Mark Bell's Power Project - Heel Striking is MORE EFFICIENT for Running? - Dr. Matt Minard || MBPP Ep. 921

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Dr. Matt Minard, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about different running styles and techniques, including "heel striking" which is thought of to be "bad" form.  Follow Matt on IG: https://www.instagram.com/learn.2.run/   New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin!   ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements!   ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off!   ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order!   ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off!   ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en    Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

An athlete generally isn't just moving. There is typically a slight side-to-side motion. If someone's center of mass is going side-to-side, side-to-side as they're trying to move forward, it's just not as efficient. I'm not using my spine to create movement. Have any of you guys really been taught how to run? If you take away someone's ability to run, their quality of life goes way down. When does heel striking come into play?

This is the bold statement. To land on anything other than your heel is inefficient. It was after physical therapy school because same like-minded people, we lift like every day for hours, and we didn't have a whole lot of other stuff to do. But I used to go heavy, and I think going heavy for 18 years. And playing baseball, just like my body, after a while, my shoulders, like I just can't go heavy anymore. I mean, bench was my thing. I got been playing baseball just like my body. After a while, my shoulders, I just can't go heavy

anymore. Bench was my thing. I got up to 395. I never got 400. I got 400 on decline, but not on flat. Right on the doorstep. That's a big bench. I weighed 225. What do you weigh right now? I'm down to about 200.

I've been as lean as like 175. Got real lean. I kind been as lean as like 175. Got real lean. So I kind of like went from bulky, big, all I cared about was lifting. But then you get to a point in your life like if I bench press 400, my life isn't really a whole lot better. So I started like thinking about other stuff or what can I put my energy towards instead of just benching. And I had people make fun of me all the time in PT school.

Like max bench press because I wouldn't max out all the time. People gave me a hard time. But you understand. Oh, absolutely. You're my people. What got you into PT? So kind of like with everything, you'd be like a patient. I got injured.

And I've always loved being in fitness. I grew up watching my dad work out. Very middle class family, but our basement was a gym. And growing up back then, they thought under 13, you weren't allowed to lift weights because it would stunt your growth. So I think not being allowed to lift for so many years and watching my dad do it made me want to do it so bad. And then I was a baseball pitcher, had injuries, surgeries, became a patient. And a lot of my family is healthcare, a lot of doctors, dieticians, nurses. And I always love helping people and I love working out.

So it just seemed like a good kind of blend of both worlds and get my fix of being around people, being creative. And I'm glad I stuck with it because when I went into physical therapy, if it was – if I knew really what it was then, I might not have still pursued it where it used to be just all exercise and that's it. And shoulder – these are what I give you for shoulder pain and not tailoring and not learning continuously to learn different strategies and tools and tricks. So, um, I just love helping people and physical therapy is,

is my best, um, favorite avenue to do that. What a surgery did end up having, you have like a Tommy John surgery. It was weird. So I jumped off a swing. Of course,

my mom's always right. Don't jump off a swings, whatever. Jumped off a swing, land on my arm, dislocated it, bent backwards. Beautiful. And so years – I still can't straighten my arm all the way. This was like 25 years ago. Wow.

And so years of pitching, and I probably didn't fall through as well as I should have. So just snapping and not stopping, being dumb, knowing I was injuring it, playing travel ball. I developed an olecranon stress fracture. So they ended up taking a bone out of my iliac crest, fused it in there, and they said, no more pitching because I can't straighten my arm all the way. It just rocks my elbow.

So, yeah. And what got you to some of these conclusions with running? Because I started seeing some of your stuff. You were talking about heel striking and people get all fired up and get mad that you that you can't heel strike when you run i've actually found even some before i

saw some of your stuff just uh running on my own i would just try to protect myself and i found myself kind of landing on my heel and doing like this little bit of a roll and i was like i kind of wondered about this but i didn't really revisit it until I saw some of your stuff. And I was like, maybe that's not a bad idea to try here and there. Who's to say it's bad? I don't know. How did you come to the conclusion? So like years of like that's the thing, learning in school,

having the knowledge but not necessarily applying it. Long story short, learning about orthopedics, I started coaching at Orange Theory about four years ago. And so then being on a microphone, seeing 15 people at one time run and one just getting for patterns of how people move. And then how can I use my voice and cues to influence movement to see what changes, what doesn't, if they're walking, if they're on an incline, if they're jogging, like when I go to different speeds or different intensities, what changed, what doesn't. So I got a lot of reps with like seeing a lot of people at one time run and then playing around with cues

but then truly just when the pandemic hit I went from working full-time outpatient orthopedics and coaching an orange theory to nothing and like I movement is my medicine like again running is just one form of movement and everyone was turning to outside, but everyone was getting injured. So I started just posting content and then thinking like an, like a scientist experimenting. Well, what happens if I run at five miles per hour at this cadence video at slow motion? Like I had a lot of these same questions three years ago,

but then just becoming a scientist and just thinking and experimenting and doing, and like all these things that we talked about theoretically just becoming the subject and then posting and then getting ideas and generating and learning. And then how can I explain this in such a way that is easy to translate this information, transfer these skills? Because I can talk fancy, but who does that help? It doesn't help anybody.

So how can I keep finding ways to get this information where I've had people that never pay for any services and that's okay. And they get the help they need just from following me on Instagram, people in the military. And those are the messages that I get that keep me going because there's always negativity online. But people say I battling depression, running has been helping me, the information you gave. So it's just never being satisfied with, I never am going to know everything, but I'm not trying not to ever lose that passion to keep learning more and more and more. And again, I'm not trying to force people to move a certain way. If you're happy, my thing is if you're happy and healthy, I'm happy. That's

it. I'm not, if you can need me or not, I don't care. But if you need some help or you want to move safe or you're constantly getting this injured, I just want to be able to provide some of that information out there to help people. So long story short, becoming a subject, having the information of all the studies of biomechanics and anatomy and all the degrees and all that, but then applying it, applying it, that's where we learn. Just in school and reading about it, you don't learn a whole lot.

You don't apply it. An interesting thing is that if you go to the first pin video on your page, I think it has the Baywatch guys in the thumbnail. And you can probably pull it up. It seems that you're trying to minimize people's movement when they run. Because when you look at runners run, whether it be runners doing longer distances or even sprinters, there's quite a bit of movement going on, like the leg hiking up, et cetera. But with a lot of the things you show, it's like you're trying to get people to move less while they're running. What's the intention? So it depends on, I always talk about paying on the principle. Moving forward is the

principle. Anything that doesn't go towards moving forward or paying on the principle, it's paying on the interest. So more movement, if it's not actually helping me to go forward, if I'm moving my arms up and down, all movement is expensive tissue just like spending and energy. I want to match my effort level and my demand. So if I'm going at these slower paces that I'm showing, if I have a ton of movement going up and down, it's just more movement that's necessary. I'm paying on the interest. What I show is me at like 5 miles per hour, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 miles per hour and showing how, yes, as I go faster, I move more. But what I don't want is someone to be running on a treadmill with 12 miles per hour of energy expenditure when it's only at 10 miles per hour because it's not as efficient. People can get injured with that.

But my thing is, yes, can we get away with less movement? Because if I'm running, I'm trying to get to fatigue. My heart rate goes up. We hit that wall. If I can move less and just move just enough I need to move forward, paying on the principle, my heart rate can stay lower. I can stay under that lactate threshold. And then I'm paying on things that actually help. I'm spending more energy pushing the ground back further, moving horizontal.

So it's just asking, is this helping towards the principle of moving forward? Yes or no. And if it's not,, is this helping towards the principle of moving forward? Yes or no. And if it's not, you don't necessarily need to do it. So I'm trying to get people at slower speeds to match the effort and the intensity. I should see five miles per hour, 12, incrementally more movement,

more arm swing as you go faster, more stride, the foot goes further and further and further back. So another analogy i like to use that we can visualize if i'm in a canoe and i'm trying to move forward yeah i've got a paddle how i move forward i put the paddle in the water and i push the water backwards and i move forward would it make sense for me then to pull the paddle all the way up out of the water every time that's not necessary i get most of that power when I push the water back. So same idea with the foot. I don't need to pick my foot way up, up off the

ground when this is where we get that power, that propulsion is pushing backwards. So it's just asking what is the movement coming from and is it necessary? But I always think back to that canoe analogy with the paddle of, is this really helping me to move forward from a biomechanics standpoint? In your practice, do you end up, I'm sure you end up with people from – you played baseball yourself. So you're dealing with athletes as well. Are you a believer in your running style as it pertains to like particular sport or is this more for like a runner who's going to run? I think what I'm mainly teaching is perfect situation, moving forward on a flat surface. That's your baseline.

And then you can adapt it to the sport specific where ideally the running, it's mainly just moving forward. We will have to deal with inclines and declines. But then is it lacrosse? Is it football?

Am I, where's my center mass? Am I going to be pushing someone? Am I going side to side? But at least having the foundation of like, all right, what is efficient mechanics? And that's our foundation. And then we can adapt from there, whatever the sport is.

So again, my whole thing is really talking about efficiency because usually efficiency correlates with safety from an injury standpoint, but there's some sports or drills that don't last that long and they don't need to be that efficient. And sprinting in that short amount of time, you know, it's just, again, it's, I'm trying to, this is where we get in trouble, teach to the masses and it's a bell-shaped curve and there's no one information could not be right for everybody, but I'm trying my best to like at least have a foundation that we can then build on and go, but yeah, if it's a sport side to side, where's my center mass? Am I going to be pushing? Am I want to switch directions? All these things make a big difference.

So mainly what I'm talking about is long distance endurance running or really anything over two minutes for the most part. And then wouldn't somebody's gait on a treadmill, would that be indicative of their gait when they're running outside? Because the treadmill, like the band is pulling you back. So it would be probably easier to heel strike on a treadmill, right? That's a great question. With the treadmill, that's what I found. Of the three skills, learning to swing your arms

forward and back and sync with the legs, learning how to lean. The hardest skill to learn is learning how to move forward, leave the ground, but moving purely horizontal, not leaving the ground and going up. So the moment that I see someone's foot comes off the ground, ideally their body's translating horizontal and not going up. It is so hard to teach that skill three of gliding on a treadmill because I'm trying to teach somebody to push the earth back, roll the world back. Like if you're dragging a sled, you feel that in the glutes. Yeah. When a treadmill belt's moving back to your point, it's so hard to teach that. They don't get that same feeling of the every action

equal and opposite i push the ground back it propels me forward on a treadmill it's it's a lot more difficult to do that so i stopped teaching there's different ways to do it giving one cue working on drills like you know where do we go with people's mechanics what do we focus on i like treadmill for working on efficiency that whole like if someone's running at nine miles per hour how can i make sure that their body work, their energy is going just enough to keep them at nine miles per hour, not doing any more work than they need to? Yeah. So I like the treadmill for the immediate feedback of the sound. There's different cues that I'll use as far as like have a glass of water in the cup holder.

And I'll say, all right, I want you just to try to keep that water moving as minimal as possible. polder and I'll say, all right, I want you just to try to keep that water moving as minimal as possible. And what that does on a subconscious level, if they're going up and down and landing hard, they'll start to move their mechanics and they'll change to adjust so that the water is moving the least amount as possible. And so just giving any different cue or feedback. The other nice thing about a treadmill is it's stationary, so I can use vision or a mirror. And so in Orange Theory, I've used before coaching, having people take a dry erase marker. And when they stand up tall, put a little line at eye level. And then that's their little gauge.

If I'm working on the up and down, they look at that. If I want them to be conscious of the side to side, then I do a plus sign and I'll cue them. All right, look at that vertical line. Do you see that line going side to side? Do you see that line going up and down so it's just another way the tremolo i do like that for some more immediate feedback of what i'm using vision what is the most um i want to get that side to side stuff more in a

little bit but what's the most common injury you see people have from running what are some of the more common hands down knee injuries and so like my thing is this whole gliding versus bounding. In order to go up, I'm using my calves or I'm using my quads. So I'm using my knees or my ankles to propel, concentric activation. If I'm doing that thousands and thousands of times, I'm loading my knee more, I'm loading my shins more, I'm using my calves, my Achilles more. So moving more horizontal, it's just less load to the shin. So it's all overuse or over loading issues are usually shins, shin splints, or knees. I would say the third is anything that has to do with the calf, whether it be calf, Achilles, plantar fasciitis.

That lower leg gets nasty, yo. Yeah. But like that's where if I can take the jump out, and that's like an aha moment I had where, how tall are you? 6'2". 6'2". I could make a ceiling height where I do this with a out, and that's like an aha moment I had where, how tall are you? 6'2". 6'2". I could make a ceiling height where I do this with a cardboard, and I measure it to you standing up at 6'2". And I teach you how to run in a room that's 6'2". So when you leave the ground, when we see you going up and down, it's more of a down-up versus an up-down.

So not jumping. So it's learning, again, to stay lower and to move horizontal. So if you think about it, the only way I can go up and hit my head is to use my knees and use my quads. It's like one of those hotels in Japan. It only goes up to like 5'6". Yeah. So it's like showing you how to move with less vertical.

So you have the knees, runner's knee or patellofemoral pain syndrome. You look like you have to poop on some of these runs. I do. It reminds me that Andrew to poop on some of these runs. I do. It reminds me of the Andrew Zergo's keep the knees bent. Andrew has like a technique for like if you have to take a dump. Well, what I do is I save it. I save it towards the end. And then once I get close, I just let out just enough farts just to propel myself without

sharding. Get yourself on. Well, what's funny is I actually use the water cup analogy as well. But I just said imagine like you have a cup inside your stomach and you don't want that to spill over yeah and that's how you stay light and you stay horizontal just like you said see i guess maybe i was onto something i didn't know about it yeah andrew said if you're gonna if you have to go to the bathroom really bad you're gonna you want to run with your knees bent if your knees are stiff then you're gonna

end up with an accident yeah it's all about the butthole. You got to squeeze. You got to keep that engaged, that pelvic floor. Okay. I'm curious about this. This is going to be just a very remedial. From when I look at what you're showing here, and it's not necessarily bad, but what I think of is like a stiff individual running. And most people that, let's say they didn't play a sport they weren't uh they didn't grow up like you know playing soccer or basketball or whatever

if they're just getting into running as adulthood in adulthood they're probably going to be more like stiffer than normal right so if they start trying to run like they see a uh an athlete or a sprinter or a runner that's very proficient run, they probably won't have the mechanics or the movement ability to do that. So I see that. But is this where you think most people should be running a majority of the time? What I'm trying to understand here is, for example, David Weck talks about head over foot, right? And when he's doing movement, there's a lot of circular patterns going on. This seems very stiff and it seems like I get how it's safe, but what I wonder is, will somebody be able to progress to a point where they can move a bit more freely when they run?

So ideally teaching people, and that's why I do like the treadmill for immediate feedback, I'm being loose. Like I'm not super stiff with it. What I'm doing is I'm actually – I'm not using my spine to create movement. I'm trying to rotate around my spine. So the rotation I get, I'm not actively twisting. But as my arm is going forward and back, it creates this reciprocal movement. But I'm not actively twisting. But in slower speeds, I'm just – I'm more relaxed. I have my arms more hanging down.

And like we talked about before, sometimes people even with the arms, they'll have like a certain plane where I'll say, you know, imagine you're half a hand saw and you're sawing forward and back, not this up and down, but sometimes little nuances, people will have a little bit too much external rotation. It's more stiff.

So it is trying to teach people to be relaxed, but that's the hardest thing teaching someone how to deadlift. Any new skill is they can't isolate individual muscles. Throwing a punch, you see it probably the most. They push and try to punch hard. Sometimes these skinny, tall guys have so much leverage and movement that they can create a lot of force.

But showing from the sagittal plane, that side view, you can't really get a true appreciation. I do have some where I'm wearing a GoPro and seeing the top-down view, or I've made little motion analysis with my treadmill with different angles or FOV or whatever, POV videos. You're right. And if it looks like that, I'm not. And it shouldn't be a stiffness to it.

And I don't agree with the whole engaging your core. I did an episode on my podcast about breathing, like how we breathe is diaphragmatic breathing and the stomach going out. If I'm engaging, embracing my core, I'm not allowing my diaphragm do its job. Breathing is all about pressure differentials and atmospheric pressure versus lungs. If I'm restricting that, so people that are stiff, I think that's where, you know, Weck talks a lot about the Paloff presses. And yes, I was taught long back in the day about that whole Stuart McGill and bracing your core. And it always like never made sense to me. It's not functional.

You don't think about doing your core and bracing for absolutely every activity. It's not functional. It's not realistic. I think where they went wrong was they saw if someone opens a door, the first thing that activates when they go to open that door

is their transverse abdominus, internal, external obliques to create a foundation and then open. And I think they took that as, oh, then we need to open that door. Is there transverse abdominus, internal, external obliques to create a foundation and then open? I think they took that as, oh, then we need to teach that first. You need to always be having that on, but it's not as effective. Have it on at 25%. Yeah, and they're like, some will say 20, some say 40, some say, I don't know. But that's the differences of neutral spine versus more activation.

I teach what's called a stable stack where I show again reverse engineering gravity is this downwards arrow. How can I align my body such that if I were to take my hands on the top of your head and push straight down, how could I get that force from your head through your skeleton to your feet? If you're kind of leaning and hinging like this and your weight's back and you're arching, I push down on your head and you're going to buckle forward. So by me amplifying the effects of gravity, I can then teach you what's a more effective or efficient way to stand for you and aligning the shoulders, the hips, and the ankles kind of where's your weight in distribution. But I don't need to have my core on. If I align myself

with gravity, I don't need to have my core on. My core should be on if I'm outside of my base support, if gravity is pulling me down. But teaching people how to move with less, my thing is just less muscle activation because every tissue, every part of our body has a maximal loading capacity and just not too much too soon. So yes, rehabilitation versus performance.

I kind of try to blend the two, but if I have to pick, my priority is always rehabilitation from an injury standpoint because you could be training for six weeks hard. You're getting faster. You get injured. You take six weeks off, all that you lost out on. So I'd rather it be a slow and steady process versus hard, fast, and quick.

Nothing good comes from fast. Most of the most beneficial things in life are slow builds, and it's not easy to do that, but it's helpful. I want to point out that it's only been mentioned very briefly, but a lot of what you're saying actually coincides with some of what David Weck talks about. David Weck does speak a lot about head over foot, but what he'll also say is that there's some individuals that put their feet under their head. So I know this gets really like nuanced, but some of this is really nuanced because we are all different. And so some people tend to kind of move their body in a particular way to where the foot is landing in a particular

spot. And other people choose to kind of go a little bit more with the weck stuff. For me, I was excited about the GOTA, some of the GOTA principles, some of the things I've learned from Kelly Starrett and some of the things from David WEC because I've been so like rigid and stiff. I need to get back to being able to be more athletic and to kind of open things up. But it was nice to watch you run today

because while I felt stiff and like a robot doing what you were doing, you didn't look that way when you were doing it. You were able to relax your body a little bit more. So, you know, I think these things, they take time to learn. And all I would say to most people that are listening to this right now, they might be thinking this is garbage. Why are they talking about a heel strike when you're running or when you're jogging? Again, we're mainly talking about somebody that's going out on a run, someone's going out on a flat surface, someone that has appropriate shoes that are going to work for them

on a particular surface, and just give it a try. Just give it a shot. And I don't think you're ever promoting for people to really slam their heels into the ground hard. You're not promoting for people to be real rigid or stiff. You're just promoting people to try to move with efficiency. Why move a lot more than you have to? And just see how you feel doing it. Yeah. And like that whole head over foot, like we're all, what we're really all talking about is our center of mass and our base support. I'll teach people even squatting. Imagine like on a BOSU ball, turn it upside down where

it's the flat surface. Somebody has to have their weight distributed evenly to teach them the lower that they can't go backwards. In their mind, they're only thinking about one thing. So we say in head over foot, it really is that base support. Or if I'm teaching somebody hip hinging, imagine if you're standing on a raft in the water. What's naturally, that's where I teach leaning. What naturally happens on the water is you would start to lean forward, but then your hips would stay back to keep your center of mass and your base support. But then my center of mass is back. If I'm trying to move forward and land and load in front of me, then I'm automatically

setting myself up for breaking. So I think we have, my only thing with the WEC is, is it locomotion moving forward or is it more stationary standing still? Are we working within this confines of our center of mass exploding side to side? But if we're going to be changing our base of support from one surface to another, that's where I think, you know, if you were to ask me to draw a line, A to B, and you say, all right, go as fast as you can from point A to point B and I go forward. If we look at that line, if I go up and down, up and down, if someone's center of mass is going side to side, side to side, as they're trying to move forward, it's just not as efficient. But to his point, being balanced when it comes to jumping or box squatting and going up,

that's totally different. If I'm trying to generate a lot of force to move my body vertical, totally different. But if I'm trying to move forward and constantly shifting my center of mass side to side, and then my spine and getting more spinal flexion, more side bending, more rotation versus just staying – keeping it a little bit more level. Not stiff but more level. That's where we should be. I think we can learn a lot from the one wheel or the segue. Like how someone moves forward is they just slightly hinge forward hinging at the ankles and they move forward if i lean if i do this that's how i slow down or that michael jackson

move yeah or or if i'm leaning back that's how we slow down so that's why the lean is is the second skill can i ask you a question real quick you mentioned if someone wants to get from point a to point b the fastest they will like that side to side movement wouldn't be beneficial um i i i get what's being said there but when i think of when i think of athletes running or athletes sprinting it that's not what is seen like you you don't see an athlete type in a naruto run on youtube because that's kind of what came to mind that just straight run an athlete generally isn't just moving there there there is typically a slight side to side motion even though their legs are going forward their body's going forward there is this side to side

motion as they're going in that direction I've never seen and I know we're talking about long distance running but when when you see athletes sprint, it's never just like, yeah, they're going forward. But there is a – Also, in an acceleration phase, that's what you're referring to. In an acceleration phase, a lot of times high-level sprinters will use almost the whole width of their lane. But the other thing I think that we mix up is the anatomy. Like nobody's anatomy, like normal hips, we have a certain amount of anteversion, like toe out.

Like if you look down at your foot and ankle, if you put your index finger on your medial malleoli and your lateral, it's offset. It's never, nothing in our body is straight forward and back, even our planes of our shoulders. So yes, the legs are moving, not straight sagittal plane. But if we think about it as the torso, your center of mass, if that's what we describe it on versus the extremities. But back to earlier, I said, if I'm doing this, I'm getting some rotation, but I'm not actually doing it. But if I'm sprinting, yeah, if I'm trying to get that much force through the ground,

heck yeah, I want to put even more of my weight through. How can I get more of my weight through? I lean over more. I'll do drills sometimes with teaching older people or anyone how to stand from a sitting position. A lot of people, what they'll do is they'll lean forward and they'll use their back as leverage to get up off the ground instead of using their legs. And I'll put a digital scale and I'll show them as they hinge forward, it's more your legs that are accepting the weight and bringing you forward.

And then as you go up, I want you to drive your feet through that scale, see that number go up as you go up. So if I'm trying to get more force, then yeah, if I lean to the side more, but that's where if I'm going at that high intensity for that mount, if I'm going to hit somebody, I don't need to be super efficient. I want more power, and that's where if I want to be able to hit somebody, then yeah, I can get more. If I get even lower to the ground, or if I go side to side, I can generate a whole heck of a lot more power if that's the sport, if that's what's needed. That's where I was tripping. Cause you said point A to point B,

the fastest. And I was just like, wait, what? So I get what you're saying now. And like in football, like the goal is going forward in the end zone, but it's not necessarily how fast can you get there if you can go through somebody or go around somebody, that's just a whole different story to it. But as far as efficiency, like if I had you walk 100 yards and go side to side versus repeat this, and this is how I learn and do stuff is I'll do these side to side and experiment and see how long did that take? What was my speed? Wear a little clip for the garment. What's my center of mass doing?

What's my speed? Wear a little clip for the garment. What's my center of mass doing? What's my step length? And seeing all this extra movement side to side, especially for walking or therefore even jogging. Slower speeds. At slower speeds, you don't need as much movement. Yeah. What's the goal? Reverse engineer. I'm trying to move forward. Move my body

forward. Translate my body forward. That's the goal. Reverse engineer. Do I need it? Do I not need it? I like what you're saying because I think this can apply to all athletes because if someone needs to run for wrestling, then this kind of running or at least being accepting of some of the ideas that you're presenting would be probably a good idea so they can stay safe with their road work, right? a good idea so they can stay safe with their road work, right? I mean, a lot of athletes, not every athlete needs to go out and really run very far, but some running proficiency can be really helpful. Yeah. And my thing is too, is like, as long as maybe you don't even think about the mechanics, I'm just trying to teach efficiency of, I want you to exert yourself to the task.

Same idea as teaching someone how to deadlift or pick up a box in real life, whether it's a pen or an Amazon box. I don't want them to have the same, no matter what they're picking up, if they have the same mechanics every single time, that's not necessary. Teaching them how, see how light this is? This is how you can pick this up. If it's heavier, then you don't want to pick it up like that. So just showing how to like in your car, when you drive, you just put the gas pedal down further or back that's it same with going forward and running i don't want you to have to think about all these things it should happen naturally but how can i have more of a dial versus a switch on off and that's where

we're talking about injury most people don't know that and they just go out and they just 100 and they get injured and we were talking off air before. If I had to pick training versus mechanics, you can have perfectly efficient mechanics, but you can still get injured too much too soon. On the other end, you can have awful inefficient mechanics and not get injured at all and allow proper adaptation time and tissue loading. So that's what I'm really just trying to get back is any sport, are you doing what's most efficient? And when you get into powerlifting and you're high, high level runners, when they're trying to shave seconds off, if we can pay more on the principle and less on the interest,

we just get faster. And that's where those high, high levels every little bit matters. And like we talked about, over 26.2 miles, I'm going to be a lot more critical of how you move versus a 10K or 5K. Thousands and thousands of steps adding up cumulative, like a 30-year mortgage, a half a percentage over 30 years.

So again, what's the demand? Long distance running, most of what we're talking about is, I think if we separate out for running for exercise versus sport, I think it'd be easier to kind of categorize these into separate things because the mechanics, it's more about performance and speed in sports. Efficiency isn't as important when it comes to sports, maybe soccer or something like that. But what I find as humans, if you don't even tell them, like that's why running at slower speeds is harder from a technical standpoint.

The faster that we go, all we're thinking about is moving forward. So everything in my body is just doing, like I'm not wasting any time. If you put somebody on a treadmill that's going 16 miles per hour, they're not going to go up and down. They fly off it. So teaching at slower speeds where it's so much more technical to control your body, just like a bike, trying to teach someone how to ride a bike at very slow speeds, it's really hard.

They have to pedal more to kind of be more upright so i think if we differentiated the two but that's why when i teach three gears of running of intensity gear one gear two and gear three i start with gear two and then i teach them gear one which is a lower intensity for active recovery or base building getting their body built up to the demands of the impact and loading. But I always teach gear two first because it's easier. It's so much harder to teach somebody to run at 5.5 miles per hour or six miles per hour or a 10 minute mile because it is a lot more technical. And that's why you saw me. I can do it more effortlessly because I've worked at it. And that's my goal is can I teach everyone these skills as quickly as possible where you don't need a doctorate degree,

you don't need all this education, this time. How can I transfer this information to you as quickly as possible? And that's what my goal is. That's what I'm trying to do. Power Project family, if you're trying to increase your muscle mass, if you're trying to lose body fat,

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Again, eightsleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Have any of you guys, andrew yourself included um have any of you guys really been taught how to run like do you recall like uh playing football or baseball or soccer or or even for yourself does anybody at this table remember there was someone who really taught you how to run no no i mean i referenced it on the podcast before where my dad had mentioned like, oh, you got to be running on your toes. But I had no idea what that meant. And I went my whole life up until like, I don't know, a year or two ago, not even understanding that there was another way to strike the ground. So, no, I've never been – I've gotten 100% of my coaching from you, Mark.

There you go. When you say another way to strike the ground, what do you mean? Heel strike to land on the forefoot, midfoot it may be okay yeah yeah i thought there was only heel striking you but but you said your dad taught you like you know he just he said run on my toes but he didn't explain any further and i had no idea what that even meant okay so i thought i had to be like running on my tippy toes like it didn't make any sense. I think 99% of people have never had somebody teach them. And most time too is because anytime doing something new, it's hard and you have to be willing to get a lot of resistance. So in my mind, it's like, what do I have? People getting

resistance. And again, I'm not trying to force everybody. If you don't want to listen, that's fine. I don't care if you're happy and healthy. I'm happy. That's what's all boiled down to. But most people haven't put themselves out there enough or try to make it as simple as possible that I can scale this and teach this to gym teachers and cross-country programs. Like how can I find a way to get this information out because running is a form of locomotion. It's a form of transportation. We might run for mental health and physical. But if you take away someone's ability to run, if you take away someone's ability to walk, their quality of life goes way down. And so that's really what I'm passionate about is getting people to be able to move their body,

whether it's for exercise or whatever it's for, just not getting injured. Because if we can't move, that's where we get so down and depressed and anxious. And most of us, I think, start running for the physical benefits, but we keep running for the mental benefits, at least in my experience and a lot of people that I talk to. It even happens with high-level athletes. When you get injured, it makes you sad. You're upset that you can't do what you used to love. I just find it interesting that it's kind of rare, at least in my own experience too, that someone really takes some time to kind of show you how to run.

To answer that question, by the way, my coaches did teach us how to run and sprint and cut. We were taught that as athletes growing up. And it was a bad habit to have your heels on the ground on the field. So, yeah. Yeah, you learned it in soccer, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't take the time to maybe do that. And they just say, hey guys, you know, like in my experience with football, they didn't really explain it. I mean they might show you how to cut. They might show you a couple things. You're doing cone drills and a little bit of stuff.

But usually it's just like you start practice and you take two laps. And then at the end of practice, it's just sprints. And no one's really saying like, hey, pick up your knees more or, hey, drive off. Use your glutes when you're running or use your hamstrings when you're running. So I guess it depends on what your background is and what particular sport that you may have picked up. To your point, though, I want to hopefully have an aha moment because we're thinking about the same thing but in a different way. So stand up right now all the way vertical. So stand up.

And notice where your weight is. Most of my weight's on my heels versus if I lean forward, now my weight is on the ball of my foot. Sports, any exercise, any activity where I want to be moving forward, I do want my center of mass to be forward. So I do want to be more on my toes or my weight to be distributed more. So I'm more talking about where's your center of mass versus what part of the foot. It's all about where's your center of mass versus what part of the foot. It's all about where is my body. And I do a visualization sometimes of what does breaking look like? What does slowing yourself down look like? With this tennis ball necklace, when I have it on,

if someone's breaking and slowing themselves down, when they land and load, the ball continues to move forward while they stay back because they're slowing down. And then the ball comes back and hits them. So it's how can I get the least amount of that ball, me slowing myself down? No matter what, to move forward, you have to break yourself at some point. Yes, we talk about breaking and overstriding and breaking the least amount, but unless I'm going up and down, there's going to be some element of slowing down. They show with force plates and all these labs to move forward, to land in any aspect in front of my body, there's going to be some element of slowing down. They show with force plates and all these labs to move forward, to land in any aspect in front of my body. There's going to be some breaking that has to happen.

You're speeding up and slowing down constantly throughout the entire time. Yeah. Producing some force. But just to that point, what I was saying is just where your weight is in athletic stance, I don't want to be on my heels. And that's where, yeah, I think we confuse heel striking with my weight being back on my heels. Yeah, I don't, this is not an athletic stance at all. You blow on me and I'll fall over versus everything's the same. I just shift my center of mass forward. Or I think of on that BOSU ball, how can you stand such that gives you that strongest foundation? Or I've used the cue, even teaching older people how

to not fall. Can you stand in such a way that if I were to come at any angle without you knowing, if I push you, which way could you stand that gives you the best chance of not falling? If there are weights here on their heels, you don't have to push too hard and they're going to fall. So that's just kind of teaching that bowl of water. Where's your center of mass? Where's your weight? And then if we're going to move forward or which direction, that being the center, the core of it all. So I don't know if that made sense. I'm curious, as for context, for most people, when does heel striking come into play

and is heel striking something that one would want to do if they were using a pair of barefoot shoes to do any of this? Because I would, actually, I'm just curious about that. So that's the thing is like walking versus running. I have that post. It's pinned as well where I have the clock and the way that I show it is it's really the same thing about the lean. It's not good to land on your heel if I'm not leaning at all, if I'm vertical. So here I show like the 12 o'clock versus the one o'clock posture. So I talk about it's okay to land on

the heel if I'm leaning between 12 and 1 o'clock. What that all boils down to is my posture, my center of mass, where I'm leaning. And you show with the stick where I'm at. There I show 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock. If I'm landing on the heel in those positions, not efficient because my weight's back. You don't want it to be jarring, right? Like if you're on a treadmill, for example, you don't want that treadmill to be making that noise. And if you're out on the street running and you're looking at stop signs and different things, you don't want that to be shaking a lot, right?

Yeah. And like the same idea of we talk about breaking and overstriding is landing and loading in front of you on the heel. But if I have that proper lean, my foot's underneath me more. So I don't have a chance to really get out in front of me because of my posture and because of my lean. So I did this view where I had this top-down view and I showed how, you know, by actually leaning my whole body forward, hinging at the ankles, my feet stay under me more. And that's where it's okay to land on the heel and try to walk and land on something other than your heel. It does. It slows you down. It's very awkward.

So there are times where it's okay. There's times when I say, this is the bold statement, to land on anything other than your heel is inefficient. Because either you're going to be jumping, leaving the ground and going up, pushing through the ball of your foot, landing on the ball of your foot, or shortening your stride up by not allowing that forward bit. When you say that forward bit, what do you mean? With the forward bit, the foot going out in front of me. So if my posture is such

that I'm leaning here, I can't really have my foot. It's kind of like running with a shopping cart. I can't bang my shins on the shopping cart. If I'm leaning forward or running, it just kind of like, if you think of this circle where my center mass is when

I'm up tall, as I lean forward, I shift that center forward more. So it allows me to land and load closer. It's hard to explain without seeing a visual. But I have a video of me running at 12 miles per hour or five minute pace, barefoot and with shoes, and I show that my mechanics are exactly the same. Teaching people how to run in a minimalist shoe can be a great teaching strategy. I know people want to make a big deal about like the landing over and over and over and over again, but you shouldn't even really be able to tell what someone's landing on when they're running is my opinion. Yeah. I mean, if you were to look at someone running,

you can't really see it. You can't really, it just happens. And it's, you're like, Oh, but if I like deliberately seen you smashing your heels into the ground, I don't think that's great. And if I deliberately see you just on your toes and you're running and you're not necessarily in the acceleration phase of a sprint, that's probably not great either. My thing is if the posture, if I can teach someone to only think and not think about the landing, if they just think about that leaning, then they don't even have to think about the landing part. And what you'll see is naturally, nobody will land

on their forefoot if they've got the lean right. If they've got their center of mass where it should be, they're not going to, they would do extra work to land on anything other to pick their feet up. So it's all about the, the shoes are just a form of protection. And yes, I'm subscribed to all that where a good way to teach somebody how to run is to give them barefoot. They're not going to jump. They're not going to land hard. Teaching someone to move more horizontal with that bowl of water, that's the same different technique or strategy to do the same exact thing. That's a great tactile feedback of getting someone in barefoot or just no shoes on to teach them that. How can you translate your body horizontal, skip a rock horizontal versus just plunging down. So it can be a great teaching strategy.

But then my thing is shoes are just a form of protection. So can I teach you to run with the same mechanics, whether you're in minimalist or barefoot shoes, with some protection on your feet? But yeah, I'm not against barefoot. I'm not for it. To me, again, safety above all. If someone is running with more fluid motion barefoot, then they'd step on glass.

They cut their foot open. The foot gets infected. They can't run forever. So the way I see shoes is a form of protection. But they can be a great teaching strategy for deadlifts, squats, running, walking, of just how much distance am I putting between your foot and the ground. The greater the distance, I have less control or receptors of what's going on. The closer I put my foot to the ground, then I can use my body's own receptors to get that feedback of where my foot is.

But, yeah. He told Graham Tuttle, the barefoot sprinter, he said, a shoe is basically just something that wraps around your foot and cushions it. And Graham's head exploded. Graham seemed bewildered, I guess you'd say. What are your thoughts on, I like where you're going with a lot of this because I think that some of the information that we do have, I think it would be great if things were more open and people discussed a lot

of various strategies when it comes to running because I think that a lot of different movement patterns could be used. And I think for somebody like myself who's trying to run a far distance, what I've learned is that it seems to be important for me to have several strategies because quite honestly, I just get tired. And I'm like, all right, that pattern, that skill is like not quite there anymore. Let me try to shuffle along this way. All right, let me try to shuffle along that way. And so I really like where it goes. But I do think that some of the stuff, when you think about it, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. Like I like to go a couple layers deep on stuff. And when it comes to something like cadence, I've always been like,

I'm going to like pop around like that and like kind of jump around like and do a lot more steps. Like, I don't know if that makes sense. But sense but the you know maybe you could explain some of the theory behind cadence and what some of your thoughts are yeah i think there's another thing where we went we got some research and then we took it and went such the wrong direction they did a study where they had somebody's step rate or frequency of steps or cadence and they showed that increasing someone's step rate by 5% to 10%, they said it was more efficient. But what it did was by increasing their steps, they changed their mechanics such that they spent less time going up and down. They spent less time with their foot going out in front. So naturally, they were more efficient. But

if I can get from point A to point B in 165 steps versus 175, it's more costly to take more steps. But what we got in trouble is they said it's more efficient to increase your step rate. And I have that example you saw on my YouTube where I talked about like paying for one peach versus three peaches. I might be getting a better deal, but I'm still spending more. I'm more efficient. So that's when we get into trouble. Yeah, if somebody comes out of Target and they're like, I saved $400. Like, you just spent $500. And you didn't even need that in the first place. So yeah, that's where we get into trouble is if

we're spending too much on it. So I used to use cadence to change someone's form or mechanics just as a strategy. But at the end of the day, it's just a measurement. It's just a measurement of frequency. How quickly is somebody turning over their feet? Walking, which typically occurs between 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour. Normal cadence is around 90 to 120. I think of it like hertz, 1 hertz, 60 hertz, or in one minute, 60 steps. Ideally, running at faster speeds, 3 hertz or 180 is what's been deemed most efficient. But at those paces, if you're trying to have someone do 180 steps at even an eight-minute

pace or 7.5 miles per hour, an 830, they are going to be taking so many steps that they don't need to. Another way to tie in that analogy is if I'm in that canoe and I have the paddle, if I'm just taking these very fast, very quick little paddles back versus, hey, push back, allow the paddle to go back a little bit further, that's where you're going to get your bang for your buck. Don't just keep constantly doing these quick, because if too high of a step rate at slow speeds, you're going to end up taking these tiny baby little steps and you're going to have to take so many more steps to even to get there. And the cadence is one of those things, it took me a long time because it were different variables that we're thinking about. It's like step length, step rate, a measurement of frequency. Is it a measurement of speed, force, power? It gets confusing. But if you just think about it in that as just a matter of frequency, how quickly am I moving?

If I want to move faster, yeah, I want to increase the cadence, but not at the expense of shortening up the stride. So go really fast, you do both. You push the water back fast and further, and you do it more frequently. But you can only do that for 20, 30 seconds if you're going all out. So to maximize speed, cadence is one of those, but that's where a lot of people have gotten in trouble where people hear that 180. And for a long time, the only tool that people had to affect people's running mechanics was step rate. Like 10 years ago, I went to a conference. The only thing they talked about was step rate and therapists,

clinicians hadn't like, I don't know what to look at. I don't know what else. I'm going to increase everybody's step rate. I did that for probably three years back in 2013, 2014. But then you learn it's just one measurement. And 5% of people, does it actually make them more efficient? 5%, they will start to move more horizontal. But most of the time, it ends up making things worse because they're just doing – they're amplifying whatever their mechanics that were inefficient before.

They're amplifying that by just repeating it more often, increasing their frequency. We got over there, Andrew. When does somebody stop trying to just be horizontal? You mentioned Stuart McGill earlier. And I used to have really, really bad back pain. And so I followed everything he preached. It was like killer to brush my teeth because I followed everything he preached, you know, if, uh, it was like killer to brush my teeth cause I had to bend over. Right. So he's like, okay, well brace yourself,

put your elbow on the sink and that's how you brush your teeth now. Oh, cool. I can brush my teeth without pain. However, it's not fixing anything. I'm still in a ton of pain. And so I'm thinking like, yeah, sure. At one point I probably could have ran, you know, kind of like some of the examples you gave, like very low impact and like that would have been great. But however, I'm just thinking like at some point I would have wanted to progress and I would have wanted to run faster. Um, so how long does somebody do this or like, is this just the way you want people to run forever? Or like when do they stop running with low impact and when they do they start maybe getting into that head over foot stuff for performance yeah i think some of it is just

the case example if i take someone like you that you've been doing jujitsu like you're not someone that's been sitting at a desk doing nothing for a while versus someone that's been doing some sport some activity getting some impact i'm going to treat those both situations very differently so if that's just where this physical therapy it is whatever the person in front of you, if someone's not used to impact at all, I'm going to have them do very, very low intensity. Low intensity means running slower. I talked before another analogy is like, let's say I haven't been out in the sun in years. I go out in the sun for five minutes.

I get burnt, crazy. I injured my skin. What if I go out in the sun for 30 seconds, go in the shade for a minute? What if I go in the sun and I keep doing these intervals, shade, running to walking? With time, though, I can start to handle more sun, more impact, more force, and my body will adapt to it. So same example, how much sun exposure are you used to? If you haven't been outside in a while, I'm not going to give you a whole lot. So same example, how much sun exposure are you used to?

If you haven't been outside in a while, I'm not going to give you a whole lot. So that's where the dosage and instead of thinking about speed, thinking about it as running slower that you run, the less impact. The faster that you run, the more impact. Where do most injuries come from? Too much loading too soon. So that's where I'm going to adjust it to the person at hand and doing dosage ratios of 30 to 90, a 1 to 3 ratio, eventually going the other direction of doing 3 to 1. We're only doing a small amount of time in the shade and then maybe not needing shade at all.

You can just be out in the sun for a while, but just adapting the body's tissues to that. What about someone like Andrew getting some exposure to like rotational work and some maybe, you know, med ball tosses or things like that. Would that be a good place to start? That's where everybody's spine's different. Some people are sensitive to rotation. Some people, rotation is healing. Some people, 70% of people sitting and bending forward bother their spine. 70% of people actually arching backwards is therapeutic. Back in New Zealand, Robin McKenzie, I did all this studying years ago. A lot of things we learn are by accident. But there's a guy in New Zealand, Mr. Jones, had back and leg pain,

rating down his leg. The physiotherapist there, Robin McKenzie, said, Mr. Jones, go in room one and go on your stomach, and I'll be there in 15 minutes. The physiotherapist didn't know the table was arched up. So he comes in. The guy's arched backwards on his stomach. And he comes in, he's like, get up, you're going to hurt yourself. The guy gets up, he's like, I don't have any leg pain anymore. That's the best my back's felt.

There are people that it's therapeutic to extend their spine. There's some that can injure it. So it's a blanket statement. We know what rotation does. We know the annulus that covers the nucleus proposis of the disc. It goes in opposite directions. So rotation, it's only half protected. Again, it's so dependent. But for most people, it's less stress and shearing. Like are we talking about concentric, eccentric, or isometric? For the spine, more isometric, it's less force through it.

Versus if I'm rotating and shearing and twisting, it's just at the expense of knowing there's going to be more. But his may be a facet issue, which doesn't matter because that's not engaged until he gets into extension. Some people, rotation can open it up. Is that a facet? Yeah, facet joints are like, if you think of all the vertebrae in our body, it's like a car, a truck, a train car. How each of those connect to each other is like the caboose, the little link. The

facet joints are just what links L4 to L5, L5 to S1. It's just a joint and joints just where two bones come together. But the joints, when we're in standing and bending forward, they're gapped. When I arch backwards and extend, they approximate and they close. And any times we're closing or extending, that's where we get more load to the tissue. So facet joints is that right there. It's kind of what connects. If you think of that like a moose from the side, it kind of looks like the neck of the moose is what we were looking at imaging. But those are joints like any other joint, knee, elbow, synovial fluid helps.

Motion is lotion, does help, but those can wear out. And more loading and compression through it can put more stress through your spine. So different things in the spine can cause pain. We say back pain. It could be the disc. It could be the facet joints. It could be ligaments around the spine. There are a lot of things that could cause it. So it's harder to a blanket statement really to really say that.

So somebody's intuition, like Andrew probably knows stuff that – like you tell us all the time. You're like, well, that hurts and this feels good. So maybe someone's intuition and then lightly dosing some maybe new or different things but being very cautious probably. Yeah, you set a really good point I want to bring up. How I would treat that in the clinic, I would put him through a movement screen and I'd find out what movements irritate him. And based off of that, then I know what to avoid. So if I find that him rotating and turning causes pain, then I know rotation is problematic. So I'm going to be aware of that by actually taking his spine for a test drive and putting it through all these motions, loaded, unloaded. Does that bother you? Does it not? Constantly having that communication.

Then I can teach him throughout the day, hey, anytime you're working in front of you, try to like, this is where I use analogies of posture of standing, sitting. I want you to imagine like you're a king or a queen, be royal, adapt the world to you versus you to the world. So teaching someone then he can know at my desk, bring it in, brushing my teeth, bring it in brushing my teeth bring it in always knowing i'm royal i'm a king adapt the world to me so then he can just uh apply that to his life whether it's sports or activities but i would have to take his spine through before i just blanket say hey he's got facet issues he can't extend it might be the best thing for him we have to test it out clinically to see if that's the case so you're telling me is you wouldn't do x-rays and then tell me I need surgery.

Because that's what I received the very first time I actually asked a doctor about it. Unfortunately, that's kind of where doctors, they have imaging and pictures. And the way they're taught and trained is they go all by pictures. They don't rely on the subjective and the objective finding as much. But that is so dangerous. Then it's assuming that that picture is that source of your pain is this. Just like a car, you can't take a picture and know what needs to be worked on unless you actually assess the car.

You can't. A picture is just a picture. We're trying to get away from that pathoanatomical diagnosis where you show the, you know, patho is pathology, anatomical going based off of just a picture saying this is what's causing it. That's where we get into the trouble sometimes. So curious about this. You're mentioning that the way that you're teaching to run is more efficient and causes less impact. So definitely at lower speeds too.

So like where is it that, okay, it's more efficient to run in this fashion? For example, when you look at – and no one is fucking running like Elliot Kupchoge or these people that are high-level runners in that sense. But would you go as far as to say that if they change their style of running to this, are they running that style because of their speed? Or would they be more efficient if they were running in this fashion? I'm glad you said this. I was going to bring on this before. They show that everybody has a speed where that's the moment where it becomes

more efficient for you to leave the ground. And so I show, I could have the treadmill at five miles per hour and I put two minutes and I say, all right, you're not allowed to leave the ground. You have to walk. And I see what happens with your heart rate response. How do you feel versus repeat it again and say, all right, you can leave the ground or run your heart rate.

And I've done this and I've shown this. It's more efficient for you to then leave the ground at certain speeds. So that's where that point where it becomes, if you think of it this way, if I looked in the sand and I see this distance between each step, the length, I should be able to say as that distance gets greater and greater, that person's going faster and faster because as I increase my speed, I want to go further horizontal. So there becomes a point where it's more efficient for me to leave the ground but move further horizontal than leave and go up. So most of the time that occurs around, if I think of it like a percentage of intensity, sprinting is me 100%. Most of us jog at 40% and most of us train at like 60 to 70. So if I'm

exerting myself at about 30 to 40%, it's more efficient for me to leave the ground. So it's more of like an effort speed. But then it has to do with your limb height, your genetic makeup, fast twitch, slow twitch, your limb length. But everyone's got a certain point where it is more efficient for you to leave the ground to move horizontal, not up. Something came to mind, the Olympic power walkers. Now I'm just wondering. I'm guessing that they're going, when you're talking about this, you notice like kind of the way they're moving.

There's some of what you're saying kind of falls in line here because they are heel striking as they're going forward. They're doing it at a very fast speed. But obviously that's kind of the opposite. Like they'd be more efficient if they were able to run a little bit more, correct? Yes. Okay. And when they do that, if they were kind of the opposite. Like they'd be more efficient if they were able to run a little bit more, correct? Yes. Okay. And when they do that, if they were to leave the ground – They look hilarious by the way.

But here's the thing is because they're taking – Flying. So fast. Some of them are fast. Yeah, they are. What you'll see is the planes of motion, they have to tap into frontal planes. Shake them hips. They have to do a lot more in order to not allow their – you see a lot of them more of that serpentine, that side to side. If you were just to let them leave the ground, they wouldn't have to do that lot more in order to not allow their you see a lot of the more that serpentine that side to side if you were just to let them leave the ground they wouldn't have to do that

yeah yeah gets me every time it's crazy but someone can do like a 10 mile per hour or a six minute per mile pace at that speed it's fucking fast yeah it's nuts yeah uh how about um sorry are you guys done on that good segment okay i was just gonna ask um because like again like i i follow a lot of the go to stuff and sometimes when i see some of the people that like over exaggerate the like turning in of the feet especially when running and then keep flicking it out like what uh how much emphasis do you put on like placement of land like or angle when the foot's landing because i don't know sometimes it seems like oh that makes sense but then i see some other people do and. I'm like, man, they're really over-exaggerating that,

that toe in. Yeah. That's a good question. And that's where anatomy, structural versus functional. If I had everybody stand with their toes pointing straight ahead and squat, most people, their femur, as the head of the femur goes in the acetabulum, there's a bit of antiversion to it. So it depends on their anatomy. If I, for example, I have a ton of external rotation, very minimal internal rotation in my hips. That's what's going to dictate that toe out, that angle more. The toe is just a representation of the rotation at the hip. It's really the hip.

If I'm externally rotated, I'm toed out. Most people have some built-in torsion where you need some of that opening up, but that's where we get into trouble. If I'm teaching 10 people the same exact thing and they're trying to force something, I use the example of back in the day, the cars, if the alignment was off, I had an 88 Camaro was my first car. It was the year I was born. For it to go straight, I had to have the steering wheel to the side. I couldn't just say, no, Matt, put it straight. That would go off. It's structural. It's the actual anatomy, the alignment. So that's where it can get into trouble. Is it functional versus structural?

Someone's anatomy is going to dictate. And there's tests that we do where we'll have somebody kind of rotate their leg out and in. And they find that point where the outside of the femur is the most flush. And at that point, that's suggestive of what your neutral position of your hip is. And neutral position is where it's the least amount of stress on the joint. But that's even pitchers, they show baseball pitchers with time, their anatomy will actually change. They used to see people missing internal rotation and they would stretch and they'd stretch and they'd think it was the capsule. And they found out that their humors were actually so much torsion, Wolf's Law, the body adapts to its demands.

It actually changed over time their actual anatomy. So the only issue with that is the alignment. And if somebody is having pain and then we're forcing something, no, no, just do it. That's the way it is. But I'm getting pain in the front of my hip. No, you haven't done it right yet. We're trying to force a square peg into a round hole is sometimes the case.

Would someone want to address that in some way or would it just depend? Like if they have particular symptoms, maybe that is something that they need to figure out. Oh, man, my foot is really pointed out and I actually have like a hip problem or something. That's where I'll more go based off of symptoms. Like I try not to give too much information in the beginning and try to focus only on the main things and see what can people naturally, just like before, if I teach them just that water, then they automatically corrected two or three things instead of working on those individually. I find that unless someone's having a problem, one of the ways I'll do that, what's someone's natural position is I'll have them look straight ahead, march a few times, not thinking about it and stop and looking down to see what's their natural

anatomy, what's most comfortable for them. But I'm not necessarily addressing that with every single person unless they're having issues. And then I'm like, all right, they're having pain in the front of their hip. They notice with squatting, with stairs, with running. And then they'll say, hey, I've been, someone told me about having my toes straight ahead or whatever. There's usually something in the history that's kind of linking that together of what that causation is. Or I'll just do a test run, have them squat with this anatomy. How's it feel? Squat with this orientation. How's it feel? And just like having them be an active participant and testing things. I think that's where if we could not just assume things or just based off of a picture, an x-ray, and assume this is how it is.

I've had people that the only reason they got better is because we did what someone told them not to do because they were scared of it and they avoided it. This doctor said never extend back because of my x-rays. They saw this therapist, this therapist. Nothing's getting better. I know they said that, but did anyone ever test it out? Did they try it? No. Let's test it out.

I know they said that, but did anyone ever test it out? Did they try it? No. Let's test it out. If I'm able to get you to move and it doesn't hurt and it's fluid, it's not necessarily – if I hit you with a baseball bat on the shoulder, you don't go, I think that – no, you know. If you're doing something that's really loading or bad, you're going to know it. So I think we just need to stop giving blanket statements and we just need to test drive. We need to clinically assess because everybody is different. need to test drive. We need to clinically assess because everybody is different. Even though we're trying to do the same thing, how can we adapt and conform your body to the best that it is

for the task at hand? How long have you been treating people for? I've been a physical therapist since May of 2013, so almost 10 years. I was lucky I was a physical therapy tech before for seven years before. So I've actually been in the field since 2006, whatever, whatever that is. Yeah. Yeah. So with all that time, um, have you seen anything like new or different? Like are, are injuries a little different than when you started and when you were learning about some of these things? Like, are you seeing, you know, our parents bringing in their like 11 year old kid and you didn't maybe see that previously? Like what's going on out there? I mean, as far as what we're seeing clinically versus how you know the approach of a therapist

changes over time we are definitely seeing more spinal issues now with less activity more sitting postures like sitting is loading still more back injuries oh my god it's like the most prevalent it's the highest grossing right like i can't tell you how many times I had this where I treated somebody maybe back in 2017, 2018, 2019. We're working about their desk, their setup, showing how standing versus sitting, loading, be a king, be a queen. Didn't see them for years. They were good. Pandemic hit, working from home. Their kids got the desk. Now they're in the couch. Now they're here. And they don't think about two you know, two hours, mostly it's eight, two hours of being in this position. They go, oh, it's not a big deal. That cumulative over time. So I'm seeing nine-year-olds with neck pain because their

parents, they come in, the kids are allowed, they pass out the iPads and they shut up and they're in a ball and they're just here and their neck hurts. So yeah. So your point is we're seeing, I am seeing more sedentary issues than in the past, but I think just with every good clinician, you never get satisfied. You always have a healthy dissatisfaction with where you're at. And I'm trying to not be the best physical therapist. I'm just trying to be better so I can help more people and let less people slip through the cracks. So we, over the years of just, like you said, doing it, being out in the field, you learn stuff different that's in the books.

And I've learned different tools over time. Something you guys aren't really allowed to do out here is dry needling. I've been dry needling people for nine years. It's the most powerful tool that we have for addressing muscular. But again, it's just a tool. So that's where we have to- I got a guy that'll do it. Underground, the black market.

Is it a Scott? In the area. In the I got a guy that will do it. Underground, the black market. Is it a Scott? In the area. In the area. Yeah, Mark will do it for us. Yeah, you don't want me doing it. But yeah, I think it's just learning how I need to adjust my approach to the patient in front of me. It's not I have one approach and you have to fit in my approach or not. I want to be able to have different tools for different clients.

And we are seeing, it depends on which area that I work in in the country, is that more weekend warriors and more active people. I've been lucky that most of the time my clinic's been in a gym. So I see mainly, you know, active people that want to get better. So, but then there was times where I worked in a practice that was mainly outpatient orthopedics post-surgical. So it's not fun. Like if someone has a surgery, we're just kind of taking them throughurgical. So it's not fun. Like if someone has a surgery, we're just kind of taking them through the process. It's not rewarding to me. If I can work with someone early on to prevent to getting to that point

and teaching the skills for more preventative, that's what's more rewarding to me and teaching them these things instead of like, hey, they come in, I'm already injured. The mess has already happened. I got really good at cleaning up someone's mess, but can I teach them to not have the mess in the first place? That's where you can have more of an impact on somebody's

life. And that's what physical therapy is and really should be about. Is that a difficult process to walk someone through? Because sometimes, you know, someone's like, man, my neck, my neck. But if it's, you know, someone that's 45, maybe they're just overly stressed and maybe it's a lot of lifestyle things that are leading to this and not necessarily, I know they're going to say, hey, doc, my neck, my neck, my neck, my neck, work on my neck, fix my neck, crack my neck or whatever they think needs to be done. But it could have to do with their sleep. It could have to do with drinking and all kinds of other factors, right? Yeah. I try to combine active strategies and passive. Passive is where you're hanging out and I'm doing things to you, needling, manipulation, soft tissue. But then I want to also have them be an active participant,

but that's harder. People don't want to do that. They don't want to do that work. So I try to give them a little bit of what they want and also what they need at the same time. But that's what makes it fun is the psychology of everyone's different. Some people get defensive and that's where I have to, in my, be able to, you know, investigate and ask questions about their lifestyle just to give me an idea. But some people, I need to be more like, it's not investigation. It's not like, why do you do this? And some people get defensive about like, and they won't tell you things. The psychology of people and wanting to change, that's a whole different aspect. But that's what makes it fun is that it's so different. You have to, how can I get you to get that concept on your own and have that aha moment? How can I show you that

when you sit here, it loads this? Well, I show you if I push here and I extra load, what'd you notice? Oh, that hurt more. Show me how you were sitting. What do you notice? That hurt even more. So just having people be an active participant, but in this lifestyle, you know, hit click two hours later, it's at your door. We're all guilty of it. It's the quick and easy is the quick and easy. And it does, it takes work. So same with physical therapy, same with everything is people want it now and they don't want to have to work a whole lot for it. So that's, that is the challenge in the world of physical therapy, because you could have people just show up, you just treat them, you give them what they want. But I got to a point where it was, it was so dead inside to constantly be treating the same thing, not assessing, not using my brain.

People didn't want to change. They just wanted me to needle them and that was it. They didn't want to go after what was causing it in the first place. So that's more where I stepped out on a more global scale and how can I try to get to people before they get to that point. I'm kind of curious about this because as you were talking about the back thing and sitting up like a king, I've seen some – actually a friend gifted us this back pain book recently. And there was a mention of like certain postures that you don't want to get into and certain ways that you don't want to bend to pick things up.

But sometimes I wonder, okay, if that's currently causing you pain, I understand that you probably want to stay away from it, but shouldn't we be able to just bend without pain, bend and pick something up? That's a reasonable load without pain. We shouldn't have to hip hinge back, keep everything straight. So do you think that there are bad and good postures or bad postures for now that in time, like in time, you probably

can sit like this without any type of pain. What are your thoughts on that? That's the important context. It's for now. It's the timing. If I have a cut on the back of my knuckle, I might tell somebody for a period of time, hey, I don't want you to bend your knuckle because every time you bend, it's reopening that. So I might say for a short amount of time, but then if I don't allow them to ever bend their knuckle like we also need some stress at some point to initiate tissue healing so there's a short amount of time where we might want to avoid or protect but if we do that forever then the skin gets even weaker than if we create fear avoidance patterns where people don't move a certain way because they're scared they're going to do something but to your point I should

be able to load and move any part of my body. But it's timing. It's like if you are injured or heal, is that cut, is it deep? Did you just get it? Was it a week ago? So just, yeah, I think we get into trouble if we treat everybody with the same, hey, don't do this, don't do that. You shouldn't bend that way.

You shouldn't pick something up that way. You shouldn't, like, it's just very odd to me that you're telling someone not to move a certain way in perpetuity. It's like. But that's where, like, to move a certain way in perpetuity it's like but that's where like we get the push like it's true like that's stewart mcgill that's where i was trained under this one thought process of like no this is what you always do and like especially when you're a student and you're learning you you just lean on them and you say but then you get out in the world and you do it or you tell people to do that like one i'm not doing that or they don't do it and you're like you try it yourself like that doesn't make any sense like yeah i need to be able to move i need to not be able to do that. They're like, one, I'm not doing that. Or they don't do it. And you're like, you try it yourself. Like, that doesn't make any sense.

Like, yeah, I need to be able to move. I need to not be able to avoid that at all times. So I think there's context for everything. But I think durability and not creating fear avoidance patterns in people I do think is really super important. But our point earlier, what might injure you or load you could be healing to somebody else. So it's just, it's so independent. But to tell people to not do something can actually be more dangerous sometimes than telling somebody to do something.

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links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What are your thoughts on stretching? So, so what is it to stretch? It's to lengthen a tissue. It's to elongate a tissue. Why would we want to do that? Well, if someone just did a thousand bicep curls and their bicep was constantly contracting and

shortening and shortening, yeah, maybe after doing a thousand, it might be a good idea to lengthen those tissues after. But if I didn't just do that, I have no real reason why am I lengthening a tissue. Sometimes people get injured from compressive forces loading or from tensile forces or stretching. People land a certain way, hyperextend their knee, they tear their hamstring. That was from stretching. So what's the point? What's the purpose? Is someone actually missing range of motion or are they not? Do they need that motion in order to do X, Y, or Z? We talked before in order to squat or to run even, you need so much ankle dorsiflexion. But if that's not in hindering them to be able to do it, do I really need to, like who's to say I

need to stretch? Maybe I'll compare side to side. Is there a difference? But the blanket stretch this, stretch that, I've had more people get hurt because they come in. I read online, I injured this. If I'm stretching that wound and I'm just stretching that cut, it's just going to stay open forever. So stretching, again, in context for post-exercise, post-activity, great. I don't think there's ever a time that's not indicative. But otherwise, you need to be very careful because you can be weaker after. And they've shown stretching your hamstrings before soccer can actually increase your

susceptibility of injury. It becomes weaker. Those different muscle spindles and the receptors in the muscle, if we're lengthening those out and that's their job is to help control force and elongation. If you stretch those out before an activity and that's some of what protects you from that injury, you're kind of throwing everything off. And there's a lot of different types of stretching. There's like dynamic stretching. There's just pure like mobility work and sema does a lot of stuff with the cables where he'll you know use the weight to challenge him in particular positions i do a lot of that as well

and found it to be beneficial like it feels good um that's kind of how i judge some stuff it feels good and then plus i feel like i'm moving a little bit better. It's taken some time, but I'm moving a little bit better. That's where if I separate out warming up versus lengthening. So like if I have a car in the garage for a year, it doesn't make sense for me to go out to the bumper and lengthen and pull on it. But yeah, I want to warm it up. I want to start it turning on. So your point, movement, dynamic is a form of movement. We're using the tissues, but I'm not passively lengthening past their typical point.

So warming up before, absolutely. But stretching, going past that physiologic point when the muscle's off, that's just where it gets different. But yeah, if we don't warm up, warm up the tissues, those stress strain curves of how much stress can a tissue handle

before it gets injured, we can really affect those if we're stiff and we don't warm up the tissues. And as we get older, it becomes even more, you know, 30s, 40s, the body, it's still a long 30, 40 year old car. It's still a great car, but it's a 30, 40 year old car. You have to take a little more time to warm it up than you would a 10 year old or brand new car. You just go out and get the gas. a brand new car you just go out and get the gas is there any um i guess i'll say therapy that therapists have been a little bit hesitant to adopt um that you've been seeing like a common thing like maybe i don't know you mentioned uh something about fascia to somebody and their

doctors like that's complete bs do not listen to that guy that guy's crazy but you might have found some good success with it in some of your patients. So is there anything that comes to mind that majority of therapists are just like, no, no, no, that's not in the books. I'm not going to even bother with it. Yeah. A hundred percent. The McKenzie method, which is why the Robin McKenzie, that is the number one thing that I think some people, we judge things when at the end of the day, I'm just trying to help people. If you get help from that therapist, great. It's not about who, I'm better than you. As long as people are getting the help they need.

People poo-poo the McKenzie method because it is so simple. And sometimes we want to do something complicated. We want to have a sexy treatment, a needle this, a stretch that, a crack that. When maybe all they need to do is just do this. So it's not sexy, but it can be super helpful. So the McKenzie method is one that I got poo-pooed on forever, but I'm like, you know what? I want to actually explore this more. And I went to a course and I went to another course and I went through all of them. And now in my opinion, every physical therapist should at least have the basics

because you will let people slip through the cracks if you don't at least know the basic fundamentals of McKenzie of teaching somebody how to move from a therapeutic standpoint that can actually help them, or what to temporarily avoid, not long-term, but temporarily. But yeah, the McKenzie method. And he came out with books, Treat Your Own Back, Treat Your Own Neck, Treat Your Own Shoulder. And it's very trying to instill independence in patients.

And that's where it does get into trouble. If I see somebody 10, 15 times, I'm getting more money for that. I should try to get people better faster, sooner, quicker, where they don't need me. But financially, that's not the best business model. But that's where that starts to be some blend in treatment styles or private practice versus big corporate. Ideally, I want to treat someone without the financial piece, but yes, if I'm treating somebody more frequently, more often, and that can just hinder someone, I want someone to not need me anymore. I want somebody to outgrow

me. I want somebody to give someone tools, teach them how to fish, not just give them the fish every time they come in. I want to teach them how to do it on their own. But yeah, long answer is the McKenzie method is number one. Cool. Do you feel like myofascial release might be an important skill for people to learn so they can take care of themselves on their own? Yeah, definitely. And like we just have to think a joint is just where two bones come together. Then there's a capsule that surrounds it.

But then there's all the different muscles and muscles have fascia or connective tissue that covers it. If we're not addressing that piece, you're going to miss out on a lot of stuff. So needling is a form of addressing the fascia, scraping, trigger point release. It's like there's many different ways to give compression, sustained compression to the tissue to affect the nervous system. There's just so many different ways to, but yes, the people where McKenzie, where I think anyone gets in trouble if they only treat one way only this i won't do that the mckenzie people they don't do myofascial stuff they're like ah they poo poo it but i can take that what they can give me and add that to my

toolkit and then move on and learn something else because i'm gonna miss out on a lot of people if i never put my hands on somebody and address the soft tissue i'm gonna miss out on so much stuff even just from a therapeutic alliance standpoint, just how healing can be, just have someone put their hands on you and show you care versus actually getting in there and addressing the tissue. So yeah, I think there's so many different ways to affect the fascia, but yeah, we need to address that because if we don't, if we're just having him move, he may need someone else to come in and add a little bit extra or forces

or directions that his body can't just do on its own to facilitate movement. I'm curious as a physical therapist if you've paid any attention to the stuff from functional patterns because like he doesn't that's or they don't like physical therapists much and they address everything as like a global system how every how's everything working together they help people learn how to move everything together rather than focusing just on the neck or just on the back or just on the knees. Have you looked into that system much? I'm just curious your thoughts on it since you've looked into quite a few things.

I went through the training through Gray Cook and functional movement screen and selective functional movement assessment where they do have like breakouts. And I do agree we should not be compartmentalized. If you're just looking at someone's shoulder, you have to look at the neck. You can't just look at someone's elbow. It should be this whole – because the body doesn't work in isolation. It is this whole process. So I think physical therapy shouldn't be just treating the neck. Like all physical therapists, if they're doing their job, should be including the whole body or movement patterns or the whole kinetic chain.

It shouldn't just be one individual movement. So yeah, I've looked at some of their stuff and I think that's more of the approach to do it. Using movement to assess and to treat, but treating it more as the whole versus just getting so nuanced in the details. But my argument is a good physical therapist shouldn't be just treating the joint. We might temporarily be addressing the soft tissue, the cut, but then how do I reintegrate how they move their hand in that whole movement when I'm pushing, pulling? So yeah, I do think that approach is probably more effective, but there's also a time and a place where you do need to temporarily hone in on a regional aspect before you go global.

On some of it's a little bit of a job too. You hire somebody for a particular reason. You tell them that their neck hurts and all they did was mess around with your feet. And you're like, fuck that guy. I'm not going back. He didn't hear me,

obviously. And my neck hurts. And he just had me roll my foot around on a lacrosse ball. Gave me some toe spacers. Yeah. And that's so important. That's where I found education. If we don't link that for them,

if I don't tell you and you really appreciate, we're reason we're working on your foot is because it's so important. That's where I found education. If we don't link that for them, if I don't tell you and you really appreciate, the reason we're working on your foot is because it's so stiff. Notice how when you move, it's causing you to move a certain way. Your head's out forward now. Notice how like if you can connect those dots and know everything we do is for a reason. But yeah, if you don't do that, if you don't communicate, people think you're crazy. Like I went in there for my shoulder and he's working on my foot and they either don't come back or they just completely miss it. So yeah, we do have to, as therapists, clinicians, providers, fitness, everything we do is explain the purpose, the reason, the why to get more of the buy-in to help connect the dots. And they don't need to understand all of the intricacies of how everything works together. They just need to do this, but they need to know why so they actually adhere and adopt and actually do it. Should somebody maybe do, this is really kind of a blanket thing, but what should someone do if they tweak something? Do you think the best option is to immediately try to like do something about it? Or do you think in most cases, give it like, just give it a day or two where you really don't do anything? For me personally, I, if I tweak something in the gym, my treatment is to like do nothing for it for a day or two.

And then I usually start to work towards something at that point. What I found is that people that have no background in health or medicine or their body, the fear of the unknown, if something happens, they just, they freak out. And most people, if they have even a basic understanding, most things, if you just let it be, it will heal. But then there's the people that kind of perseverate or they think maybe it's cancer, their friend, this, have that. And so it turns in this huge thing. And sometimes all I do is give people permission to move, but no, I'm not, I don't think that most people should go out and see a provider immediately. I think kind of like just being smart about it, like what was the cause? Was it a one-time

incident or did it just slowly happen over time? Most of the one-time incidents will actually get better on their own. If it was just how your daily patterns of movement and there was no, this is what caused it, that's where it might be helpful to go see someone to say, hey, I wasn't thinking about it this way of sitting this way or doing this or whatever. Oh, I didn't realize that that makes sense to me. So one-time incidents, most of the time it will get better. But if you're like, I can't figure out why this is, and I don't want to take that downtime because I made progress and I want to keep moving and I need to move for my mental, I don't think it's a good idea to just completely shut it down. But I kind of have like a 48 hour rule. Like after 48 hours, reassess it, write down your symptoms because in the moment we tend to

like exaggerate everything. We think everything's worse than it is. Later on, you're like, oh, that wasn't so bad. So I'm not into journaling every single thing, but just have an idea. What was your mindset at that moment? And then two days later, even if it's trending in a good direction, you're like, well, it hurt right when I got up before. Now it doesn't. That's a good sign. And just seeing signs of, all right, is this at least heading in the right direction? Is this at least starting to heal? What a difference a day or two can make, right? Yeah. It's crazy. So it's just like not getting too high with the high and too low with the lows and just listening, listening to your body and trying to make sense of it. That's where it's hard on your own. Even clinicians,

Just listening, listening to your body and trying to make sense of it. That's where it's hard on your own. Even clinicians, if you were to take a case and if it was my own body and somebody else came to me, I'd be like, oh, this, this, and this. But when it's yourself, the subjective, it just gets a lot more – it's more challenging. That's why a lot of clinicians will see other clinicians because they just need to turn that part of their brain off and just let somebody else kind of take the reins and to learn from it. Do you ever console and give like diet and nutrition recommendations to anybody? I mean technically, legally as a physical therapist, we're not supposed to give diet in specific. That's where we should work as a team and have a nutritionist. But I want to support somebody. And so I might give them tools like MyFitnessPal or just ways of teaching them the basics of like calories, energy.

And what are you trying to do? Are you trying to lose? Then we might want to try to take in a little less or use your own body stores. Just having some of that education to them is food is fuel. Are you allowed to tell someone that they're too fat? I do it all the time. Listen, bro, you're pretty big here. We need –

Your feet are hurting well. That works pretty well. They come in. They wait. They get copay. Like, listen, buddy, you're just fat as hell. What do you want me to do? Like, get rid of that pooch.

Yeah, that works out well. They come back quite a bit. But I actually had a clinician when I was a student. I had one lady. I think she was burnt out and just tired of everything. It was so awkward for me as a student just to constantly shadow. And literally every single person, the weight was a part of it. And just like, you know, you got to lose some weight.

And people would be like, it was, yeah. Yeah, because I was thinking like in the context of somebody like, man, I just, my back's hurting all the time. And it's like, well, you're kind of inflamed because you eat a lot of, you know, whatever, insert inflammation type food, whatever you want to call that. And so I was just curious if you're just like, hey, maybe if you cut out all the stuff that comes in a box, you might be okay. There's definitely a component to that, but it's kind of like, there's so many things out there trying to like, where do I focus? Where's my expertise? And can we get more people on the team? People can only handle so much information. Like how can I do my part?

Does it need to be addressed? I do definitely think so. But in my world of using movement more so as medicine, the way I think of it is I'm just your body's tour guide. Your body has an amazing capacity to heal. It just has to be in the right environment. So that's my job is to get you on that path. Sometimes it's some hands-on. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it gets you 80%, 90% of the way there and you take it from there.

But I'm just a guide. It's not, I don't fix people. You're not broken. I'm just a tour guide that doesn't get tipped. And I'm just here to help you and your body and let your body do its thing and not interrupt that process. Yeah. You said that you're not broken. Do people come to you feeling that way? And do you have to kind of let them know like, hey, like you're not actually broken. We just need to tweak a couple things here and there. Yeah, definitely. And that's where some clinicians or some people out there, it's an ego thing. They turn it, it's about them.

I'm the best therapist. I fix people. People come in, I get them better. No, like I'm just allowing your body to do its thing and not letting you to mess it up. Truly to heal that, I can't really speed it up. I want to have all the dye. There could be some deficits. I can definitely slow down healing.

We just have to let the body do its thing. If I tell you you're broken or I tell you I'm fixing you, it's not this on-off. It's this dial. Tissues aren't torn or they're healthy. There's in between. And so it's just someone's mind is so powerful, it can't heal them, but it can prevent them from healing. They constantly think what they're feeling is not right or pathological or they're broken. The tissues can be healed and they can still have some of these same, they find that

what's called central sensitization where people can have an injury. It's healed under imaging, but in their mind, they still feel like there's actually an injury still there and there's not. So we do have to be careful of the language that we use and not labeling people and explaining it's all dynamic, it's all moving. You can heal from about anything. We just need the right time, the right atmosphere, and create the right environment for you to heal. the right atmosphere and create the right environment for you to heal. Who are some of the people that influenced you that might just be people that we all have access to, like via the Internet or purchasing books and things like that?

I was lucky. I went through a residency. So like physical therapy, it's a four-year degree, then three-year doctorate. I just wanted to keep learning. So I did a one-year orthopedic residency where how can I accelerate my learning? Had 10 different clinicians that have tons of experience. They work with me in my caseload, and we have some more lab time so I can just be exposed to different methods and teaching me how to assess. But I got exposed to a lot of different things in that. I really think that all the great cook stuff, the functional movement screen,

the selective functional movement assessment, they do have like a systematic approach to it and how they think about movement and how they treat it. And they offer a lot of good structure, like even for trainers, how do we know what to work on? Well, this FMS test or this screen, this gives you a baseline. Now we know where to work. So it can be a way to kind of guide your treatments more that do more even functional capacity. They do the resistance. I mean, all that kind of stuff your treatments more that do more even functional capacity. They do the resistance.

I mean, all that kind of stuff. It's just another way. It's not the sexy, traditional, just simple movement stuff. Like, how can we incorporate this into more of a full body? That's probably the, I mean, I've learned through so many different people. I mean, you've got great resources out there and you point people in different directions. So finding people like you that are not tied to one thing and just open to learning and exposing, because if we're closed off to learning and learning new, you might be missing out on what's the best possible thing for you.

So I think my thing is have a genuine curiosity to keep learning. That's about something like a voodoo floss or some of the stuff that we've got, you know, seen from like Kelly Sturette. I mean, I think all that stuff, there's a time and a place for it. But we can sometimes make things too complicated. I'm not saying that's what that is, but I'm saying sometimes we can just do too much. Like that's why I do the tennis ball necklace. I could sell these, but I try to teach people how to use it. I could sell these, but I try to teach people how to use it.

Take a tennis ball, cut a slit, fill with some pennies, shoelace, costs you less than $2 versus like a lab that costs millions of dollars with sensors and force plates and videos and this. Like how can I teach somebody the least complicated way? But that's where I think all those things have a place and they're all tools. It's just how we use those tools I think is important. But I think just keeping an open mind and continue to get exposure to different things and to try it out and not poo-poo it before you try it

and actually do it. Because again, what could hurt someone could help somebody else. Andrew, want to take us out of here, buddy? Absolutely. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode.

Please drop those comments down below. Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation hit that like button and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already follow the podcast at mb power project all over the place and make sure you guys hit up uh powerproject.live we got like some awesome stuff over there as well my instagram is at i am andrew z and sema where you at discord's down below and sema ending on instagram and youtube and it's me, YinYing, on TikTok and Twitter. Matt, where can people find you? Learn.to, the number two,.run. On all platforms, I do have a podcast, Learn to Run with Dr. Matt Minard, where it's just me.

I talk about different topics. So learn to run. When knees over toes, Ben Patrick came through Instagram like a freight train. What were some of your thoughts on that? I mean, it's extreme, but he's right. Like, I think by saying don't let your knees go past your toes, we created this whole huge mess of the world. And so he's just exploited that on a good stance, a business standpoint,

and he's made an empire out of it because it is, you can have your knees go past your toes. So yeah, I think there's, there's definitely a reason for it, but I think he's taking one thing like we'd all do and that's his thing. So good for him. People are getting, people are getting benefit from it. Yeah. Getting people to move. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Catch you guys later. Bye.