Mark Bell's Power Project - The Truth About How To Improve Your Mobility, Posture & Flexibility

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Is everything you believe about mobility, posture, and flexibility wrong? Soft tissue expert Lenny Parracino is here to challenge what you think you know about your body.On this episode of Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast, hosts Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang talk with Lenny about the real science behind movement. Discover what fascia is, why your muscles get stiff, and the truth about pain. This discussion gives you the tools to understand your body better.Learn why some of the most common exercises might be holding you back and how to properly care for your body to move better and feel stronger. Find out how to address your body’s unique needs to improve your training and daily life.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!Best 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!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/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima Inyang➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=enFollow Andrew Zaragoza➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewzChapters:0:00 - Why Barbell Curls Can Be Dangerous 1:09 - How Aging Affects Your Body’s Tissue 3:14 - How Your Brain Learns to Move 4:51 - The Man Who Lost the Feeling in His Body 8:50 - Why Better Movement Alone Isn't the Answer 12:27 - Structure vs. Function Explained 14:40 - Why Elite Athletes Have Hidden Weaknesses 22:56 - Understanding Joints & Your Movement Potential 26:45 - The Real Reason Your Back Spasms After Sitting 32:20 - When to Use Dumbbells Instead of a Barbell 35:50 - Essential Books for Understanding the Body 44:22 - What is Fascia & Why is it Important? 52:48 - The Truth About "Recoil" and "Fascia Training" 58:41 - Can Lifting Weights Hurt Your Athleticism? 1:08:20 - What a Pro Athlete's Tissue Feels Like 1:15:38 - The Real Cause of Muscle Soreness (DOMS) 1:24:23 - Proving Soft Tissue Work is Not a Placebo 1:33:34 - The Complex Science of Where Pain Comes From 1:42:26 - How to Do Your Own Soft Tissue Work at Home 2:04:54 - Top Experts to Learn From 2:17:23 - The Ultimate Framework for Creating Any Workout

If someone's standing there and they suponate and they can't supernate all the way, they have no business. I'm just being real. I don't want them to get hurt. No business with a barbell curl. Structure without function is a corpse. And function without structure is a ghost. I can make you more robust and everything's got good capacity relative to what you want to do.

I got a better shot at it. Now the question is, can your brain control it? Because if your brain can't feel it, if your brain can't control it, you can't put the load into it to any significant level to get that biology to adapt. Lenny, you know what, man? I'm not sure where we should start with you. Well, first of all, you did it right. Got the one.

Compared to you to you too. That was gifted to us by our buddy, Bill Maeda. He's a beast. Oh, yeah. But yeah, your knowledge on like soft tissue and just health in general, I think, is pretty awesome. So that's why you're here today. I met you down in Los Angeles, went down, and, you worked on me you helped me with my foot and you've been helping me along with my foot a couple

different on a couple different occasions now but i think maybe a good place to start would be if you could uh talk to us a little bit about like kind of what happens to us in in general terms uh as we as we get older what's what's kind of happening at what's going on with aging well as most people know it's a well hopefully a slow degenerative process You know, one of the things we talk about is following unifying principles, which are principles that unify all of us as humans and therefore can't be deduced any further. So it's not the principles of physical therapy or the principles of orthopedic medicine or the principles of chiropractic medicine. They're unifying principles that all of us should be like, oh, pretty cool.

I can put that in my pocket and use it to navigate complexity. And so one of our principles is movement is a signal of life. And so when you look at soft tissue, which is really what we are, we're not a machine, we're a biological machine. If we use machine as a metaphor, you got to throw the word biological. So with this living, fluidic, soft tissue machine, and over time, things that stay still will stagnate. And if you think about it, there's nothing in the living world that if it doesn't move, it doesn't. eventually degenerate, decay, and die. And so when you look at, I think the system, one of our other unifying principles is we are mainly fluid as a living being. And so when you look at birth, we're in a very high percentile of fluid. And if we make it into our 80s, we're in about the 50 percentile of fluid.

So wrinkles, changes in the body are directly correlated to fluid. fluidic changes. Drying up like a raisin. Exactly. That's exactly true. You mentioned something to me about movement that I thought was really interesting because you're talking about movement.

You're talking about stagnation. Where do we learn to move? Yeah, so that was a question you and I were talking about earlier. It really bugged me. This is my passion, as you can tell. and I'm like, man, I'm a movement guy, personal trainer, went to school for exercise, science, nutrition, helping people move.

And then one day I asked myself on the way home, and I'm like, how do we learn to move? And I could not answer it with any kind of validity. People like, oh, I watch my parents. I'm like, well, blind people move. Like, how do we learn how to move? Like, Mike, it's interesting. Like, how do we learn?

And there was this embryologist that said something, and I was like, whoa, you know what someone's that's something you write it down and you don't really know what they said but you write it down you ponder it and he's like we learn to move through pressure and tension that we sense based on urge when you look at really good pediatric therapists when a child has something going on early on they're phenomenal with the way they play games with the baby and get the baby to reach yeah and so when you watch a baby evolve i used to have a video of this it's kind of neat the babies are touching and falling and hitting.

These pressures and these tensions are signaling reflexes. And this is how we learn to move. And I was like, wow, what's the one sense that we can't live without? Like, how do... Yes. You know this is a jih Tjitza practitioner. You can do it blindfolded. You said there was a movie that followed a guy around that lost sensory?

Yes. So there's only, I believe, to date, nine documented... medical cases where people lost pro-perception so your ability to sense the environment there's only nine most of them passed except for ian waterman it's the man who lost his body that's what the title is i believe it's still on youtube maybe you can try to bring that up right man who lost his body at ean waterman i'm looking for right now and they according to uh the book there's a book out on him too experts said they learned so much about movement study and Ian and in short what they said was his ability first of all the reason why they think he survived is because he could feel above the

neck it was a rare virus that ravaged his body and he used thought in sight to learn to move so first it was the thought process and you're showing a video right now of him walking now in his later years I think he's now confined to a wheelchair the last I heard yeah so like you see him right there he can't feel anything

I gotta watch this it's kind of interesting but that's where there's a lot of people out there that are doing a great job right now in the barefoot movement it's getting real popular talking about how shoes can damage in the pro-perception of our foot.

We have a lot of different sensory organs. And this is kind of where, and when you get into the science of soft tissue therapy, we know that hands-on approaches have worked. They've been around forever. It's just the explanatory models. They're either way off, dead wrong, or a little foo-fou-metapysical.

And we're just starting to understand a little bit more about what we really can do in a manual therapy approach or soft-tissue therapy approach. And that's not just with a practitioner, but even on your own. You know, something kind of cool. And I have a question after this, but there's a guy on Instagram. His name is Blind Grappler. He's been blind, and he knows how to do Jiu-Jitsu. And one of the things you wonder is, like, how did he learn Jiu-Jitsu? It's like, there's a little touch, pressures, right? An urge to deal with those pressures. Also, interestingly enough, a lot of people close their eyes,

too, when they do some, right? It helps with your sensitivity out of understanding you. Right. You close your eyes or you, like, look off into the distance. you're not like looking at your opponent all the time right yeah that's interesting and like you're sort of like i guess searching for like a certain feel or something you can use that to like train your your your your your sensitivity to certain movements too by purposefully closing your eyes so what you both said what do you think happened when ian wanted him closed his eyes according to the reports he fell because he has to use eyes as a dominating sense yeah to be able to do what he's doing he's got to watch you see that with people when they get older they have to watch everywhere they go

Yeah, it's very interesting. And that's why it's very important when we're working with people, we respect this sensorial experience that they're having because everybody is different. I always say working with a person for the first time in the office is like walking in a dark room that I've never been in. But once I work with you a second time, a third time, a fourth time, I'm walking in that room, that dark room, I can navigate.

Like now in my house, I can navigate it in the dark. I'm good. First session should be free then, I think. It's harder on me. It's more expensive. That's right. But before we proceed and talking about how important this stuff is, I think there's a lot of people who will, even while starting this conversation, will be like, well, you can just achieve all of this through movement and stretching and strength training and deep positions. There are many people who think that soft tissue work is unnecessary and you can heal all of this through movement. So my curiosity is like, why not just better movement?

Oh, that's a great question. I'm going to go to slide four. I know I gave you guys some slides. So this was my big, you know, doing this 33 years, I would say this is my big aha moment. And it became an aha moment because I had the very fortunate opportunity to work with and I won't drop names, but some of the most elite athletes in the world at what they do. Like we're talking Hall of Famers in different sports, not just because I've been in the NBA the last eight years. It was also at the Meyer Institute of sport. We see athletes.

And before I was with the National Academy of Sports Medicine. So we saw a bunch. And as a young practitioner, I'm thinking, oh, they're perfect. They have to be perfect. I watched them on TV last week. I saw what they did. They have to be perfect. And as I started evaluating and started working with them, I'm like, I'm old enough to be their dad.

and I have a better MRI scan. I have a better knee. How do they do that? Confused me. So I had this very interesting client who taught pre-med at Stanford as a physicist and then work with the Jet Propulsion Labs. And he and another person

who are both rocket scientist said, I see where you're going with this question, like how they do what they do. But instead of just giving you the answer, giving you the fish i'm going to teach you how so read the book systems thinking and you don't have to read the whole book you're not trying to be a physicist but the reason why i want you to read that is because we are a system in fact we're an open system we're not a closed system a closed system is like a clock right in order to be a system you have to have three things you have to have elements you have

an interconnectedness and you have to have a purpose function so a clock has a purpose but it's closed because is very predictable. We all look up at the clock. We're like, oh, it's one o'clock. An open system is unpredictable. All three of us drink this awesome water, and it's going to affect us differently. Just like one exercise is going to affect us differently. So once I started understanding that, I said, oh, this is interesting.

This may explain why I see what I see, because as the systems demands rise, so do the contributions of the system. So there's other ways of saying this. This is another quote by these two biologists. Can you say that first one again one more time? As a systems demands rise, so do the contributions of the system. Got it. It's a super cool thing to understand because even though you might have in isolation a crappy whatever, knee or a crappy piece of tissue, you have all this other health. So you and I were talking about this a little bit before.

One of the hardest cases that I get is, oh, my knee's killing me. The person comes in, and they're a systemic mess. So this is analogous to having a cigarette butt. You flick it in California where everything's dry, and now we have a catastrophe on our hands. Take that same cigarette butt, go to the East Coast, flick it in damp, wet, it doesn't matter. That's a healthy organism that dealt with those wall sits. No problem. Knee felt a little bit, but man, it washed out the next day.

the dry area they did a wall sit and it blew their knee up for a month then they go the route of the MRI and everybody starts picking on the part so another way of looking at this is i call this the professional puzzle structure without function is a corpse and function without structure is a ghost it's a puzzle and i think this is a professional puzzle whether you're chiropractor physical therapist even in the orthopedic world so let's kind of unpackage that a little bit structure so your body yeah without doing anything just a corpse right how many times have you work with somebody and i did this so blame me mark your hamstrings are tight let's break that down first of all how do you know it's the hamstrings and what is tightness it's a sensation it's like me telling you who you love love is a sensation sounds weird but it's true so that those are the questions i've always had i'm like well what is tightness in the first place because when i did my fresh tissue

dissections i've done many of them i never saw a short hamstring like so i don't get i didn't see one short one a long one like oh they had short hamstrings it's the way we memorize the structure so again the structure without the function just the corpse just it's just words you know we were talking about this before it's like well how many oceans are there people like seven i'm like congratulations you memorize the textbook you ask a kid how many oceans there are before they go to school and hopefully you're hoping for a question on a question because then you know they think and they go how do i figure that out oh great question here's a globe they come back and they tell you there's one there's seven names yeah show me the disconnection uh-huh right so just like in the

planar fascia the plan of fashion the achilles 10 is one tissue just name different So again, we go back to this quote, which again, we call it a puzzle, function without structure now, you get people that are looking at behavior, which is function, how you do your thing you're doing, and they dismiss the structure. You can't dismiss the structure either because that is who you are. This is a biological thing that we're moving around in. yeah you see so that's where i came up with this aha moment where one can exhibit global function yet lack local tissue capacity so big and as strong as you guys are if i do a thorough evaluation on you i'm going to find a weakness somewhere relative to your strengths because it's all about tension, equilibrium. It's all about you. It's not you versus you and versus me. It's you versus you. Somewhere will find a lack of tissue capacity. In my professional, humble opinion, that's what I'm

going to focus on. And a lot of people, they don't wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to return to my level of incompetence today. We typically gravitate towards what we're good at. Yeah, yeah. Right? We typically do, and that's cool. But as the saying goes, you know, if all you ever do is work on your strengths, your weaknesses will eventually limit them. That's why training to minimize your biggest weakness is often the best way to maximize your greatest strength. So I know I gave you the long answer. I apologize. But I think what we have to do, and this will stop a lot of cross-talk amongst different professionals is respect. There's a difference between the behavior and the actual tissue

capacity. There's a difference. And I always give the example of LeBron James, who I think in this era is one of the greatest athletes we've ever seen because of the amount of physical stress he's placed on his body at the level he has with very few issues in the tissues. I mean, it's pretty amazing. His size and his strength, I mean, and how long he's been doing everything for. Yeah, so if you go to slide four for me. I mean, how many years he's been in the NBA? You know, we forget about that too, because he just went right from high school, right in there, you know? Right. Now, so I always, I like to pose this question. LeBron comes to you and says, I want to hire you, I want to, I want to push it. I want my other son to be in the NBA, and I want to push it. I'm going to give you

the million dollars for the year to be my guy, my trainer, my therapist, whatever you want to call him, you've got to present to me a plan. What are you going to do? I pose this to professionals. What are you going to present to him? You're going to present to him a different way to play basketball? He will, and I've been in it. He'll laugh at you. Like, that's the thing, man. They know basketball. Are you going to work on he's probably strong with a lot of global movements. My thing is you're going to hopefully find where the weaknesses are and you're going improve upon them yeah and you can't blame structure which is why we put that next slide up i use this all time as public knowledge so i'm not going out of school with this but i'm like hey google lebron james's

foot we all agreed he's like one of the greatest movers in the world just go ahead and google his foot and we can't just be so isolated saying oh wow you know that person can't function he functions higher than most humans can. And that's a foot structure. I got a question for you on the foot. Do you think that it's important for some athletes' foot to be like maybe crammed together a little bit? Or depending on their structure and how they move.

I mean, LeBron, he walks a little different than some of the other guys in the NBA and so forth. And maybe he needs that kind of stubby foot to like jump. off of. I think you're bringing up a really good point. There's been some evidence out there and overhead athletes that their structure may look like that because obviously biology adapts to demands, but it might have to look like that for them to do the thing that they're doing, which is basically what you're saying. The only thing that we can do is come back and test its capacity, right? That's basically in a nutshell. Everything that we do is about capacity. So

if we tested this left foot and we saw that there was a deficit in capacity relative to what he wants to do and then relative to his other side, then I'm going to go more towards working on the capacity because you can't lose. You know, we have a saying, right? You guys have heard this before. The best ability is availability. And so the greater the capacity, within these tissues, the better chance we have at dealing with the function. Yeah, that's the key. If I can make you more robust, even the evidence shows this. If I can make you more robust and everything's got good capacity relative to what you want to do,

I got a better shot at it, but here's the kicker. It doesn't mean you're good at it. You still got to do the function. Of course. So you can have all the capacities in the tissue and very healthy tissue and you can't dribble basketball. So it's both ways. It's both ways. And I think as practitioners, we need to focus on the capacities and integrate into ways that allow the person to do the thing they want to do, which is function.

I'm curious about this. And actually, I think I forgot who I was having a discussion with this about recently. But, and maybe, like, you can also let me know if I'm mistaken in some of what I do here. um when i personally do soft tissue work i try to touch every tissue of my body at some point through the week so i even have something that will allow me to get the tissues of my head like my my temples the back of my jaw like i i i try to find weird feeling stuff right um and the person i was talking to they had a question they were wondering well for certain sports or for maybe yeah for certain sports, would it be that like, you know, you want some tissues to be very, very tight

and other tissues not to be as supple for the demands of the sport? And in my mind, and you can tell me again, if I'm wrong here, in my mind, I was thinking, well, I think that you want all your tissues to be able to handle pressure. But then when you do your sport, you're able to just create the tension needed for the moment of action and then be able to go back to being a at least supple human. So am I wrong in that as... No, you're absolutely... I mean, I couldn't say it any better.

Okay. The confusion is when we talk about stiffness, are you talking about morphological stiffness or stiffness as a behavior in the sport? That's the problem. You said it so much better. No, you do. No, you said it perfect because I like to go

and sometimes they're horrible, get tissue work done. I'm like, I call it press and pray, hope and stroke. And I'm like, what are we doing here? But I learn a lot. I'm like, ooh, that's the spot that I can go home and work on my own. Right? I didn't realize that area was basically what it is.

And we're starting to learn this now with new technology, a micro-circulatory stasis. Micro, not macro, still can be healthy and have good circulation. But in the tissue itself, it's like a sponge. There's little areas that have micro-circultory stasis. and it has to do with what's called the loose connector tissue. I actually have a slide here. I think it's like 10. If you want to show it?

I think it won't come across in the audio side of things, but I think it's worth mentioning and worth maybe demonstrating. Can you just maybe demonstrate on me what you showed me earlier about the elbow and about like somebody having their elbow in pain? I think I would probably be helpful to what you're explaining to in SEMA right here with the end ranges. Yeah. Yeah. What I was explaining to you is an example of capacity. So in here, I have, so for those who are going to have the ability to look at these slides,

the definitions I think are important. And this is a really important one right here. So we talked about movements of signal of life, macro and micro. Movement can be, and there's a lot of different ways to define it, but movement can be defined as a sequencing of segments for an intended task. Where does that happen? It happens at joints. Now, let's break this down because I've done this before and had some people,

PhDs and kinesiology look at me sideways and go, oh, wow, I didn't realize that because we tend to read from textbooks. And it's kind of how we're taught, very cause and effect or linear. But a joint's a space. What do you mean about that? Well, a joint is an articulation where bones meet. So let's look at the hip, for example. So the hip is where you have your pelvis and your femur.

You say, okay, cool, then what's the knee? And you go, well, the knee is the tibia and the femur. Well, you said femur was the hip. It's the same bone. Oh, no. So when these two bones come together, they create a space. That's where movement takes place. So to understand the trajectory of a joint is really powerful.

because if you don't use it, you lose it. So when's the last time you took your neck, especially as an adult you talked about, I think your earlier question was, how do we stay healthy as we get older? When's the last time you took your neck, rotated all the way right, bent it back like that,

squeezed into it and told your brain it's there? If you don't do that, you lose it. Now, as a kid, you could argue, you're in a different cycle of your life. You're more pliable and... Different hormones and so forth. Yeah, evolution, and the tissues.

I thought you're going to get some of that from catching a pass from a friend. Yeah, whatever the heck it is. You're a little fake headlock or whatever. Yeah, exactly. So we understand that. Now, here's where it gets fun. When two bones move

at the same speed in the same direction, then that motion is zero. So here's a power lifting example. When we look at how the femur moves in acetabulum, and let's just say we get to 80 degrees, and there's no more left.

The brain's smart enough to tuck the pelvis under and flex the spine to get the global motion accomplished. That could be, I'm just making this up, that could be too much stress for the back. Maybe. In a squat. Especially if, yeah, in a bilateral squad,

vertically loaded. Especially if one side had 80 degrees and the other had 100. Because now I have a vertical displacement or vertical load coming through and now I have torque in the system. Yeah. Even though the person doesn't butt wink on you, it might be torque in a system enough.

Enough. Again, we're just making this up for conversation. And so the whole idea is that movement capacity is ultimately determined by the joint from a bony perspective, while remaining connective tissue elements provide guidance. That's where capsules come into place, so what encapsulates those two bones. But that capsule is not alone. So a lot of people out there going, oh, it's all about the capsule. Well, the capsule is part of an entire continuum that goes all the way out to the surface.

It's not separated. It's only separated in the mind of the scalpel and the way we write it in the book. But the reality is it's not. It's a continuum of tissue. And then muscles are motors. Like, think of your car. Well, how do you drive your, you got to get in it. So the brain is the conductor.

And it goes all the way back to what we talked about before is you got to have the sensory information so that the brain can conduct. So what we're finding in soft tissue, if these soft tissue elements are sticky, dampened, the receptors are not getting stimulated, and then it alters the conductor, and therefore it alters muscle tension. So I'll come back to your elbow.

I haven't forgot you. This is one of the things that always frustrated me is someone hurts their back, and you come in like you guys, I'm like, what docks say? Doc says your core's weak. come on man how are you going to objectify that one

if a doctor tells you two your core is weak I saw what you just did out there in the gym I'm like but that's what they'll say yeah my thing is different lane different specialty but it always frustrated me what is that you know you have this great workout

you sit you watch the show you and I were talking about our fun show Dexter watch it go oh man I'm into it I watch three episodes I get up off the couch Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, my back. Yeah. Spasm. What happened? That was frustrated me.

Yeah. I just watched you. Yeah, what is that? And now we know what it is. It's not the muscles bad or it has to do with the latency in which the receptor is signaling the brain so the brain does not conduct efficiently. So you know what it's like? You got a real kick. car outside you go to get in it and perform race your buddy your windshield's foggy so you want to know

what tissue work can do you can clean that windshield yeah and i've done in the theory of it's great and i've seen it through studies of ultrasound share wave elastography changes in the tissue and what's been fun about it is we have a clinic with all different types of metrics we even have a force plate in the leg press we have a force plate in the knee extension we have a force plate in the knee extension we have force plates on the ground. We have mobile force plates. We have force frames. So we can test these things. And so here's a theory. Let's test it. And most people, meaning clients that come in, they can feel it. Like after we work on an area, they now have better per perception. They have better conduction. So back to your point with the elbow is what we're doing is we're looking at

what space do you have? What are we working with here? And I want to know first what I'm working with. Why? Because you can't get movement where you don't have it. I mean, that's pretty simple to understand. You know how many people come into me? And I say, okay, just raise your shoulders up. We got shoulders like this.

For those of you that are listening, my shoulders are not all the way up. And they go, yeah, I hurt myself doing pull-ups. Or I want to do pull-ups. You have no business doing pull-ups. Yeah, maybe we could alter it in front and all that. But you just don't have it. So you're going to have to get it somewhere else. maybe that's through the back i mean i can't tell where you're going to get it but it's the very simple

principle path of least resistance the system is always going to organize itself along the most efficient path and so it's like all of us going hiking we see this beautiful river and we note that the water goes around the rock it doesn't go through the rock now if we wanted the water to hit the rock erode the rock and change the rock what do we have to do we have to create a constraint. They call it a dam, but it's a constraint. Yeah. And that's where really good therapists know this, and that's how they specifically put load into tissue to get the tissue to adapt, because without it, you can't adapt tissue. So back to your elbow, what do you have available? You got your flexion, you got your extension. What about the rotation? What about pronation,

supination? And then, oh, that you're showing me what you have actively? What do you have passively? I'm not making it up. And if I see that you have 10 more, more degrees, five more degrees of supination like I did with you. Now the question is, can your brain control it? Because if your brain can't feel it, if your brain can't control it, you can't put the load into it to any significant level to get that biology to adapt. And so what we'll do is we'll put you there and then we'll test it. And a lot of times what you have is a faint contraction. It's kind of like lights on, lights off, or it's flickering. And a lot of athletic people, it's more of a flicker. Yeah. And we'll see that with elite athletes all the time because it happens with

fatigue. It happens with flying in pro sports. The athletes are flying a lot. And you'll accumulate fluid in the system. It's a little more stagnant. And that's when you start to see this dampening effect. I don't believe when you say flying, you mean like plane rides. Planes. Yeah. Yeah. We're all over the place. Crossing time zones and everybody. And we do our best because obviously we fly in private planes where people use Norma Tech, which is obviously a mechanical pumping action. Imagine that being on a flight and you got the Norma Tech going. They're all reclined. You're like legs all blowing up.

But even then, you know, even then, guys, as soon as they get off the plane, they're like, let's get to work. They're smart. You know, they got to flush it out. We use all different methods, not just a great staff to do it, but also, you know, contrasting and Norma Tech elevated, isometrics, you know, different STEM units. just to keep things moving. So basically, like, in the case of, like, lifting or, like, bench pressing just really quickly, if you're, you know, if you have a hard time, you know, supernating your hands, and you just can't do a good job of turning your palm up very well,

when you start handling more and more weights, you could be potentially forcing your elbow into some positions that, you're getting, like, shoved into these positions almost aggressively rather than you being able to have the appropriate perception in your brain to carry through. that full range of motion. Yeah, it's as simple as you can't get motion where you don't have it. I use the river analogy all the time. If someone's standing there and they suponate and they can't supernate all the way, they have no business. I'm just being real.

I don't want them to get hurt. No business with a barbell curl. Right, right. Do dumbbells. That's all. Just do dumbbells. If you have a big deficit on one shoulder complex relative to the other, use dumbbells. Get off the bar and you say to me, no, man, I have a big deficit.

bench press competition oh you changed the function on me do you see but i don't have a lot of people getting ready for the bench press competition now if i did i go okay now we got an issue here because i got to get you ready for your function but you don't have the prerequisites for it you follow that's the key so everything comes back to what i call the platinum rule and so do you guys all hear was a kid the golden rule do on to others yeah as you want them to do on to you yeah so i said that one time and i had a mentor say man you are selfish and i said what my grandmother taught me that you know i'm like yeah yeah yeah and he goes you want to change your practice overnight you follow the platinum rule due to others the way they want done to them ain't about you like it's not about you not about you

So, they want to do the bench press, but we're here to teach them. We got to work on some prerequisites to get there. And that's just the reality of it all. And it would be something like, hey, maybe you don't do the barbell curl and you do the dumbbells. But in the meantime, you also try to figure out a way to get that arm to rotate better. 100%. And that's where we built what we call the management phases. Like, how do we manage these things?

And I came up with these phases a while back. And it's fun because when I share them, people relate to the phase numbers. And they're like, man, because phase five is function. And so I'm going to pull it up here for people to see. For those of you who are watching, it's kind of neat to see. And people will text me and they're like, man, I want to go pickleball. to go dance. I had a lady who's a high-level dancer, and she's older, but she's like a master's champion. She had a hip replacement. And she's like, man, I got to get back to dance.

I'm like, man, you just had a hip replacement. Let's test the capacity. So we have these management phases. And the artist and the practitioner is one who can do exactly what you said, is you focus on building the capacity of a region while you're integrating it into the thing that's going to get you closer to your function so when you look at these management phases uh the fifth is function it's what we don't do uh it's slide 26 so it's we don't do function you do function why because function is chaos i got to say that this is the most comprehensive situation or thing i've ever seen on anybody's laptop. And, you know, maybe when we're done here today,

you could give us some references into some of the books and stuff that you've stockpiled this information from over the years because you said this is worth like half a million dollars, some of the books and different investments that you've had over the years. So I think some of the people that are way into fascia and wanting to learn more about some of what you're teaching and some of what you teach and some of your seminars and stuff, I think maybe if we could have maybe some sort of list or compiled list of some, at least some of the books that you've read over the years that have been really impactful.

Yeah, no problem. I mean, with that being said, I always, because I realize it's a lot. So if you go to slide six, I'm going to read this for people because this is a famous quote. And you say something and it kind of triggers my mind. George Bach said this. And so I'll unpack it a bit. All models are approximation. essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful.

However, the approximate nature of the model must always be born in mind. So you're like, why did he say that? Because life is complex. Nobody knows it all. Nobody. A couple guys online do. Oh, I know. Online think they do.

Why do you think this is like my second slide? A couple people with 60,000 followers, I clearly know. They know everything. So, and, you know, we also, the other slide I have, which I hopefully appreciate the grandmaster principle, is I tweak the couple words, but you practice with the confidence of a black belt while learning with the humility of a white belt. So when I entered, this is a true story, I entered Gracie Jiu-Jitsu a long time ago, and there was an aura that I sensed that I couldn't put my finger on. I was, you know how maybe not you because you're so big in muscular.

My first walking in, you're so intimidated. Oh, I was. When I first walked in, yes, I was. I was so intimidated. Well, he gets a bullseye out of being that big, man. This guy comes in, he's six, four. Oh, shit.

You know, he's got the pajamas on, the geese. Yep, yep, yep. He's got a dirty black belt. That's dangerous. With a lot of white stripes. Didn't know much about it. though. I just knew I wanted to do some kind of martial art again. And I'm like, ah, someone

said, go to Gracie Jujit. So what is that? We're rolling around on the ground. Okay, I didn't know nothing. And I just had time off. So I'm like, I walk in. And this guy was the nicest guy, but he had an oar about him. It was different. And I kept noticing that. And one day, it dawned on me. Holy cow, I met the first man in my life with authentic confidence. Like, it just, it came off of him. He could walk in a street, people could throw things at him, yell at them, make names. It's all good, bro. It was Henner Gracie. It was like, and he's got a lot of energy, and his brother's a little more stoic. But the confidence, it's not cockiness, they're okay in a group of people. I'm like, and, you know, like, say you didn't know Jiu-Jitsu and you guys were just

purely in the gym and you just watched a lot of UFC, you know that. group and you can throw a punch but you get a black world judoosu it's like that's cool bro they love that kind of stuff but in a confident way yeah and so i always look at that like in our industry people just spouting things off and stuff i mean i think we really have to have this humility when we're learning we don't know a lot we really don't so it goes back to george's quote that the slide prior yeah And I put, instead of all models are wrong, because I think that's a little derogatory. Like, man, you worked hard for your PT degree. You worked hard for your athletic training degree.

I respect that. But just remember that all of these are models, and they're all incomplete. But we get so biased, right? And that's why I love these talks, because I'm willing, man, challenge my bias. Challenge my bias, because it'll only make it better. I'm cool. I'm cool. I'm humble enough to say, okay, we got to look at it differently.

you know and that's fine and that's what good science does it looks at patterns it doesn't look at that one paper i always say man don't be evidence based be evidence led let the evidence lead you right but don't be hostage to it don't just regurgitate no man i see that all the time they regurgitate papers and they say i'm only doing this exercise because of that paper i'm like man you're gifted this beautiful brain for a reason like let's use the creativity so back to george's quote it's like, I look at everything as a model, and they're all incomplete any way you look at it. Now, the other quote here is you can't blueprint a complex system. You have to navigate it. And how we navigate it is we literally take these first principles or these unifying principles

and we say, okay, if we can't deduce this any further, then let's use these. For example, movements of signal of life. Who's going to argue that? Okay, cool. Everyone got that? Okay, cool. you got an ankle sprain what are you doing what a boot on like i can make this really practical yeah like i can make this super practical um we had a very interesting meeting not long ago with the top orthopedic surgeon and it was a fascinating meeting because closed door let's kind of put the egos aside why are we not moving patients earlier it's because of the business side they might not feel comfortable with the therapist they might not feel comfortable with the patient because yes Too much load isn't good either.

But stimulus, stimulate, don't aggravate, is critical in the healing process. Otherwise, like we said, what stays still sticks. And then we have too much scar tissue, too much collagenous deposition, you know, and it's not healthy. And so if we understand that movement's a signal of life, you and I just took a walk around the block. I mean, just get up, move around. You know, people, oh, this posture, no. You know what posture is best? No one posture.

move your shit around right you let suit lie on a stove too long what happens it goes bad it thickens move it around yeah so that's what these principles do for us they allow us to navigate um and and sift through the bullshit that's this is my framework right here there's six of them um and it's a framework that i use when i'm analyzing things yeah all right mark you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So how are you doing it? I got a secret, man. It's called Good Life Protein. Okay. Tell me about that. I've been doing some Good Life Protein. We've been talking on this show for a really long time of certified Piedmontese beef. And you can get that under the umbrella of Good Life Proteins, which also has chicken breast, chicken thighs, sausage, shrimp, scallops, all kinds of different fish, salmon, tilapia.

the website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of lamb is another one that comes of mind and so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy kind of depending on the way that I'm eating so if I'm doing a keto diet I'll eat more fat and that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80-20 grass-fed grass finish ground beef I might get bacon and there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more bodybuilder style where the fat is you know might be like 40 grams or something like that and then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of the certified Piedmontese beef. This is one of the reasons why, like, neither of us find it hard to stay in shape because

we're always enjoying the food we're eating. And protein, you talk about protein leverage at all the time, it's satiating and helps you feel full. I look forward to every meal, and I can surf and turf, you know? I could cook up some, you know, chicken thighs or something like that and have some shrimp with it, or I could have some steak. I would say, you know, the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorite. so it's hard for me to lock one down,

but I really love the bovette steaks. Yeah. And then I also love the rib-eyes as well. You can't go wrong with the rib-ies. So, guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat, pause, you can have to Good LifeProtines.com and use code power for 20% off

any purchases made on the website, or you can use code Power Project to get an extra 5% off if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase. This is the best meat in the world. what might be might be a good idea to

maybe just explain to us a little bit about fascia because there's so many you just see here's so many people talking about fascia these days and the words thrown around and it doesn't seem like it seems like it's hard to find

somebody that really knows what it is and somebody that's like seen it up close but you're somebody that has worked on cadavers you worked with Gil Headley you also worked with Thomas Myers side by side and so you've actually seen these things

even though it isn't a cadaver like we know that that's different but like what is fascia and you know what I guess like what's our fascination with it like what could it potentially like if we have a better understanding of it what could it potentially lead to

and I hope this doesn't detract I want this to add on to that question but you'll see a lot of people in the industry talk about fascia training that's become somewhat of like a I wouldn't call it a buzzword because I get what they're talking about. But when you see some of the things that these people are doing,

it's loading with global movement from the feet and everything is moving as something forward or doing something, the whole body, right? So you see that a lot too. Do you believe that there's legitimacy to that? Yeah, you guys asked like five questions and one question. I should have just waited. No, no, it's great.

They're all great questions. So we have to start with the basics. If you go to slide 10, this is something that we talk about early in our curriculum is, what is FASHA? Well, the experts do not agree. This is our problem. So it depends on who you ask. And now they are working on this with the anatomical nomenclature committee. So there's a new paper that just came out in January of 2025, brand new, towards a comprehensive

the definition of the human fascial system. Here's, I'm going to give you the real quick yet accurate understanding. Fasha is not a tissue. It's a system. As soon as I say that, it changes everything. Yeah. Because there'll be people out there saying, you can't stretch your fascia. They're partially correct.

And a paper will come out. You can't stretch the fashion. You're correct. The dense fascia. The loose connective tissue, which is all, the fascia changes all the time proof you get up in the morning your low back's a little stiff go run a hot shower on it what happens feels better doesn't it yeah that's your fascia it's also called connected tissue and that's aptly named because it connects everything so one of your questions is

why all this fascination uh that's good yeah that's good because it is proven not only mechanically but neurologically, that we are connected, whereas muscles are just a bunch of names, 630-something names, and they aren't as important without their investing fascia. Like, here's a good one for you guys. Can you guys picture the low back anatomy at all? Like, look at all the books. You see that big white diamond, right? Well, if you were to cut the white diamond.

there's three to four layers of it depending on where you cut. And then you get down in there and you got your erectors, but the erectors are interesting and it's like a sandwich. It's very different in the appendages. But in the trunk,

the anatomy is a little bit different with his muscles slip into this sandwich baggie of fascia, thoracolumbar fascia. It's not that, they're not very big, relative to all the other muscles like your glutes.

Huge. What about you peel a glute off? You got all the little glutes. huge hammies huge you follow adductors huge right so do you ever think about how do i deadlift and transfer that energy i go down to deadlift i can generate how much can you deadlift uh maybe now somewhere in the five fives five or sixes uh maybe four or five hundred or five hundred pounds so you're generating four or five hundred pounds up through into these little edy-bitty muscles yeah how does that work

If you did it mathematically, which Dr. Serge Grecoveske did, the amount of force that those tissues produce, if you transferred it directly to the little muscles in the back, would shatter the vertebrae. Absolutely. Which it doesn't happen. People are deadlifting all over the world right now. What they found was the connective tissue,

the fascia is much stronger than the muscle contraction. They work in synergy to transfer energy. you see so that's again the evolution of learning more and more about anatomy where they used to look at it and just think of it as an inert tissue like a tissue that just didn't matter as a package material and now that's where you're seeing the evolution of all this so back to your question it's a system and there's a lot of elements within the system yeah there are a lot of elements that can be reversed with intervention movement uh movement uh so Sometimes it requires a little more local movement. Back to your question on, you know, sometimes we can clean it up globally. And if we can clean it up globally, like when I see the youth, a lot of times you can. You just, you can work on things. And I think that's where this whole integrative training movement has been great.

But then there's times where you have to focus more on the local tissue capacity for the reasons we already discussed. Body files patholith resistance, the water's going to go around, things like that, yeah. But all that's built into the management phases. So the first phase, if you recall back, is you got to balance sensitivity, you got to appreciate that, and fluid regulation. So it's your nervous system and your circulatory system. And then you have the local capacity of said tissue complex, whatever that is. Say you're like, oh, my knee region or my T-Ban, whatever it is. Can you produce force, reduce it, and transfer energy there? Can you? That's our question and that's our strategy. If you can't come up with the strategy to help

improve that, because biology will adapt. And then the next one is, the local, can you do it at a rate? So this is going to go into your question. A rate of force. So here's an example. We'll take our hand like this, put it on the table. Your index finger, press it down. So you know that is an isometric contraction. Press it, press it, press it. Now, let's go up and down, like there's a thousand pounds on that. So, concentric, eccentric, we're doing bicep curls. Yeah.

One was an isometric, and now we're doing concentric eccentric eccentric. Now, if you feel, and you're putting energy into it, you're not going to do that all day. It's going to wear out. Now, let's do this. Take your other hand, grab your index finger, and do that. Hear it, everybody? Yeah. And how long can you do this for?

Forever, probably. The muscle's not doing shit. Yeah. It's in there. It's quasi-isometric. It's part of the process, but it's mainly the connective tissue. And everybody started getting into this, the racholumbar fascia IT bent.

So now we've got to create springiness throughout the whole body. Yeah. And boom, here comes in industry. But if I date back in my library, there's people been doing plyometrics forever. Yeah. We've been doing this forever. All people are doing is packaging it.

Sorry to spill the beans. But that's basically what's happening. We're taking these fundamental things, and we're going on, let's put a package together. We've got to train our fascia. You're always training your fascia. And so you just have to put different variability to it. So there's obviously some truth to this. Like, yeah, you can flex your spine, you can extend it, you can lateral bend it, you can rotate it.

You can then do combinations of that, great, but can you do it through in a recoil action? And Dr. Gary Gray and Dr. Taberi have been doing this for ages. So when these new systems of movement come out, as an old guy, I'm not ornery yet, but I start to chuckle a little bit. Like, this stuff has been around for ages. We just put different packages together and different promotional material. When you said a recoil, what did you mean? Just what you did.

Great question. So it's a recoil where, think of it like a trampoline. We deform and then reform. So it's that transformation between change and direction, the recoil. So when you meant, because I think you were kind of, you mentioned the movements of the spine, And then you mentioned the recoil action. So what specifically would be examples there? Yeah, so let's see if I can do this with all the wires and stuff.

So if I pull my hands up like this, so say, oh, Lenny, extend your spine, flex your spine. That's muscle contraction, which is very wasteful. Uh-huh. You throw a ball to me. I do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So now the energy, the massive momentum of the system creates the reaction. Yeah.

Okay, and this is very important. there are very predictable reactions in the system. So as long as it's safe for the listeners, I like to do this with everyone. As you raise your right hand as high as you can, get it way, way up there. You're going to take your right hand, all of our right hands,

and we're going to rotate to the right as far as possible. As far as possible, as far as possible. True or false, your left foot's pronated and your right supinated. True or false? Yeah. Oh, yeah, true. Yeah, I didn't even look at you. because there's very predictable reactions.

That's why I have a saying, the truth is in the reaction. Yeah. So I knew that was going to happen. Now, the rate at which you pronated, the rate at which you supinated, the amount may be totally different than Mark and totally different than Lenny.

But you did it. It's going to happen. Now, why is that important? Make believe you sprained your ankle, left lateral ankle spring. What's one of our principles? Movement's a signal of life. Yeah, but it can't be movement that's so direct

that it causes agitation. I need stimulation, not aggravation. You follow? So here's what we're going to do. Your mind's off of it. So now you've got your mind up at your hand, and all you're concentrating on is turning. And all I'm looking at is if your left foot pronates,

I didn't want to supinate it because that's the direction of the sprain. But I want to see if the tibiot can move because if I can get a little bit of movement in there, I'm getting signaling. If I don't get signaling and sensory information, the brain goes, you don't use it? I don't need it.

And that's why I get these people in my office after being, you know, braced and overly iced and anti-inflammatories and they're just not getting better. Or they got better feeling-wise, feeling and healing are different processes. And then they go back and resume sport and then it's a disaster. And then, you know, sometimes you hear people say, oh, PT didn't work or whatever. It's just the lack of precision. Because of what you said, it kind of reminds me of rope flow. You know, I don't know, have you seen, have you seen some people doing,

rope flow before just twirling the rope around yeah it's what's neat so you twirl the rope around and you're maybe concentrating on like twirling it i guess a certain way but all these things and all these interactions with the ground all these different things are happening uh with your feet right and and with your muscles that you're not even maybe thinking about because maybe you're thinking of like oh i'm going to you know throw the rope this way and you're not really thinking that your right elbow needs to pull back a lot for you to come through on the other side maybe you're only thinking about like those forward forces. So a lot of different things going on all at one time

when you're doing something like that. Yeah. So all these systems out there, I think, are great. I always come back to, I am very much appreciative to all the stuff that's out there because movement is our principle. Like, let's get people to move.

So I'm not anti-this movement system, yoga, Pilates, gyrotonics. functional patterns, matrices, you name it, it's out there. I am pro-context, period. You come in to see me, how may I help you, platinum rule, what are you training for? What are you training for? Right, because the said principle, which we all learned in strength and conditioning, is specific adaptations to impose demands.

You get real good at what you do. Yeah. You know, within the confines of your health. and so everything's got to be context so for somebody in our social media world today saying this is the way you have to train and what really bugs me is this this is how you train to get out of pain whoa you went from training and you change the context to pain pain is a whole science in itself and there's a very solid saying that i try to get people to understand even though it can get really deep and that is the tissue is the source, not the cause. You tell me this hurts, it hurts.

That tissue can be sensitive. That doesn't mean the tissue is the cause. And this is very important because what happens is if you're not getting better and then you go through the medical system and then you get a scan, you can't see pain on a scan. You can't see a lot of things. You can't see your mechanoreceptors on a scan. You can't see a lot of things.

And then who's looking at that? And then what type of technology? I've learned all that in pro sports. It depends on the technology. Who's reading it? There's all kinds of issues with that. But you cannot, with evidence, say that's why you're feeling what you're feeling. It's way more complex than that.

And so that's why I always come back to, okay, so what? What do you do about it? You got to look at capacities. If you're putting the stimulus in and we're looking to build your capacity and that capacity is not building, we got a yellow flag. We got to keep looking into, you know,

maybe sinister things going on. Yeah. I'm curious. You, okay, so this might be somewhat of a odd question. I don't even know how I want to phrase this,

but a lot of people kind of bash lifting, typical traditional lifting training. And I think I'm guilty of this too, because I, I see the merits of training and strength training. I still strength train, right? But a lot of people try to push people totally away from strength training

because they say that it focuses too much on the structure and the muscle. And then, like, that's negating one's human movement or their ability to function, right? So my question here is, can strength training, can the traditional aspects of the way people lift, especially, can that hamper your movement ability? Do you think that that's something that one should pay attention to? Their inputs of different training stimuli? Because, and here's an example, like you see someone who's gone deep down the rabbit hole of power lifting, and you see the tissue changes that happen. Even though one is very strong, there's now this level of global stiffness and chronic stiffness through the system, right? So that will be an example that's used. So,

I'm just curious, like, what's the yin and the yang of this stuff, you think? It's the yin and the yank. You have to figure that out. Yeah, it will. If I take a basketball player and strength train them, and I've had some that are so genetically freaky, they walk by a dumbbell rack and they grow. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, and they're not on drugs. You know, they're tested every other day.

You have to be careful because it can hamper, as you properly said, the ultimate goal, which is basketball. Yes. So it always comes back to the context. Like, what are you trying to achieve? And then I have some people, they want to play volleyball, but their backs agitating them. And we find that one side of their rectors are hypertrophied and the other are not.

See, that's where the system comes into play and say, and Mark said it perfect, is we might have to do some, quote-unquote, isolated, I call it local, local stimuli, some good old hyper extensions with maybe a little bit more isometric on one side to help facilitate that, and then integrated it into patterns with variables relative to volleyball. You see? Yes. And a great example, I don't know if you know this, but there's a lot of tendon loading going on in the NBA during the season.

not a lot of strength training there's some very little stimuli though because you don't want to lose you're not looking to gain strength in season you're looking to stay healthy yes and if you only play basketball and you don't strength train we've seen the ill effects of that more injuries and they track all this I mean there's more biometrics in basketball than probably most sports every acceleration deceleration the speed at which they move all that's being monitored. Those are all camera systems that are tracking. I think it started in basketball. I think it started with the spurs, I think.

Yeah. So all this is being measured, and then you look at injury profiles, and you come up with these hypotheses. But the point is, we do a lot of heavy isometrics during the season to keep the tendon, the collagen stimulated, but not to the point where we aggravate. We're trying to stave off aggravation

because of constant recoil. So when you look at basketball, it's mainly elastic recoil. They're springing around. of course there's strength in that and there's power and all that all these different behaviors but the dominance is elastic recall you got to be springy um and so in the training then you go okay what am i not getting in the training goes back to what we said before is really work on the things you're not doing to create a more well-rounded athlete and then be more specific like what each

individual needs yes we have some players in my ears there that just didn't need a lot of strength training and some that really did usually generally general speaking, it's the youth. They're like baby deer. And they need to put, they need to put some load into their system, you know, and the strength coach is doing an amazing job with that. Ryan, can you see if you can bring up any images of David Boston? David Boston basically trained himself right out of the NFL. He got so jacked. Oh, really? He was, Charles Poliquin worked with him, and he got in really good, you know, he got, he got bigger, but like, he was a wide receiver, and he gained like 25 pounds or 30 pounds.

And it wasn't, you know, too much after that, I believe his career kind of started to go sideways. Now, you don't know for sure that that training made him go. We got to be fair to the coach and stuff like that. But he was an excellent football player and his skills kind of diminished after he got like more jacked. He already was jacked. Yeah. But he got insanely jacked after, you know, some training with Charles Pulliquin for a little while. So what you'll lose, when you implement a strength program,

and strength, hypertrophy, and you're not doing the other things like the sport or training patterns of the sport, you're going to lose the last degree of call. I would put a lot of money on if we went and saw a bunch of bodybuilders like Gold Gym in Venice.

Lined them up on the beach and said, we're going to do a sprint competition. How many of them are going to smoke a hamstring? Oh, yeah. Majority of them. You don't see it all the time in football because they're cross-training. They're running their routes.

They're doing things. You see, but if you put them and you say no running, no elastic recoil behavior, only behavior of constant tension, concentric eccentric, really loaded up, you'll see a lack of those bio behaviors. I was going to say what's interesting is if you were to take the athletes and had them like bench press heavy, they're not going to get hurt the way that you would think they would. You know, you take the bodybuilders outside and have them sprint. Yeah. A couple of them are going to tear hamstring most likely.

Whereas if you took the athlete and brought them in to do really any exercise in the gym, I mean, you can tear something doing lifting weights like that, but more than likely they're not going to. Yeah, I don't have the exact numbers. Somewhere in this computer I do, the amount of force that goes through your body when you add speed is exponential. Yes. It's a lot.

It's a lot. Like multiple, multiple times your body weight versus like, you might be able to bench press your body weight or something. Something like that. It's like seven times your body would. Yeah. So that's the argument with a lot of tests is their testing capacity only to a specific point. And there's a famous hamstring researcher. First name is Brian and cannot pronounce his last name. I love that you find the top guy and the very specific thing. Because you mentioned this to me about like the foot. You're like, I went to this guy and that knew the very specific thing about like the big toe. Yeah. And so he talked about there's a massive difference between 80% sprinting speed and 100%. And what one hypothesis is, guys in the NFL, I think he was talking about NFL players more than anything, a lot of times they're not training in the off season or basketball, training in the off season 100%. They're training at low percentages and then it's game day. And that jump between 80 and 100 isn't, it's like an earthquake, right? A five versus a seven is massive. And so I remember last year he was talking about that, I thought that was like, oh, wow, because we're not able to replicate that in a clinical setting.

You'd have to get out on the field, and you've got to push it. And so people are starting to do that. Our team of people are phenomenal at this. And as soon as they get through their strength metrics and their elastic recoil metrics in an isolated way or local way, then we integrate it into patterns and say, hey, man, we know the end game. End game's football.

It's a receiver. He's got to run routes. And they'll bring them out on the field. then they'll start slowly integrating that. Yeah, we have some therapists that are really amazing at that. Yeah. And that's the difference between just rehab and something from a post-op to bring in it all the way back to sport.

That's how I created these management phases. When I was in pro sports, I'm like, whoa, man, the checklist is crazy. You know why? You come to me, you're a pro athlete. We let you go play too soon, and you smoke your knee greater than before. We kill careers. So in pro sports, there's a checklist that's like one, two, you've got to check the boxes before you just go return to play.

Now, the average person, their insurance might not cover. It might be a great therapist, but their insurance isn't going to cover that many sessions for that many boxes to check. And that's where it gets a little tricky. So that's where I came up with this and I handed it to people. I'm like, man, listen, you know, you can, you know what I'm saying? You can poke the bear. Don't try to hump it. It's going to get pissy.

So you feel good and you're like, oh, cool, I can poke the beer. And you get too close and then it comes roaring at you and now your foot blows up again. And it's not that the rehab didn't work. You just pushed it too much because you use sensation

and not biometrics. You know, you can't manage something you don't measure and you can measure anything. You don't have to have fancy gadgets and force plates. You can measure anything. We've been doing it for years in gym.

Hey, what are you bench, man? Next month. What do you bench, man? Use the mess. metrics. Like, are you getting better? Because if you're not building capacity, there's something wrong in the organism that you've got to look into. Yeah. You were mentioning that some athletes, when you work on them, and I think this has been observed by your colleagues as well, they just feel way different versus, you know, maybe somebody that isn't playing a sport or isn't a professional. You mentioned they almost feel like a trampoline. Yeah. Their tissues feel like a trampoline, which I find that to be fascinating. It's giving you, like, their body's giving you, like, feedback when you put your thumbs or elbow into them. Yeah, and if you have children and they're young, you can kind of use them as an anatomy project, too, because it's really fascinating.

They're like, ow. Yeah. Someone might be ticklish. Hopefully they're not too owie. I mean, depending. You don't want to be heavy-handed. But you asked me the question when I worked on you, you start really light. Like, big guys like you, a lot of times I pull my hands on somebody, you're like, what is?

this fluff and buff and then next thing you know it like i'm somewhere where no one's been you know because i took the time to get there but that has to do with the properties of physical elasticity and unfortunately that's not taught enough but yet that's the element of the soft tissue um so i put a slide here for people and we built this a while back it's slide number 10 what is soft tissue health is there a difference between dysfunction and pathology right and so it goes back to my model thing you go to a doctor what do they study and even the doctorate of physical therapy curriculum studies what studies pathology though yeah it's all yeah correct anatomy is a basis that we all study and then we take it from there into a career but they study pathologic right and that's why you go you don't

go to physical therapy just to hang out. Now, there's some that are just amazingly multi-credentialed and they strength train and they do all this other stuff. But I'm talking about physical therapy curriculum, not people that learn stuff outside of school. I'm talking in school, I got my doctorate of physical therapy. This is what I learned. It's

predominantly, and I've traveled all over the world and asked this question, how much time do you spend understanding soft tissue, evaluation, treatment, and the process to make that tissue complex healthy and there's very little time on it. It's really looking at these various pathologies and what do we do about that um so this led me to okay what is soft

tissue health like like how do we define it and it was interesting because i did ask a couple surgeons too and they they were fascinating i was surprised really they said i can't really give you a definition i just know it i'm like oh that's cool like they know it because they see it they touch it they're operating they know the difference between unhealthy tissue and healthy tissue but i want the definition because I got to put it in a slide so I can share it. I want to put it in words. So anyway, I came up with this to your question, Mark, touching all different types of people. In a course of a month, I might have three different elite athletes in different sports, but then I have an 80-year-old person, and unfortunately I have worked with cancer patients, one close to hospice,

And, you know, I've had situations where, unfortunately, my wife had a very severe infection, and she was in the ICU for 28 days, and she had fasciatomy. So I've seen some stuff and palpated stuff. And then you have young kids and people that are systemically inflamed with a bad knee. And you're like, holy cow. And I'll get this in a course of a day. Like, we're pretty busy in the clinic last week, and I had six people I saw. I mean, very different, very different.

And so that's where this definition in this slide came into play. So health is characterized by softness. It's soft, supple, and strong. And we kind of talked about this before. This is looking at the tissue in a passive state. You can add activity to it. But when you touch tissue that's healthy, it's soft, supple, strong. It exhibits a balanced hydration and reduced sensitive.

positivity to deformation. Now, obviously, if you just stick your elbow in somebody fast, like that's not what you're supposed to do, though. It's a gradual process. And then when you get to what we call the tissue barrier where you can no longer push down, you feel the recoil of it. And that's what you'll feel on a very healthy human. And what was neat about the NBA is we have 15 guys on the roster. You're with them all year, and you're with them all year. We're talking seven days a week you might treat two to three times a day and you get to know each player so i came up with this kind of scale you have bendy wendy over here runs a row you know the aerobic classes the yoga classes i mean they whipped their body all over the place then you got stiffy stevie over here

other end of the spectrum who are you going to hire to remove your refrigerator stiffy stevia hell yeah i did that once these dudes came in they're rugby players yeah and they have a moving company they're all like you like just they lift the refrigerator benny wendy's not doing that right but if you had a little like area in your attic you had to get to you hire bendy wendy absolutely what i learned was all pro athletes are right in the middle they're not bendy wendy and they're not stiffy stevie yeah in most professional sports and then what i learned is there's a spectrum within the center the ones that are really healthy are like right in the middle They're flexible, they're super strong, and they don't get sore often.

Interestingly, when you monitor their workloads and you ask, hey, anything's sore? As a matter of fact, I will work so hard, and they hardly feel it. I always say the harder I work, the healthier you are. And that's true. Because if your body's super sensitive to deformation, just like with a hand touch and a little bit of sheer force, that's an unhealthy tissue. I've actually shown people before I'm like I'm pressing on you this hard because I'll show them like I'll poke

at their shoulder let's say the area that hurts and I'll put my finger on it and I'll just show them on the other side where they don't have the discomfort and they're like you're kidding me like you're shitting me like there's no way you're only pushing that hard I'm like yeah that's what I'm doing that's exactly right and so when you feel these

what we call densities which brings us to what is dysfunction so dysfunction is termed in the literature a densification So it's when the interface, or what we call the loose connect to you, one of the elements of the facial system, becomes more viscous. So it's analogous to honey in the refrigerator. You go to pull it out, you want to use it, but you can't get it out of the bottle because it was in the back. It got too cold, whatever. So what you do is you shake it up.

Well, that didn't work. What do you do? You heat it. Oh, the viscosity changes. So it's literally what happens in our body is we have increased viscosity. and it thickens the loose connected tissue. And what that does is it dampens the relative movement of one harder structure on another,

or more specifically the dense connected tissue. This also happens as part of DOMS, delayed onset muscle so when you look at the literature, for those that are staying up and up on literature, there was a paper written three years ago, and it was titled, how we've been looking at delayed onset muscle soreness wrong for 100 years you do not have to be sore to build muscle i train my days if we train legs and

we weren't sore we go back and train again buddies would call me up yo you sore nope get back to the gym do it again and now we know and then i couldn't walk and my grandma was like what's wrong with you i'm like nothing man i trained legs this was great legs day bro traumatizing right so now we know So what we're doing is, and here's the kicker with the research, that muscle damage may be there. They're not saying it may be there or it may not be there. It's not why you're sore. It's the fluid buildup, and without getting deep into the woods, and I can get people the research that you want to read it, but it's micro-neurro-damage. So what happens is they're compressed muscle spindles because the fluid's viscosity increases and it hurts.

Yeah. So that's why everybody got into flushing, like got a flushing. like got to flush it out let's do the cold tub let's do the heat they all do the same thing we create these big stories it's like they're all doing the same thing what do you think cold does constrictions yeah what happens to men when they jump in the ocean whoo it goes away get back out in the sun right so all it's doing all cold is doing is closing the vessels and opening them will you open when you get out of the cold you know there's no magic to it now some people it doesn't go good with their nervous system doesn't go good with their hormonal system so I'm like

Do you like it? Yeah, I love it. Okay, cool. Don't try to sell everyone on it, though. Because not everybody likes it. If you're going to be a nervous wreck getting in a cold tub, don't do it. Don't do it. Some people like the sauna.

The sauna does what? Opens things up. And it gets things to get out of the system. You know, so Norma Tech is great. You know, what hockey guys do? They ride the bike the next day. Flush their legs. Just light easy.

I think Zone 2 cardio is an amazing flush. Amazing flush. that makes a lot of sense from a metabolic perspective so dysfunction is more of the loose connector tissue thickening and it affects the tensile status of the anatomy which is very important to us but it does not alter the collagen fibers and it is reversible Pathology alters the collagen fibers, and you cannot, cannot change it with human hands. You cannot change it with implements. So all the people that PooPu Manual Therapy are right if they're only looking at pathology. And that's what you'll see in the research. If you know how to look at it, you're like, oh, yeah, well, they're right.

But what about all the other stuff within the system? Remember, the system has a lot of other elements. So that's where people start fighting online. fun of funny. I'm like, you guys are just, you got to have some humility here. There's a lot more to this system than what you think you know. I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they want to do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with them more. A lot of us are trying to get jacked and tan. A lot of us just want to look good, feel good. And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that

we might have high cholesterol or these various things, it's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that knows what they're doing, they can look at your cholesterol, they can look at the various markers that you have, and they can kind of see where you're at, and they can help guide you through that. And there's a few aspects, too, where it's like, yes, I mean, no, no shade to doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this.

At Merrick Health, these patient care coronators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them into the Hulk. But that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically

live your life a little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind, guys, when you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels for everything you're working with. Whereas if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, you're good, bro, even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what's like things you can do in terms of your lifestyle. And if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that

you get with the patient care coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like if you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do. Sometimes it's supplementation. Sometimes it's TRT and sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right, guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, heads AmeriHealth.com and use code Power Project for 10% off any panel of your choice. What are some things that isometrics do?

Because it seems like they can be really valuable when somebody, you know, has an injury, trying to come back. Big time. Yeah, I think it does a lot of things. And, you know, obviously there's been a lot of success. there's a lot of different ways to answer the question from a soft tissue perspective my easy go-to is just look at your hand i have all my clients do this take a look at your hand look at the color squeeze it squeeze it ISO ISO open up look what happened color change color change yeah there's no

better way to wash out the waste byproducts of an issue in the tissue than an isometric contraction so when we do our work on the table it's always integrated integrated into active work. So we don't just do the table. You realize you don't know what a table is? Like the way you do your work? Yeah, yeah, but you know what it really is? It's a tweak against gravity.

See, we make these stories of, like it's some special skill. And it's really not. I'm just taking you, because as soon as you stand up, if I start touching your tissue, I got to now compete against all the contractile units. I get you on the table, man, the contractile units are putting. I want to feel what's going on.

Yeah. I don't want to compete against all. these contractile units like unless i ask you to contract which is a whole different part of the table assessment yeah so isometrics are great for helping to wash out waste byproducts now this is very hard to research so it's very underreported in the research but this is a big hypothesis why do isos work they think the biochemistry is being washed out which makes a lot of sense right we just did with a little hand squeeze um it can also put tension into the system without triggering fear, meaning I'm afraid to move,

because when I move, I hurt. Yeah. So now we get a person acclimated with their environment. This is a total lenientism. All right, so sometimes I go out on the limb, and I let you guys know I'm out there, so you don't have to go with me. It's coming from a big tree and a lot of roots.

But I think that's why I've heard in the clinic, anecdotally, a lot of women loving Pilates and these different exercises that do a lot of isos. because when you get into like perimenopausal and menopause, what happens is the collagen really starts to become unglued. And that's what they'll say. I feel like a melted candle. I feel like I'm coming unglued.

And that's because estrogen has a direct correlation to collagen integrity. Yeah. So that's really interesting. And there's not a lot of research on it, Dr. Carlos Steco and others are trying to work on that, like pelvic floor and all this stuff. And you'll see it out there. So I think the isometrics do wonders for a lot of people in a lot of different arenas. And listen, speed kills.

So start ISO, then go isotonic, then slowly build up speed. It makes sense. You learn how to drive a car. Like, let's just go slow. Take it easy. Don't jump in a Formula One. Yeah. That's what happens.

People feel good. They're like, I'm going to go run again. I'm like, oh, geez. Yeah. So when it comes to all of this soft tissue work, the thing that you'll hear from professionals is like they'll always try to reference there's no research behind that. So it's just placebo. And if the athlete feels better from that placebo effect, it's great. Now, from everything you've done, the years you've been working on athletes, I know it's definitely more than placebo. But is there a way to explain how this work is more than placebo? Like, are there papers to show how it's more than just a placebo effect of somebody feeling better? Well, yeah, like, if someone said that to me, I'm like, obviously you've never came to our classes. Like, I have a gazillion references for you. You just have to know where to look.

Like, we'll model you in. You know what I'm saying? Like, I got tons of it. In fact, what I do is, like, I'll say things like, we get on a table and I move you around and you'll say, Is that my quad? Is that my hammy? I'm like, it depends on the mood. I'm in. I'm like, sometimes I'm like, yeah. But that's like geography.

Are we in the Atlantic Ocean? Yeah, we're there. But the reality is it's all the other stuff. It's not the muscle because the muscle is jello. And like, how can I prove that? Well, I'll bring you. I'll bring you into the lab. I pull my computer up and I have a dissection.

I show you. And you see the tension. We can do it afterwards. It's probably not great to show right now. But you see the tension of all the different lines of connective tissue and they're cutting it in the lab and then when you get to the muscle, it's just jello. There's nothing to it. So I say what I say because of what I've seen. Now, is there a literature out there? Yeah. We have a new MRI study of the elbow where they took

elbow patients. Now, people are going to argue it's not an RCT, it's not a systematic review, but we have a systematic review on the planar fascia proving that, and I don't mind sharing this, it's just research out there. It proves that through sheer wave elastography. Did I talk about that already how it measures it? No. Okay, so sheer wave velocography is the gold standard to soft tissue. So if someone said that to me, where's the research? I'm like, do you know what share wave elastography is? And they're like, yes or no? Well, there's a systematic review on planar fascia and what they found in most of these cases, it's not the planar fascia that's thick and stiff. The planar fascia is thick and soft, which points to the edema that's trapped, causing the

irritation, telltale sign. Get up in the morning, you feel a little bit, you start walking around, feels better. End of the day, it feels worse. If something's broken, it always hurts. If something's torn, it's pretty much going to always hurt until they're remodeling. Right? But if he keeps coming and going, it's more of a fluid dynamic situation. So what you have is you have this interstitial pressure there and it gets agitated. I always find this interesting, that every human that feels an irritation of their body fidgets. Everyone. show me a human that doesn't fidget. So why is that?

I don't know the answer. I can hypothesize. It's probably because you change pressure gradients. You're right, but she, Kurtz, go to the left. Right? So there's tons of literature on this. You just have to know where to look. And we see it in the clinic.

A lot of my education has been retro. Like I see things. I'm like, I want to try to explain that. Like, why is that? And there's, hey, listen, there's still more questions than there are answers. But the research is mounting. like the journal of body work and movement therapies a lot of times i talk to physical therapists they're like yeah i never never saw that journal never been in that journal um and so it's out there

dr carlos stecco dr antonio stecco um how about this one you can go on youtube and go strolling under the skin dr john paul gumpertair probably not pronouncing his name exactly correct shows, and this was by accident, he shows living anatomy. So we've done fresh tissue dissections, great. We have different cadaveric dissections, great, but what about putting an endoscope inside a living human? And so that's what living tissue actually looks like inside the body. So you wonder why you get stiff? That's the stuff that gums up.

So if I was to ask you guys, what does a collagen fiber look like to you? Most people are going to think of it like, oh, it's like a string or whatever. Jellyfish? It's really a hollow tube. And so scientists don't understand what's inside those tubes

and how that transmits, but they think that might be a big pathway, a big pathway to communication throughout the whole system. So this is where it gets kind of out there and people are, you know, especially evidence-based, they're like, ah, I got to see more.

And it's like, I'm not going to wait 20 years. I don't have 20 years to wait. like we know this stuff changes and again i've always said we know a lot of techniques work our explanatory models are behind but we're getting better at it yeah yeah i find it so funny just because like manual therapy is something that's been done by every single culture for probably forever forever you know it's something that people have known this makes this makes the body feel better and right and that's why it's practice but somehow scientists will poo-poo it Yeah, you said something interesting, though, because there has been a question raised, manual therapy, what does that mean?

So when you look at curriculum, for example, a lot of times in the physical therapy world, they're going to learn what's called the low velocity, low amplitude, or medium velocity, low amplitude, whereas chiropractors are high velocity, low amplitude. So there's kind of, all it is is a speed tweak. Yes. And technically, there's really no difference between a butt speed. And they're kind of proving that there might not be that much different. And so when we say manor therapy, like we've got to define it. What's the context of that? I'm talking specifically about soft tissue work.

Yeah. And no one learns that. Dr. Jeffrey Bov is probably a super smart guy. And he said it best. He's like, there's no school that teaches this. That's the problem. I've had to learn all over the world. I went to massage therapy school.

Then I went through the Rolfing curriculum or structural integration. And then I took, you know, just a lot of different. courses, Thai massage, I mean all different types to come back to, okay, what do I want to do with this information and anchor to unifying principles and have a system to follow. But the good thing I'm thankful for anyway is I started in strength and conditioning. And how I started was in strength and conditioning, training people, seeing a lot of issues in the tissues, and movement globally wasn't cleaning it up. Back to your original question early on, it's like it wasn't cleaning it up. So I knew there had to be something else.

And what I later found was, and this is very important for the listeners, there's a big difference between being injured and being irritated. Yeah, a huge difference. So we use analogies like a bee sting. There's no tissue damage. We probably can't even see it on your body. But it hurts. Yeah.

It's nasty. And when you wash out those chemicals, it feels better, doesn't it? You know, another example is a paper cut. I mean, it's like, ah, hardly any tissue damage. But unfortunately, you can have a catastrophic cancerous tumor, have three weeks to live, and you have no pain. I've seen that happen, unfortunately. Massive tissue damage, catastrophic.

So no longer can we blame the tissue, but we have to respect it. And that's why we say tissue is the source. That area can be the source. but not the cause the cause can be very very complex and oftentimes is yeah so i would argue and i work with uh right now is just one he's a pro bodybuilder he's always coming in man this is achy this is achy why i'm like it's really doms is what it is and you're so jacked up bro he says i know and he tells me i lost all my athleticism right he was a natural bodybuilder for many years and made it to the top and then said screw it i want to go on the juice and he just

got huge. And the kid's heart's beating, washing his hair. Like, he's just, he's just too big and he's achy all the time. Yeah. And I'll say things to him. I'm like, hey, if you sit and watch TV, he's like, yeah, I go, what happens to your neck? He goes, it kills me. I go, feel better walking around, yes. That's because you're stirring the soup. Training hard, right? What happens with training? All work creates what? Waste byproducts. That's part of being a human, an open system. Nothing's for free. Yeah. You drink, you pee, eat, you poop. Well, you your work, you have waste byproducts. That's why sweating is so important. You've got to get shit out. Groceries in, garbage out. If it sits, it triggers your sensors. Hey, hey. And that's

why people like tissue work and it really helps to locally flush that stuff out. What do you think, like, where do you think that pain comes from? Well, pain is a very elusive term. And the research will say, this. I hate to say this, but I have a slide for that. Of course you do. Oh, these are all questions. You've been studying this stuff for 30 years. Well, no, there's a questions that everybody asked, right? So if you look at, and when I show this, people laugh, right? Because it's slide 23.

So when you look at that, take a guess. Like, I don't know where it comes from. Like, look at Like, and there's tons of references to this. You're just trying to distract us. Well, look at that. It's a matrix, right? So let's just look at it. Injury to neighboring tissues. It can be lifestyle, diet, alcohol, smoking.

We get athletes all the time, and we have a couple surgeons that have mentioned this. He's like, man, I'm telling you, I don't know if it's a correlation or what, but the weed smokers, I got a tougher time in surgery with them. Whether it's true or not, then there's other studies where people are fasting before surgery and they're seeing less inflammation markers, less inflammatory markers. And so, you know, there's stuff we just don't understand. So you have systemic inflammation.

You also have local inflammation. And you can't say, well, pain's coming from the brain. Well, no, the brain is the conductor, but the tissues send the signals. All the tissues can send the signals. We do know it's protective. So let's anchor to the things we do know. And when I see things like this that are very complex,

go, how can I simplify it? I always have a mentor, Dr. Gary Gray. He always says, so what? What are you going to do about it? I'm a clinician, not a researcher, right? We're all in there helping people. So my strategy is four things to look at. Sleep, nutrition, movement, and mindset.

So get an aura ring. Let's start tracking that. Let's look at your nutrition. Let's start real easy. You ready? Just eat real food. Just real. like we know there's so much depth to that soil i mean nutrition is about dirt right where it's

coming from who's sprayed what like it gets deep let's just start with real let's just start easy right uh movement what are you doing now for movement all right how about tweak this and tweak that don't go like a new program because now you're putting a massive stress around the body let's take what you're doing how about this you're oh you're walking a mile perfect You and I just walked a mile. How about if we walk that mile, but then every 20 steps, we do a reach like this, and we do a reach like that. Why? So I can decompress your damn spine, because gravity's going to drive you to the ground.

Yeah. Super simple. And then the next time you do it, we're going to go this direction and that direction. And now we're opening the system up. We're creating more variability in the system. Cool. Easy. And then I want you to feel safe doing it.

Like, man, give people all the positive things. you see with them in the clinic. Don't tell them all the weaknesses they have and you got garbage knees and this is a tangent I'll go on right now because this pissed me off early on. I grew up with a real strict stepfather. He said, you take care of your teeth. I have instructed the dentist.

No novocaine if you get a cavity. Ooh. So I'm a little kid scared shitless. I'm brushing and flossing like crazy. But what I learned at the dentist, when the doctor comes in, does the scan, you know, does the x-rays, looks at it, checks for cancer, sends me to a hygienist. They do their gum scan, and they're teaching me, and then they give me a little white baggy, and they give me my stuff to work on, hey, back here, you're missing back here. You did real good up here, but you didn't do good back there. Nobody ever, in all the years I've been going to the dentist, said to me, when you can't take your bad breath and your teeth hurt so much, we'll just replace them.

but how many people came into my clinic and that's what the ortho said when you can't handle your hip pain anymore we're just going to replace it when you can't handle your elbow pain we'll go in and clean it up but yet biologically speaking if us three were going to home depot to build a human body we need three things cells fibers and fluid you get the cell aisle you get the fiber aisle I'll get the fluid aisle, get all those elements, and then it all morphs into whatever you want it to be. And just as a human being here on Earth, we morph into teeth and gums and hip flexors and calf muscles. But they're all based on the three same fundamental elements. They just morph into different proportions, but at an embryological level.

So why are we not taking care of our spine that way? Why are we not taking care of our elbow that way and all the other surrounding tissue? It always baffled me. Always baffled me. So giving people, you know, things to do and improving their mindset, hygiene of their body,

I mean, you're doing it. You said you go through your body and you scan. It's like, to me, it was like a scan when I heard you say that. You're scanning your body. And if you can't rectify the situation on your own, then you just hire somebody that can be a little bit more specific and maybe get into an area that maybe you can't

or put you in an environment, there's always more out there. There's so many great experts that are out there. So I know that was a long way, Mark, I apologize, but pain is not an easy subject. And that's why I get frustrated when people start talking about, do this and you'll be out of pain. That is just, that's a disservice to science. That's being disrespectful to the people that have worked really hard to understand as best as they can pain mechanisms. Yeah. Now, how do you know pain is threatening to the system is when your body reflexively withdraws?

So that's how I know how deep I can go or when I work with somebody manually. But it's the same thing. So if all of us are walking right now, we're just, we're feeling good, man. We're last-to-recall, walk, everything's springing nice. And all of a sudden we hit a patch of ice. What happens? Every human. Your system goes in.

Yeah. So as soon as the system goes in, like, I remember watching a fight one time with Brian Ortega. This dude was so calm and relaxed. I'm like, oh, shit, this will be a good one. And he just, whore ass, man. He killed. It was a last minute fight.

His mindset was there. He was relaxed. You know that. I use this example all the time. I think it was heat on Gracie. It's like, all right, I lie on my back. I get this to clients all the time, too. Lie on my back.

You got a 200-pound piece of plywood on top of you. you got to push it off now i'm going to put a 200 pound wet rug on you now you got to push it off which one's easier well you know the answer yeah because that's what you're looking for if you and i are grappling and i'm on top of you're waiting for me to stiff in just that second and bang that's your shot to tip me move me whatever yeah so think about that principle now when we move your system starts to tighten up, that's a protective behavior. So all this beautiful elastic recoil stuff you see in functional patterns and the matrices and there's a lot of organizations teaching it.

If I have a person that can't even walk with elastic recoil, I have no business teaching on that with load. Because you're redirecting loads now. You've got a cable column. You change the game, man. Gravity's coming straight down on us. You start redirecting loads. now you put more stress into the system,

the question is, can they handle it? And hey, maybe they can. Maybe they can. But if they can't, I'm giving you the reason why. As a system starts to tighten as a way to protect itself. Yeah, if it's staying relaxed

through these movement patterns, you have an athlete that's very healthy. Because remember, muscle is very energy wasting. And so we want the muscle to contract to its thing and you transfer that energy through the system. We don't want it clogged up. I like to use the analogy of a freeway. You know, you want, it's a lot of lanes, but I want everybody moving.

Where's the traffic? Is there a traffic jam? It's kind of another way of going through tissue and understanding it. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. So, Mark has been doing soft tissue for a while now. I've been doing soft tissue for a while. It's been a while since I've seen someone.

But I'm curious your thoughts on the ways that people can take care of their soft tissues in the meantime while they're not seeing somebody because I think we've had certain people on where some of them mentioned that nothing somebody does can match a manual therapist but I think that we all need to build a level of familiarity with our own tissues and I think that that would probably even make the work that if I were to do work with you would be even that much more effective. 100%. So what do you think people need to pay attention to when they're trying to work on their own tissues at home?

Like you mentioned, tightening up, right? I think some people, when they first venture into doing soft tissue work, they'll use a hard implement and they'll be sweating and grimacing, and that would make it worse, right? So what are things that they need to pay attention to as they try to start learning about their body and take care of their tissues? Yeah, I look at it, like the dentist's analogy, the high. hygienist does a great job, and they tell me what to really focus on. And I do the same thing in soft tissue therapy.

I'm like, hey, you know, this area right here, we can only accomplish so much. This is a process. I'm really anti-we-fix the human body. It drives me, I cringe when I hear this on Instagram. Come see me, I'll heal you. I'm like, oh, you're that great, huh? No humility there at all. Okay.

And I can fix you, like, we're a car, we're not. And so our job is to go through and do the things our expertise allows us to do and then educate, share with you the process to do on your own, just like the hygienist. And it's kind of how I got the whole idea in the first place. That's why I call it soft tissue hygiene. And so, yeah, you bring up a great point. One of my other colleagues, and I look at him as a mentor too, he owns our facility, Dr. John Meyer. He always said that to me.

I shared with him the curriculum that we teach, and he's like, man, you've got to teach people what to do on their own. because not everybody has the finances. Pro athletes, they're so lucky. Like, you know, I was on call seven days a week, and I'd get calls Saturday night. Hey, Lenny, need you to come on over. You know, and that's what you sign up for, and that's what you do. So not everybody has that luxury, and so you do. You have to teach people.

And so what I've personally done over the years is I bought every freaking implement possible, and then I just, I have it all stored in my Amazon account, and I don't make it. any money off it. I'm like, I'll just text it to people. I'm like, hey, man, this is cool implement for you. Yeah. You know, just, it's easy. You know, just don't overdo it. I always say you've got to keep the main thing, the main thing. I don't know if you've ever felt this guys, but I'll start foam rolling and going, uh, I need to work out today. Like, I got a lot of issues in the tissues, right? I'm old and, you know, stuff gets gumbed up and I've had injuries. I played sports my whole life, race, motorcross, and all that whole thing.

And so I'm like, all right, I've got to keep the main thing, the main thing. What's the area of most importance right now? Let's use it as a weekly project. One week here. Let's clean this thing up. Let's see what we can do. And then I'll have people text me, hey, how to feel. Are you doing your homework?

If you're not, no worries, man. Like, life. I get it, but at least I share with you what to do. Yeah. 100%. That's a great practitioner or somebody that will teach you what to do. This whole idea of you relying on me. and manual therapy is like the thing that's bull all it is you got a table and i have a very

fancy table you guys look it up manuthero 242 this thing disarticulates every which way i can put you in weird positions that you've never been in and it allows me to look at the three-dimensional l-l-dia of the tissue yeah if you look it up manuthero 242 it's amazing um and people love it like because they're like wow i didn't know my spine can move like that and i use it too as a cognitive tool like yeah your spine can do that um but all it is is a tweak against gravity that's all it is yeah you're tweaking against gravity um i'm not competing like i said before with the contractile units she so that table moves all different directions and it goes really high goes very low so i'm big guys like you i go real low tables so i have high leverage um and what they're not showing in those

photos is all the dimensional ways it moves yeah so if you ever been on a table face down and I unlatched the transverse plane and I can rotate your pelvis independent of your thoracic spine. And so I do the tissue work under movement. Wow. Yeah. That's one thing we do,

like at the Gray Institute, we have some curriculum there and we share professionals all over the world. We talk about the three-dimensionality of tissue. I mean, we show it in the anatomy too. It's not just theoretical. So Mark, you have been loving wearing these boluvas for a long time.

Why is it that you like these shoes that look like this? I'm trying to get my feet to be You know, I think it's funny how sometimes people will, when I wear these shoes, they're like, oh, those are different. And I'm like, well, maybe you should blame God because this is the human foot. This is the way that it looks. But paluvers are awesome because it's going to allow you to train your feet and train your toes and allow for that toe spread because you got the five-finger toe thing going on. It's like a, like put on a glove for your feet.

It feels amazing. It's like walking around with toe spacers. You know, we've been working on our feet for a long time now. You always hear the benefit of people talking about like these tribes who have gone without shoes forever. and they have this toe space and have these amazing feet. And these shoes will allow you to just passively get that back by walking around. You don't realize what a disadvantage you're at when your foot is all clumped together from the football cleats or soccer cleats or whatever else you were wearing when you were young.

And so it's nice to be able to splay your toes. In addition to that, though, one thing I love about Palluva is the fact that it's not a regular barefoot shoe. I do love barefoot shoes as well, but it also has appropriate padding. And when you're stepping on some crazy pebbles and rocks and different things, like when I'm out on a run, some terrain is a little different than others. I don't have to be worried that I'm going to get some sort of stabbing crazy thing happening to my foot because it has an appropriate amount of cushion underneath the foot. And guys, Paluva has a lot of different styles on their website. I think one of the newest styles they just came out with, which is a little bit more of a rigorous due is the strand ATR. It's not these.

These are the strands, but the ATRs have a little bit more. If you want to go hiking with them, you totally can. Those are amazing. If you go out, you know, throw those on and go sprint on a field and your feet feel so strong, grabbing the grass and being able to actually grab the ground with your foot feels amazing. I'm more of a chill guy with my Paluva, so I like the Zen slip-ons, but that's the thing. With Paluva, there's a lot of different options.

So if you had to pluva.com and use code Power Project, you'll be able to save 15% off your entire purchase. And they also have toe socks. Their five feet of your toe socks are no show. So check those out. too it's real Ryan I think I sent you it might just be in a text between you and I

I think I sent you something for today and then also there's one in the in our thread with the power project you might be able to find two different Instagram clips I just kind of wanted to get your take on these two different things

that I saw just because there's so many people you know again talking about fashion there's some misunderstandings I think there's maybe some people that haven't had the chance to kind of see it the way that you have and probably haven't dove into it maybe the way that you have. So I'm going to give Cody a myofasher restriction at his right ribcage and armpit.

And if he can already see, he's already having to adapt a little bit against this. Good. So now Cody, go ahead and try to lift both arms up for me. And we're going to just, woo, good. Okay. So can you see that his range of motion is restricted right now? really try to lift them up higher, Cody.

Okay? Now, drop them back down because, ow, that's not fun. Now, this makes sense, right? You can imagine how this is going to create this restriction. Did you notice what happened at his left shoulder over here? Uh-huh, yeah? So go ahead, lift both of them again. A facial restriction here is causing some serious range of motion issues over here.

Now, let's drop that down, and I'm going to give him a facial release and fix them up. And now, woo-hoo, yeah. Did you notice him kind of move his neck? that can is not comfortable on the neck either so i'm going to give cody i just want to get some your thoughts on that uh i mean there's a little truth to it and then there's the this is where people get into trouble with people that read evidence um and even understand the basics of what i talked about so it goes back to that slide a very important slide what is health was it what is dysfunction what is pathology if you have collagenous reorganization technically it's called

an obliteration of the architecture you are not releasing that I always make a joke, like where you release it in the woods. Like, you can't, you can't cut it with a scalpel on a dead person. Now, I've dealt with this many times with mastectomies, breast cancer, augmentation. There's a lot of scarring, and scarring is like a bullseye. It could look clean on the outside, man, when you get on the inside. Do you want to see what scarring looks like? Sheard her ultrasound?

It's a video and you can play it because it's my wife. I'll show you what slide it is. Let's see. And then I'll go back to your question. Slide 17. So this will scare women. Brandy, unfortunately, the love of my life, she unfortunately suffered strep bacterial infection

in what we believe to be a razor blade. so i always say this to women you shave she says yes i go every time you shave you put it in alcohol like a barber most people don't they leave it in their shower so what happened was the strep bacteria got into her bloodstream and threw her into uh unfortunately ended up as sepsis uh so obviously that's life threatening so i actually saw i can honestly say i saw an anterior tib work in person

because on the top photo when she dorsi flexed you see the tip the actual muscle because they took the fascia off of it so that's a fasciatomy on the bottom obviously it's a graph they took skin this is how tough and tensile our skin is which is part of fascia it's a superficial fascia they just took a patch here and they put it right over it so one is obviously her relaxed and the other is contracted now if you play the video this is a famous fascial researcher And what he did, it's hard to understand him because English is not his first language, but you see her foot, and we just did this three years ago.

This is the infection happened 11 years ago. Okay, for example, what is evident here is evident that we have a fusion among the layers of the fascia and the skin. It is directly a fusion among the epidermis, the dermis, but in particular of our deep muscle fascia. Then now, I think it goes to a remodeling organization of the structure. Because if you remember, if I go, for example, in a good image of our fascia, we can see what is this? This is the deep muscle fascia. The name in the leg is the cruel fascia. You can highlight the superficial fascia.

Shiosky black, faint line. I like something, retinal acutis, that is this hyper-echoic because this is a splitting of the superficial fascia. But if I go where you have, you add the fasciotum, is evident that we have this situation, which there's no more blackfinite lines. Remodeling of the deep massular fascia, but it's not the same to this. Okay, so now let's go back to the video and this person says, like, okay, come on, I'll pay you whatever amount of money.

Come on over my house. Go ahead. And it's not going to, you know, you don't think, and I'm not just saying this to be like a proud husband or I think, but I work on her feet while I'm watching Dexter. Yeah. For half hour, 45 minutes a night. Because what happens with her, this is interesting. If you test her contractile ability, like she can Dorseyflex, I can hold it strong in version E version planter flexion. You can dislocate her foot like that if she did like box jumps because the fash is gone.

So the elastic. I learned so much about this stuff through this process at a pathological level all the way to what can we do. And we did manual therapy from the get-go, even when she was still on dialysis. Because remember, in the hospital, this was secondary. They wanted to cut her legs off. They were going to take her legs off, and I'm like, hey, wait a minute. Both her legs? Yeah, because she had it on both. Wow.

And that's what they typically do when a person they think this is the entry point. We're going to take the legs off. If you look up like toxic shock syndrome and all these other type pathologies, and you'll see people losing arms and legs, yeah, and that's why they do that. Because from a protective perspective, the organism shunts blood to the vital organs. So everything shunts to the vital organs, so the periphery starts to die off, and then that can start to pollute the system in simple terms. And so I'm like, hey, wait a minute, can we just do fasciatomies?

What if we can save the legs? And so luckily we kind of knew a couple people. and we had good people. On the top picture there, you saw the black line. So they have to keep this open for a while. That black line is a magic marker to make sure that the disease is out of there. So what they do is they measure that. They literally take a big marker, and they just put a marker there,

and they wanted to make sure so that had to keep her open. If they closed it too soon, that happened to a girl, I forgot. It was over in North Carolina. She was ziplining. Cut her thigh. It gets infected, it goes to the hospital. They closed her up too soon and ended up sepsis, and I think they ended up taking her leg.

So, yeah, this stuff happens more often. It happens. I've seen, you know, when you get into this, you're like, oh, my God, this happens more often than I thought. Yeah. Sad cases like, you know, football, you get a scratch, jiu-jitsu, you get a cut, now you got strep. But what happens is this. You get that, it happens to surfing a lot. You get cut, little toxic stuff in the ocean.

You go to the hospital. They're like, hey, man, you can be here like four days. We identified what it is. This is where cause and effect linear thinking is really important. We did the biops, you know, whatever. the culture, we know what it is, we're going to give you the thing, and you're out of here in four days. What happened with her is she got infected by the, we think. We don't know for sure, but we think she got infected with the medication and it took her in their tailspin. So it just, it just catapulted

into, you know, worse and worse until it got to a point where she survived. But, you know, I'm with her all the time, obviously, and what she has is chronic, chronic edema. She doesn't have the pump. So how important is soft tissue? Well, this, collagenous matrix when it has good integrity it's your pump and the muscle contracts into it when the muscle contracts into it it is your biopump that's critical and she doesn't have it yeah so long walks she needs to have you know a compression sleeve on um and then she just has to manage it what will happen like around mile four four and a half five she starts getting achy and that's what it is it's pulling of the fluid it's just the pressure starts to rise a lot like doms we worked out hard

you create a lot of waste byproducts and it gets achy what are some of the weird pressures that happen in our foot because uh i don't know i don't know how many other people have had like you know dealt with various types of foot pain but i've dealt with a couple different things and there's like this constant um i guess you wouldn't even really think about it unless you got hurt but there's constant like pressure and repressurizing that's going on in your feet i'm sure it's going on probably throughout your whole body but you're just not pressing your whole body against the floor all the time. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't have any specifics for you except for when you look at the amount of mechanoreceptors. So think of McKenoreceptors like an ADT, a home alarm system. For whatever reason, the human body's got a lot of ADT sensors down there. And it makes sense because standing up,

how do we know gravity, our feet? And, you know, there's a myriad of ways those can become dampened. You know, toes start to crowd themselves. Some of it can be structurally genetic. and then more adaptive. It's probably more adaptive than it is. You were born, you know, people say that. You know, my grandma had bunions and stuff. And it's like, well, a lot of it's more adaptive. You know how genetics are.

It's like a loaded gun. The environment pulls a trigger. So even if you have a genetic predisposition towards something, if we catch it early on, we can alter loads to help with your genetics. Yeah. You know, and that's why. What's the simple?

There's a ton today of barefoot companies out there. kids should be in barefoot shoes they should be bare foot and i get it they got to be safe i respect that um but yeah a child is born with a perfect foot and we want to develop that sensory information uh and there's a lot of great you know people out there talking about this so yeah and i think it was just done one more clip oh so back to her point yeah you just can't release things and yeah it's not that it's not that simple now i'll tell you a better analogy if you ever have any of your athletes have had a little bit peck damage um it's really easy to actually assess what you do is you put your hand very lightly very lightly if you overly compress you might not feel it and you have them through

their go through their active ranges and what aberrant tension is abnormal tension is when tension builds up abruptly within the normal range it's supposed to build near the end right when i do this the sensors are going, stretch, stretch, stretch. The stretch sensors are going, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, me, me, me, me, me, like that. They shouldn't be going, being right here. And that's what happens. So what the brain will do is say, oh, water going down the river.

I'll just move around the rock. Unless you're in a bench pressure, you can't move because you created a constraint. Yeah. And now you tear it. You see? So that's where you're like, okay, tissue work can create some reversibility to the areas that are,

still healthy. So what we want to do in Brandy's case where this fibrotic mess cannot be changed, we don't want that snag in the blanket to keep grabbing other fibers. Because you can have a snag in the blanket. The blanket's still functional. It keeps you warm. But you don't want that hole to get bigger and bigger and bigger and then it's going to affect you getting warm. You follow? Yes. And so think of it like that because the tissue is a fabric. Yeah. it's a video right or oh it's a slide the dehydration yeah i struggle with that one uh here's why every dissection i've ever done people are slippery and lucy goosey um and so i find it hard to believe i think what we're dealing with more in the living body is these micro circulatory stasis problems

where the internal pressure gradient isn't as efficient as we'd like it to be. More so than, oh, you're just dehydrated. Now, the tissue does, and I'll quote Helen Langavan, Dr. Helen Langavan from NIH, she's doing a lot of research on myofacial pain and the etiology of it, which is unknown if you look it up. But they're working on it, and that's what scientists do.

They're like, hey, we don't know exactly. It's multifactorial, and we're trying to figure it out. but she talks about interestingly think of your tissues and now you'll know what foam rolling does and all these implements as a sponge the difference is the sponge analogy is going to be in a pool

we're going to be in water so you've got all these little tiny holes in there and what we're going to do is we're going to squeeze the sponge in the water so at that point of squeeze we're going to extrude or get that water

out of that particular area you follow and then when we let go it's going to suck in like a vacuum and all those little tiny holes in the sponge get bigger and that's what they started to learn they believe the same thing happens with stretching when you stretch so that's a compressive force when you stretch it's a tensile force same thing happens to little holes on the sponge right if i grab the sponge and i pull that sponge apart yeah the holes go like that right and then when i let go it sucks back up yeah and what she found was the dense connect tissue doesn't change it's the loose connected tissue that changes and it stimulates what's called a fiberblass and the fascicites and these different cells and what they think now is the cell is a tension regulator to the fluid matrix that's their hypothesis so like if i if i feel like something on the my neck and I stretch it a lot of time I come back and oh that does feel better so yes it affects the neurology but it also affects the fluid system so you go back to the system that we developed

soft tissue management system what's the first phase balance sensitivity and balance fluid regulation the nervous system in the circulatory system so i'm going to make things real simple soft tissue therapists manual therapists are really biological plumbers that affect the electricity I'm being super simple here, but you get the analogy. We're not carpenters. We're not reorganizing your fascia. We're not, you know, breaking knots.

No, you're not. And that's where you get a lot of the people poo-pooing. Because they're only looking at it from a carpenter perspective. They're like, you're right. You're absolutely right. I'm not stretching the IT band. But I can affect the interface between your IT ban and the contractile units we call Vassus Lateralis

and Biceafel. ephemorous, yeah. Or some people we should follow, listen to, or buy some books from, like, what do you think would be, if somebody wants to dive in a little bit further? It's always the toughest question I get. It really is, because my humble opinion is we don't learn enough about basics and about complex thinking you know i would say you know we live in a complex world we are complex but what humans do is they complicate it complicated thinking is different than complex thinking and my

example is isn't it interesting you can take your phone we could zoom right now someone in australia and say what's up you ever thought about that like that's pretty cool like a phone can like oh that's interesting but with ingenuity and time what do we do we replicate it another company comes out with it i can't replicate you i can't replicate you we're different we're super different because we're complex so we have to think complex systems and that's why i always come back to and huberman said this i loved it he's like best book someone could buy is mastery yeah just like kid out of school like mastery if you're looking into biology you're going to med school be a good idea to look into systems thinking i don't know if you guys know this but you've

heard of functional medicine right yes so what's the difference between an allopathic medicine and functional medicine one's a systems approach and one is a linear approach doesn't mean the linear approach is wrong remember all models are approximations and that's why dana white comes out there going I'm not going to doctors for this. And that's not fair. My wife, they saved her life. Yeah. We needed a linear approach.

What is in her? Get it out. But then when she leaves the hospital, we got to switch models. We got to go into a systems approach. Now, how can we help her get her kidneys back? How can we help her get her movement patterns back? I mean, she went down to 96 pounds. She couldn't even walk.

They just checked her off. We saved her life. You know what they did? They had a set of four surgeons. One side they tied her too tight. So when she grew her weight back, to this day, she feels like there's bands right around her ankle. And the fluid builds up because she was 98 pounds when they put her, you know, put the graphs on. And she gained all her weight back into that new structure.

Yeah. So now she's dealing with it. What do you think? She's going to go back to the surgeons. In fact, surgeons never even contacted her. They went home that night saying, man, we saved this girl's life. They're different models. So it's a long way of saying But I'll give you some authors

Dr. Robert Schleip All of his work is great Yeah I think he's amazing Once a year he does a One year review on connective tissue And I take it every year Because he scours through the research He does the hard work for you

And he brings great practicality to it He practices what he preaches Which is one of my things You know someone shows up to me And tells me about the body And they don't do anything for their body I have tough time with that because I think evidence is great, but practical experience is huge, and the combination of both is beautiful.

And I've learned the most from people that have both. So Dr. Robert Schlebe, Bingo, Dr. Helen Langevin's work, like stretching, she's got YouTube lectures, all that stuff's great. Dr. Carlos Stecco, her book, The Functional Atlas of the Human Fascial System, it has to be in your library. not only is it a great reference for pictures of what anatomy looks like on a fresh cadaver. There's a lot of written components that are very practical for practitioners. So phenomenal resource.

Dr. Antonio Stecco is another, it's her brother. The family's been in facial research for 40 years. Wow. And he's interesting because I got to spend over a week with them both in the cadaver lab and in lectures. and having dinners and stuff. He's a physiatrist, teaches at NYU from Italy, but what I found interesting about them, when I got to know,

is they're also practicing doctors and researchers. And so the combination between the two is huge. You'll always see a bit of a slight bias to somebody that is just doing research. And sometimes it doesn't have as much practicality, but when you get a combination of both, you know, from a movement perspective and people that are into therapy, like Dr. Enda King is amazing

because, again, he's not only a researcher, specializes in the knee and the groin, but he also practices what he preaches, comes from an athletic background. He works at one of the largest sports medicine places in the world at Aspartar, I believe it's KTar. And they have a lot of free lectures. You go online.

So those are a bunch of references that come to mind. You know, Gil Hell, he's great, but he is an anatomist. so if you want to learn a little bit about anatomy like he has a wonderful membership it's a very nominal fee you go on there and you get to look at cadaveric dissections and you really get to see it's not as clean as the textbooks make it seem you know um Thomas Myers does a great job too you just have to be careful with all these connections people like oh this train and that train well guess what there's an infinite number of trains you can create any train you want no disrespect but it's the reality it is the reality Gil Healy says it best you know there's an infinite number of connections in the body that's why it's called connect tissue you know um so i'm more about the person and the function than i am some textbook telling me what plain to work you know um and who else comes to mind for the systems thinking book there's

quite a few authors that use systems thinking in the titles are a specific book uh if you show them to me i think i have like five of them but there's a couple that uh they're real easy easy reads. Okay. Yeah, just systems thinking. Gotcha. And it's one of those things I say, don't go front to back unless you really want to.

It's really trying to grasp how does that relate to the human body. Got it. Okay. And I think it's titled Systems Thinking, period. Yeah, but you can always text it to me. Okay. And I'll show, yeah, this is the better one. They're really cheap too.

But it's just like fundamentally, oh, that's interesting because we have elements, We have an interconnectedness and we have a behavior. And then when you learn that, really gets you to go, man, you know what? And I'm older. So this is what I started. I'm like, wait a minute. My sinus issue, my prostate issue, my blood pressure. Holy shit.

It's the same thing. But I got three different doctors with three different solutions and three different drugs. Wait a minute. And, you know, and sometimes docs get a little pissed. Like, oh, you on Google? I'm free to think. Yeah, yeah. I always say, I ain't even a smart guy, but I'm curious, and I'm going to ask questions.

That's why we used to have why day in the clinic. So you guys are working out and you've got to challenge each other while you're doing what you're doing. But you can only answer it using principles. Not opinions. Give me your principle of why you're doing it. That's fun. It's a good mental gymnastics. I first started hearing about transcriptions from Thomas to Lauer.

And, you know, Thomas is somebody that's an animal with working out. You got a chance to work out with them. I worked out with him. And he's kind of always on the front lines of, like, you know, finding out about these new companies that have cool things. But I didn't really realize that Transcriptions was the first company to put out Methylene Blue. And now look at Methylene Blue. It's so popular.

It's everywhere. It's one of those things. If you guys listen to this podcast, you know, I'm very iffy with the supplements that I take. Because there's a lot of shady stuff out there. You've got to be careful. The great thing about Transcriptions is that when people want to get Methaline Blue, usually they'll go on Amazon. on that are going on with these other sites. It's not third-party test. And it's not, it's not

doced. A lot of people end up with toxicity from the blue that they get because there's no testing of it. Transcriptions, they have third-party testing for the products. It's dose so you know easily what exact dose of methylene blue you're getting in each trokey. So you're not making some type of mistake. There's not going to be anything in it. It's safe. You can have it dissolve and you can turn your whole world blue if you want or you can just swallow it. They have two different types of Methylene Blue, they have one that is, I believe, dose at 16 milligrams, and they have another one that's dosed at 50 milligrams. So make sure you check the milligrams. I don't recommend anybody start at 50 milligrams, but the 16, I feel, is very safe. You can also score the

trokies, and you can break them up into smaller bits. Yeah, so I do. And in addition to that, on top of the methylene blue, they have a lot of other great products of stuff as well. They got stuff for sleep. They got stuff for calming down, all kinds of things. I got to say, I use it about two or three times a week. I use it before jiu-jitsu. And the cool thing that I've noticed, and I've paid attention to this over the past few months, is that after sessions, I don't feel as tired. So it's almost like I've become more efficient with my, with just the way I use my body in these hard sessions of grappling. And it's like, cool. That means that, I mean, I could go for longer if I wanted to, and my recovery is better affected. It's pretty great. I know Dr. Scott,

sure. We had him on the podcast and he talked quite a bit about how he recommends methylene blue to a lot of the athletes that he works with. And they're seeing some profound impacts. And one of the things I've heard about it is that it can enhance red light. So those are you doing red light therapy or those of you that have some opportunities to get out into some good sunlight? It might be a good idea to try some methylene blue before you go out on your walk or run outside or whatever activity is that you're going to do outside. And this stuff is great, but please, like first off, they have stuff for staying calm. They have stuff for sleep. But remember, this stuff isn't a substitution for sleep. This isn't a substitution for taking care of

nutrition. This is supposed to be an add-on to all the things that we already should be doing, and it's going to make things so much better if you're doing everything else too. And I think this is just a little different, too, than just adding some magnesium to your diet. I think this is a little different than, you know, treat these things appropriately. Make sure you do some of your own research, but. Oh, if you're taking medications. It's SSRIs, you better talk to your doctor first. Don't, don't be popping these things. And if you're taking any medications at all,

it would be good to double triple, quadruple check and make sure that you're safe. Transcriptions has a lot of great things that you need. So go and check out their website when you have the opportunity. Strength is never a weakness, weakness, weakness, and catch you guys later. Those two first ones on the left,

the one with the funny colors there, I don't have my glasses on, but the next one is good too, systems thinker. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's a good one. How can people learn from you, Lenny? We teach a class for professionals. I've now stepped down from full-time at the NBA,

and I'm just in private practice at the Meyer Institute of Sport in Los Angeles, like five minutes from LAX. And we'll teach your course there once a year, and then we're hired to go out, contracted to go out and teach. And there's not a, I always say, you know, all of us are in practice and we're working, so it's two days, but you learn a lot, and hopefully it opens up pathways for you to then go,

your own way. I am an anti-gouroo dude. This is never going to be Lenny's soft tissue management system. I want to look at the basics. I want to create framework, and I want you to plug in your model, and I just want to help to complete a bigger model. That's it. Or add another incomplete model to your incomplete model, right? And so just make people think through the process. That's my ultimate goal, and we do that again through the Great Institute it's great institute.com there's a personal training

physical therapist athletic training certification called the certified applied functional science program what I love about that if you don't mind we have time I want to share this because this is like if people look this up

and just take a screenshot of this this is pretty cool you won't recognize me in this because we did it a long time ago I had hair back then. I was dark, and I looked a lot younger. But why has it been so successful? That was our challenge.

Why was this so successful? If you look at this, I'll show you what slide it is. It's slide 27. So we created this. So you throw out at me different training methods. I don't care what you throw. It doesn't matter. They're names.

I'm going to build it right here for you. Step number one. It's got to be in a position. What are all the positions in the world? Standing, seated, kneeling, supine-prone, side-lying, and inverted. What other positions are there? People say hanging, you're still vertical. To me, you're still standing.

Now you just took the verticality and put it in a different environment, call the bar. Okay, so those are all the positions. Determine the action or motion. Call it what you want. You want to call it downward dog? You want to call it gyroids? I don't care. Call it what you want.

But what I'm going to look at is your body's position in space. We know that gravity exists. we know that ground reaction exists and we know there's massive momentum okay so basics and then step three is select the relative variables so these are all your variables so let me ask you a question what's the last thing you did for a work what movement did you do what position were you in i was uh standing standing okay what action uh throw throw throw yes a throw okay cool so you did you squat down grab something yes yeah okay so And so I would ask you, like, what did that throw look like?

Because a throw can be a million things. Were you throwing a baseball? That's an overhead athlete. Yeah. Yeah, you were doing something different, right? It's an extension backwards. Right. Okay, so down, up, throw.

Okay, so now I look at that. What were you using? Implement? Yeah. Sandbag. Sandbag. Cool. What if we wanted to tweak that?

Have you ever done it with a water bag? No. Which one's more jihitsu like? Hmm. Both? Both to an extent. Depending on how loose the person is. Exactly. Exactly. Right?

Yeah, yeah. Like, the average person doesn't know. If you come in clinch, as soon as you clinch, what do you do? You drop your body weight. Where the average person's like, nah, you clinching strong. No, because you just turn your hips and you're going to swing them like a swing. They're going to fly off of you. Yeah.

You know that because you're into jiu-jitsu. So all I do is I take the sandbag and I switch it to water, the water bag. I'm like, oh, cool. That changes the game. So you can take any pattern of movement and tweak it with variables. Why do they do that? Variability. Yeah.

You know what the one thing we know at pro athletes, what they exude, that the average person doesn't? One thing. Not big, strong, because everybody's your size in the NFL for the most part, right? Big, strong power, right? Adaptability. Variability. Variability. Which could lead, good point.

That could lead to better adaptability because you're varying it. I would say, okay, here's my exercise. Ready? One, two, three, four, five. But what if the goal was 20 of those? And you said, hey, man, dude, let's come over to the variable list. I like that example. Hey, do that again.

Yeah, let's come over to the variable list and let's change the direction. Now I do the 20 reps, but I shared the load. So our whole certification course teaches how you become the art. artist and this is what i find fascinating all artwork no matter whose house you go into most often is different yeah but it's founded off of three basic colors r bg that's it's just the mix and match and then the creativity that's what movement is the entire movement industry and that's how this program has been so successful because you don't have to be a guru you don't have to follow the guru like we're anti-goor you be you that's why i love that book mastery it's like you master it's like

you master it and that's why i always make fun of oh evidence base i'm like be having is led bro think for yourself you know so and that's why i say the truth is in the reaction so you know this is how we create exercises like you're talking offline before it's like okay you do lunge is great you do them in all dimensions great start the lunge from kneeling oh it's a whole different day it's a whole different day or hold just one demo why you got two offload it

so there's no magic out there it's just teaching people the framework so this is what we do in our curriculum at all levels you know even the manual therapy side or what we call the soft tissue therapy side the movement side so we have two online curriculum

pieces where people from all over the world can go through it and then we teach the live and what the live does is like Robert Schlebe does really as we look at the research throughout the year and then we implement it in the live courses. So every year, the live course evolves.

Like, hey, this is what we now know. And last year, we thought it was this and maybe now there's a different mechanism that we're starting to look into. And then we always come up with better practical ways. And then I'm going to start doing this more. I don't have followers like you guys, but on Instagram, it's soft underscore tissue underscore therapy.

and yeah, I'd love to see people on there because I'm only posting, you know, little tidbits. I get clients that don't mind sharing their body. I'll show a technique. Dude, the fact that you own that handle is like really dope. It was a long time ago, and there's no followers, but I figured, you know, this is my thing. We'll have to give you some clips from you working on me today

and some of the stuff you've shared here today too on this podcast for your Instagram. Yeah, that would be awesome. And so I'll put stuff on there. And, you know, obviously, I would have a lot of followers if I was able to post the people I work with, like, other people. I'm like, oh, you're lucky. They let you do that. You know, that's, that is anti-Meyer Institute of Sport.

There is no cameras, you know, and that's why our players, you know, the athletes love it. Yeah, they don't want to go straight. No. They feel free. And it's like, oh, cool, you know, no one's trying to make money on me. And, yeah, I totally respect that. It's tough to be in that position. I think they get pulled in that direction so much all day long, right?

It's crazy. You don't realize it until you travel with them. Yeah. You travel with them. And it's a little different in L.A. Like, I'll ask them all the time. Like, hey, you go in the grocery store, anybody you reckon? Nah, they don't care.

Like, some people don't even know. Like, everyone knows the Lakers because they won so many championships. But like, oh, I work with the Clippers. Like, what's that? Because they're musicians or they're in the entertainment field, right? So not everybody's into. It's really interesting. But you go to small markets.

Oh, wow. Totally different. You get there, and there's people wait. at the hotel for autographs. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Thanks for your time today. I appreciate you coming up from L.A.

Thank you so much. Thank you. You guys are awesome. Appreciate it. Strength is never a week. This week, this is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.