Barbell Shrugged - Being Able To Wipe Your Ass And Change The Channel Isn’t Enough- Active Life Radio #11

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

When we have a new client come to us at Active Life, we are almost never the first stop for them.   Working with a stranger from half way around the world isn’t exactly the experience people think of when they want to get out of pain without giving up their active lifestyle.    In this episode Dr. Sean and Active Life One-on-One Coach, Lance Einerson talk about Lance’s client Chris who has been to many doctors and found himself frustrated with their answers.   He had shoulder pain that had him limited to the point that it was looking like changing the channel and wiping his own ass we’re going to be the future of his shoulder fitness.   That was unacceptable to Chris, and he followed a referral from another Active Life client all the way to being discussed as a success story on this show.   Minute Breakdown:   1-10: Does it get repetitive? 11-20: What if he can’t do the movements? 21-30: How to deal with multiple issues at the same time 31-40: What does breathing have to do with it? 41-50: Creating corporate wellness out of this experience  51-60: Learn how to teach people to breathe.    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/alr-ep11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

what's up everybody welcome back to active life radio on the shrugged collective network today's show is brought to you by some pretty awesome sponsors it's brought to you by first Organifi, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com. These guys are putting out the best tasting, easiest to consume health products on the market. When I'm talking about superfoods, I'm talking about green juices, I'm talking about turmeric tea. It's the stuff I drink before bed. It's the stuff I drink in the morning with my breakfast and I don't have to wince as I squeeze some nasty concoction into a cup and pour it down my throat. I just put some Organifi powder and put some nice water in the cup with it, stir it, drink it. It's a beautiful day. Head to Organifi.com and use the code SHRUGGED at checkout for 20% off. 20%!

That's crazy. We also have another sponsor, and this is a cool sponsor. It's a company called Ned. You can go to HelloNed.com to get to know more about them. They are a CBD and hemp products company and hemp and cbd are one of those those products i've always wanted to get myself into i just didn't really understand what the benefits of it was and how it was supposed to work and it's sub-sensory so you don't feel it so it's one of those is it really working i can tell you that if nothing else the

act of taking it every day is relaxing the lip balm is awesome and you can know that all ned products are made from organic and whole natural ingredients they They're small batch, they're slow crafted, they only source products from local farms and communities. And that means that you never have to worry about where it's coming from, how it's been processed, or if it's going to work. You guys know me well enough to know that I would not promote companies that didn't match the values that I have. And these are companies that are doing the right kind of stuff for the right kind of people with the right kind of people. So head to helloned.com and use the code shrugged at checkout for 15% off. Easy day. I just saved you guys hundreds of bucks. Now we're going to get you to the intro of the episode with Dr. Lance Enerson,

active life one-on-one coach talking about everything from Achilles issues and shoulder issues with one of his clients to a super secret project that we have been working on together and I think we're ready to release to you, the Shrugged audience. All right, what's up, Dr. Lance Einerson? Welcome to the Active Life Radio portion of the Shrugged Collective Network. Well, thanks, man. I'm happy to be here. I love doing this. It's great. I'm happy to have you here. You were the first Active Life Radio episode on Shrug Collective. That's flattering. I realize that. That's cool. You never forget your first. No. All right. So, Lance, welcome back. Today, we're going to be talking about your client who we spoke to

prior to the show. He's down with us giving all the specifics about what's going on with him, what went on with him. And yeah, let's fill him in. What did Chris come to you for? So Chris signed up as a one-on-one client with Active Life because he had shoulder pain. He wasn't able to really like lift his arm up above his head, you know, in front or out to the side without having, having pain. And what he was worried about was that he was going to these doctors and physical therapists and stuff. And they were like, Hey, maybe you should just stop doing CrossFit. Maybe you should just stop doing these things that you enjoy doing and find

something else to do because your shoulder hurts. And that wasn't something that he was, you know, willing to do. That wasn't a compromise he wanted to make. And so he came to us. And does he, is it, am I mistaken or does he coach a little bit of CrossFit? Yeah, he did at the time. I haven't talked to him about that in a while, but at the time, yes. Yeah, no, it's not his primary profession. He's a full-time team manager over at LinkedIn. So it's not like he's your prototypical 25-year-old CrossFit athlete who is doing some job that they just got into after college. This guy's an established professional, been around

the block for a while, does CrossFit because he likes to feel fit and be fit. And he coaches just because it's fun for him. Yeah. Yeah. It was just a big part of his lifestyle. You know, it's the things that he really enjoyed doing and having that, you know, taken away because of pain like that, that just wasn't cool. Yeah. So I remember the first time I talked to Chris, he was a referral to us from Amy Mandelbaum. Okay. So for people who know Amy Mandelbaum, she owns CrossFit Westport. She's a multiple-time Games Masters athlete, which Chris is not. No big deal.

Sorry, Chris. You didn't know the games. I'm not sure where Chris plays, but it wasn't close to the games. But so she referred him over and he came on and he was like, yeah, whatever Amy says, I'm just going to do it. And so we signed him up and he signed up for six months to work with you and he came on and it was shoulder stuff, right? Yeah. I mean, that, that's what he, he showed up for. But when we, you know, went through the screening and, and we checked strength and everything, and we actually had a conversation about the things that were going on, uh, it turned out that there were some other

things going on as well. Can you take our listeners through what that conversation is like? Because I mean, it's, I know that my wrist hurts, for example. What are you going to have a conversation with me about that's going to make me understand that my back hurts also, but previously I didn't? Yeah. So it's not just like, okay, my wrist hurts. And so we sit down and talk about it. Let's talk about everything about your wrist because there's – a person isn't just a wrist person actually you know we've got a lot of things going on uh and we have a lot of other things going on that might be you know that aren't even movement related that you know you have a lot of stress going on and so that

that conversation uh it might have something with like okay your wrist hurts well what are the things you're doing what are the things that you like to do and what's bothering you? And we can trace that back down the line. Well, are we having some shoulder problems too? Are you compensating for something somewhere there? Do you remember specifically, I'm sorry to interrupt, but do you remember specifically what that conversation was like with Chris? Oh man, that's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. It's been, that's like been like a year and a half. The big thing for him, though, that stands out from that conversation was, okay, you're here for this shoulder thing, and we're going to look into that. But let's go a little bit deeper and talk about some other things that you're feeling that might not be at the forefront of your mind that are inhibiting your experience when you're in the gym or doing other active things that you enjoy

doing? And the big thing that came up for him is that in the past, he'd had some micro tears in his Achilles. And so like running, jumping, any activities that involve those sort of things, they weren't happening super well. So how do you, when somebody tells you that, like I have a history of micro tears in my Achilles, my arm doesn't move out to the side, move out in front. How do you explain to somebody that we're going to be able to help them with that and it's not going to be physical therapy. Well, a lot of times the conversation comes back to, you know, like, let's talk about what you're actually experiencing. You know, like, is this thing, you know, is it stiff? Is it tight? Is it short?

You know, like, what we're addressing there is not so much, uh, the, the fact that like, Hey, we need to do all of this hands-on work, but you know what, you probably just haven't loaded this for a long time. So we need to strengthen it. You know, we, we need to get you the proper range of motion so that you can actually move it in the way that you want to, and then give you strength so that you can actually own those positions and perform in them and do the things that you want to do. I mean, it doesn't take a doctor to do that. It takes somebody who's willing to put some intention into some programming and have a conversation with a person that, you know, it's not always comfortable, but it's the thing that they need. And so you have it.

Now, what do you mean by it's not always comfortable? Because I think I want you to expand on that because I actually think that one of the things that we do really well as a company that people listening to this could gain benefit from whether they're going to do what we do or not is we have the uncomfortable conversations that lead us to the valuable resolutions. So what are you describing when you say it's going to be uncomfortable to have that talk? So I think that some people will have an easier time having conversation. You know, everybody's got this, the thing that's uncomfortable for them. And for me, something that I've had to overcome to be able to do this and to do my job well, which I feel like I do, is to push people in their expectations. So Chris might have come and said,

okay, my shoulder is bothering me. Let's focus on my shoulder. And the conversation on my end had to be, you're not a shoulder. You're not this injury. We need to look deeper beyond just, Hey, the shoulder's not moving this way. Let's talk about all of the other stuff that's going on that might be affecting the way that you're feeling. Is that difficult to do with a stranger?

It was, but not so much anymore. It's something, it's something that I, it's a learned skill. I guess that's what I'm getting at. For sure. But do you feel like for them, I mean, for the new client, they haven't learned the skill. So is it uncomfortable for them, do you think, to have that conversation with you? It's uncomfortable to have that conversation if you're not demonstrating that your intent is to help them and to improve their life. So if I'm just showing up on the phone, like, Hey, all right, tell me about your shoulder. Okay. This is what was on your intake form. Cool. All right. We're going to put some testing. This is what we're going to do. Okay. See you. Bye. Right. Like that's, that's going to be really

hard for them to open up. But if we're taking a little bit of time to get to know them, to talk about the things that are going on and the way that their injuries are affecting not just their performance, but like the way that they're feeling as people, then it's a little bit easier to open up to somebody who's showing that they actually care. Yeah. I'm happy that that's been your experience because I think that it's important for people to know that when they can understand your intent, when they recognize that you're doing what you're doing out of empathy for them, they prefer to open up and have a real conversation. That's just human nature. I want to tell somebody who is down to hear and not judge for my problems. I want to tell them my problems. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the cool thing

that happens to as, as a coach is that when you slow down and make that connection, it becomes so much easier for you to, to help them to build that bridge from where they're at to where they want to be because it's, everything is so much more real and you're not having so much trial and error and guesswork because there's all this other stuff going on that you don't know about. Absolutely. So I'd love to hear from you. When you take somebody like Chris on, he can't bring his arm out to the side or out in front of him without pain.

How do you test the guy like that? Yeah. So that comes back to that, that conversation, right? So we, we have our movement screen that we put people through so we can see actually the way that they're moving. And we talk to them about the things that are bothering them and we set it up in a way that is not going to be so invasive that it's going to, you know, get them in trouble symptom wise. But we still need to get, you know, the best data that we can. So for him, it was like, okay, we're not going to, we're not going to be testing, you know, like a five rep single arm shoulder press with you just because it hurts.

You know, it's that we're not going to get anything good out of that. But what we, what we might do is do something like, all right, we're going to do a landmine press and see what you're able to do there. And it's like, okay, that's that one. That one didn't hurt. That's okay. We, and then we can build off of that and, you know, get them to the movement that they want to have and the strength that they need to. So essentially in the beginning, you were just staying within pain-free or limited pain rangers emotion and then building him up over time.

Is that right? Yeah, yeah. But like we give parameters too, right? Because pain doesn't, it's not always like, hey, just stop doing this. But rather, hey, we're going to do this thing. I want you to stay within, you know, a two or three out of 10.

If you're there, cool. Let's keep moving. Or, you know, like a four out of 10, you're feeling good there. Pain's not lasting more than 24 or 48 hours. Cool. Let's keep moving. So how often do you find yourself explaining that to a client and having them be surprised by that information? I try to do it on the front end with people of letting them know that the work that we're doing is not going to be pain-free and that there's going to have to be some irritation going on there if they, if they want to have some positive adaptation and that that's going to just be part of the package. And when you have that conversation on the front end, it, it's does, it's not a big deal because you've, you set the expectations. They know that that's part of the process and they don't get that panic. They don't get that.

They're not freaking out thinking that something's wrong. the process and they don't get that panic. They don't get that. They're not freaking out, thinking that something's wrong. Right. Because the pain is driven up by the uncertainty that comes with it. Yeah. Yeah. The uncertainty. So do you find that that's a more difficult thing to instill in people from a distance than it is to do with them in person in your clinic? It's a slower process, obviously. I mean, if somebody's right in front of me in my clinic and I'm working with them, then you can have that conversation in real time. But what I've found, because that's something I was actually worried about when I started working for Active Life, like, I don't

know if I'm going to be able to communicate these important things when I'm not in person. And it really hasn't been that big a deal. It's just like, hey, this is the way that it is, and as long as I'm consistent in the way that I'm communicating those ideas to them so that if they're asking multiple times or in different ways in different situations because they have some uncertainty, it's actually went really smooth. So let's take somebody who hasn't ever had that conversation with someone. They've been in pain for a long time. They're listening to this podcast and they're like, I hope this is the one that teaches me how to get out of pain by myself. Finally, how do they know if what they're doing is too much and it's, it's causing more damage versus

this is probably the adaptation, the irritation that you need to drive the adaptation. Yeah. So if they're working on some exercise to help to get them out of pain and they're working through it and they notice that their pain is getting worse as they work through the set and through the work that they're doing, probably not a good idea to keep going. If they're working and their pain doesn't get any worse it stays at that that constant level and it doesn't get worse when they're done

or it goes away right when they're done again that's cool that's that's them driving some some adaptation um and then the other thing is that if, if the pain just starts to go away as they're doing it, probably a good thing there as well, unless we're talking about some tendon issues, right? If they're warming up and it's, it's getting better. And we know that there's a connective tissue thing, which is going to probably have to come from another conversation. Then, you know, we need to talk about that as well. But overall, if the pain gets worse when they're doing it, then we need to stop. If it stays around for more than 48 hours, again, we need to stop. But yeah. So those are some pretty simple steps for you guys. I'll reiterate

them in a really simple way for you to hear so you can know if what you're doing is making you worse or making you better. Rule number one, if the pain you're experiencing is a five out of ten or greater when you first start, for the sake of caution, shut it down. If the pain is a four out of ten or less, continue, provided that that pain does not get worse from rep to rep. If it gets better from rep to rep, that's great. When you put the weight down or you stop doing the movement, whatever discomfort you're experiencing should dissipate immediately. If it doesn't, if it lingers, you might be causing some problems.

Might be time to shut it down. Lastly, if you're still feeling residual symptoms in 24 to 48 hours after the episode, shut it down. Go see a physical therapist, go see a chiropractor, go see a trusted medical professional in person who you believe is going to be able to help you. Fair? Perfect. Awesome. Okay, so I want to get back to, to Chris specifically. Do you remember the early days of what it was like with him? Because now you have a guy who often, I mean, people hear like, Oh, Achilles issue or shoulder issue. No problem. We'll just work the lower body or we'll just work the upper body. Now the guy's got lower body and upper body. It's difficult to deload everything.

What do you do? You start loading things intentionally according to what's going on for him. So he had some range of motion issues for the upper body. Um, that was shoulder flexion. Yeah. He had shoulder flexion and abduction issues there. So for just, just, just so people don't know, that's okay. For people who don't know what that means, shoulder flexion and abduction issues there. So for just so people don't know, that's okay. For people who don't know what that means, shoulder flexion is essentially with your arms at your side. If you were to raise your arms straight in front of you over your head, that's shoulder flexion.

Shoulder abduction is if you were to bring your arms away from your body out to the sides like if you were going to do a jumping jack. So those are the two things that Chris had difficulty doing continue. So he had some range of motion issues there that we needed to work through. Uh, and he also had some not great movement going on at the scapula, the shoulder blade. How do you, like what is not great movement? So with we do, you know, we use single arm high pulls quite a bit to check on strength balance for him. When he was pulling up, he was not able to pull so much by driving the elbow up and out to the side. It was rather that he was more leaning into it to get into that position because

his shoulder blade wasn't moving very well to accommodate the actual shoulder joint to get into the right position. So how do you, that sounds like the kind of thing that would be really difficult to fix from a distance. It would be if you didn't have good tools to do it. So with him, what he needed to do was actually just to strengthen that motion and to strengthen that motion for him. Again, it was single arm high pulls and he did them for a long time. Uh, so it started off light or just started off with less reps or less range. What'd you do with them? I, all of the above. So you just short, we shortened the range of motion took him to the edge of the edge of symptoms so you know not driving into where he was going to be getting into trouble but you know walking

that line and just built up over time with with a range of motion and with weight until you know he was just ripping those out it was great was great. Um, that, that issue along the way, it wasn't, it wasn't something that was just a like, Hey, we're going to do single arm high pulls. Okay, cool. We're going to do these for a long time. We're going to get you strong and you're going to be good to go for him. There were some bumps in the road along the way. Um, you know, a lot of, you know what I want you, I want you to tell us the bumps, but before you do, we're going to take a quick break. Perfect. So we're going to, we're going to tell you guys how great we are and how you can work with us. If you want, we'll be right back. What's up shrug nation. Are you enjoying this episode? I bet you are. I'm going to keep

this brief. We'll get you right back to the show in a moment. In the meantime, if you're interested in anything that we're doing at Active Life, make sure that you head to ActiveLifeRx.com slash shrugged. You want to be a better coach. You want to help your clients better. You want to get out of pain, but you don't want to go to the doctor or miss the gym. ActiveLifeRx.com slash shrugged. That's where you need to be. We'll see you when you get there. Turn pro. Here we go back to the episode. All right. So for the bumps in the road for, for Chris was that he, he ended up having some,

some nerve tension that was going on in there, which was some pain, kind of like a sensation that was not feeling great in the elbow area and in the forearm. And so we had to dial some things back along the way. It couldn't just keep loading him more and more and more into this upward pulling motion that we actually had to add in some things like some nerve glides and things to make sure that all of the tissues in the area were actually adapting in the way that they needed to adapt.

What is a nerve glide? I know what a nerve glide is. I want to make sure everyone who's listening knows what a nerve glide is. I don't know. I think you forgot, Sean. I'm asking for a friend, man. So a nerve glide is when you put the body into a certain position and you apply tension from one end or the other or both so that you're getting tension on a specific nerve. You're going to get tension on other tissues as well because you can't just isolate a nerve out of your body. But what happens there is, at least the idea is that the nerve is sliding back and forth in the sheath a little bit better, so that it's not getting bound up by,

you know, pressure or, you know, poor movement patterns, you know, what have you in that area. Perfect. Cool. Yeah. So for him, that was a big thing that we needed to address along the way. And once we did, that was just, that was a, it was a bump in the road and we started spending more time up overhead as well because he got to where he was pain-free in being overhead, but then he wasn't strong there at all. Well, before we even get to how you added strength there, what did he say to you that made you feel like,

we should probably add some nerve glides here? So it was like, hey, my forearm is feeling really weird. I'm getting some, just like some, I'm trying to remember the words he used. Like shooting, I can't remember if it was either shooting pain or kind of like tingling in the forearm. So it's very nerve-oriented words. When somebody's having issues from a nerve, it usually jumps out at you.

It's not just like, oh, hey, like a muscle soreness thing. It's very distinct. Yeah, and a good way for people to think about this simple, is this a nerve issue? Because people will say all the time, how often do you hear like, Oh, I have an, uh, a pinched nerve. Yeah. You don't have a pinched nerve. Yeah. So the way to, to understand if you have a nerve entrapment issue or to at least simplify whether that's what's going on or not, is if when you move something, you get pain not where you moved it. So, for example, you bring your arm out to the side and you get pain at your elbow or

in your pinky, that's not a muscle. That's a nerve. You know, you reach down to the floor and you feel something in the bottom of your foot, that's not a muscle. That's a nerve. You know, you reach down to the floor and you feel something in the bottom of your foot. That's not a muscle. That's a nerve. Exactly. All right. So go on. So first you, first you need to get the nerves moving. Then we got them full range of motion because the nerves were inhibiting that he gets the full range of motion. Now you're like, all right, dude, you're weak there. Yeah. So from there we, we started adding a lot of pressing a lot of overhead carries things like that that we're actually building time under tension in those positions

that in the past had either been really painful really weak you know maybe a little combination of both and in that process we were able to get to get the adaptation that he was looking for that he actually came to get, to be able to do things up overhead so that he could do the stuff that he enjoyed rather than just tapping out, calling quits, and not being able to enjoy it anymore. Sure, and I think a valuable thing for people to know is that when nervy stuff starts to happen, that's when we as active life coaches have to start to make a really discerning decision about whether or not this is going to stay within our

scope or if it needs to be referred to a doctor. And what I would say to people who are listening, wondering how we make that decision is we have a few very simple go-tos that will clear up very, very, very mild nerve issues that are not showing signs of permanent or deteriorating nerve damage. It's just a little bit of pain. We have our go-tos and if those things don't work, we make a referral to get somebody hands-on in person to make sure they can take a look at it. So all the while you're working on the shoulder like this, what's going on with the achilles so with the achilles for for him he he would have uh like stiffness and stuff in the morning that you know getting up it took a few steps for it to feel like it was getting moving and stuff like that and then he was able to do

stuff throughout the day throughout the day wouldn't hurt so much. Uh, and he could have like go and work out, but when afterwards, then it would be bothering him, you know, get pain, uh, back there. And, and he, he just wouldn't be feeling very good after those things. And he knew that he had a previous injury there, but because it hadn't been addressed in an intentional way that was meant to actually help strengthen that connective tissue, then it had just lingered for a long time. So what'd you do? I mean, did you start throwing them on calf raises, donkey calf, getting jacked? Of course. Now we did a lot of eccentrics. I mean, eccentrics are, that's the currency of connective tissue. Oh, that's a good one. It's the currency of connective tissue.

Eccentrics are the currency of connective tissue. If you guys see me make that post and forget to credit Lance, you just give me crap about it because I'm definitely going to make that post. All right, man. So because it is the currency, that's, that's what connective tissue is looking for to be rebuilt. I mean, connective tissue, if you have, if you have a hole through a tendon somewhere, that hole is not going to get filled in. It just, it doesn't work that way, but all of the tissue around it and the rest of that tendon, it absolutely can become stronger and more robust. But blood flow sucks there.

It just doesn't work like muscle. It won't just heal over time. It needs tension. It needs time under tension to do so. So we hit eccentrics for the entire time that I worked with him. It took a long time. But by the time we were done, he was running. He was out doing everything that he wanted to do. And when I texted him yesterday to make sure we could use his name, he said he was feeling great. Everything was still awesome. That's outstanding. So it sounds to me like, based on what I'm hearing on the podcast so far from you,

and I know this is not what it was, but that's why I want to ask the question. It sounds like you were doing nerve floss, high pulls and eccentric calf lowering. And that was all Chris did for six months with you. It wasn't all that he did. Uh, we had other things in there too. And a lot of it was building in between different phases of what he was able to do but it was definitely not a sexy instagram sort of uh program for him to do and that it was just the nature it's just the nature of the beast all right with with rehab stuff when you're always working in your wheelhouse for that Instagram-worthy post, the wheels start to fall off other places.

For sure. And we've got to address that. So did that become – I mean, was that monotonous? Was it repetitive? Were you having conversations with him like, I know it's the same thing today? Yeah. So, again, that's something I tried to address on the front end of, Hey, this is going to be something that you're

going to be doing quite a bit. And as soon as you get to where you need to be, whether that's a range of motion thing or a strength thing, then we'll, we'll move on to the next thing. But until we get to that point, we need to be laser focused on this thing right now. And once that's done, then we'll move on. We'll go to the next piece of low-hanging fruit. How often do you feel like you have to check back in with that? As far as like testing to see if they're where they need to be or to make sure that they're doing okay. The conversation around the, I know we're doing it again. I know. Yeah. It totally depends on the person.

Some people are completely content to just have the same thing. And as long as they know that what they're doing is going to be the same thing. So they don't even have to think about it. Some people absolutely love it. There's like, all right, I'm on autopilot and I'm starting to feel better. This is great. I don't even have to think about it. Some people absolutely love it. There's like, all right, I'm on autopilot and I'm starting to feel better. This is great. I don't even have to think about it. Other people are bored and you got to have that conversation. And sometimes you got to make little tweaks in there just to make sure that people are staying mentally and emotionally engaged. So was Chris getting fitness along the way? He was getting healthness. What I mean by that though is like,

I know you're not writing his Metcons. Yeah. But was he getting to work out? He absolutely was. So what I like to do is after we go through an assessment and we build out the program, everything for the person is to give them some parameters. Like, okay, stay away from X, Y, Z.

Keep your range of motion here. Other than that, like the gym is your oyster, go and keep your fitness, keep your fitness up. And if there's something that creeps up along the way that, that you're not sure about, then let's talk about it. But otherwise you need to keep working out. And what would be an example of the X, Y, Z that you tell Chris to stay away from? So for him, it was a lot of the stuff was overhead. Um, so as we're going to stay away from overhead in, um, like it started out that he couldn't do like hardly anything overhead besides like a landmine, something like that. And then it progressed progressed to like let's stay away from the barbell overhead but you can do things with dumbbells or with a single dumbbell and then like for like the running

stuff or not for the running sorry the for the lower body stuff what we were doing is staying away from cyclical loading so the cyclical loading is going to be that repetitive kind of like pounding sort of uh activities like running box box jumps double unders that sort of thing we wanted to stay away from that because that's the opposite of the whole eccentric loading thing we're not spending time under tension it's not giving those that connective tissue the ability or the opportunity to rebuild itself so we stayed away from, but eventually we dosed it in and got him back to full running. So would you say that's the biggest difference between what we do for clients

when we say don't do this as compared to the doctor who might say don't do this or the coach who says don't do this, meaning the doctor or the coach who says, don't do this, meaning the doctor, the coach who tells the client to avoid something isn't giving them an avoid it until we can perform this in this manner with this weight for this many reps, where that's exactly what we're looking to do is tell them we're going to avoid this until we can accomplish that. At which point we're going to bring this back in. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we're, we're offering a solution to a problem versus avoiding a problem, right? I mean, if, if the doctor's like,

well, your shoulder hurts and quit snatching, I mean, you shouldn't be throwing weight over your head like that anyway. Like, well, maybe I want to throw weight over my head like that. Maybe I enjoy it. Like that's something that I really love to do. It's not solving a problem. That's just creating a new one because then you have to deal with everything else, all the emotional and social things that go along with losing that part of your life. Without a doubt. I mean that's – I think that's the part that oftentimes doctors don't understand. They learn we all took the oath in school, right? Do no harm but i

think that what gets forgotten is there's harm that's not physical and if you tell someone to stop doing something that they value you're doing harm yeah exactly i mean like if a person if all a person is is a shoulder and you tell them not to snatch okay that's great but you know people are more than shoulders sure and that's not the way it works so you are the guy on our staff who teaches the rest of the guys and gals on our staff all of the neurological control through breathing right the the cns up regulation down regulation normalizing you teach it through breathing which by the way, is very cool. I got to see it firsthand this past week when we did our first ProPath workshop.

Room full of grown adults crying from breathing, which is wild. It's crazy. I mean, crying. We took them through a visualization exercise to go with it. Um, but I don't think that they get the response that they got without the breath work, which was, which was mind blowing. Yeah. So visualization without the physiology, it's not worth as much. Right.

It was wild. So did you give any of that work to Chris? A little bit, but very, very little. So part of it would be cueing breathing a certain way when we're working for us to gain some range of motion, right? So if we're doing eccentric pullovers, which that's slowly lowering, we're spending time under tension again. So just describe to them what an eccentric pullover looks like, please.

So an eccentric pullover, you'd be laying on your back on a bench, and you would have a dumbbell. It's like a single dumbbell or a barbell up in front of you, and you would be lowering it back behind you with keeping your arms straight. The idea is that you're lengthening out your lats. So would somebody else return that up for him? Would it be a spotted exercise? It could be. Um, the other way that you could do is, is when you get to the top, then you're bending your elbows and just kind of rolling it back over and start back up.

So it's almost like an, like a pull down once it's overhead. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So for doing something like that and incorporating breathing into that is that has traditionally for them been painful or uncomfortable to cue the, to their nervous system, like, Hey, what we're doing is therapeutic. It's safe. And we can have some, some different adaptation here rather than just locking you out. So how would you have someone breathe to do that? So what I would have them do is to start with a like a full breath so their their lungs would be full so their lungs are full right and then they're exhaling as they bring the weight up overhead and ideally through the nose because the exhale and the nasal breath are both down regulatory

that's getting them out of that fight or flight it gets them into a good state neurologically every time they meet the position that used to be uncomfortable. And so it starts to kind of rewire that mapping, if you will, of the movement. That is so cool. Nuts. It's so cool. What I want people to understand from that is it's not just breathing to relax. It's that something that would be painful if you didn't breathe that way might not be painful when you do. And if you can do it breathing that way and have it not be uncomfortable, you might be able to do it in general and your brain would not interpret it as uncomfortable because you've been

there before and it didn't hurt exactly it's just like it's similar or akin i guess to like exposure therapy for like psychological things like phobias like all right we're going to leave you in a room with a picture of a snake all right we're going to leave you here with a fake snake we're going to have you hold a rope with you know you're blindfolded and you're going to pretend like it's a snake you know it's a working stepwise to uh i guess get the the brain and the body on the same page and get it going in the direction that you want it going, want it to be going. Yeah. It's wild. It's crazy that that works. I know. Right. And it's what's crazy to me is that it works so well. And so many people have so much resistance against it. What do you mean they have resistance against it? They're like, nah, that's not going to work. Or they just completely, they just completely

discount it. It's like, that is too simple. There's absolutely no way that can work. So what do you – Well, eating less food will make you lose weight too. That's simple. Right. Yeah. That's a topic we're not going to dive into. But so what do you say to people who would say, oh, so basically that's just a placebo?

What would I say to them? Yeah. How do you respond to that? Because I've had conversations with people who are like, what you guys do doesn't work. It's just a placebo. People think they're going to get better, so they do, and you might as well be a chalk pill. And my response to them is, cool.

So you're telling me that they're out of pain and they're back to doing what they love to do and they feel like a better parent and they feel like a better person and life is good, but my methods and our team's methods don't work because we're no better than a chalk pill. I'm okay believe that to be our value. But how do you respond to something like that? Because what you're describing is very what I would call California woo-woo. Yeah. And honestly, when I have conversations with people about it, that's the way I approach it. It's like this is going to sound crazy. Just trust me on this. And I will give you all the science behind it in the world if you want, but it works.

And I have a book sitting right there on the coffee table in my office that's actually it's you are the placebo and i don't i know the science behind it but i don't care it works people feel better and it changes their lives i'll take it yeah i read it in a book. Okay. So, I think we're there. I think we took it through. Chris came to you,

shoulder pain, Achilles pain, couldn't run, couldn't walk at the end of the day, had a lot of pain, couldn't press, couldn't raise his arms over his head. I mean, now he's doing everything. Yes, he's back in the gym.

As far as what he told me, he said that everything was feeling good. And he was doing great and he was, and he was, uh, he was doing great when, when we stopped working and that was, that's been a while, but we didn't get a polygraph, right? No polygraph. Nah, no, no, no. He, he, he didn't, uh, he didn't have a, what does that call the notary? He didn't have a notary. Yeah, no, he's doing great. Chris is one. I mean, I, he was so happy with the outcomes that he got working with you that he invited me to come meet him at LinkedIn where he works in the Empire State Building.

You didn't know this? No, I didn't even know that. He invited us to LinkedIn in the Empire State Building and it's led to a conversation with us and the director of wellness for LinkedIn Worldwide about potentially creating an environment where Active Life could contribute to the LinkedIn corporate wellness program for 2020. That's rad. You're not kidding. That makes me feel good. You're not kidding.

Well, you'd be a part of it. You'd definitely be a part of it. It should make you feel good. So we're not going to talk about Chris anymore, but I want to make sure that people who are listening to this know about what you've been working on for us at Active Life. So can you take people through a little bit of the secret, super secret project that we've had in the works now for like six months?

Yeah, it's been a minute, right? Yeah, but look, hey, that's how we make sure our stuff is good, man. That's true. That's true. And it's a lot of work there's a lot a lot that goes in behind the scenes for sure uh more so than i i realized when when i agreed to do it no no not not when i agreed to do it but when i when like when i saw what ray did when he created like the the immersion you know like that i was like i can do this and it's like yeah i can't but man right a lot of work yeah there's a lot of work yeah um anyway so our super secret project has been a essentially an immersion for breath work that's for for coaches

for physical therapists for kairos for people that that are working to help other people. And the way that this immersion works is that we go through, we start out with the basics and some of the history of breath work and what it means, what it is, what it isn't. And we work through of how to use it for programming, for performance, for helping to get people out of pain, for helping people to manage their neurological state, their nervous system just overall. And it's really, in my opinion, a really an amazing way to, to dive really deep into the breath work, um, subject as a coach without having to go through the years of experience and finding all this stuff on your own, but just to have it all there at, at your fingertips. Yeah. So I think what's so cool about what you built, Lance, is one of the pillars of active life is simplicity. What I mean by that

is our movement assessment would not fly in a doctor's office because it's not a medical movement assessment, right? Our breathwork course that you built is is essentially minimum effective dose of knowledge to be able to elicit the maximum dose of response exactly right i mean you don't need to could you go get more education on specifically how the diaphragm works and how the phrenic nerve inserts and what the relationship is there and, and what a nasal breath is versus a mouth. Yes, you could, but that's the, that's digging into the weeds. This course is meant to be able to help a coach help their clients with the minimum necessary knowledge to be effective and safe. Exactly. I mean, if, if you want to go spend time,

you know, looking in a mirror in the, in the ivory tower, so you can put another piece of paper on your wall behind your desk, since I have a couple back there, then that's great. You can get a whole, you can get a whole bunch more knowledge on that. But if you want to start making changes in people's lives at the neurological level and to help them to solve some high-level problems, then we got you. Now, Lance, do you think that a coach who takes this immersion course from us, the Breathwork Immersion, do you think that they would be able to monetize that in their gym? Meaning could a coach put their members through it and make money as an additional course or additional service in the gym? Oh yeah, absolutely. So with the course, what we have,

it's essentially once you get the basics, it breaks into two pillars. If you will, you have the performance end, and then you also have the helping people get out of pain side. So if they're doing stuff that is like if they've already done the immersion from active life and they're applying those principles, we can supercharge that with the breathing, make things happen faster, make them a little bit more fluid. Or if you're on the performance end of things,

you're you, the person that takes that can absolutely apply those principles into increasing people's performance by changing the way that they're breathing. And just like in the coach, the normal coaches immersion, there's a screening process. So you're not just guessing. You can screen them, work with them, screen them again, show them the results, show them the change. I love it. We might have to do a whole episode on that program. I'm down. Let's do it. I know you're down. All right. We're going to, we're going to wrap this thing up here in a moment. If you guys just heard what Lance talked about with his breathwork immersion, what I want you to do is pull the car over and shoot us a DM at ActiveLifeRx. Go to ActiveLifeRx on Instagram, shoot us a DM and say, I want in on the breathwork. And we're going to see if we can throw together a beta group from

you guys to expose this to the general public, but we are going to be selective. We want to make sure you're going to be able to use it to help other people and that you're not just going to be enrolling in this course, which will not be free, by the way. I want to be clear about that. We want to make sure you're using this course to help other people, not just yourselves. So that will be one of the prerequisites for this beta group that we'll take if you guys come with some interest is that cool with you lance yeah that's cool with me let's do it cool ray's probably gonna listen to this and have my ass because i didn't talk to him yeah i was wondering like this is all new to me but we rolled it yeah shit meat wall let's see if it sticks

no it's good and and i'm excited because it's it's the way that we do everything we we try something we do it in-house we do it with a few small groups we refine refine refine them and release it to the public we've never had this kind of a a megaphone if you will to put in front of people and give them the opportunities to take advantage of what we do. And I'm excited to give them that opportunity. Yeah. And I'm, I'm excited to be part of it because I see the changes that coaches are making in people's lives that have been through the immersion and now with the pro path with all, all of the, the massive change that's going to be coming from that and to be able to contribute a little part of that

and to be part of it just as staff on Active Life, I'm pumped. It's awesome. I love it. Lance, remind them in case they forgot from week one, where can they find you? So Instagram is the easiest place to find me. It's Lance.Enerson.

It's E-I-N-E-R-S-O-N underscore DPT. Lance dot. Yeah, Lance.Enerson underscore DPT. Don't worry about it. I'll get it in the show notes. Yeah. And then just my name for my website. It's LanceEnerson.com.

Perfect. All right, Lance. It's been a blast, my man. As always. That's going to be a wrap for this episode of Active Life Radio. All right, Lance. It's been a blast, my man. As always. as a great review. If you really love this episode, make sure you're sharing it with the people who need to hear it. Value unshared is value wasted. And of course, if you're looking to get more from us,

whether it's coaching courses, one-on-one coaching from one of our staff members to help you get out of pain without going to the doctor or missing the gym, head to ActiveLifeRx.com slash shrugged. We'll see you then. Turn pro. you