Barbell Shrugged - Pain Free Performance at All Ages w/ Dr. Melissa Capurro, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #790

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Melissa is a performance physical therapist and is heavily involved in the CrossFit space as a healthcare provider, as well as an athlete. Melissa grew up in the Metropolitan New York area, but now resides in the Tampa Bay area. Upon graduating from PT school, Melissa started working in an outpatient orthopedic physical therapy practice, but was unsatisfied with what she was able to achieve there and the level of care provided for patients. At the time, she was coaching remotely and decided to break away form the clinic altogether, and opened up her own practice. Melissa is now a remote rehab and performance coach, as well as a physical therapist with her clinic out of her affiliate, CrossFit Westchase in Largo, FL. In addition, she is a proud member of the Rapid Health Optimization team as a movement specialist. When she’s not working or training, she enjoys getting outdoors in the beautiful Florida weather with her boyfriend, Darren Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Dr. Melissa Capurro on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Dr. Melissa Capuro is coming into the podcast. She is the resident physical therapist inside Rabbit Health Optimization. And she, she's also, one thing that gets her really stoked when we talk about it, competing in CrossFit. She loves lifting the weights really fast and competing against people, which I used to do. So we have some fun stuff to talk about and how CrossFit has changed in the competition scene over the years, but most importantly, her ability to work with our clients and getting them pain free at all ages of an experience levels in their life. She does a phenomenal job inside RTA, the signature program inside rapid that you can learn more by heading over to rapidhealthreport.com

where you can see Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. All of that available to you for free over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner, Doug Larson, Melissa Capuro. How's life? Hey, guys. I'm super excited to be here. Life is good. It's really cool because I've been listening to this podcast for years, and being able to be want to hear all about Wadapalooza because I'm an old man. And when I think about Wadapalooza, when I was a younger man, I only think about Guido, Trinidad, and the original, original of that big party. And now it's like a giant festival of fitness down there. It's like a giant festival of fitness down there. It's like illegal to wear a shirt. Nobody is not completely bronzed for some reason,

even like the people from Wisconsin that show up are like perfectly spray tanned knowing that they're going to be in Miami for five days. But yeah, I want to hear, how'd you guys do as a team? And what's, what's kind of like the, the latest on Wadapalooza. Yeah, it was such a great weekend. I feel like I hyped up this weekend so much going into it because the other times that I've been Wadapalooza, I competed there once before and I volunteered there once before as medical staff prior to this year. It's always been so, so amazing just seeing the community, the CrossFit community out there

supporting one another this is the one competition that you can actually get up close and personal with elite athletes like you can be in the same warm-up areas then you can see them on you know the stage that you're going to be on working out doing the same workouts um so it, really club 11 right after just saying, just saying it's possible. They're probably there with me. I'm at home sleeping. Yeah. Every year they also wasn't true at all.

For the record, the Anders is home sleeping part. No, I guess I got going straight to the airport. These are not true stories melissa we are very responsible people we may not we may have done that though i love it that's why we don't go to water flows anymore we're married with kids we have to be we have to be better people what was the last time you guys were there literally that year that he's talking about i'll tell you then the better part of that story Not only did we happen to pull an all-nighter at Club 11 with some

friends from the CrossFit community, but I was moving that weekend from San Diego to North Carolina. So I spent, and my wife, we had just had our baby, so I was six months

old at home that my wife was with while I was in Miami, hanging out with my fitness friends, doing podcasts, living the dream, full night, didn't make it home, picked the backpack up at 5am with one of the interns that was, she was interning with us. And it was like her like, congratulations, you did it. We're going to go write recommendations for you and all this stuff. Now, um, hopped on a plane at like six 30, got to San Diego, like eight hours later. And I looked at my wife and I was like, I'm really tired. Meanwhile, there's an entire moving crew. There's like 10 people in my house, like moving all of our stuff out. she's been with a six month old the the the look that i got upon asking if i could take a nap is one that you don't ever want to see again it's like i think i think you should fall in line here and start start helping oh my goodness i love wadapalooza yeah wadapalooza is great i uh i may have shared many of these kind of like CrossFit competition things. I actually am like super interested in how how many competitions do you do a year?

And how do you kind of like lay out a season? And what are like the big events these days? I don't follow it that much anymore. Yeah, that's a great question. So I would say as of late, I probably do two to three competitions a year. This past year was a little bit more than that, because I do count the open as a competition. So typically, I'll do the open, I'll do a bigger competition, and maybe one other smaller one. In terms of the season, you know, it starts, it starts with the open, right? So the open is, I guess, the beginning of the season for all of us, even even those of us that aren't going to semifinals or the games. And then, you know, once the open is over, now that they've gotten rid of quarterfinals, it's like your your season kind of ends there, right? So you can really,

you know, have other competitions that you want to get into anywhere dispersed throughout the year. So I make sure that after I do any competition, whether it's the open or any other local event that I take a couple months off of competing after that, just because my central nervous system personally gets super fried after a competition. So once I do the open this year, which actually starts next week, I'll probably take another, you know, this is actually a little bit of a different kind of year, because I'm doing a partner competition with my boyfriend, just a year, a month and a half after the open. But after that, I'm taking some time off,

because I actually just really want to focus on training. But my general rule of thumb, just like I said, is to try and take a couple months off to really focus on training because when you're competing and you're training for a competition, you're not actually getting better as an athlete. You're just preparing for that one event. Yeah. You got to go sit on the rower, build an engine. You just ride that bike. You don't go anywhere. You just keep on breathing. Keep moving actually actually i should dig into that a little bit more like how do you distinguish between kind of the off season and the end season as far as as far as how you're getting better in the off season versus like just preparing specifically for whatever event you're going into yeah so um in terms of just training for an event like and, and when I say event, I mean, like, whether it's a one or two day competition, I try personally not to spend more than a month or so getting ready for that specific event, just because you're really honed into the workouts, which you really know, usually a couple weeks ahead of time a month ahead of time.

So there's really only so many times you can do one of the competition workouts, you know what I mean? And in terms of, you know, training beyond that, it's really important is at least I think it's super important to be able to develop yourself just more as a well rounded athlete. Like for example, my priorities are to get stronger and to have better gymnastics capacity. And it's really hard for me to do that. If I'm trying to practice this event, that's like a 400 meter run, dumbbell snatches and farmer carries, you know what I mean? Because that's just blowing steam and and using resources that I could totally be using to get stronger and recover from getting stronger. Or just using more

time to spend time on like the pull-up bar, the rings, or something like that. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garn and I have learned over more than two decades of working

with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. RTA is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre and post pictures. RTA is something completely different. RTA is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of

elite professionals, each with their own special expertise to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Arte isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best physically and mentally when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit ArateLab.com. That's A-R-E-T-E Lab.com. Now, back to the show. What was your fitness background prior to CrossFit? Did you come in with any skill sets that were CrossFit specific before doing CrossFit? Not really.

Throughout high school, I played field hockey, softball, and I started lifting when I was in college. But I got pretty bored of that and found CrossFit when I was in PT school. My PT school, University of Delaware actually had a CrossFit box on campus. Like it was cool. We actually had in our rec center, like our own little CrossFit gym, which was, it's affiliated. It was super cool. So I found it there, fell in love with it. And that's kind of how I started that. But I don't really have much to really, you know, make sure I was prepared for CrossFit other than just the requisite strength that I had going into it. And do you still have like crossfit specific skills that you that you

struggle with to this day like your your classic like your muscle ups your handstand push-ups and you mentioned gymnastic skills or like you know snatching and catching all the way at the bottom and perfect technique or whatever it is like what are you currently working on that uh even though you've been in the game for a long time and you compete, you still have these things that are, that are like your, uh, kind of the weak links in your chain. Yeah, 100%. So, uh, any type of muscle up is, is a weak point for me right now. Um, I've done all of them before. Uh, however, it's very much a mental skill for me as much as it is physical, but more so mental for me because one day I'll have six unbroken bar muscle ups and they feel great. And another day I'll have one and I'm like,

oh, these feel terrible. Um, so I've definitely struggled with, you know, mentally being able to do these skills in the past as well. And I think it's more mental than it is physical for sure. Being a physical therapist and like having a comprehensive understanding of what good movement is and how to correct poor movement and turn it into good movement with range of motion and strength and working on weak muscle groups and whatever it is. Do you find that it's still difficult to kind of quote unquote train yourself versus having the coach? Or do you feel like because you know what you know, like you actually can make much faster progress as a result? So I actually do have a coach? Or do you feel like because you know what you know,

like you actually can make much faster progress as a result? So I actually do have a coach. My coach is the owner of my CrossFit gym, which is CrossFit West Chase. I've been working with him now for gosh, probably over a year, probably a year and a half at this point. But to your point, being a physical therapist, I almost feel like it's more of a negative for me, because I'm such a perfectionist with my movement. It's like, if something doesn't feel good, or look good, I'm like, ah, screw it, like that. That's terrible today. Like, we don't have these today. So it almost contributes to that negative self talk that I know I have with myself when a movement doesn't feel good. So it's almost like I know too much at times, which kind of is really annoying,

but it's the reality of being a movement specialist. Everybody that just listened to that might be rolling their eyes and going, what is a muscle up? And what are these people talking about? Because many of them, many of our clients as well, which I didn't even kind of realize we were talking

about it before the show. Like there's a, there's a large gap sometimes for people that are hearing about really high level performance. And then they get into kind of our program and it's like, okay, ready, set, go lift weights. And they go, well, the last thing I did was P90X when that was super popular, like the Beachbody DVDs. And now all of a sudden we have somebody that's like telling us about movement patterns and all of these things that sound very complex. I'd love to kind of understand where your, your mindset and kind of like the, the education side of how you get many of our clients that just haven't been in weight rooms their whole life. And that could be, they were, you know,

cyclists or something, and it wasn't a part of their training, but getting them comfortable moving well so that they're not at risk of having injury, which is obviously everybody's worst case scenario is coming to lift weights. And now all of a sudden they're banged up and having to deal with like nagging pain all the time. Um, I'd love to hear just kind of like what your,

what your first step is and, and getting people to actually understand that their body is supposed to move a specific way and, and steps that you take to kind of getting them, um, turning into real movers. Yeah. So with our clients, this definitely starts on our first initial call to talk about like any injuries that they've had in the past, anything limiting them from being able to be the best mover they could be. And I think a big part of it is just bringing awareness to the client. So after we have our initial call, we'll go through a testing procedure where I prescribe testing movements to them that are specific to whatever their ailments are. So every single client gets a mobility screen and then we give, I give them specific testing based on what they're feeling. So having them go through these testing movements, whether it be mobility,

strength, stability, it's a huge opportunity for them to open their eyes to like, oh my gosh, I did not know that my right leg was so weak compared to my left leg. Like I couldn't stand on my right leg for 10 seconds to pass this kettlebell back and forth, but my other leg was completely fine. So I think a big part of it is just giving them the opportunity to be aware of those things. Because I feel every client that I've had a meeting with really wants to improve upon these things. So it's not like we get someone that's like, Oh, like, I don't care about any of this, right? Like, we get people that want to fix it. So being able to open their eyes

to it is is super important. And then going ahead and addressing it with any rehab specific things that I give to their coach. It, it's usually pretty well received. And whenever I have my followup calls, you know, a lot of the feedback that I'll get is like, I feel way stronger just being able to do like normal day-to-day things. And I'm so surprised that I was able to make that progress. It's crazy. I try and brainwash my kids so hard to just squeeze their butt and push their hips back like we went ice skating this weekend with my son he's like three and a half and every time i'm like dude you got to get up get yourself off up off the ice and he like gets his feet under him and his feet or his

like hands are touching the ice and his feet are underneath him and i go now you just squeeze your butt just squeeze your butt dude like can we just teach like the basic movement pattern to this little man? And then he, all of a sudden his chest comes up and I'm like, dad's the greatest coach in the whole wide world. Look at him. Even the little kids need to learn how to do it. The thing that I always used to be amazed with is how beautiful when I, when I own gyms, how beautiful movement is, especially when people are doing it with tons and tons of weight on their body. Like people that squat a lot, but don't do it beautifully. I give them a big high five when people squat beautifully and they do it with tons of weight. I walk by them and I'm like, that is a work of art that that person is putting together right there

because it looks so effortless. And when I, when I, when I think about movement as a whole, it really is like the thing that I'm most admirable of. And it's less about the amount of weight that I've seen somebody lift. Like I've seen people lift, like, like snatch a lot of weight. You're like, Oh my gosh, they're going to die is the first thing. But when you see it beautifully, like the Olympians do, you're like, look at that little magical thing that they just did with the barbell. That is incredible. Um, how, how quickly do you think you, um, cause, cause people really are starting a lot of them, like at zero, they don't have, they've never thought about their body as a unit that is supposed to move in a specific way and getting them from, um, zero to understanding,

just squeezing their butt, keeping their belly tight, pushing their hips back. Um, how long of a process can somebody kind of expect to, uh, undergo in order to get to a place where they understand kind of like basic concepts of how their body is supposed to move. Yeah, that's a good question. And the answer, the short answer is it really depends on the person because like you were just saying, you were giving out cues of like, keep your belly tight, squeeze your butt. There are so many people that don't understand that.

Like I will have to use so many additional cues to get them to do the same thing. But it takes just so much longer because some people haven't really ever, for example, people don't know how to breathe the right way. So keeping your belly tight means so many different things. And what I've learned that could mean over my years of being a movement specialist is insane. It's crazy. And then people just like some people don't even know that their glutes exist or how to use them. Right.

So getting them to like set up correctly for a deadlift or, you know, sit properly in the bottom of a squat. It's so different depending on the client. But at least with our process, with our movement screen, our mobility screen, having them go through that gives me a really good idea of like, what movement patterns are they really capable of doing? What are they not capable of doing? And then from there, I can prescribe whatever is needed to be able to give them the ability to do it because so many people don't even know they have mobility limitations. Like you ever see like one of those immature squats where it's like

their chest comes forward and their knees don't drive over their toes at all. Like, oh, yeah, I'm squatting. And they're like, this is great. And I'm like, this is trash. We need to work on your ankles. We need to get you to keep your chest up. Maybe we need to work on your hips, right? So just being able, like I said before, to give them that awareness of like, this needs to be better in us to really optimize this, this movement pattern here. Yeah. It's very complicated. Uh, it's, it's an awesome subject because it can go all the way. Like nobody ever thinks about their ankles. That's just like a thing that you walk on and you never really actually like put all those pieces together until you really start to dive into all of it. How often do you kind of run across the people that I'm thinking of to like stretch this back pain away. And you go, Whoa, no, no, no, no. Hold on. You can't stretch the thing that you've already stretched way too far. Um, are you, do you ever

kind of, uh, or I guess like, what is your process in, in working with clients when you start to actually break down the differences between mobility, stability, and how that actually relates to proper movement? Yeah. So that client that you're talking about or that type of client. You all know who she is because she's the best. And just that person in general, because that, there's a lot of those out there. They feel tight, which is crazy. Yeah, exactly. So, um, that's that type of client is a lot different than most of the people I see. I will say that, um, I do think of one person in terms of our clients and I've seen it elsewhere in my, you know, personal patients as well. Um, but those people don't, they first need the education of

like, hey, you have too much mobility. Now we need to work on stabilizing what you have, because you have so much that it's like, you're almost at more risk to injure yourself because you just don't have the strength or stability in that range at all. So having that conversation with them, I feel like is tough, because they're like, but I just really want to stretch. And I'm like, but you can't stretch anymore. Like, where are you going to go? There's no tissue left. Right.

So, you know, having that conversation and getting them to buy into that is definitely number one because they don't want to buy into that. Yeah. A lot of times the stretching kind of feels good. And so because it feels nice, they think it's going to fix the problem, but that's not necessarily the case. Can you dig more into like where, where and when you need more mobility and where and when you need more stability, which you've already touched on a little bit, how does it all play together? Yeah. So there's a phrase that I heard. I took this gymnastics course over the weekend and one of the instructors

said a really awesome phrase that I learned in PT school and I haven't heard it since then. And it was proximal stability equals distal mobility. So I think, isn't that good? Yeah. You can't fire a cannon from a canal. Exactly, exactly. So the more strength and stability that we have towards the center of our bodies allows us to move other parts of our bodies, our arms, our shoulders, our legs, even more and even better. So kind of like we just talked about when someone has a lot of range of motion, usually what my thought is, I kind of have to know more about the client in general, but usually what they need is strength and stability. Whereas, for example, someone is limited mobility in terms of not meeting standards for our movement tests. That's kind of like where

I have to start because in terms of what our athletes need, at the bottom of that period, if they can't move well, because of mobility limitations, that's your first step because that's the lowest hanging fruit, right? You can't get stronger in a range of motion if you don't have that range of motion. So for example, if we have a client that can only, you know, squat to parallel, like you can't expect them to progress in their squatting if they can't even strengthen that whole range of motion. So being able to, you know, work with those people to mobilize more and then progressively overload them, uh, is what they need, but it's really such a diverse population. And those two types of

clients are so different. Yeah. I actually love, uh, that specific thing. Like the number of times in 29 years of doing this, this fitness thing, you know, when you're like younger in the game and you don't have like a ton of experience and I could tell you all the bad stories of me being a bad trainer as well. Thinking I was like, so right that you have to do something a certain way. And if you don't do it a certain way, you're definitely not getting any results and you're, you're failing yourself. And you're like, so stuck. And then now when I

look at everything, um, on the movement side, there's, there's such an application for quarter squats, sometimes like partial ranges of motion, isometrics, and finding those people that actually don't really need any range of motion. They've got plenty of it. So let's just get you to a place. And then maybe we can start to implement some sort of isometric down at the bottom where you can actually tell your body, hey, this is where we need to go. And anything past this is too far.

Do you have any kind of like normal language that you're using around like helping people find what normal range of motion is, whether they are short or if they're long or if they're like hypermobile, just to get people to, because, you know, if you've never lifted weights or done this seriously to say like, go to the bottom of the squat, most people don't even know what that means. They don't know where that area is or what that feels like. And it's literally, it's in their posterior chain. They can't see it. So how do you, how do you get them to understand what an end range of motion even is? Yeah. So, and that also is very dependent on the client.

In terms of someone who moves a lot, again, bringing awareness to the fact that like, hey, you move so much. We need to find what part of this is, you know, functional range of motion that we can use, right? So like you said, doing some sort of like isometric at the bottom that puts them in the best position for their body to do the job that they need to do, whether that's squat, a barbell, or a goblet squat, anything like that. I love for these people, these like overly flexible people, like you just mentioned isometric holds, but I love eccentrics too, because it forces them to slow down where it's like, okay, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going down, I'm going down. Okay,

like this is the point where I start to feel maybe things shift, or maybe I'm going into like a butt wink or something that I shouldn't be doing. So for those people, eccentrics, like I love those. I honestly love eccentrics for everybody, but especially those people. And for the really tight people, while we're working on that range of motion, I love something in terms of squatting. I love like box squats, for example, or like you said, quarter range of motion squats, but more so giving them a target that I want them to hit that's well within their ability to hit. So you could still build that strength while you're working on mobility as well. It's just tough because, you know, being able to work on, depending on what their range of

motion looks like and what their control looks like, you can get them into the bottom of a squat while holding load to basically use this counterbalance and help them, you can get them into the bottom of a squat while holding load to basically use this counterbalance and help them, you know, gain range of motion, gain, you know, joint, joint play there. But it really depends on what their quality of movement looks like. But there's so many different ways to skin the cat too. If someone has a range of motion issue that really is from a past injury, how do you work around things like that where, where they've tried to get range of motion back and maybe it's painful

and you basically looked at it and said, you know what, it's not a good idea to try to improve range of motion here, but they still want to compete as an example. So they have things that, they have movements that they are required to do, and they want to train without exacerbating their pain. That type of thing.

How do you work around injuries and the downstream effects of having had injuries? So it really depends why, just going off of your question, it depends why it would be a bad idea for us to actually work on range of motion. So if someone has a chronic injury that's been there, say, for years and years and years, I think just evaluating the different parts of the, you know, injury, whether it be the joint, the muscle, anything like that around it, evaluating that to kind of see what the status is there. I don't really think there's any downside to working on range of motion as long as it's, as it's within a safe range that they're able to tolerate while, you know, using manual therapy

if needed. But I always think that if their range of motion is lacking to tolerate while, you know, using manual therapy if needed. But I always think that if their range of motion is lacking, of course, if they, as long as they didn't have like a fusion or like some surgery where they're going to be stuck there for the rest of their lives, I always think it's a good idea to at least push the needle as much as we can in a safe range. But with that being said, you know, you can use other modalities and other movements to train. So for example, if someone's limited in shoulder flexion, you ask them to raise their arm up above their shoulder, and they can only reach to maybe just a little bit above shoulder height. You know, you're probably not going to have them barbell strict press, right? Because

they're going to look like an inclined bench press, right? So something for that, for example, like I love using landmine presses, because it gets like a vertical pressing stimulus in, but it doesn't force them into range of motion that they don't have. But if I'm seeing a client that needs to be able to, for example, compete in CrossFit, I need to be able to make sure that they can raise their shoulders above their head, because CrossFit requires so much of us and a lot of just daily activities require so much I need to be able to make sure that they can raise their shoulders above their head because CrossFit requires so much of us. And a lot of just daily activities require so much of us to be able to do things overhead, you know, grabbing a cup out of the cabinet, picking up your child and maybe raising them overhead, you know, stuff like that. So I think there's, I think there's merit to all of that. Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Doug. You look like you had something to tell us and say.

I was going to go back onto the injury front here. Have you had any recent injuries that you're currently working around? And what have you had success with? Oh, gosh. Did I not show you guys the video? Remind me. Oh, my gosh. I should have sent it to you guys or I should have sent this in the chat.

But literally, this is a great story. 10 days before Wadapalooza, I was playing with one of the workouts. And one of the workouts was with your team, you have to accumulate 30 overhead squats at 105 pounds, 20 overhead squats at 125 pounds, 10 overhead squats at 145. So, you know, my team and I were strategizing, we're figuring out who can do what. I can't snatch 145, which was the last bar, right? I was actually also using a shorty bar, which it's a shorter bar, it weighs less, but it also has less whip, right? So can't snatch 145, definitely can't snatch it with a shorty bar. So I was trying to figure out how to get this 145 bar over my head. So I cleaned it, had it in my front rack. And a friend of mine was like, oh, at this point, I had been playing with how to get it overhead for about 15 minutes.

So I was kind of tired at this point. My friend was like, just dip and drive it overhead just to get into your back rack. Like, don't get it all the way overhead, but just flip it over your head. I was like, all right, cool. Yeah, 145 with a shorty bar. That feels like 165. Why not? So I did. And I was hanging on to it.

I was holding on to it. And I forgot to let go as it fell behind me because I completely missed my back rack. So needless to say, my elbows came into like this extremely forward position. I had the most shoulder external rotation I've ever had in my entire life. And I sprained both of my elbows 10 days before waterpalooza. So I reached out to a friend of mine who is a chiropractor who does a lot of great manual work. He took care of me in terms of manual stuff, like using the laser, anything just like acute that needed to be done.

And I started rehabbing myself and I was fine for the competition. But I definitely am still limited in terms of like end range of flexion motion. So I can't like bend my elbow all the way completely yet um front rack time for a little break yeah competing wise probably for sure yeah i mean i could straighten it all the way but does it hurt in the turnover like snatching jerks um Front rack is very uncomfortable. Snatching is fine. Like anything with a straight arm I'm good with, like handstand walking, no issues. But anything in the front rack is miserable because that,

that arm will start to like creep out. So we're, we're currently working. She just did a front rack. Do you see how jacked that girl is? Those of you listening in your car, my gosh, put a front rack in that girl. There's biceps all over the place. Good job. Proud of you. Yeah.

Yeah. It was actually both elbows that I sprained, but the right one is so much worse. Yeah. Yo, I'm super curious what your thoughts are on. I use mine all the time still. And I don't know if I use it out of just like having one and the placebo effect of it feels good. Or if there's real benefit to some of these like e-stem machines. Like I have an old PowerDot that I use all the time still.

Is it actually working or does it just make me feel good? I mean, I have a PowerDot too. I have not used it in what feels like years. I have mine just like sitting next to the couch and I'll just like throw it on an arm, throw it on a shoulder, throw it on a leg. Like anytime there's just like a very minor thing that I'm like feeling,

it's kind of like a warm blanket. I just put it on and then I go, I think I'm doing something. But you're a pro. Does it really work? So when you think about it, say no. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. It's a muscle stimulator, right? So it's it's forcing muscular contraction, which is bringing blood flow to the area, which is never a bad thing. Beyond that, I don't know really what it does, to be honest with you. But I think that blood flow and bringing, you know, healing cells to an injured area or an area maybe that's overused or just sore, like there's nothing wrong with it.

How much it's going to do for you. I'm not I'm not super sure about that. But however, I swear by red light. Do you guys use red light? No. Tell me about it. Regularly. I heard it's supposed to grow your hair, which as soon as I heard that, I was like, they're just lying. I don't know.

I have benefits there, but no, I've never invested in red light anything and used it consistently. So I love my red light. I have a couple different red light devices. I have a red light panel that just stays on one of my red light. I have a couple different red light devices. I have like a red light panel that just like stays on like one of my desks. And then I have like an actual red light device that I can like strap to any body part. But essentially what he knows. Yeah, they're cool. They're super cool. So it does stimulate like collagen production. So if you get it close enough to like any surface, especially for like injured areas, like I'll throw it on my elbow, and it's so like, it's literally on my elbow. So it is able to kind of help produce and supply collagen and help that rebuild. So ligaments, that sort of tissue, I've been using it for that. And it's been really, really helpful. Um, it is really good for hair, nails, and skin. So collagen production there for sure. But the same thing too, like blood flow, being able to bring blood flow to that, to those areas. Um, but I think the

biggest thing that I'm, I'm loving about it is that, that collagen production sort of effect for sure. Yeah. Um, are there any other things that you recommend people, um, as far as like the recovery side of things? Uh, I know Norma tech boots, like there's, there's so many tools that come out. Um, now any of them that, that passed your test of that, that people should be looking into? Um, I mean, to be honest with you, for Christmas presents? That's a long ways off. Yeah, I mean, I would love a red light device

for anybody, just because you can use it for so many different things. But honestly, a sauna, those, obviously, we know the benefits of that. The Normatec boots, I don't really know how much they do other than just like push body fluid around blood flow yeah other than that i'm not really sure but honestly you can't if you don't have a good diet good stress management um sleeping well like you're really not in any place to be buying any of

those things, right? I'm so happy you just said that actually, how kind of the relationship between stress management and the tension people are holding in their bodies, like how often do you kind of look at people and go, oh yeah, you're, you, you lack flexibility, but the thing you need to do is just go breathe. Are there, how do you kind of manage, I guess this really gets into kind of like the, the psyche of the person that you're working with, their personality, how open they are. It's like countless times I've seen in my life, like we could go stretch. I could literally get like fold. I could like push on your back to loosen your hamstrings as hard as I can. But you are so tight and wound up from the day with no chance of getting all of that tension out of your body.

It's not a stretching problem. It's like processing and creating like more resilience in your body is the problem here. It's not the tissue length itself. How do you go about just having that conversation? That's a, it's a tricky one. Cause you're kind of saying you need to change as a person. This isn't like a, can you bend over and touch your toes thing? Right. And I think really what it is, is a central nervous system problem where it's like overload, overload, overload all the time. Um, you know, with our clients and my patients here, personally, I'll will be talking about like stress, diet and sleep. And obviously, that's something that's

heavily, you know, talked about and addressed in our program as well. But I think being able to just really get a handle on those three things, you'll get a pretty good idea of where someone's at, in terms of that kind of like spectrum of like super wound up like what that all looks like versus like pretty relaxed like usually has most of their stuff in check right so i think just being able to create that buy-in with them of like hey bringing their awareness to there are a couple things that we can change here. Sometimes it's well received, sometimes it's not. But you really just kind of have to gauge their, I guess, need or want to change those things. You know what I mean? But they have to be aware of the trade-off of like, well, if you don't address these things, we may not be able to make progress. But usually, I feel like most people are pretty on board with being able to make those changes. But it's hard, you know. Speaking of tradeoffs, especially with some of our older clients, like they're not CrossFit competitors.

Of course, it's good to be able to do all the basic movement patterns effectively, but you don't have to do them with one rep max weight on a regular basis to be a healthy person and live a long, meaningful life. You know, in my experience, oftentimes kind of the majority of the physical therapy field is more conservative in how they program for people because they're trying to minimize injury potential for the future more so than people that are just wanting to go 100 percent or 100 miles an hour as an athlete. What are your thoughts on people that they are a little bit older, even program that are, you know, able to do those types of movements, barbell back squats, deadlifts, stuff like that. I mean, I honestly think that getting strong is, you know, something that's going to protect

us well into our older ages. So I think the more that we're able to do the better. I also think that with that PTs in general, if you look at like a traditional outpatient orthopedic physical therapist, like most of them don't really know how to program for true strength. So I think that kind of comes with it as well. It's like a lot of people, yeah, maybe they're a little bit more conservative, but they don't know anything else like we didn't learn about strength really principles in pt school we didn't learn about how to create a strength program you know like once they once someone's released from a clinic right it's like okay you're gonna go figure out what to do next

but it's like the pt doesn't know how to do that the pt also doesn't know how to navigate like that middle ground area of like okay you graduate a pt but like what's that intermediate step before you go with a personal trainer right um so i think there's a lot of education to be had there for those people but yeah i mean i think the more that older individuals can be doing if they're doing it safely they should be doing it for sure. Yeah. My, um, my mom, this was actually a CrossFit thing. Shouldn't do kipping pull-ups starting at like 58. I don't think that's a smart move. She had like a real frozen shoulder, which was like the most terrifying injury. I feel like I like could not raise her arm past parallel.

Yeah. And that range of motion only got smaller, like yearly. And I, I really had no, I had never, this is, this is part of being young and dumb is you never actually understand what,

um, people that are like 20 years older than you are going through. So when I would like tell my mom, like it's CrossFit, just get after it, mom, like go. Not realizing prerequisite ranges of motion that would be needed to do something that involves speed and power on a joint that probably isn't that healthy after all these years. And building up to that, to whenever she was injured, like there's probably countless interventions that could have happened to stop that. But I didn't understand what a 58 year old person felt like.

Um, I I'd love to know kind of in your experience, what, what you're looking for and kind of how you work with people that aren't competing in CrossFit, don't have a lot of the same goals and also just have a, a different life. I know you're awesome, but I didn't know what it was like to be 41 until I like turned 41. And I was like, Oh, this is what all those old ass people were talking about. I get it now. You know, like it's really hard to understand until you're kind of like have some

like creaky things going on. I'd love to just understand kind of like your process and getting to know people and what motivates them, where they're meeting them, where they're at. Like, what is it? What does that conversation kind of look like to just understand what that person's life looks like? Yeah. And it's really funny because I feel like my first either meeting or session with a client, like I don't even have to really ask them what's wrong to know what's wrong, right? Like they'll usually tell the story themselves.

We learned something in PT school that like patients are usually pretty good storytellers and you just kind of have to listen. Right. So as long as you can build rapport with a client and And something I've done a lot is I'll follow up their goals with why. And then they'll give me an answer. And I'll follow up with why again. So asking why several, several times to really get down to the answer. That's truly like, well, why do I want to be able to do this. I will tell you, I've had some meetings and I've had some initial evaluations and in people crying because it's like, you know, we really got to that pain point. Right. So being able to understand that why and being able to, you know, use that in our sessions specifically and like use that in our training to get them to where they want to be is the most effective. Right. And there's the specificity principle. Right. So if they have a goal of X, Y, Z, making sure that we're doing everything specifically to get them there and training the most specifically to that goal. Um, so, um, it's, it's that, that whole process. And I mean, even the way, sometimes I think back to like owning a gym

and having like, I love these people so much, but we're realizing like, you got like three kids at home and you got a nine, 10 hour day, high stress job. And then they show up at 6 a.m. to you. And you're like, you ready? I'm gonna start your day off with the most intense thing you've ever done

in your whole life. You ready to rock? And they're like, hell yeah, Anders, let's do this. I'm like, now I just wonder like how, like, could we have gotten to the same place? And maybe I took a little bit better, better care of their body. Had I had a bigger vision of, and just more experience as a human being that I love that you're able to, I mean, you have people like flying you out to their house to go work with them. So you clearly do a great job with it.

My, I don't, I don't know if anybody was doing that for me back in the day. So I think it's really cool. I think that you do a great job, like connecting with people and whatever, whatever the, the patience or empathy or being able to like

understand where they're trying to go and what's holding them back from getting there is, is, is like a big, big piece of the job. And you do a great job. The. I appreciate that. I would love to know where can people find out more about you and tell them about your CrossFit competition that's coming up? What are you going to win? Do you, are you in the grid still? Let's get down to like the real OG thing here.

Are you a gritter? So I, right. So I, I'm not on the aces uh so i am i have been sponsoring the team for years and i am their physical therapist so i keep them i keep too i didn't doug own a team partially yeah please a real sponsorship with equity involved. So yeah, it's honestly such a cool sport.

But I've been the Orlando Aces' physical therapist for the past three years. So I keep all of them together. I'm at every practice. I'm at every match. So a lot of it is like, you know, doing like day of stuff where it's like any manual work that's needed or just getting them on like a rehab protocol. If something's kind of like nagging, um, this year, uh, my, my boyfriend's actually the grid athlete. So he's been playing for eight or nine years. So he's, he's the star of, of that.

Um, you ever heard of a triple under? Yeah. I was going to say, if you're dating somebody that's in the grid and you're a physical therapist, that's like a match made in heaven. Cause he needs a physical therapist around him 24 hours a day. For sure. To do the stuff that they do. That is the craziest sport. Literally, yeah.

He's like the triple under king in grid. Where you at, Doug? You got those? I got them. I can't even do a single under, though, to be honest with you. Let me give a shout out to Molly Metz. I haven't talked to Molly in a long time, many years. But I think she did like 100 in a row triple unders.

Triple what? A while back. 100 unbroken triple unders? Yeah. And she also did 10 consecutive minutes of double unders. Wow. It was like, I don't know, it was 1,000 double-unders. Wow. It was like, I don't know, it was 1,000 double-unders or something like that. Oh, my gosh.

That's unbelievable. Look her up on YouTube. Her name's Molly Metz. She was like a jump rope world champion person. She owns Jump and Rope, the company Jump and Rope. That's awesome. She was on Shrug years ago. I remember that.

She's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I've seen triple-unders. She crushes. That'ses that's yeah it's so cool they're so inspiring honestly um but yeah so actually our grid season is about to start pretty soon uh practices i'm sure will be starting up um but the next competition other than the open is my boyfriend and i are just gonna be taking on this local competition called WOD Wars.

It's actually going to be at Raymond James Stadium this year, which is really cool. So we get to play where the Bucks play. Yeah, so it's awesome. Do you know Travis Mash used to be a gritter? No way, really? If you want someone to move a ton of weight for like five seconds, that's your boy right there. So he was obviously a strength specialist. Yeah.

I think his event was like max clean and jerks in like 10 seconds at like 275, some, some insane amount of money. It's not, it's not today's weights that they move around but it was it was enormous amount it's like him him and klokov going at it back in the day that's crazy the grid is like the i cannot believe the grid is still around like i i genuinely that is mind-boggling to me that they went from madison square garden on day one it's growing i growing. I bet it has like a real since they didn't since they weren't trying to show CrossFit

how great they were with like going to Madison Square Garden on day one and they have like probably a league of very fit people and a following because people love this stuff without they just don't have to do it the way it was done but um

in the end it's like 10 years old now yeah we've been around for like a decade and they still do it might be maybe 12 it still might be like one of the most athletic things I've ever seen in my entire life. Like the things that those people do at that speed and that intensity, uh, especially the gymnastic stuff. And like, you can't even in that league anymore, do like a toes to bar. It's gotta be like a toe to bar chest to bar. What is that? Yeah. So, uh of no existed. Yeah, it's like a complex now. I feel like every year they come up with new movements that they're doing. So this this past year, they introduced the high ring hands like handstand pushups. So you're on the high rings, like rings a height that you would do a ring muscle-up on but you have to somehow get yourself up there get yourself inverted and do handstand push-ups on those high rings which looked so scary i can't

even tell you that first match that we had where people were doing those it was just insane but yeah that complex now um one rep of this complex is a toe-to-bar toe-to-bar chest-to-bar toe-to-bar chest-to-bar bar muscle-up that's one rep-to-bar, toe-to-bar, chest-to-bar, bar muscle-up. That's one rep. Yeah. Unbroken. It's like all of the things that you did after you were done training just to be fun and hang out with your friends.

People are doing burst sport at very high intensity. Yeah. So the triple touch, which is the toe-to-bar, chest-to-bar, bar muscle-up, that actually showed up in the fittest experience CrossFit competition this year, which is crazy because it's like now they're moving some of these grid elements into a normal CrossFit competition. So it's kind of cool to see how there's like some crossover. But I think with

the way that CrossFit is doing their season this year, I feel like grid may be becoming a little bit more popular because it's like, oh, I may not get to compete as far as I want to. Let me go try something like grid. I couldn't tell you anything about the CrossFit season, but I got the email and I screenshotted it and I sent it to Nicole and Casey and I said, anybody want to battle? And then they both were like, no. And I was like, yeah, me neither.

I just wanted to know you wanted you to know I was still on the email list. Where can people find you? Instagram is probably the easiest way. The Stoic Physio on Instagram is where you can see a lot of the stuff that I'm up to. Any training stuff that I'm doing, rehab stuff is on there. So it's pretty comprehensive. There you go. Douglas E. Larson.

On Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. Melissa, appreciate you coming on the show and I love having you on the rapid team and a shout out to Sean Pastuch for connecting us. A great dude and he hooked it up and now you're on the team. So, appreciate it. We haven't even talked about your least adherent, pain in the butt client, Doug Larson.

How jacked up that guy is. I'm the best client. We didn't even say that she helped do my programming or my physical therapy stuff for many, many months but he kept up with it for a good bit i still do it yeah i didn't she doesn't write the programming on a weekly basis anymore but i still do all the stuff that we went over at least a year ago now yeah and i made wonderful progress with my my thoracic spinal rotation rotation, which was like my main, my main goal. I do it almost every day at a minimum. I do, I do that stuff. So, um,

all the rib injury things that I was dealing with, uh, I wouldn't say like they're all a hundred percent gone, but, uh, radically reduced for, for a long time. Um, so I have like a sternum thing that I get, you can't really avoid it all the way in jujitsu. For sure. But I really have made a lot of progress there. So I hadn't actually given like an official, especially not public. Thank you for, for all the help that you provided there. But yes, thank you very much because it really was meaningful to me. So appreciate it. There you go. Yeah, absolutely. Super happy to help. And I'm actually, I'm so happy to be part of the team and seriously shout out to Dr. Sean for connecting us because that was so awesome and

like so needed at the exact time. So I appreciate it all around. Awesome. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged to make sure you get over to rtalab.com. A-R-E. I misspelled it the other day, Doug. How terrible is that? It's so embarrassing. A-R-E-T-E-L-A-B.com. Arte Lab. That is a signature program inside Rapid Health Optimization where you can learn about all lab testing, performance analysis, and you can come hang out with us and Dr. Melissa. She's radical. You can access all of that over at artelab.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.