Barbell Shrugged - Why You Need To Recover As Hard As You Train W/ Jill Miller

Episode Date: March 15, 2017

  If you've been doing a few minutes on a rower and half-ass rolling on a piece of foam for your recovery, you may have already figured out it's not enough.   Our guest this week, Jill Miller, founder of Tune Up Fitness and author of The Roll Model, said it perfectly, "Healing happens in our restorative state".    Your body is an adaptive machine.    If you want to get stronger and faster, you need to put the same amount of attention on how your recover if you truly want to be able to access the most out of your body and training.   We spoke with Jill about how we can better prepare our bodies to push hard and stay healthy while training by recovering better.    Although Jill's background is in the yoga world, the information she shares goes far beyond warrior poses and OMing. She has an amazing amount of knowledge of the human body and has developed tools and practices on self care, particularly with fascial work and mobility.    In this episode, Jill shares her strategies and translates some the science behind down regulation, recovery, and how we can optimize and train our bodies to recover faster and more efficiently. Her information is as unique as it is important for hard-charging athletes.    You'd do well to tune in and listen.    Lastly, be sure to check out Jill's therapy self-massage tools and Yoga Tune Up programs designed to help you recover from training more effectively, relieve pain and stress, and improve balance and strength at her website here.  daily.barbellshrugged.com/tuneupfitness   Enjoy the show, Mike

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Jill Miller and she teaches us how to tone our Vegas. Overzealous fascial work? You've been doing too much soft tissue work on that area? Too much soft tissue work. Soft tissue work. You've got to work on it. Aggressive soft tissue work on that area? Too much soft tissue work. Soft tissue work. A lot of people. Aggressive soft tissue work. Jill, it's literally down regulation. Yeah, that's right.

I guess so. Down regulation. Up regulation first. Yeah. Well, maybe you need to go downtown to up regulate. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Mike Bledsoe. Thank you.

Here with Doug Larson, Kenny Kane, and we have traveled up to L.A. to visit Miss Jill Miller. This is. That's right. This is Jill Miller. I'm a wife. You're a wife. And mother. We have Lila on the show as well.

Lila, can you wave to the camera? It's video, Lila. It's video. You don't have to say cheese. You can actually wave. That's so cool. There you go. Jill Miller is the author of The Role Model and author of what?

Yeah, author of The Role Model. It's a big book. The co-founder of Yoga Tune Up. Co-founder of Tune Up Fitness Worldwide. Oh, shit. That's okay. Yeah, yeah. And creator of Yoga Tune Up.

And then what's super cool we found out today is that you're the anatomy columnist. Is that right? For the Yoga Journal. Yes. Which is a big deal. That's happening this year. Yeah, super cool. That out today is that you're the anatomy columnist. Is that right? For the Yoga Journal. Yes. Which is a big deal. That's happening this year. Yeah. Super cool.

That's a big deal. Yeah. And you said that was really cool because that was something that you read a lot when you were growing up or years back. And now you're the column editor, which is super cool. Not the editor. I'm a columnist. Oh, excuse me. Excuse me.

So, but I. Basically the editor. You know, I'm editing my own work. So, right. Okay. So, you're a columnist been editing my own work. So, right. OK, so you're a columnist for that for that for the for the for the anatomy column. And I remember I got my first subscription to Yoga Journal when I was 14 years old. So I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I discovered yoga around 11 years old. And my aunt got me a subscription to Yoga Journal when I was 14.

And the anatomy column was like amazing to me and that's actually how i first started learning anatomy aside from my dad's medical textbooks because he was a doctor so pages of diseases was also my other radio it's on yes he's doing a video so the fact that 30 something years later they reached out to me about being a columnist for that specific category yeah that's cool so they actually reached out to you for this thing that was a big part of your past i had no i mean just yeah it's really cool did you see that coming cool we're just gonna email or a call it was such a total random cold call i had no idea super cool yeah so look out may is my first issue on the shoulder.

And then the next one is going to be on the glutes, you know, body parts. It's cool to talk to someone so excited about this. I'm reading a book right now called Mastery by Robert Greene. And one of the things he talks about in that book is people who tend to become, who attain some level of mastery, there's something that's triggered in their childhood you know between the ages of six and twelve and hearing you talk about this right now and you have you made this discovery with the yoga journal and then uh combined with the knowledge

that came from your your father it sounds like you had this this perfect mix to just trigger you into this path absolutely i think well i think some of like learning latin was about approval and you know being able to talk with him legitimately about scientific e things and body part things but then the other thing was i just had an insatiable need to understand my inner workings and it really goes beyond anatomy it's not just like muscle parts but I'm pretty obsessed with physiology and how things work together and and also somatic so the limbic system and my baby and and a lot of that's been triggered by being a parent I care a lot more about feelings now than I've ever felt before then I've ever than I've ever felt before. Than I've ever, well, than I've ever felt before.

I feel more feelings than I've ever had before. And I think the parents who are around the table can understand how many feelings you have that are actually much like your toddlers. They're primordial. They're insane. And what's in the way of performance quite often are those emotions that are unreconciled or unaccepted. And so that has been a really interesting avenue for me in terms of the work that I'm doing now, which a lot of it is around the vagus nerve and impacting downregulation and recovery states. Is this something you fell more in love with after having children, this downregulating the nervous system?

No, I've always been into that because I've always, I've been into yoga since I was 11 or 12 after having children, this downregulating the nervous system? No. I've always been into that because I've been into yoga since I was 11 or 12 years old. But I think that I have a real gift for doing it. And you guys just came to a class that the entire hour was about accessing the parasympathetic nervous system or ways of stimulating the vagus nerve so that a person who's not a yoga person could do it too, right? Because we didn't do poses. We didn't do a bunch of… I didn't go into warrior one or two. No, I didn't.

I think the only pose that we did was shavasana yeah right everything else was sort of interesting strange human movement coupled with breathing strategies a little bit of rolling um and mindset like just continually like taking your mind on a certain walk and then positioning your neck in certain ways that would stimulate um different windows of pressure into the vagus nerve that's something i noticed between like good like a yoga instructor and then a really good or great yoga instructor is is setting the context throughout the class and having and and walking people through taking them on a journey of sorts and that's something that usually i associate with the poses and then being able to go into a class and we've got just balls on the

back of my head and that'll never not. And up in your brainstem, right? Yeah. Up in your cerebellum there. Yeah. And then going there and I've done that before, but having you there, you know, walking us through the, like what kind of taking us on that journey while I've got my head there really, it was really good. I really enjoyed it. I don't know what else to say besides really, it was really good. I really enjoyed it.

I don't know what else to say besides that. It was really good. But I guess I'm trying to make that point that there's one thing to go through the motions and there's another thing to really dive into it. Well, that's, it's like a, it's like a Venn diagram. They're actually, the teacher or the coach needs to be creating certain circumstances so that the application of whatever technique means something to the body.

So that is sort of creating the atmosphere and the smoke and mirrors, the theatrics, the crafting of the stagecraft of a given session, whether it's a one-on-one or whether it's a group or a conference or whatever type of setting, is being able to create a container that is safe for the execution of whatever technique you're doing. And the stuff I'm doing is I need to create really deep safety, a sense of you trusting me, trusting the space, so that you can allow the really subtle things I'm asking for to actually happen. And so like magic, your skull distanced itself from your spine magically. And you were able to let the balls indent themselves there and influence

traction, cervical traction. And then that allowed us to, that freed up rotation. Like all of a sudden we rechecked after that and you guys did a spinal rotation move and everyone was like, and went way further than they did before with the subtlest amount of cueing but but very well chosen right and i also as the coach or the teacher i have to be able to um entrain myself into states, mental and physiological states, that my students or my clients

can sort of have a reciprocal relationship with that so that they can actually kind of, I'm off-gassing my state of being into them. They're sort of sucking it up and trying to mirror that. And then they're able to have that experience. Yeah. You can have that experience. You're not just sticking a ball in a place.

And this is like the big myth when people are like, oh, that's Jill. She's the ball girl. It's like, you know what? No, it's so much more than that. This is really about recrafting your embodiment. And it's not just about poking your body with a ball. Yeah. or it's about recrafting your embodiment and it's not just about poking your body with a ball yeah it was the depth of which you spoke within the hour was pretty considerable i mean because we're talking about obviously a lot of parasympathetic stuff within the hour and then in that is this gigantic conversation for the worlds that we come from there's this

sympathetic up regulatory sort of ethos, like everybody's sort of upping themselves to perform. And the thing that you're contributing a lot to is this conversation of this sort of downregulatory state and also, by the way, it happens to help when you want to go back up and perform really, really well. And we saw that very subtle movements, just like you mentioned, but our ranges of motion. I was kind of eyeing what Mike was doing and Doug was doing and seeing what I was doing. And the degrees of rotation, flexion, extension,

all the different positions that you're having us be in after just a little bit of release, a little bit of ball pressure, were significant, sometimes 10, 15, 20 degrees. But also, there was a lot, like, again, there was a lot of suggestive cueing that helped you to re-regulate your own emotional or stress levels just through the cue sets. So that is really, it's like, well, what enabled the range of motion? Was it a little bit of pressure here or was it, well, it was the little bit of pressure plus the breath, plus the mindsets, right?

That did that. If I can return to states of equilibrium and suck up more from the parasympathetic side of the coin, then I'm going to be wasting less energy when I'm upregulated. It's like I want to be able to return to a state of homeostatic balance as quickly as possible. This is the premise behind HRV, right? And so I really like to build people's endurance in the just absolute deepest stages of downregulation. People run marathons and can, you know, they can pace themselves for 23 point, was it 23.6 miles? 26.2. Thank you. Yeah. I can add.

26.2. Thank you. Yeah. I can add. 26.2 miles. But, you know, I don't think we have the same type of endurance in the other state of being. And so one of my aims is to give people those tools so that they can improve their tolerance for relaxation and improve their capacity for that end of the coin. Because I think that's really what resilience is. But we're so deficient in that piece of the pond or the piece of the pie that it's worth just investigating for just, that's why I teach immersions on it. And that's why my next book is on it. and especially in this time of stress crisis on a cultural level in our country if all of us could pack in a little bit more

self-reflection our executive function would come online much more clearly and more cleanly and i think we'd be able to have more rational discourse instead of living in fear which most of us are living in fear right now how long does it take for someone to to kind of get to that end of the spectrum where it seems to me that the first time someone's gonna pick one of these up they're thinking okay I can do I can do soft tissue work with this I'm gonna roll out my my sticky spots I'm gonna get a little more range of motion I have hopefully better technique as a result you know better better economy of movement I'm gonna be able to go through

a workout and get less tired because my technique is going to be better and there's going to be less resistance everything's going to be a little bit easier and that's kind of like purely on on the physical side and then we could say that's on the superficial level you know but it's it's not but in terms of the peeling away the onion so the structural stuff is really important. But I think it's a gateway drug. So let's call this a rubber drug. I like drugs. Let's do it. And you just start rolling around on any of the different products I have

or any different soft tissue tool that you might use. And I think after a certain while, if you create some conditions within that of of quiet actually and concentration on what you're experiencing you'll start to actually feel more than what you're feeling you'll start to feel more than just your elbow tendons you might start to feel or have um, one, but you might also start to have associations and pieces of your life may start to flash back at you and you'll be able to put together the pieces of the puzzle

of why you're constantly having to roll that part of your body. Why are you constantly in pain there? Because you don't have to be a host for the pain but ultimately expunging put first of all adding up the story which you can't get to just if you're always up here you have to be able to go into the opposite state of the spectrum in order to get that information the information is there and that's where the healing is I, healing happens in our restorative time zone in our body. It doesn't happen in the upregulated states.

So if you really want to regenerate, you need to go into the regeneration portion of your nervous system and develop its strength. Develop the strength of the resiliency there. So how long does it take? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Like, I don't know how long it's going to take somebody who doesn't want to get quiet? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how long it's going to take somebody who doesn't want to get quiet to get quiet. I don't know. But I think

eventually people do. They crash. They break. And the hospital is a great place to get quiet. But it's very expensive to be there. That's true. I remember after I dislocated my hip, they were like, you can go home. And I was like, nah, I just want to stay here. I was all drugged up and happy.

I didn't want to go anywhere. Another thousand bucks for an hour. Get me out. That's fine. I know. Well, I think that what you're describing is bringing yourself into a state where rejuvenation happens and where that self-reflection. And I think that for most people in our culture, that may be a place they've never touched. It's scary. Or it's been momentary. And there's also not a lot of value put on it. So

I think, especially in the strength and conditioning world, there's a lot of value put on the sympathetic nervous system. People are taking scoops of C4 Jack 3D, and that is a chemical that's going to just ramp you up. And there's, you know, that's what people like. That's what they like to see. There's a lot of value in getting pumped up. And being the chill dude or dudette is not as valued. Like, it's not cool to be that person. So I think there's a lot of it to do with that is people don't want to down

regulate because they don't value it because it's not a big show. It's not sexy. I would like to tag that. I mean, as being a contributor sort of to the dopamine response, like that immediate gratification, gratification, gratification,

gratification, gratification. That's a factor that immediate gratification. That's a factor gratification. The gratification that people get. I saw that in a book somewhere. It was so gratifactory. I think it was a dictionary. I was reading it in. The hand went into the pants and it was at a factory but truly like being a contributor

in the fitness industry to selling that sort of like that hit we're going to get that hit and the value is around that hit and there's part of that's chemical part of it's also value system that we've created all of us have contributed to that without like a larger conversation we have we have

we've been in the fitness industry for a long time so like and i'm not saying that we've done bs but we but but the conversation is deeper than than just one side of the the wellness box if you will i mean the other part is what we're talking about right here and getting people to that quiet space like that that, I'm sure you see some, some autonomic neuropathies and people are coming to you for this sort of overstimulation. And that's, I'm starting to see that. And that's one of the big things that we're trying to do at our gym is to like get people to value the yin with the yang. And that's like a, that's a conversational piece that belongs on a kitchen table at first

glance but then really if we're talking about longevity sustainability and a long-time practice of a yin and yang sort of experience to your physicality it it does demand that but getting people to that quiet space in a system that both sells right and go, I'm, I'm purchasing stuff. I need to feel like I get a hard workout. And so it's hard to come into a class and go, I lean to the right and okay. And am I getting, is this worth my fucking dollars to pay? You know what I mean? I mean, I try to sell it upfront. Like this is not a calorie scorcher, right? You know, and I'll, and I'll use some of those buds buzzwords. It's like, this is not a calorie scorcher right you know and i'll and i'll use some of those buzzwords it's like this is about mapping yourself this is about getting to know your body better

because if you can figure out how to sense your way around your body you're going to get more out of the stuff you do out there all right but the way you actually develop that body sense sense when it happens in super slow-mo it sticks it sticks it becomes a a permanent new neural groove or it can be it has the potential to be versus versus um you know continually bypassing all of that which is what i see i mean i did my first years of training in slow motion. I did yoga. It's a super slow-mo, right? And then I dabbled in different other cross-training platforms. I love strength and conditioning. I mean, I love lifting. I feel like I'm a born-again doing that work. But I've put it on top of a body that can move in slow motion, that can breathe in slow motion, that can perceive in slow motion. So I can speed up the ticker tape as fast as I want

because I've practiced so much of that in that box, in that slow motion box. And so I want to live long, healthy, pain-free, And I really want to know myself. And in terms of the yoga, like the yoga space, there's this thing called Svadaya, which is self-knowledge and self-study. And yeah, I like to look inside. I do. It's really cool. And I look inside other people too.

I mean, I do cadaver labs and I look under the hood and take parts apart in slow motion. So I'm like going into this sort of slow motion epithet here. But there was something else you said, if I can remember what you said. When people come to work with me. No, but it's about that autonomic dysregulation. When people come to work with me privately, not a single person walks through that door that doesn't have a huge bag of CRAP that they're walking in the room with. Emotional baggage that is in the way of them moving excellently or feeling excellently or sleeping well or being able to relate to the world in a way that doesn't destroy them.

And so you see these things in a private session or you see them in a classroom you see people who don't who can't blink right they're like frozen open i'm like frozen open i'm like i'm on i'm on crack um or you see i know a lot of slow blinkers like people and there's people who i know that went through 10 years of trauma and it's just sort of like exactly wow and so save at the bar this um but you know all the all of the pieces are needed for health like we know that but there's got to be somebody you know like me and the people that i train that are like i'm gonna go really deep i'm gonna go the distance in this other facet of human somatics so that i can bring this to people like you,

to the big muscle guys and the big muscle girls. I've never been described as a big muscle guy. I think that's the first time. Shut up. Come on. Boom, boom, boom. Come on. So today we attended one of your...

Oh, speaking of big muscle guys, can I just tell you about one of my students who just won in Las Vegas three days ago? He's actually he's the model in this video. There he is. Greg. Greg Reed. And he's also.

God, it's so small. There's bigger pictures. You should see him now. He just won the big bodybuilding competition that was in Vegas last weekend. Fifty six years old. He won overall. He won first place in his own category 56 years old he won overall he won first place in his own category and then he went overall so he's got these 30 something men with lats half the size of his and you know perfectly harmonious physique and he stopped competing almost 20 years ago

because he had a series of car accidents that destroyed him and but he's literally put himself back together he uses this stuff that's why he's the model in the treat why you train video and why he's one of the role models in my book the role model so like this is a guy who is at the he's peaking at 56 he's not even done peaking because he's going to nationals next right this was like western regional or whatever but like it's a big deal it's vegas that's super cool boom doing those those things whatever that is very proud of him big shout out to Greg Reed

that is amazing congratulations I think a lot of times people don't associate being a guy like that being a muscly guy and and

and engaging and he does this work he does this work yeah and he's a winner I'm meeting more and more people who do that are

mm-hmm yeah he gets it. You got to slide and glide to pop. But that's going to be an Instagram quote. That is a great quote. Let's take a break real quick and come back. I want to talk about being.

That's it. I went to your Instagram account when I saw you were coming over here, Hunter. Did you see the one where he was naked on the beach? I had to warn Ryan. I did. Chill. And that's how you figured out he was a Ken doll? There's totally a little Ken doll thing going on there.

You know, a big muscular Ken doll? He's making him. Chill, the ladies love Hunter. I can see why. They love him. Like, I always tease him because his hair is like this beautiful cloth, and then it plugs in. It's like a shock of self-curling

and highlights, the whole thing. If I go out with Hunter, my wife is like, eh, no big deal. Hunter's going to get him. But you know, Hunter, excuse me. Hunter. Hunter. Hunter.

Was that a double entendre? Hunter. The off-camera kick to the nuts. I didn't even say it. First of all, ladies, you're. Where was I? Hunter. The off-camera kick to the nuts. Hunter. I didn't even say it. I just said it. First of all, ladies, you're right. He's really hot. Hunter was in my class today.

And it's like I'm so glad my husband didn't come to my class until six months into dating me. Because as soon as I see somebody move, I get so much information. You just become judgy? I can't. Not judgy, but judgy I guess no it's that entrainment it's like I can feel it sounds so

spooky but I feel my way into my students it's the mirror neurons I can't help it they're called empathy neurons and mirror neurons and I can't help but have that experience you can't get rid of them I tried but it's also aons, and I can't help but have that experience. You can't get rid of them. I tried.

But it's also a gift because then I can kind of creatively think of some solutions or some cues that would help, potentially, that student to embody certain things that I'm trying to communicate. So Hunter's got a couple things to work on, right? We talked about it after class. Oh, yeah. So Hunter's got a couple things to work on. We talked about it after class. Oh, yeah. But it's exciting. He didn't share any of that in the car. He's totally, he's perfectly imperfect, ladies.

You're going to love him. I'm not. The ladies are loving him. He's off to the lake. Why is he off camera is what I want to know. I mean, why are you wasting his? We're creating a myth. Don't tell them. That's what's happening.

He's much better behind the camera. He's so happy. He's so happy. Now you're on this pedestal, so now you've got a lot to live up to. He's going to work on his rib cage dynamics, though. And that's diaphragm. That's quadratus lumborum.

That's erector spinae. That's transversus abdominis. That's obliques. That's really a relationship of rib cage to pelvis. We were walking down the stairs after class and he said, oh, I spent my whole childhood doing computer games.

So, he is actually a child now because he's trying out all these different physical things. He's coming into his body now. He's just a child. Stay away from his body now. He's just a child. Stay away from him, ladies. He's just a child. On second thought.

Oh, man. So what were we doing in class when you were noticing all this stuff? Oh, standing. I mean, every move. So every move. Hunter can't stand? He can't stand it.

He can't stand the down regulation. So he translates his rib cage, right? So this is like a common gymnast thing. Like, I land and I got the poof, right? And I'm exaggerating, but there's a tendency in every move he does to translate or to shear his rib cage forward of his pelvis. I see that a lot with overhead work. Absolutely. People put weight overhead and immediately kind of like pop the butt back,

ribs open up. Yep. I'm not saying I've never done it. It's interesting. In overhead, I think one of the big things that's impacting that is a lack of understanding of the thoracolumbar fascia and its relationship from the buttocks all the way through to the humerus. So if I have tension in my lats because I'm busy doing all my lat pulls,

and then I bring my arm overhead and I don't have any slack or I don't have any pliability or elasticity in the plane of connective tissue, it's a multilayered plane, lats, obliques, transversus abdominis, erector spinae, quadratus lumborum, layer upon layer of fascial connective tissue. It's basically a big layered tendon plane. If I don't have elasticity for my lats when my arm rises overhead, it's going to kink and cinch and result in lumbar extension there, an inappropriate amount of lumbar extension.

But he's got that just standing. He's got that just rotating. He's got that just rotating on axis, trying to rotate on axis because the habit is so ingrained, right? The habit is so ingrained of this disconnect of the northern hemisphere from the southern hemisphere. And so you find it pervasive in all movements. So even in lateral flexion, you know, the ribcage went forward and I was seeing a lot of odd rotations throughout my classroom. It's very, very hard to stay on axis and do these sort of pure movements. A lot of what I teach in Yoga Tune-Up is so simple. It's like, hey, can you move as efficiently as possible without translating into the other stuff? Because the other stuff is always wanting to

bully the other body parts around. It's like, we've got all these bully body parts. And so a lot of times we use the yoga tuna balls, the role model balls to bring body awareness to those parts prior, actually prior to even exercising so that you gain proprioception. And so also that you can turn them off because sometimes they're so hyper aroused. They justoused they don't even know that they're doing everything so for example in that rotation exercise where you're just standing and I had you all pretend that you were standing in concrete

so there's no movement of the pelvis and knees or the ankles and then just firing the derotators or the counter rotators of the spine without translating without translating so there's other things that I could use to pull myself around or the counter rotators of the spine without translating, without translating, without translating. So there's other things that I could use to pull myself around,

but that's not what I'm asking for. It's like, can you get naked enough inside your structure to just fire those things that would initiate that movement? And we could have spent an entire class on the concept of derotation or counter rotation, and I do, like I would, but that wasn't the premise of our class today. I wanted you guys to have sort of a sense, like a naked central nervous system.

My concept was like, you know, the brain and the spinal cord. And so I wanted to take that spinal cord within the core of your spine through its global ranges of motion, and then play around with breath, position, and then do just a little magic dust to actually get things to shut off.

And that actually improved your range of motion to get the extra overflow to shut off so that we can improve range of motion. So we did a couple of kind of like baseline tests where we did rotation without moving our hips or our pelvis, where we just did upper body rotation, moving the shoulders on fixed hips. And then we're moving the rib cage on fixed hips, let's say, because the shoulders go along for the ride.

The shoulders aren't doing it. It's just your axis doing it. True story. Yeah. We're not trying to move the shoulder independently of, of the rib cage, removing rib cage on the hips. Right.

And so we, we did, we did rotation both ways. We did, we did lateral flexion. And then you also did, you did rotation, uh,

fixed. And then you also did a full body rotation. So then you allowed the whole chain to integrate into that also. That's right. So, yeah, we turned with just the rib cage on fixed hips. And then we kind of paused after noticing and reflecting on how far we could turn. And then we did more of a full global rotation using any rotation you could come up with that wasn't compensation by popping the ribs or anything we just talked about and then we did we did global not global we did flexion and extension where again we're trying to do it on fixed hips and these were kind of like baseline tests and then we then we did a

bunch of work with flexion we did lateral flexion as well and then we did a bunch of work with with some of the balls and some of the and using the the gorgeous ball as well for a lot of our our musculature on the kind of the front side of our core here. Front and lateral. Front and lateral. And then we went back and did those same tests again. I don't know if you'd consider them a test, but we did the same thing afterward just to see if there was any improvements or changes in any way.

Is that a very common thing for you to use with your clients, that kind of test, retest model? So in Yoga Tune-Up and the role model, we call it check-in and recheck so that it doesn't actually sound like a test You know like tests. No, I mean like I love tests. I'm such a like straight-a student like give me the test but I don't think most people feel that way about academics, so I Softer term I called check in and recheck that way it's it's a reflection right it's a Observation and then you don't feel like, Oh, did I pass the test?

Because I think when people hear the word test, they're like, am I going to pass it? Um, but anyway, check in and recheck. But it is exactly that. And so, um, what, what we'll do in, uh, the role model in Rome, excuse me, the yoga tune up work or the role model, or even a program I created for 24 hour fitness called treat while you train where the check in and rechecks are also progressive movements. So they will also add in complexity. So the check-in might add another destabilizing component or a dynamic component.

And so you're trying to, your body is trying to map, remap, and improve the mapping and not not lose the prior mapping, but build the map as you progress through the class. And then it's interrupted with different excursions that really improve your body's cognition of itself, its range of motion, breath, and so on. Does sequencing matter for you? I feel like I know the answer because I've worked with you before, but it but also experiencing your class now and then also having worked with some of your apprentices through the years, I've noticed that there is some attention to sequencing, but does it truly matter for people that would be listening or watching the show? Does does it matter where you start mobilizing and where you move to? Depends.

Okay. It depends. It depends on the – Great coaches always say it. But it depends on that person's context. You know, it depends on that person's context and also the environment that you're in. So I might, in a room like we did this at Equinox Fitness Clubs, I mean, that room is quiet.

It's got a sanctuary type of feeling. So my entry point there can be where it is there. If I'm teaching at a louder gym, that's maybe, you know, louder music, or you hear the equipment, or it's colder, there would be a different entry point with those students. But the cool thing about the body is, because your nervous system is everywhere, and your fascial tissues are constantly interrelated, any entry point will have a global impact if I'm doing it impactably. So I can up-regulate or down-regulate depending on how I want to dial my student or how I want them to help interconnect. I can really start anywhere.

I tend to start with a coupled thing of awareness of physiology. And that typically happens by starting people in a reclined position. So I bring them into awareness of their physiology and awareness of their mindset. And then I actually give them suggestions of things to do so that, and those are, you know, those are cues that actually help to coalesce the attention of the room and create that safe container so that then we can go and party, which whatever direction the class is going in. Does that make sense? It does. I mean, are you looking for like, oh, you should always know nose first and then the ears. Mike said it.

Every great coach always does answer the same way, which is it does depend. Because environments and situations change, and therefore contexts do as well. I mean, that's just the nature of context. You've got to read the room, man. You've got to read the room. One sequence in particular that

one of your apprentices had worked with my coaches and some of the people from our gym was one where they were using the alpha ball. If I, is that correct? That is the alpha ball. Yeah. The big gray one. And then we went to QL specifically then to kind of sequence down through Iliacus and try to get, and it was, it was specifically sequenced. So we went down the thoracic slightly into the lumbar and then hit QL. Then we kind of like moved around. And so I, I, I thought that was very specific and it seemed like,

okay, that really helped with some of the posterior and anterior control. And, you know, I, I get imbalanced on ones. I, on my right side gets a little knotted up and I felt that very significantly. And I, I and I just I do wonder like that does that you know the thing the thing about the book no the thing that sucks about about books or videos it's like oh it looks like you start there and then you do that and then that and then there that's the sequence that's it it's Because Jill has the pictures in the book, and that's the way you do it. But it's not necessarily true for everybody. You know, I have to create a sequence.

It's a book. I have to create a sequence. Kelly and I created sequences in this video. This is the video. But every time I teach, it's jazz. It's informed jazz. It's informed by my knowledge of anatomy and physiology and my tools, my equipment, my space, and then as much information as I can continue to gather from my client or the students. And while there are certain things we always do and there are certain priorities we always have,

the actual execution is going to be never happen again. Yeah. Cool. Something I noticed with people who know their craft well is they have to be technically good first. So maybe following a sequence in the beginning is really helpful. And then kind of adding the art later and having that intuitive, oh, let's see what this is like. That's something that's learned after sticking to a sequence for a period of time. You've got to be a cook before you can be a chef. Yeah.

That type of thing. Right. You've got to learn the cuts. You've got to learn how to mince. You've got to follow the recipe. Then you can improv later. You have to learn how to French mince, Japanese mince. Like all the different mince type of mincings that you do.

But, yeah, it's playing the scales, right? And mastering being able to play the scales and then being able to theme and interpret. I mean, I loved, believe me, I love like rigid systems. Like I loved doing a Yangar yoga. I loved, God forbid, but I did way back in the day learn, you know, Bikram. That was the first form of yoga I learned when I was like 11 or 12. From a video, by the way, from the Raquel Welsh yoga video, which she was sued by Bikram because she stole his sequence.

But I loved like, you do this, and then you do this. And I loved Ashtanga because you do this, and then you do this. And then you have two days off a month. And then it's when the moon is full and when the moon is not full. So, but those systems didn't necessarily honor the variability of human life, like the variability of my life. It's like, that gave me the McDonald's like formula. You're not living in a lunar cycles, right?

Or the Hebrew calendar, like whatever. Yeah. So, um, and I like literally yoga tune up was like, Jesus, this is so, it's, I'm so out of tune by overdoing the same thing all the time. I'm completely out of tune by repeating those scales constantly. So I needed to, like, go into the minor scale and then, like, the seven chord scale? All those weird scales. I had to go into all the weird scales in order to break free from the tyranny of formula. Yeah. Well, I've been through your book a few times, like following all the sequences. All the sequences. They're good.

And I've noticed that if I do start at the beginning and go to the end, it could take me like five or six hours. Oh, you're so adorable. That's so awesome. I'm so honored. I've done that a couple times. But I've also broken up throughout the end. It could take me like five or six hours. Oh, you're so adorable. That's so awesome. I'm so honored. I've done that a couple times. But I've also broken up throughout the week. So like an hour a day or something like that. And incidentally, that's also when he has flaccid.

Did we get that on camera in the beginning? That's in the afterword. About the whole down regulation? Okay. Too down. I've down regulated too hard a couple times. There's complaints from the wife. What I find is...

Texts in the middle of the night to Jill. What do I do now? I think I went too hard. I found areas where it didn't seem like I needed that much work. I was like, oh, that didn't feel like much. And there's areas where, oh, my right quad is completely fired up a lot. I need to hit it more often. So going through all the sequences just to find things in your body is a good idea.

Yeah, I think it's good to do all of it because, I mean, and I'm telling you, like, it's all there. So because you're going to just do the stuff you want to do. Like if you don't have any instruction, you're just going to keep doing kind of the same things or in the same pool. That's why it's good. Like I, it's so cool that you guys came to class so that I could actually give you some coaching or give you a couple of additional things to think about. And all of us need that. We need an outside pair of eyes to help us to reflect on ourselves, right? In the short term, if someone doesn't have a coach or someone to be their outside pair of eyes, like how would someone know where to focus using these tools? The cool thing about the tools is that the tools give your body proprioception. So that's really a huge part of this is about mapping yourself.

And the more better you can get at sensing your way around your own structure, then the better you'll be at rearranging those body structures in whatever activity you're doing, whether it's lifting or running or rowing or rowboating, showboating, whatever kind of show you're into doing for yourself, show and tell. So this is the way your body tells you what it can do, what it senses and what it doesn't sense. And that's really important for execution. That's the gift of a stress transfer medium or a massage tool. It should give you that

unless you're going so hard that you hurt yourself. Because this isn't about making pain. This is actually about sensing yourself and improving your ability to listen, not scream and shout at yourself, but to listen, have a dialogue, and then remediate that through proper activity and correct activity, through proper activation of your body afterwards. This isn't just to turn into a gelatinous mass. I mean, think about Greg Reed. He massages himself from toe to feet. He goes two hours.

He uses every single ball all over his body. And then he goes and he kills it in bodybuilding competition. So he knows how to activate his tissues and isolate them so excellently because he has so thoroughly mapped from skin to deep using these tools. Does that make sense? It does. You just said something that I think it's important to sort of distinguish for our followers. And that is like sometimes people will use mobility tools and then they'll create more tension around areas that they're trying to listen to as you sort of describe it. And I think listening is a really good language choice. Like, as you said, that I like I'm going to impart that to my students immediately. Like it is a relationship about listening.

However, like eyeballs. They are. But a lot of people go, oh, no, I can get into a finish position because I put the ball in a certain spot and it allows me to do that. Versus the more evolved practice or consideration would be like where is it, how is that, and how am I making an informed choice around that. Right. Yeah. No, I mean palpation is like an amazing tool for doing that. It could be somebody else doing it to you, but it costs a lot of money. What do you suggest for people that do do this? What's sort of like the threshold?

Like when somebody is, like when you're watching somebody and you're going, okay, they're forcing themselves into that. Like what are the basic? I mean, I've heard Kelly talk about it, but what would you suggest? Well, I love Kelly. This is probably about Kelly Starrett, who is amazing. He's an Amazing friend. I like his cue around do it until you make change or until you stop making change.

That's his kind of time threshold. But in terms of some of the fascial research that's out there, 60 seconds to two minutes on one spot is actually enough to excite the organelles within a cell and to really upregulate some of the neural signaling of the pathway of the motor proprioceptor pathway so you know you're probably not gonna just I mean most people when they get on the balls they you know want to roll around like yeah so they're not necessarily on one spot for that long of time when we did this the suboccipital release that cervical traction we were probably on there for three to four minutes actually oh really yeah i thought it was like a thousand years well a lifetime i was also not going we weren't gonna like go and do deadlifts afterwards right so if i'm gonna if if the if the context of the class is about um helping to, you know, refine sense and deeply, deeply relax you, then doing

holds that are longer than two minutes is perfectly safe. I'm not going to tell you to go out and try to PR a deadlift after you've done cervical traction for four minutes. Does that make sense? So it's also the context of, you know, what are the activities that you're going to doing afterwards? But we actually did do significant activations after we did the cervical traction, which is that we actually activated the cervical flexors, which on a lot of us are deeply shut down because they're constantly chronically shortened because we're in this position all the time. I think that was a big eye-opener for Doug, myself, and Mike

without even checking in with you guys. But we did this thing where we took the gorgeous ball, but honestly, everybody's scalings. Oh, you mean doing this? Yeah. So that was a different move. So I'm talking about we did this really subtle cervical flexion. Actually, that was probably the most enjoyable part of the whole class.

I felt very relaxed in that moment. That's awesome. Yeah. And I told everyone just do less. Just barely feel it, but activate. I love it when people tell me to do less. Just do less. Yeah, isn't it nice to be able to do less? It is nice.

Shop less, buy less, hang less. There's a couple things that And then we did an anterior scaling release with the Cordus Ball. That's what you were talking about. Yeah. I mean, just get that done.

I mean, there's so many. Don't forget about me. I know. I just wanted to catch back. I totally got stuff too. We all got stuff. No, but I felt such an amazing release. I mean, we hit the scalene.

Yeah. It's a sternocleidomastoid. And I mean, it just was amazing. The jaw could move. It was amazing. The jaw could move. Wonderful. Those are all those vagal windows. This was all in service of this

champion nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. TYV. Tonya Vegas. Corey, you're going to sell a lot of shirts. I'm going next, Doug. Peace. Hashtag. Tonya Vegas. Hashtag. Corey, you're going to sell a lot of shirts. I'm going next, dog. Peace.

You're back. So a second thing. You were saying that one to two minutes per spot is really the optimal amount of time that you would want to be on any particular tissue. Does that mean? Yeah, prior to training. But if you're going to do this before you go to bed, stay on many minutes. Okay. Many more than one to two minutes.

So if someone only has 20 minutes three or four times a week, maybe five days a week at most to do something along the lines of soft tissue work and or down regulation type training, does rolling out your body not make any sense at all? So you just pick a few focal spots and then stick on those spots and then kind of a rotation over the course of a week? Oh, I like that. Sure. Yeah. That works for me. Good course of a week. Oh, I like that. Sure. Yeah.

That works for me. Good job, Doug. I mean, I have this. I was like. Look, here's what I've learned is there's a few spots that if I do them, they reset everything. They actually help my structure to hang better and more efficiently. So I don't actually have to roll everything. If I do certain spots that are some of these gateways to helping upload parasympathetics,

then I'm in a more relaxed state altogether. I can concentrate better, and I gain more out of my movement practice once I do these few spots. For me, the few spots happen to be revolved around the fact that I'm nursing my son every three hours a day. I have a girl who's about to turn three,

so I'm constantly doing things that have me out here. And so I get really short and tight here, here, here. So I spend a lot of time working on anterior chest, neck, hand and wrist, all of the things that are this grasping thing. So if I do just a few minutes, and it really is just probably about five to seven minutes before I train, I'm totally set. So picking a few spots that pull you out of a position that you're chronically held in for, I mean, you're in a very unique case given that you've just given birth and you're breastfeeding and that whole thing. But for someone that just sits in an office all day, they're in a similar position.

Dude, it's the same posture. Yeah, it's very similar. You're slumped over with your arms out in front of you. Holding on to your mouse all the time. Holding on to your phone all the time is the same supinated position as holding on to your kid. You're holding on to your phones like this all the time. That's how we create a little kid. It's a lot lighter.

A little bit more. Yeah, but it's also smaller. So you're using different, you're using the same muscles in a different way. Interesting. But I would advocate for exploring the whole body. Like don't leave things out. Don't leave, I mean, people love rolling their butts.

They love rolling their quads. They love rolling their hamstrings. You know, roll your soleus, roll all different muscles of the feet, sit on the ball for your pelvic floor, do things for your intercostals. There's kind of nothing that can't be, almost nothing that can't be rolled. There was two things that I got out of the book that I wasn't doing before when I was doing mobility work, which is I would roll things out and I would stretch things and so on and so forth. And I think that's what a lot of people do. But just the simple practice of letting a ball,

like laying on a ball on a muscle and just letting it be there for five to 10 breaths. It's like, oh, I'm just going to take five breaths and I'm going to like just kind of breathe to wherever that is in your body. That was just that by itself. So if I'm going to work on my quad, I put the ball there, I lay on it, and I just take 10 breaths while putting attention there into the ball and where it's making that impact on my body. And that's something that I don't think is done very often. People usually pull the ball out and just start hammering it. That was great for me. The other thing was also the contract relax.

So I may contract the muscle against the ball and relax and feel it get deeper and then feel the muscle relax around the ball, which is nice. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, so there's nine slash ten techniques that I teach. There's nine in the book. I think there's seven on the Treat While You Train video. But there's, you know, nine to ten, maybe a dozen techniques that if you use the different techniques and intersperse them with the balls on different parts of your body, you're going to be able to self-treat yourself. I'm with you.

I love just doing what's called sustained compression. It's like dropping a pebble into the pond and watching the ripples form. Because your body is a fluid system. It is your 78% water. In fact, your 99% water molecules. If you delineated the molecules in your body, your 99% water molecules that's bonded to other types of molecules, which give your facial hair. Your facial hair, your

hair, your facial hair is even water. Isn't that interesting? I thought I was pure energy, but you know, now I'm getting confused. You're a liquid form. I'm liquid energy. And so when we, when we, you know, when we place. You should have seen me yesterday. Mike's alcohol.

Great. You know, when we, but our fluids move in slow motion and they move very, very, very slowly if they're over bonded to crystalline structures. You want to be more liquefied in general. I mean, there's a certain range of liquefication in different parts of your body. Your bones are less liquid than your fascial tissues, but they're nonetheless liquid. Your blood's very, very liquid. So when we dock a ball into soft tissues, one of the things that you're attempting to do

is enhance its fluidity, right? I mean, like on a basic level. And you're moving a very thick, viscous liquid called hyaluronic acid around. And so that also, that sustained pressure, you know, creates the ripples. But that sustained pressure also stimulates the central nervous system in a really magical way because that pressure of the ball is a little micro stretch. It's a little tiny micro stretch into the locus of where the ball is going.

And so when you just stay there, instead of is going. And so when you just stay there, instead of like booting around, when you just stay there, what it does is it conveys a signal from the muscle spindle, the stretch receptors within the muscle. And you can talk to Dr. Andy Galpin more about all of that because you guys, he's in your pocket. He's so smart.

Fascinating. That's communicating information to the spinal cord, up to the brain and back. And finally, finally, it allows that elongation to happen. But the end result of that is global relaxation in the body. But I can bypass that by doing contract relax. When you contract the muscle where the ball is located and then relax it, it actually very, very quickly converts the resistance to stretch to nothing. There's no resistance.

And the more fascicles and the more I can get involved with that contraction, the more the muscle is going to relax. And so I'm going to have less interference from that tension. But it's probably going to come back. And that's why training appropriately after doing that is important. So that ultimately the length-tension relationship in all your different muscles improves so that you don't have these constant nagging hypertonic sections within muscles from overtraining or from undertraining its antagonist. Right? So what it's like, did-training its antagonist, right?

Yeah. So what it's like, did I under-train the antagonist or did I over-train it? You know, like, what is it? But ultimately, it's this, you know, constant, it's this interesting story of remodeling yourself and remodeling yourself and being conscious of the journey. And you can't really get conscious if you don't go into these down-regulated states. I advocate for that. Recovery state. Love it.

Did that answer any of your questions? Perfectly. Perfectly. Love it. So if someone wanted to take a course or something like that, I know you guys are doing almost 100 courses a year at the moment. Something along those lines? Not me personally, but I have about 30 teachers that teach the training courses.

And then we have about 500 yoga tune-up teachers worldwide. And I mean worldwide. So we're in Japan. We've got stuff in Croatia, Ireland, UK. I'm doing stuff in Germany this year. Canada, tons of stuff in Canada. Mexico, all over the U.S. So you're not very busy.

Not in Russia. I heard you weren't doing anything. You mostly sit around and relax. I just have babies and think of things. And roll around on balls. I'm writing a second book right now. I'm doing the column for Yoga Journal.

I have four programs that I've created for 24-Hour Fitness. I've got programs at Equinox, Yoga Works. It's busy. It's really busy. People need this. This is like we are still in an uphill. We're still rolling the balls uphill.

I mean, like, there has not been a tipping point. Culturally, people are more aware of it. There are more mainstream magazines that are asking for little sequences in their magazines and whatnot, which is great, which is a big indicator that the time is approaching where this is something that everybody has in their home and they're brushing and flossing their body like the way they're brushing and flossing their teeth.

But I think we're also in a cultural, this very strange cultural mindset right now, especially right now, where everybody taking some chill pills is helpful for communication, for good communication, for thoughtful communication, whatever side of things you're on. Because my family is divided. That could be one of your next products, chill pills.

Chill pills. Jill's chill pills. So, but they can find the teachers through the website, yogatuneup.com, or our global website, which is tuneupfitness.com, and they can find role model trainings, which don't involve the word yoga at all. It's just the therapy ball work, the fascial work. And you can also find teachers by putting your, what did I say, the zip code in. And you can also find teachers by going, what did I say, the zip code in. What else can you do? Oh, social

medium with me. Instagram. I love it. I love Instagram. What's your handle? You're great on Instagram. Yoga Tune Up. You're good on Instagram. I know. Your food. I really try not to. You want to go to dinner after this and we can just Instagram our stuff together.

It's always like, of course, you're in Southern California. So it's like, it's lots of avocados, lots of eggs. Tacos. And sunsets. It's like. Sure. Yeah. That sounds perfect.

Let's do that next. Sounds like my Instagram account. We're so spoiled. Awesome. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you, Jeff. That was great. Thank you.

I feel gratified. So gratified right now. So grass-fed. I feel so grass-fed. I definitely feel grass-fed, yeah. Cool. And if someone's in SoCal and they are in the Encino area,

do you do that class you do with us today often? Oh, so I do. You know, I teach this one. She's like, no, no, don't come see me. Don't come see me. No, I mean, it's not, it's like Equ you know, I teach. She's like, no, don't come see me. Don't come see me. No, I mean, it's not, it's like Equinox is a club.

It's like a member club. It's not like a drop-in. I wish it were. The drop-in stuff with me is mostly workshops and trainings or, you know, private stuff, I suppose. Okay. You're out of luck. Tough shit.

It's a membership club. I know. I had a feeling that was the case. I was like, I'm not going to say anything. Yeah, it's awkward. Everyone's like, I can't get to chill. Oh, man. Yeah, but we have teachers that you can drop into their classes

at easily accessible places all over the place. I just don't teach as much as I used to. I teach a lot of events. I mentor my teachers, and I do lots of fun, cool, secretive stuff. So you do that class just for us. That's what you're saying.

Yeah. I feel very special now. I do a lot of secret teaching I can't talk about. Oh, we practiced this. But I taught. No, I know. I'll just nap.

Show them how to do it. Show them how to do it. Boom, boom. Okay. All right. We'll work on it some more. I watched the elbow. Yeah.

That's how you high five. Well, you just get it loose. You got to get loose. Or side five. There you go. Oh, keep it loose. You can do that. I know you can do more. I watched the elbow. Yeah. That's how you high five. Well, you just get it loose. You got to get loose. I was side five. There you go. Oh, keep it loose. You can do that. I know you can do that.

Learning all the time. Awesome. I love it. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for joining us. Yeah. Thank you, Jill.