants.

She's ready. I have some loose running shorts. I got one even better. Ridiculously tight jorts. Jorts. You got some of those. Yeah, I do. I usually save them for the river, but I might break them out for a science experiment.

We did have a guy who used to squat in really tight jorts to the point where one time he tore right through the middle of his crotch on his jorts. And his jorts, those are jean shorts, if you don't know what we're talking about. His jorts hung there like a little jean miniskirt. The best part? He went out to his car and got another pair. Yeah, that's the best part of the story.

He's like, what are you going to do now that your shorts are torn? He's like, he goes out of his car and grabs another pair of jorts. I'm like, what? He's real country.

He's like, I got more in my car. He just has like an endless supply of jorts. I always carry two jorts. That's right. All right, guys. Take a break real quick

when we come back. We'll talk more about stuff that I don't know about yet. Figure it out as we go. Hey, guys. Take a break real quick. When we come back, we'll talk more about stuff that I don't know about yet. Figure it out as we go. Hey, guys. This is Rich Froning, and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to fitter.tv. And we're back.

All right. Yeah. I guess I'll go back through the intros again. Mike Bledsoe here again with Doug Larson and Chris Moore. And our guest, Dr. Brad Cole. You may have forgotten after that awesome technique, Wad, that was in between in the middle of this show somewhere. Was there an awesome technique, Wad?

Yeah. I guess there should be. Okay. All right. Cool. Yeah, so we were talking about number one predictor of injury is. You're on the spot. This is after the jorts discussion, right?

The jorts. Oh, wait, wait. We didn't bring that up before the jorts. Somewhere in there. I don't know. Yeah, what's number one? There's jorts, and then there's the number one predictor for injury. Okay, so when it comes to training, focus on durability.

Have a long goal of durability, and that's what's going to really separate you from the other athletes. So that's kind of an ambiguous term. Durability? Durability, yeah. How long you can go before things start to break down. Okay. Okay, so for those that, you know,

it really becomes an issue for those that are on the competitive circuit. You look at the top competitors, and they're very're very durable all right they move well with good quality consistently right even when they're gassed right and they do so over longer time frames too so better durability to prevent entry so they're durable because they have good technique at all times even when they're fatigued is that kind of what i heard you say? That's correct, yes. And because they focus on good technique, okay? Because if there is a movement, or if there's a stability or a mobility problem,

it doesn't hurt. The average Joe doesn't care, right? But in the long run, something's gonna go wrong. And we know that from research know from research studies uh that like we were talking about earlier the the number one predictor for injury is if there's been a previous injury okay you can't change that the number two predictor and it comes on really really it comes in well before any mobility issue the number two predictor is if there is an asymmetry so left the right side of your body there's a symmetry

asymmetry right symmetry yeah that range of motion or that stability asymmetry from left to right right you're moving definitely side to side i have yeah we have a good example of that with myself i was talking to dr cole in my kitchen before we were doing this and i was talking about i have a hamstring recurring hamstring injury on my right side. So I already have the number one predictor, previous injury. Number two is I've noticed that my right foot always wants to kick out a little bit. And it doesn't have as, the internal rotation of that hip on the right side is just not as good as the left. And we were talking about, now I've got two. I'm stacking now.

It's looking bad for you yeah yeah some amount of asymmetry is totally normal like as a right-handed person you're going to have certain right handedness patterns that are going to you know that are going to be normal you're going to have less ankle mobility on your right side more likely you can have less glute strength on your right side more quad strength on your right side less glute strength strength on your left side some of that stuff is totally normal you really can't work around it just because you do some things with one hand

at all times. Like you're always going to kick a soccer ball. It's all that skateboarding, man. That's right. You got your longboard. And by the way, I could have made

a masturbation joke that I won't. You won't. We won't even bring it up, in fact. He always does some things with one hand. I'm not even going to say that joke.

Should I? He always uses the mouse with his right hand.'s what you're saying yeah should i ditch the skateboard is that is that screwing me up well you gotta you gotta highlight those asymmetries you know figure them out with the movement screen and so you've observed on your own you know looking at your foot when you walked across the bathroom floor that there's could be a in a symmetry there but how much more could you you know, spending a couple minutes with somebody like me to figure out exactly. Just a suggestion. Excuse me. Mike is

self-assessing. Not a good idea. You can't see your own shadow. Don't do a self-assessment. Do you kick with both legs on your skateboard? Primarily a right foot kicker. But I'm trying to not kick at all. Trying this new thing. Pumping?

It's called staying still. Total body stability. We'll do a technique lot on pumping your board. Okay, wink, wink. Wink, wink, yes, right. Sorry, go ahead and continue. Then there's boarding, but I mean, just also thinking about rotational athletes,

there's asymmetries there. Oh, yeah. And then how many people are actually out there that avoid doing single leg stuff? You guys have been talking about some single leg work recently. Single arm, single leg, they avoid it because it's hard to do. They can't lift as much. It's not as fun. Yeah.

And they might not be good at one side, so you kind of avoid it. You brought up a good point with the rotational athletes. If you golf or play baseball or anything like that, tennis, anything where you hit or throw something, for the most part, you're doing all that explosively in one direction only and never on the other side, so you're bound to have a bunch of funky asymmetries.

I don't know tennis and all these other sports, but baseball specifically, I know a lot of pitchers have a huge internal rotation deficit on the right side they have a huge internal rotation deficit on their plant leg when if i throw right-handed my left leg is my plant leg they have a huge internal rotation symmetry on their left hip you develop these asymmetries and fixing those asymmetries goes a long way to keeping you from getting injured after you've been doing that sport and that same movement pattern over and over again for years and years on end. Well, yes, and also to an extent,

because a lot of those true rotational athletes, they do have some asterisks on their movement screen that where it's not as important for some, for asymmetry at some of those tests, but not others. So that's why it's helpful to have somebody that's what they do to look into it so give you a good objective assessment because that time spent in an assessment saves a lot of time in treatment so maybe they can avoid you know torquing on their shoulder for 30 minutes every time they they train right uh so here let's go let's go a little bit

into the movement screen okay we said that was it was scored seven different movements so i said it was zero to three kind of how do you know if it's a zero one two or three what does that even mean oh sure it's objective yeah yeah if there's any pain or discomfort uh then then that's a zero and then they they should at that point be kicked off to a a medical or a movement health professional okay all right let's use the overhead squat just to make it so people can visualize while we're talking so you're doing overhead squat you're painting your knee while you're doing it you get a zero zero okay yeah what about what about one two or three with overhead squat uh one means that that based on those standards that that the movement looks awful

all right and so that's a problem that's usually when a good coach says whoa stop don't do that you know okay let's go fix this first right the way i usually find one was you you couldn't do it you couldn't really do the movement almost at all yeah yeah it's just it just doesn't move well you know that could be a little bit a little bit of a strict standard because uh they then for a two means it looks okay-ish it's not perfect because you know three means that it's that it was looked awesome You wouldn't do anything to fix it. Perfect overhead squat. And so I deal out the twos pretty liberally

because if it's not perfect, it's a two. But if you break it down a bit and then there's an asymmetrical two, then that's a problem. And then if it's a one, that's a really low-hanging fruit. And so we prioritize that movement for corrections. I've got a lot of ones. Have you ever seen a three before?

Oh, yeah. You have seen a three? Oh, sure. Okay. Usually not threes across the boards, but yeah. Do you think you couldn't get a three? Well, I don't think I would get a three. No?

But maybe. I think you'd get a three. But then, I mean, it's kind of like, maybe it seems a little subjective. Like, sometimes guys go, man, that you get a 3. It seems a little subjective. Sometimes guys go, man, that chick is a 10. You know there's no such thing as a 10? That's ridiculous. I don't believe in 10s.

There might be a 9.5. You've met a 10. How would you know? I'm thinking maybe there's a 2.5, maybe not a 3. Someone's going to have a problem somewhere only tens are our wives yeah well so yeah they're listening questions look for the lowest hanging fruit and so Go for the other girls No no no Roll back We're going back to

Movement Back to the movements You know What you're going to correct Focus on the lowest Hanging fruit Because you know If somebody's doing

Some overhead squat work And there's five people Standing around Or the four of us Looking at it You know Scratching our heads And rubbing our chins

Trying to figure out If it's a 2.5 or a 3 Or maybe a 2.75 Forget it move on because there's something else that's causing a problem go to it usually go assess another movement that's probably going to be more important than trying to like good enough exactly exactly so because if somebody comes in and doug if we can use your example again sure if we spend all our time looking at your your bilateral movements you know on both sides looking at your overhead squat

that would look great. And we could have been figuring out, why is your neck sore if the overhead squat's so good? But instead, it was good. It was probably pretty good. Good enough. Move on. And then when you find a movement flaw, it's going to really jump out.

And so you just have to keep looking for the right things. Is that kind of how it goes during an assessment? You're like, well, that looks pretty good. Let's try this. And then you go, oh keep looking for the right things. Is that kind of how it goes during an assessment? You're like, well, that looks pretty good. Let's try this. And then you go, oh, this is the problem. Oh, you're terrible there. Yeah. Yeah.

That's really the fun and the beauty of it because you get to see, I mean, whoever I'm talking to, the lights come on. I said, wow, I had no idea. I was terrible at that. It becomes obvious to them, too. Yeah. And that's the idea is to let them know where the problems are. I'll let them know, you know, what's not working well, like your thoracic rotation, uh, it actively, it wasn't there. And so, so I can, you know, I could rotate your

shoulders pretty well, but when you rotate it on your own, you just didn't have it. All right. So it's like, you know, there's a big aha moment and then we can look at the correction for it. And then it's the most fun to then 10 minutes later recheck it and it's better. And it's better by something that the patient or the client was involved in doing. And so now they've got a really cool take on. And they learn how to fix it. It's really cool.

So with the mobility issues, I imagine that you prescribe stretches and then with the mobility issues you i imagine you prescribe stretches and then with the stability stuff is that more where kind of quote-unquote corrective exercise comes in exactly right yeah corrective exercise and then i always give a corrective exercise uh with an with an assessment to a self-assessment because otherwise you know because maybe it's a bias i have but when i'm working with somebody i'm talking to them about you know, because maybe it's a bias I have, but when I'm working with somebody, I'm talking to them about, you know, what they've done in the past. And it's a story I hear all the time. Well, I do this exercise, you know, for my hip or whatever.

You know, why do you do that one? Well, you know, I was told to five years ago and it worked. So, well, it's good to know. It's good to know at that point that, hey, you've been working on this the whole time, and maybe it's not as important anymore. Okay, so have a good take-home self-assessment or a self-audit, I like to call them. So you can audit the movement yourself and know when to apply the corrective exercise because sometimes it's not something you do every day. If it's a stability issue, sometimes it'll clean up right away. And then check it periodically.

It's part of your movement prep before you train check it and if it's grooving well great forget about it if you're you know if you're hitting you're hitting a speed bump with that movement audit then you use the corrective get it working again and then move well do you have any examples there where someone has a stability issue you gave them a couple exercises and in and some type of self audit that that audit that you could state right now that way we could see, not in a general way, but like in a very specific way, exactly what that looks like.

Sure, sure, okay, so somebody comes in and they try to stretch out their hamstrings all the time because their hamstrings are tight and they're always tight. And so they do bend forward, touch your toes, it doesn't look good, but their movement, their strategy, they don't hip hinge like a deadlift. They're just flexing forward at their low back first to reach for their toes. And if you stand up and flex forward at your low back first, your brain says, stop. Don't do that.

And so the movement stops and they don't reach very far. Makes sense. I can follow. You following, Mike? Yeah, we good? Got it. Got it? If I can follow, you people at home have it if i didn't follow you have it yeah makes you feel to go

so then a couple minutes just working on basically a hip hinge shooting the butt back like a good deadlift technique uh that's more hip motion and less back motion groove that a couple of times and then go back into the same assessment and we didn't stretch the hamstrings but they've got more range and they say wow that's really cool i didn't stretch my hamstrings and now we're actually addressing the problem just expanded their awareness of what the real issue is exactly right yeah a lot of people don't like to do kind of touch your toes hamstring style stretches you know i reach down touch my toes i'm stretching everything behind me i'm not really stretching my hamstrings but stretching whatever's getting elongated that's on the back half of my body yeah which whichever is loosest gets stretched first that's exactly right whatever is the easiest

to pull straight is going to pull straight first and everything else is going to fall behind so if we break it down and for the moment we say that you're really stretching your low back and your hamstrings my hamstrings are big long or big powerful strong muscles stretching your low back and your hamstrings. My hamstrings are big, long, or big, powerful, strong muscles. And my low back has a bunch of little tiny muscles, a whole bunch of them in a very small space. They're probably going to stretch tight first. And then they are going to be the things that pull on my big hamstrings. So they're probably going to be stretching more than my hamstrings in that example. Kind of like if you tie a very small band to a very you know very thick large band and then you you tie them end to end and you pull on them the small band is going

to stretch a lot the big band is not going to stretch very much at all that's kind of what's going on when you're stretching when you're stretching your hamstrings by touching your toes your low back stretches a lot hamstrings you feel in your hamstrings but they're not really being stretched that much your low back's taking the majority of that stress so you say these hamstrings are these hamstrings suck they're so tight well they're just they're just your hamstrings they're doing what hamstrings do yes yeah yeah don't blame your hamstrings asshole so so knowing which joints and which muscles are supposed to be stretched and which ones really aren't supposed to be stretched goes a long way to the types of stretching that you prescribe. Can you kind of dig into that a little bit and talk

about how you prescribe these exercises and why you know you're working and stretching the right things versus the wrong things, like you're stretching your hamstrings and you're not stretching your low back in most cases? Well, sure. Yeah. It depends on the person, but it's all about the quality of the movement. So take the same guy, all right, and he needs to work on his hip hinge pattern. So that's his new stretch, all right? And I usually,

you know, do this when I say stretch or somebody. Quotation marks people on iTunes. He made sarcastic quotation marks. Sarcastic quotation marks. That's your new stretch. Hopefully,

yeah. Can you hear my voice? That's our new stretch. Stretch. You should get the inflection there. So hip hinging like a good morning. Exactly, right? Good morning exercise. Back straight, bending the hip. Okay. Yeahinging like a good morning. Exactly right. A good morning exercise. Back straight, bending the hip.

Grooving that pattern. Then they can enjoy a better pattern through their movement as opposed to sitting down and trying to pound out some range in their hamstrings. Pounding range. Pounding range. Felt that one coming. You saw that one coming?

Our consciousness is linked, CTP. Felt it in his bones. All right. You haven't really been saying much this episode. You're kind of just hanging out over there. He's learning. He's blown away by all the knowledge. I was listening to you two guys go at it.

Yeah, we weren't doing the majority of the talking. How did I end up doing the majority of the talking? Where are you guys? You're the requisite mobility guy. This is your bread and butter. I'm sorry. Fuck, me and Bledsoe are learning a lot here we're students i'm just in here drinking coffee just listening there you go having a good time all right i'm a host i'm supposed to be

saying things so if someone wanted to learn more about functional movement screens and kind of this joint by joint uh mobility stability um concept where would they go is there any resources out there for this topic oh sure you can go to functionalmovement.com and there's that's a very accessible uh website and there's a lot of resources there and um uh depending on when this podcast goes up i'll probably put something on my blog at drbradcole.com you posted a few things in the past on this very topic i think you went through each joint kind of blog by blog at one point. Call me out. That's the plan at least.

He said he was going to do it. It was going to be like the 12 month project and now it's going to be like a four year project. It was like your book that we had at one. Oh yeah, the book's almost done.

Doug and I outlined a book once. We're basically done. Nice. Did the hard part. That was the hard part. You're writing a book now. You've learned your lesson.

Teaser. Shit. Don't tell me. Now the world knows. Now I'm committed. I'm going to pressure so you'll finish. you're writing a book now you've learned your lesson teaser shit don't tell me now the world knows now I'm committing I'm putting the pressure so you'll finish no you guys are my inspiration

when it comes to publication you guys are consistently doing a really good job and I bang out a pod an article a blog every now and then

that's because we're too dumb to know we should stop we just keep going there's people that can do a way better job than know we should stop. We just keep going. There's people that could do a way better job than us, but for some reason we just keep plugging away and showing up. Consistency.

That's the hardest part of podcasting, by the way, folks. Showing up. It's the hardest part of life. If you want results, you want to get. That's true. Podcasting is the same as stretching. If you want to have a result, it doesn't matter if you're perfect. It doesn't matter if you have all the answers.

What matters is you show up and you work on it and you keep looking for the answer. If you drive to the gym, you'll magically be in shape. Seriously, that's the hard part. Just go to the gym. If you get there, you'll work out and you'll train hard. You have to show up to a gym where they're writing the workout for you.

I've definitely seen people show up to certain gyms, wander around for half an hour, and then walk right back out. Same goes for stretching. It's quality and showing up. There we go. So it's a time spent in assessment saves time to treatment. Time spent in programming saves time to training. Sweat on the mat or bleed in the streets.

That's a good thing to end on. All right, let's wrap this up. It's just the analogies are getting ridiculous. All right, Doug, what you got? I suppose the most relevant topic or product for this episode is maximum mobility. If you want to learn how to do your own self-assessment and figure out where you're tight and where you actually need to stretch that way you're not just stretching for quote-unquote no reason see when i when i quote i say quote-unquote they're good uh that way the people on itunes now are you quoting i'm saying nothing and then unquoting and then going on with a statement

i don't know what part do you i'm gonna skip past it though so if you want to learn how to do your own self-assessment, maximum mobility basically goes through each of your joint ranges of motion, tells you how much range of motion you're supposed to have for most quote unquote functional movement. There's another quote unquote. And then shows you exactly what to do

to fix it and to get more range of motion if you actually have a problem. So if you want to check out maximum mobility, you can go to wobbleshark.com and click on the shop, click on products and you can see Maximum Mobility there. It has more

information about it on the product page. And if you already bought it, we're updating it soon. Doug's like, we are? Chris wants to update it soon. We are? We filmed some stuff the other day. Oh yeah, we filmed a bunch of stretches the other day. I was like, oh, we are?

Yeah, we do. We filmed a bunch of stretches the other day, so we're going to post those up here pretty soon. Hopefully by the time this episode posts, we have a bunch of stretches the other day. I was like, oh, we are? Yeah, we do. We filmed a bunch of stretches the other day, so we're going to post those up here pretty soon. So hopefully by the time this episode posts, we have a bunch of stretches that you can reference. That's the beauty of the way we do our products is we actually host the product on our own website. That way we can update them, so they're constantly improving.

It's not like you download it one time, and that's all you get. Yeah, if we burn physical DVDs, that'd be a huge pain to update. They all right brad uh tell us if people are at least at least they live in memphis and they want to um you know take advantage of your services and then fix some pain that they have where can they reach you yeah you can find me at drbradcole.com or cole pain therapy group c-o-l-e cole pain therapy group.com or find me on twitter uh dr brad cole and y'all are on Bartlett. You got Dr. Brad Cole?

Got it. Damn. No numbers? Nothing. No underscores? Dr. Brad Cole underscore 2018

dot dash me. Find me. Good luck. If your Twitter handle is your name and the year of your birth you're a douche.

No one's going to find me. Alright Chris what do you got? Yeah, go to barbellbuddha.com. I write, I podcast on the Barbell Buddha podcast. You can find those things there. I think you'll love it. And also, there's a link to a store where you can support those efforts by picking up a nice signed copy of Progress.

You can download a digital copy and there's some other things on there. So please check it out. I'm your friend. I'm here to help you. That's my book. Mike, it's your turn. You can also's some other things on there. So please check it out. I'm your friend. I'm here to help you. That's my book. Mike, it's your turn. You can also find Chris's book on iTunes. And Amazon.

And Amazon. Search Sexy Chris Moore and it'll come up. No, just search my name. I wonder if it would. Click Google Images. Search Sexy Chris Moore. Google Images. You'll find some pictures that I'm not particularly proud of.

All right, guys. Don't forget, head over to Facebook, like us there, and sign up for our newsletter at barbellsrug.com. And I will see you next week. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Brad. I appreciate it. You bet.