Progressive Play, Developmental Milestones & Pediatric Physical Therapy EP|72 W/ Nicole Schremp PT

Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado

Episode 72

Progressive Play, Developmental Milestones & Pediatric Physical Therapy With Nicole Schremp PT, DPT, PCS

With Dr. Antonio Gurule


How do you know if your infant or child is progressing appropriately?

You want the best for your kids and while some would argue not hitting certain milestones are not an issues, addressing these issues earlier than later will help the gain strength and confidence to interact with other children as they grow in any situation

Episode Highlights 

What are developmental milestones?

What are some of the ways a pediatric physical therapist can help?

How is pediatric physical therapy different from what is considered “standard” physical therapy?

Why is “play” considered to be so important?


Nicole Crippen Schremp, PT, DPT, PCS

Background:

  • Mother
  • Doctor of Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Pediatric Specialist

 

00:09

Alright guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast, I am with Nicole Schremp. She is a pediatric physical therapist, we just wanted to have a conversation and chat around what really what, you know, pediatric PT could look like some of the common things to look for, that might indicate or warrant, you know, consults or a conversation with a pediatric physical therapist. She’s, she’s at Children’s Hospital here in Denver today, for those of you who are local, and want to have a conversation, but I’ll let you introduce yourself, talk a little bit about you know, your history, what you what drew you to Pediatric Physical Therapy, so on and so forth. Awesome.

 

00:55

Well, thank you so much for having me, it’s an honor. Um, so as we talked about, I am pediatric physical therapist. So I completed my doctorate physical therapy at the University of Colorado. And while I was there, I actually had my first clinical in pediatrics and really had no idea what this field was I came into school thinking I was going to go into sports. And during the first clinical, I literally fell in love with the population. I have always had this motherly instinct and loved like babysitting and being with kids. And then I went, I found out PT and I get to be with play with kids all day, I just, it was wonderful. I continued to explore different avenues throughout school. However, kind of circled back to my last clinical, I went down to Texas Children’s and was inpatient there. And it really just solidified that I wanted to work with pediatrics. Knowing that I also knew how much more there was to learn, I was like, we only got so much when we were in school. So I applied and was able to complete my pediatric residency after I graduated, so that just gave me so much more exposure and experience in all different settings. It was a 13 month program that just finished last July. So I feel so fortunate to have continued my learning and every day, I just have more more questions. And love, literally love what I do.

 

02:35

That’s amazing. So when now, at least for me, and I think for most people, when they hear physical therapists, they usually think about, well, a something hurts and or post surgical. Right. So like I had surgery. And so let’s go to a physical therapist. So how would this? How would this conversation differ? And obviously kids do get injured and unfortunately have to go through surgery and things where that would be applicable. But my understanding is your role is separate from those Correct?

 

03:06

Yeah, that is correct. So I do a lot more with the developmental side and children. As a pediatric physical therapist, just broadly, we work with children and families, we want to assist the child in reaching their maximum potential in whatever capacity is the goal is that they can be active participants like in their home, in their school and in their community. So we want to make those everyday activities easier for kids. This can range from a child who might not be hitting their milestones. As the CDC puts them out there, we know that all kids have different trajectories in development. But sometimes, some kids need a little bit more help to start rolling or walking along those lines. And that’s more of that early intervention through the hospital. Now I am in a more developmental role. So children that have longer term care in the hospital, they can’t leave for one reason or another. I am helping them with those opportunities, giving them more opportunities to work on their city and and they’re rolling and all of those foundational moments and movements that we need later in life.

 

04:25

So obviously, in a similar field and understanding this but for for listeners. And we had on I had a conversation via messenger with a pediatrician at one point when the CDC took out crawling as a necessary developmental milestone. We’re not gonna get into the details of what the conversation was. But why is why are rolling, crawling and these types of things foundational Are these importance for the listeners or parents, you know, people just like, Oh, it’s okay, they didn’t crawl, they’ll be okay.

 

05:06

Well, in a broad sense, we want kids to have opportunities, we want them to move and explore their environment. So whether it’s them developing strength or improving their range of motion, or crawling really helps develop those fine motor and all of those arches of the hands and helps open up our hands in preparation for different activities. So all of those different areas, I really want a child to develop that symmetrical strength and range of motion. And we also need to be able to weight shift our body when we’re little, which we don’t think about to move forward and back or side to side and be able to catch herself, which helps us start with that balance. It’s going to help develop core strength as we’re moving in and out of, you know, our bases support. So where do we feel really stable? But are we able to go out and go get something and then come back without falling? All of those different pieces are going to be really important to start developing for children. So that they can, when they’re older, be able to do what they want and move around? Well,

 

06:13

yeah, no, I think that’s such a good explanation of it. Because I mean, when you look at, and I’ve heard multiple people say this in a number of different ways, but but rehab, rehab, training, whatever that might be, is really just a an extension of training in general, because when you’re talking about adults, it’s really no different. The more exposure you have to certain things makes you well rounded and better able to handle situations.

 

06:39

Yeah, that’s it. That’s exactly it. It’s key after PTS that we play, we do so much play with children, we just are trying to give them opportunities to explore their environment that they might not be either getting because they have an injury or, or we have to teach families to help them really learn how they are involved in their child and how we can make these activities. Functional, and really fun. But parents are really the driving force behind who we collaborate with.

 

07:14

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, kids aren’t going to do it on their own right. So when, when you’re having let’s say, for instance, you’re you’re at a barbecue at a you’re at, you know, whatever else having a conversation with somebody, what are some of the things that you encourage people to to look out for that might indicate outside of a pediatrician saying, hey, it looks like we’re behind on certain things. Because with a lot of things, there’s silent or subtle markers or indications that something might be going on where obviously the better to intervene before it starts to develop into a obviously a poor pattern.

 

07:57

So that’s, you know, it’s a broad question, but also not so I think some different things, especially for thinking about a child and their development. So what does that zero to 12 months kind of look like when we’re supposed to be able to roll and be in our belly and lift your head and set all of those as kind of progressive to help us walk it and move. So some things that, you know, we’re looking for, we want a child to be when they’re on their back, like kicking their arms and legs against gravity, and like kicking them in a symmetrical pattern. So we have both arms and both legs are be able to move, they’re able to bend and straighten and bend and straighten. That’s not only showing, there’s the good range of motion, but it’s also showing they have some strength, they’re actually moving their body against gravity, which for them is a little bit heavier than it is, you know, for us. We’re also you know, thinking about if a child is standing, that they’re able to stand and kind of move their body side to side versus are they only standing on their left leg? Like, maybe they’re not strong enough to move back and forth? So some other pretty common ones that we’re hearing more about our children just do they only turn their head to one side? Is there a flatter spot on one side of their head? So that’s where you know, there’s some different indications of torticollis or plagiocephaly? Or, you know, those those more? I guess like, is a child just only looking one way? Or are we able to have full range of motion in our neck to look both ways? So I think those are some of the big things that we’re looking for. And some children just aren’t as motivated to move with others. So is that a child and if it is like that might be their personality, but how can we keep encouraging them to move and want to explore by giving them fun activities, or something that they really want to get to is a cause and effect toy really appropriate for them? So They hit something that lights up and they’re like, oh my gosh, I want to do that again.

 

10:04

Yeah, no, I mean, and that’s what’s so interesting too. I mean, part of a lot of this is just obviously general observation, right? Because a kid is not going to be able to dictate and tell you if something’s wrong, or if they feel unbalanced or pain outside of crying. But yet, I think just overall perception and awareness for our own bodies is something that a lot of us lack. So I think just paying attention is such a big important thing, not only to your own body, but also to the kids to see what, what seem what seems off, outside of, you know, more serious things. Why do some of these things occurred like, like a strengthen bounced, outside of like a, you know, a significant neural disorder, which would be obviously more prevalent, or I guess, more, more prominent? First, I want to see, how do these strength imbalances occur in kids, when you would think there’s like, well, they’re just a kid, shouldn’t they just be naturally doing these things?

 

11:05

Yeah, it can be a hard question. It can be some, you know, sometimes, kids, our families need them to maybe be in a carrier more, or they’re in their mercy more, or they’re not exploring as much, or sometimes they might just, we might always hand them something on their left side, not even thinking about it. But there were only handed on their left side, or sometimes, however, we lay them down, everything might always be on the right. So they might only be rolling to the right. So their strength in the, you know, some core muscles and our arms and neck muscles only in one direction. So sometimes it just might be things that we’re not even thinking about. But when it would, kind of back to what you were talking about, in terms of observation, so much of what I do my first session is just watching a child move. So the power of observation of seeing how, what are their movement patterns? How are they moving? Do they have a variety of movements, or some things that we run into in the hospital, we only walk in on one side of the room. So if a child’s head is always to one way, they might only be strengthening moving as they roll to the you know, left, because that’s where everyone is, that’s where action is. Which could be true at home with changing tables or crib, they might just environmentally get exposure more on one side than the other.

 

12:32

That’s a good point. Because as I’ve had this exact same conversation with individuals that have multiple monitors, that you know, it’s I have two monitors, but ones over here and they gotta catch in their neck because they’re doing they only look right, they never look left and or we just live in this world. We don’t look out and around to create more exposure. Do you? Now obviously, being a pediatric physical therapist, do you see any adults do you intervene with adults? And my my curiosity with that is and I’m not sure if you’ve heard I’m sure you have though, is DNS dynamic neuromuscular stabilization. A lot of that’s based on developmental patterns, where they use these principles to intervene even with adults and getting people back into developmental patterns to fix issues. Do you find benefit in what you’re doing with adults as well as exploring these developmental patterns?

 

13:26

That’s a great point. So I don’t I ever since graduation, I’ve really been focused on now are named pediatric. Yeah, I have heard of it. But I don’t feel like I can really speak to it right now. Because that’s not where gotcha I’d be shocked if I wouldn’t see. I wouldn’t find it valuable for them just because knowing what I know about kids. So that’s something that I yeah, I do really have my niche right now. Most of the time, sometimes there are more adults with congenital or more pediatric diagnosis that I see right throughout the hospital, but most of the time, I’m working with children more on that developmental side. So working on those, those early motor skills.

 

14:17

What’s the obviously there could be put with plagiocephaly separately in Georgia call us like a fairly early intervention. What’s kind of like the the, I guess, average range of kids ages that that you do see or is it is very broad and wide.

 

14:35

It’s very broad and wide. I think I most I guess if I had to pinpoint it would be like zero to probably five right now is most of what I’m seeing at the hospital. During my residency, I was I spent time outpatient and did do some sports, pediatrics. I also was in the school district at Cherry Creek, so I worked with first and second graders. I’m so I have had that early experience. So from that zero to three year old all the way up to you at 1920. Knowing that right now I’m back to the younger age group.

 

15:14

Now, for adults, when, interestingly enough, sometimes when we’re dealing with like a weakness issue, their body weight, as you had indicated for peds, which is different, obviously based based on the age, but their body weight is too much for them, is there a time where you’re, you’re using resistance training outside of their own bodyweight, ie, different modalities or bands or something like that?

 

15:42

When I was in the sports, kind of doing more ortho for one day a week, for those nine months, when I was in the residency, we definitely were using a lot of bands using different probably very similar modalities that you would use on the chiropractic front. But definitely ankle sprains or low back pain or rehab from a sports injury, all those things that I think when you think about physical therapy, and kind of where your mind tends to go

 

16:11

outside of that in your specialty of zero to five, it’s pretty much just exploration, crawling groundwork, so on and so forth.

 

16:18

Yeah, it’s a lot of like giving these children opportunities and making it fun and exciting. And like, it’s a lot of play, we want them to want to do the movements, like it’s, I will do some facilitation to help them get into certain positions. But we’ve found more and more research of just like that cause and effect of them doing it and we get really excited or like they roll up, we’re like, oh my gosh, that’s amazing. Or they roll and they get some reward on the other side, whether they see a book they see mom, or you know what that looks like. So a lot of it is just using the child and letting them explore their environment and that reward of clapping or you know, some of those things, so they get really excited. Do you

 

17:03

is there any? I’m sure there is benefits? I don’t know if it’s the questions asked correctly. But if you do intervene with it, but is there advantages to doing soft tissue work in any situation to help facilitate a you know, some massage or vibration to activate something

 

17:21

100% And I was just in a continuing education course over the weekend, looking at how breath really impacts the body’s movement and core and thinking about some of the children I work with have tricks and bent. So they’re the top of their breathing, you know, is impacted because they have that open hole. So what is what can you do for read mobilization or some soft tissue massage on the ribs to really help expand and improve breathing, which is also going to help in so many different ways?

 

17:56

That’s interesting. Yeah, that’s a really good point. What are what are a few things just, I mean, obviously, in our industry, there’s certain there’s certain things that we want people to, I guess Miss tuberous, if you will, but not even Mr. Buzz, just like what are a few things that you think you would you’re trying to get out that people that people should know, about Pediatric Physical Therapy?

 

18:24

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think the big thing that I want people to know is encourage your child to explore like, it’s okay to let them play on their own and be able to move around in their own environment. And it’s also okay, if you have some questions on things that might not seem right for your child to ask your pediatrician and really use them as partnership. If they’re, you know, think everything’s fine, and you just still have your like parent instinct that something’s going on, reach out to a PT or look into early intervention. If it’s if you’re zero to three years old, it’s something that would be a it’s really great service for children with any sort of delay to receive services in their home. So I would just, I would just say, if something doesn’t feel right at all, whether it’s, you know, your chiropractor or another PT or your pediatrician, and if you don’t get an answer, just continue to ask.

 

19:33

How might I mean, this is? This is such a funny question, I think, because we kind of get the same. For adults, it’s harder because creativity, especially in that type of setting is is harder to intentionally elicit. But But if play bass is so important, what things do you tell your parents Now granted, you’re seeing them in an intervention status, if you will? But what things do you encourage people to do? If clay base is so important? How do you encourage parents to help their kids play more at home?

 

20:09

Yeah, I so one thing is really just talking to parents, what is your routine at home? What is your day look like? And then how can we put little pieces into their day that you don’t really think about as therapy, but therapy, so say diaper changes is, is something that we’re really working on some for strings. So we want parents who After every diaper change to help the child bring their hands to their toes. So something you know, you’re already bringing your self, the child on their back. So we’re really working on touching our knees or our toes in that position, or did the child love bubbles, like, let’s play bubbles down the hall and see if we can encourage them to crawl to the bubbles or to stand up to pop the bubbles. Putting little squiggles on Windows to have them stay in there and just pull off the little swigs. It’s really a ton of core strength and balance and reaching. So there’s a lot of different play based activities that we can get really creative with, and really seen the big pieces like how does it fit into their life and their routine? I don’t want to give parents a laundry list of homework, I want to give them some things that they are like, oh, yeah, we basically do that. But I can tweak it this way. And that’s actually going to help their child their individualized program of whatever that child needs to get stronger, or more whatever, like developing those skills.

 

21:41

And I think that’s I think that’s such an important way of getting at it because we say something very similar, right is it’s like, oftentimes, what we’re doing is no different than what you’re already doing. But the intention of how you’re doing it just changes slightly. And that makes the world a difference.

 

22:00

Portal. That’s the I love that how you set that the intention? Yeah, that’s exactly it. We’re making it fun and enjoyable, but they’re just a little, there might be a little different tweak, to really help us get that result that we’re looking for, or the child is going to start doing something just a little bit different. And parents are like, Oh, my gosh, this is wonderful.

 

22:21

Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. I think that I think, I think that’s all I think that’s amazing like to it, because obviously, there’s there’s extenuating circumstances of more serious conditions that require a lot more obviously, one on one, but for the general type of public of having these things, most kids are doing fine with it, because they have this natural exploration, but making it fun in in seeing the games can also highlight certain things. I mean, I know for our kids, we talk a lot about like, they naturally go, I’m gonna pretend like I’m a dog, and you’re seeing how they crawl or do all these other things. And you really start to see discrepancy, so on and so forth. So that’s, that’s a lot of great information. I honestly, I learned so much. I don’t have a lot of other follow up questions. I think this has been wonderful for me to share to give people an idea, especially not to, because I think there’s a number of great pediatricians out there. But I think a lot of times these in our world, these movement based things of what we find to be super important, sometimes just get swept under the rug, they’ll grow, they’ll grow out of it as what we commonly hear, right. But we, you know, my thought is, well, maybe, but we might as well optimize them so that they can be interactive with their peers at school at home.

 

23:46

Yeah, I think that’s the big piece, we just want the child to participate with their family, friends in school environments. And you’re right, they might grow out of, but they might not and why not get evaluated by, you know, whatever setting that is, if it’s, if it’s a PT like to have a PT just do an evaluation, see where they are some other ones that we hear a lot that they might grow out of is to walking. So definitely that’s one that I did bring up before but something to be on the lookout for. So anything a child does all the time that they their only way of moving W sitting into another one. So it’s okay if we’re you know, going in and out of it or using that to transition but if we can’t move outside of sitting, you know in a W position or we’re only looking into our head to one direction or only walking on those toes, it’s kind of when we get siloed that that might you know, something that we definitely want to look at it. We want just kids to move. We want that variety. We want them to just do different things in different ways.

 

24:55

That’s such a good that’s that’s a good point too, because I think I think it’s kind of hard to say They sometimes like, well, what’s normal is like, well, when you walk when you look at anybody walking, we all pretty much walk the same way. And when you see something else like, well, we kind of use general general common sense. Like that doesn’t seem natural to how everyone else moves or walks. Same with crawling or scooting. Yeah, they’re like, well, they get around fine. Well, yeah, cuz they can, like we’re the other example that we commonly use is like humans are very task oriented, goal driven, as you said, I want to do this because I get a reward. We’re no different. If the task is to run a mile, you’re going to figure out how to do it, regardless of its efficient or not,

 

25:42

right? Yep. And that’s it. Some kids, there’s so many different ways of crawling, if you like, look on the internet or research, there’s like, I mean, so many different ways, we would ideally like a child to hands and knees crawl, because they’re getting cemetry, they’re getting reciprocal movements, they’re strengthening both sides. Some of these other ways of crawling, the child is efficient, they’re getting around, but might only be strengthening one side, or they might be putting one side of their body in a less optimal position. So we want the reason they’re doing that as they figured out how to move and get that reward. But we want them to let them keep going. But we also want to strengthen and you know, work on whatever other piece there is to that?

 

26:25

Yeah. Well, I appreciate the time this has been this has been extremely helpful for me as well. And obviously good to always see like, what are what are certain things that are coming up that are like, hey, it’s always that’s a hard conversation to sometimes like, this doesn’t look normal. But it’s just it’s, it’s worth asking a few questions and knowing who to talk to. Is there. Is there anything else that you would like to leave people with that has come to mind that maybe I didn’t ask a question about,

 

26:55

you think that it, I really, just to circle back, let your child explore, be able to have fun and play inside outside all of those different areas. And just trust your instinct. If you feel like you want to ask them questions, please do?

 

27:12

How can how can people reach out to you? If they want to work with you or or anything like that?

 

27:19

Yeah, I would love to hear from you with questions or anything. So I have an email address that I’ll pass along that we’ll be putting this in the show notes. Nicole dot c that Trump dpt@gmail.com. It’s a little bit of a handful. So we’ll just put it in the show notes. Have it be there?

 

27:38

Well, perfect. I really want to appreciate you taking the time out of busy day and chatting with us and sharing your knowledge.

 

27:46

Awesome. Thank you so much. One last piece that I want to put in the show notes too. If you’re if you have questions on milestones, work, and the CDC has different avenues for milestone trackers and milestones. And then

 

28:02

for early intervention, because this does come up every now and then where would one reach out to or who should they who should they be researching or looking out to for those early intervention resources.

 

28:12

So early intervention is a federally mandated program. So it’s like support for an education for children, you know, developmental delays and their families. So it’s anyone from the zero to three, you can go on. And I think if you just type in early intervention, there’s different community center board. So you want to reach out to your community center board or ask your pediatrician for a referral.

 

28:39

That’s probably Yeah, so it’d be a pediatrician be a good resource early intervention. Yeah. That’ll come up. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and chatting.

 

28:50

Thank you so much for having me.


How to Choose Weight Lifting or Training. EP|71 Live Loud Life Podcas

Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado

Episode 71

How to Choose Weight Lifting or Training.

With Dr. Antonio Gurule


Want to increase the weight you lift?

Or the number of reps you do?

Whatever your goals are, Dr. Antonio has guidance for you.

Episode Highlights

3:00 – “How do I know what weights to use? / How many reps to do?”

5:00 – Tough at 10 method

=7:30 – Goblet squat sample of building up weight or reps

15:00 – Discouraging from doing the same exact workout day after day


About Dr. Antonio Gurule

Nutrition Building Blocks Broken Down

Background:

  • Father
  • Doctor of Chiropractic
  • Owner of Live LOUD
  • Personal Trainer & Health Coach

Anthony Gurule  00:00

Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, I’m your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My wife and I, we co-own Live LOUD Chiropractic and Coaching here in Lafayette, Colorado. We are just outside of Boulder, Colorado in Boulder County. And our mission is to help families. We want to help make families stronger, so that we can build a stronger community. We want to help guide you to the adventurous life that you and your family were meant for. And we do this through chiropractic and coaching. chiropractic, obviously being more of a hands on approach, more of a clinical conversation, clinical diagnostics, but the coaching aspect is really what we believe is, you know, the foundation of what our system methodology, whatever you want to call it is, because a lot of this comes around through just coaching suggestions and recommendations. also, you know, obviously within that comes into clinical prescriptions of certain things to eat or supplements, so on and so forth. But it’s coaching a lifestyle, it’s coaching, it’s coaching a philosophy and a foundation about how to live an active healthy life as an individual, and setting an example of a healthy active life for your family, for your immediate family, for your friends, and more importantly for your community. So stronger families to make a stronger community as a whole would be a win win, right? And that’s what we want to be able to do. we want to be able to help fill in the gaps in the holes that you’re maybe not getting from, from other roles and conditions.

 

Anthony Gurule  01:43

And today that’s in particular where we’re going to talk about. it’s going to be a little bit more of a shorter episode because this is more of a quote unquote, you know, just discussion around how to lay out a framework and a better understanding of how to work out or what exercises are safe or maybe not safe during pregnancy. This is a very, very common question that we get.

 

Anthony Gurule  02:12

My wife Nichelle has created a mini course that has some workout ideas, recommendations, and prescriptions than laid out into a workout. She guides and  educates other clinicians on how to broach this topic as a chiropractor, how to better serve prenatal patients through chiropractic care, but also exercise recommendations and prescriptions, having recommendations with other personal trainers within the community whether that’s CrossFit whether that’s Orange Theory, chatting with coaches and owners and saying hey, if you have prenatal patients and they’re having these types of symptoms, or this has happened, here’s some better recommendations, not modifications. We call them lateralizations–you’re just you know, you’re doing something something different or something else we you know, we borrow that term from Charlie Weingroff, who’s a physical therapist and strength conditioning coach. But it also and also doulas, right, doulas and midwives and OBs who are directly involved with the prenatal process from nearly conception all the way through, having this conversation. we know that exercise is important during pregnancy,

 

Anthony Gurule  03:19

There are so many different studies that talk about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy, not only for the mom, but also for baby, which is quite interesting. They’re seeing increased cognitive-what’s the word I’m looking for? Excuse me, their cognitive output as a as an as a child through as they age is actually better from moms that actually worked out during pregnancy.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:50

Now this is tough, right? How do you define working out or exercise? it’s different for everybody. But we want to, and we encourage that, and yet we’re sympathetic to the different stages of life, aches and pains, so on and so forth, which obviously would limit what you can do from an exercise perspective. So you know, it’s a bit of a gray area on determining what is working out? what is exercise? What are the physical guidelines or recommendations for pregnancy? And without getting into the like, nitty gritty detail of every single thing. And obviously, every potential situation, if you had this versus this, what could happen? we’re not gonna be able to do that. What we just want to lay out is what is what are we trying to accomplish here, and we want to encourage you to stay as physically active as possible.

 

Anthony Gurule  04:41

And one of the things that constantly comes up is, well, should you add something in that you have not already been doing? Let’s say for instance, someone just through the stages of life with work and kids or whatever that is, they were not able to work out as much before they got pregnant, but now that they’re pregnant, whether they have more time or they understand the importance of exercises during pregnancy, well, would we say, “Well, you haven’t been exercising, so you shouldn’t do too much.” No, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really make sense. Now, we would encourage not to do too much, there’s obviously, you know, a too far swinging the pendulum of the other way. But we wouldn’t say “no, don’t exercise because you weren’t doing something before,” we just have to find those first few stepping stones to help them start to gain some momentum. and help hold their hand, if you will, So that their technique and they feel confident about lifting, or how far they’re walking or whatever that is. And that’s an important topic, because a lot of times people want to add things in, but they weren’t quite ready or weren’t doing them before. And they then assume that they’re not able to do them at all. So you do have to take that in consideration, there is a ton that you can do, and that you can still add, even though you weren’t doing them prior to pregnancy.

 

Anthony Gurule  05:54

Now on the big questions is, is it safe? you know, outside to contact sports, or different things like that the majority of what you’re going to do is safe for pregnancy, right? Rock climbing, we have pregnant patients that have been rock climbing before, obviously, there’s a certain inherent risk with certain sports or activities. You know, you could fall off riding your bike, you could fall over running, right, so we’re not encouraging any of these by any means. We’re just kind of, you know, setting some suggestions, if you will. And you have to take into consideration.

 

Anthony Gurule  06:31

Now, there are certain things to consider when you’re talking about like weightlifting, and how heavy and the intensity that you’re doing. And if you’re doing Valsalva movements, which is essentially holding your breath to maintain a more rigid or stiff torso, as you’re seeing changes in blood volume and blood pressure, you know, you do have to take that in consideration. And that is again, of course a conversation with your provider that is managing your, your pregnancy, but we recommend Mama’s weight lift, or do resistance training. During pregnancy, again, we talked about about load management and the intensity and things like that, but you can still lift and do fairly intense things. And it’s a fairly as a you know, as a scale and a wide range during pregnancy and see a ton of benefit from that. Now, are we trying to hit one rep maxes and PRs during pregnancy, I mean, some would argue yes, but I would argue, why, that’s not really an accurate representation of what your strength is anyways. So you know, you do have to to kind of keep manipulating the numbers and the weights and the intensity and the sets and reps in order to do it. But weightlifting and resistance training is safe, and it is effective. Now, outside of that, there’s not a lot of unsafe things to do, again, outside of contact sports, or things that would elicit, you know, potential trauma to you or baby based on impact we’ve had, again, not our recommendations, but some have tried very just easy scheme, because they’re in the winter months, and they wanted to and they felt very confident about not falling. So you know, you have those types of things.

 

Anthony Gurule  08:16

Overall, again, we’re talking about movement. You need to move, and it’s good to get your heart rate up. And it’s good to breathe hard. So that doesn’t mean just because you’re pregnant, you can’t do HIIT training or circuit training or CrossFit or Orange Theory. But you do have to listen to your body and understand certain signs that would indicate that things might be too much, right? Now those are going to be different for everyone, but a lot of this comes down to you know, lightheadedness, you know, breathing too hard. Certain aches and pains within lower extremity, chest, abdomen, so on and so forth would be obviously like your more extreme ones. If you’re becoming pale or anything like that, I mean, again, these are the same criteria, though, that would be if someone else was working out or training too hard. So it’s realistically the same thing. It’s just that your threshold level for all those most likely have gone down. And depending on what type of an athlete you were before, you’re going to be maybe a little frustrated that you’re not able to do the things you were able to do previously, which makes sense. But if you’re someone who wasn’t exercising before, you’re probably going to be a little bit more hyper aware of that, of just feeling that shortness of breath or that uneasiness. So again, we’re not saying you have to push through that because we’re not trying to set yourself up for a strength and conditioning program to increase your metabolic capacity to increase your strength and conditioning during pregnancy. We’re trying to help you maintain a healthy active pregnancy.

 

Anthony Gurule  09:54

Now, walking. walking is great. but in general, we encourage you to do something above and beyond walking. Obviously, again, certain things would dictate that you would not be able to do so. And this is again, any exercise. Any exercise that you do during pregnancy needs to be consulted with and work through and have a conversation with the primary physician who is managing your pregnancy, whether that’s your nurse practitioner, your midwife or your OB or obstetrician, right. But we would encourage more than just walking. walking is fantastic, but that’s kind of like your baseline minimum, right? Just like our activities, or recommendation activity guidelines. We want a few days a week of where we’re kind of just doing this steady state getting our steps in, you know, kind of pushing ourselves, we’re huffing and puffing, but still just kind of at that conversational level, but you’re not really getting a lot of benefits outside of that.

 

Anthony Gurule  10:55

So if you’re just walking, high five. kudos. can you do something more? Can you do some bodyweight squats? Can you do some bodyweight, you know, good mornings? can you do some walking lunges? do you have a suspension training, we’re able to do some bodyweight rows? Do you have some bands that you can do some rows with? You know, there’s a lot that you can do that allows you to get a little bit more out of that. Now, again, this all comes back down to preferences of exercises that you like to do, because that’s gonna allow you to maintain the most consistency, but then also the intensity that you like to do. And we do encourage having an open mind and at least being willing to try some high intensity things that allow you to still get your heart rate up a little bit. And it’s okay to lift more than five or 10 pounds. And not saying that that is a bad thing. There’s programs out there where it’s all directed around that where it’s lighter weight, high rep, but I just don’t want individuals and mamas to feel like they’re not able to do more and or being ashamed because other people are just saying they should back off because they’re pregnant. “why would you need a lift that much?” It fits within your strength, and your comfort, and your wheelhouse, that is totally fine.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:05

Again, you if you’ve been doing that enough, you understand the risk reward ratio and having a conversation with your practitioner has driven us to kind of help navigate and guide as you start to get further through pregnancies, what things maybe we need to change or manipulate. But that’s totally fine. Now outside of that, the question around safe also comes up around core exercises. diastasis recti, pelvic floor strength, so on and so forth, we want to enhance the capability of understanding how to control tension within your abdominal wall and your pelvic floor through pregnancy, because the pressure is increasing due to baby taking up more space. But we’re not we’re not necessarily we’re not gaining more strength, right.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:45

And so what a lot of people assume it’s when we’ve seen this, is “I don’t want diastasis. So I’m doing more core work to prevent diastasis from happening.” diastasis recti will happen in 100% of moms, it’s estimated at the week 35 Everyone will have some form of it. Now it is technically not a quote unquote diagnosis, though, until 12 weeks postpartum, because it is a normal thing that everyone will get. So you can’t diagnose someone with something that everyone will get–doesn’t make sense, right? So after that, though, if you still have weakness or spacing issues, then we can have a you know, a stronger conversation about putting a diagnosis on that.

 

Anthony Gurule  13:26

But what we’re trying to enhance and help is what exercises are quote unquote, not safe versus unsafe, but adding too much pressure or tension into the abdominal wall or the pelvic floor and creating more laxity. again, as that pressure for as baby’s growing starts to put more pressure on the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall. If you’re doing more things that increases the pressure within the within the abdominal cavity that’s going to push on that separation even more and/or push on that pelvic floor even more, creating potential incontinence or prolapse issues and/or more bulging and doming within the abdominal wall stretching out that separation or that gap even further, potentially making the recovery process more challenging or slightly longer. I’m not saying that it will but potentially, so we do have to take that in consideration. So we go through activation exercise of the pelvic floor, of the abdominal wall so that you better understand how to control those pressure increases while you’re lifting or exercising so that you simply can stay at a management level.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:28

And that in turn, helps you get through pregnancy of understanding how to lift up your older kiddo, having to lift up dog food or anything like that. It’s just managing and controlling pressure. So there’s really not anything that I would say that safe or unsafe. Now, things that we would advise against for core exercises is sit ups or crunches. You know a lot of those things that create like hanging knee raises and different things like that during pregnancy. A lot of those things that create a lot of intra abdominal pressure and tension. and especially during a flex position, that tends to put a lot more pressure on the abdominal wall, the separation where diastasis will occur as well as the pelvic floor.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:09

So, you know, while we never say never, there’s definitely a category of things that we definitely urge against because the risk/reward benefit and again, risk not being “injured,” But risk of potentially putting more pressure and making the recovery process  on the other side harder, is not is not something that we find to be as advantageous. But you can still get the benefits of quote unquote, core exercises through full body movements such as goblet squats, such as deadlifts, you know, depending on the phase that you’re in, push ups, which are, you know, a dynamic plank. or being able to do a TRX row, which is a reverse plank as you’re just lifting yourself up. three point rows where you’re on, you know, two hands or doing like a row on a bench, where you’re in a tabletop position that’s adding anti rotation exercises. So there’s a ton that you can do that still highlights and isolates, the core isolates, sorry. that highlights and will emphasize core activation, but through a full body compound movement. And what’s great about that is during pregnancy, depending on your energy levels, it’s hard to do all the little isolated accessory and all these separate exercises as it is. So it’s kind of nice being able to combine everything, so you get more bang for your buck, especially if you’re a parent and you’re on and you’re on baby number two or three, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  16:31

So what exercises are safe for pregnant women to do? All are. reduce or eliminate for sure contact activities, different things like that. the increased risk activities of you know, trauma and things like that. Outside of that you’re managing pressure, I would definitely encourage reducing anything that’s heavy lifting, that’s, that’s requiring you to do Valsalva moves, you’re having to hold your breath for an extended period of time. that changes blood pressure, so on and so forth. But outside of that, Pregnancy is a completely safe time to do all exercises. we definitely as we highlighted, urge and encourage, you know, certain things over other ones just for you know, added bang for your buck or full body movements, so on and so forth. And that, but outside of that you are free to do what you want.

 

Anthony Gurule  17:19

If you want guidance, though, you know, there are there are trainers out there that work specifically with prenatal patients. we would love to be able to have that conversation with you if that’s something you want to bounce back or navigate. Because we do want to encourage as much as we can. A very, very active pregnancy through exercise working out or however you want to describe that. So if you found this beneficial, please like share, subscribe. if you’re pregnant, I hope you can utilize this and take some of the information for you and yourself. If you have anyone else you know… a relative a family member, a friend who is pregnant and they’re unsure they’ve been you know asking this question what things I don’t know what things I can do. I don’t know if it’s safe for baby share this video with them. We’d love to be able to provide a better frame of reference and or context to be able to ask better questions so that they can find the workout program  or the movements that work best for them during their pregnancy. Until next time guys live loud .if you’re currently pregnant, Congratulations, and we look forward to helping and serving in the future.


How to Choose Weight When Lifting or Training EP|71

Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado

Episode 71

How to Choose Weight When Lifting or Training

With Dr. Antonio Gurule


Want to increase the weight you lift? Or the amount of reps you do? Whatever your goals are, Dr. Antonio has guidance for you. 

Episode Highlights 

3:00 – “How do I know what weights to use? / How many reps to do?”

5:00 – Tough at 10 method

7:30 – Goblet squat sample of building up weight or reps 

15:00 – Discouraging from doing the same exact workout day after day


About Dr. Antonio Gurule

Nutrition Building Blocks Broken Down

Background:

  • Father
  • Doctor of Chiropractic
  • Owner of Live LOUD
  • Personal Trainer & Health Coach

Anthony Gurule  00:00

Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live Loud Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, your host of the Live Loud Life podcast. My wife and I, we own Live Loud Chiropractic and Coaching. We are based here in Lafayette, Colorado, which is in Boulder County and just north of Denver. So if you’re local, and you’re looking for some help, and you need a little bit of love, we’d love to help you guys out. If you’re not local, we do offer virtual consultations, where you know, we set up, set up a call where we help you workshop and work through some of the issues that you’re having.

 

Anthony Gurule  00:42

Our big philosophy is helping you and advocating for you to have an active role in your recovery. Many times we’re dealing with aches and pains or anything like that, it’s usually a more passive approach, meaning hey, you need to come in and get x y&z done, or I need to administer help you with these exercises. We believe that you need to understand how your body moves, how it operates, how to fuel it, so on and so forth. Now, yes, we are chiropractors, we do manual therapy, we do know the benefit of that. But if we can help feel fill the gap. For some of the information or knowledge that maybe you’re not getting from your other providers or practitioners, we’d love to do that oftentimes, these consultations are just you know, it’s almost as like a sounding board session, you we want to listen and hear what your goals are, and we kind of hear where you’re at, and we help you kind of just navigate and make some suggestions on how to get there. And that’s where we’re going with today.

 

Anthony Gurule  01:40

So today, one of the things that we have conversations around a lot is working out and training, right? This is exercise, fitness, you know, whatever you want to call it. This is obviously a big component of our life. And as you’ll commonly hear me say there’s seasons of life where things go up and down. And you know, it gets crazy, you know, from time to time depending what’s going on. But ultimately, we know and most people know that this is important. And we know that most people are trying to you know to accomplish this. And who this is for is, this is for a lot of people who are doing boot camps and different classes, especially online classes at home, or just you working out on your own, if you’re going to, you know, and this is more directed towards like the typical CrossFit class, right, their program is a lot more dialed in, right, where they’re kind of helping you navigate, hey, during this cycle, you know, we’re going to be building weights and the the rep schemes of the sets and reps of going up and down are obviously a lot more calculated and dialed. not to say that the boot camps and other ones are not, I’m not saying that. But for many of you, you’re working out at home, and it’s kind of like, Hey, I’ve been doing this workout for like the last five to 10 years. And it’s the same thing, it’s the same weight, it’s the same, right? And it could be providing everything that you need. So there’s nothing wrong with that. But one of the questions that we get is like, Well, how do I know like how much weight to use, or how many sets and reps to use? And so excuse me, I’m going to very, very briefly and kind of superficially give some of those recommendations.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:26

Now. There is a definite art and science to resistance training and weightlifting and everything that we’re talking about here. And if that’s you, and you’re interested in that this is not this is again, more of a superficial level. There’s definitely a ton of resources out there to to get that knowledge and information. But we kind of wanted to help you navigate like this overarching view, if you will.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:53

So when you’re looking at it, and this is not this is not going into program, or sorry, exercise selection and philosophy. We’re talking about adding weights, so on and so forth. And we’ll probably try to use like, you know, some specifics to just to create a little bit of context. But that being said, what we’re looking at here is how do you how to how do you know when we’re going to what weight to do? Now, If that’s your question, that usually indicates to us that the experience that you have weightlifting is probably a little bit less, and that’s fine. I’m not It’s not meant to be hurtful or anything but having that question indicates that we have not done a lot of lifting or time to know you know, what kind of how to how to manipulate and end that. and we were all there at some point. And finally, I don’t know do I go heavier? Do I not go heavier? What weight do I use?

 

Anthony Gurule  04:51

We try to start with Well, hey first, first and foremost, do you know how to do the movement? that’s important, right? Because if your know how to do the movement well and appropriately then adding weight’s not gonna be a concern. If you don’t know or you’re unsure, that’s where you would get a consultation, a trainer, whatever that is to determine how to do the movement appropriately so that we can add more load. Because if we’re adding more load, and we don’t know what we’re doing, that could be a recipe for possible injury. But most people start off with which again, for you, if listening to this, most people start off with something like three sets of 10, which is great, it’s a great starting point, really easy to understand and know.

 

Anthony Gurule  05:33

So what weight would you choose? Well, you know, if this is you’re just kind of coming back into something, obviously, you’re gonna err on the lighter side and just kind of go through the motions, which is fine. If you’ve been doing it for a while. And now you’re kind of at this point, hey, I want to try to add a little bit more. We want to look at tough at 10. Right? What Wait, could you do that feels tough at that 10th Rep? Now, not impossible, tough at 10 might be maybe three, maybe five reps in reserve, meaning after that 10th Rep, You only have a few reps in reserve. That’s a pretty good starting point to start eliciting some adaptation for strength, which is the reason why we’re doing weightlifting, right? So tough at 10 is a is a nice little starting point to determine what to do now you have a framework. Now you kind of have like a baseline. Right? Okay, cool.

 

Anthony Gurule  06:26

Well, we’ll just use an example. Let’s say we’re doing goblet squats, right? 25 pounds is tough at 10. And that’s, that’s, that’s now you have no you have a set and rep scheme, and you have a weight. And now we can play around with these numbers right? Now, ultimately, too we have to look back at what our goals are. Right? Again, in this situation? If this question is been asked more times than not, most people are saying I want to get a little bit stronger, I want to feel better. And I want to maintain some mobility, I want to tone up maybe a little bit, add a little muscle, lose a little fat, all those types of things right. Now, again, what’s great is if you are asking these questions, and we maybe weren’t doing as much before, anything we do will help you reach those goals. If you have been doing the exact same thing for years. Well, anything we do differently will help you achieve those goals. Because we’re now mixing it up. Right? We’re, we’re forcing the body to change and adapt because we’ve created this novel stimulus that it’s not used to and it will start to change, right. And that’s part of what we’re trying to do is add some things, take some things away, go a little heavier, go a little lighter.

 

Anthony Gurule  07:38

It’s this constant variable of kind of manipulations that really starts to challenge the body multiple different ways. And that’s the beauty behind it. Right?

 

Anthony Gurule  07:48

So coming back and trying again, stay as somewhat specific as we can that make things complicated, right? We have a goblet squat, we have three sets of 10. And we got 25 pounds, okay, so we’re going to be running that for, you know, maybe a couple of one to two weeks, a couple times a week, so on and so forth. So now that you’re starting to feel you’re like, Okay, well, 25 pounds, starting to feel a little easier, starting to feel a little bit lighter, wonderful, we can start to take that up a little bit, right, let’s go. If you’re doing dumbbells and go to 27 and a half, you can go to 30 pounds, okay? Now, what most do in this situation, we remain at three sets of 10 and just start adding more weight. Not wrong, but what you’re going to find is you’re going to very quickly cap out, right, because you’re doing the exact same amount of volume with heavier loads. And that’s much harder for your body to adapt and handle. So what we, you know, typically suggest trying as you’re doing this, and it really just depends on the, the, how big of a weight jump, you know, you make. Let’s say for instance, you went from 25 to 35, three sets of 10. With that, what’s quick math on that, right? It’s, it’s a nearly a third, it’s a little bit more than like a third 30, 33% increase, it’s more than a third of an increase. That’s a big jump in weight, and you’re doing the exact same three sets of 10. Now, being that it’s still kind of in a lighter load, if you will, depending on the person, obviously, you might be able to accomplish that fine, but for someone else, that might just be way too much.

 

Anthony Gurule  09:28

But yet that next jump up if they only had that 25 to 35 upon options, what do you do? Well, you manipulate the sets and reps, right? So we were doing three sets of 10. If 35 If the 10 pound jump is is really really heavy and big. But yet you can do some well, we might say hey, let’s start three sets of three. So we significantly dropped down how many reps you’re doing from 10 to three, which allows you to do the heavier weight right the heavier weight to be able to complete it with proficiency and safety, so on and so forth. So that would be a valid option to allow you to choose a heavier weight, we’re just going to start to manipulate the sets and reps.

 

Anthony Gurule  10:11

Now, what you could also see… how this could also play out is let’s say for instance, you have like a medium, heavy, and light day, throughout the week. So we’re doing goblet squat three days a week, we have a medium day, a heavy day, and a light day. So you know, your heavy might be 35 pounds, your medium might be 25 pounds. And then your light might be, let’s just say 15 pounds, right.

 

Anthony Gurule  10:32

So you might be doing like five sets of 10 for the light, three sets of 10 with a medium and three sets of three with the heavy, right, three sets of three reps. So you’ll see how the volume for each one of those obviously changes based on the weight that you’re using. Now, again, all this kind of comes has come back to the goals, but based on the goals that we set, right, get stronger, add some muscle, lose some fat, tone up a little bit, maintain mobility, that would work really well for what that person is trying to accomplish. without a lot of complexity, right. And it allows you to stay consistent. And consistency really is your key when you’re looking back for completing all these things.

 

Anthony Gurule  11:16

What helps you complete the most amount of work throughout the week, consistently, week after week, month after month, year after year, right? While still mixing it up. Because again, we’re trying to get out of the mode of hey, I’ve been doing, you know the exact same workout where I hit shoulders, back legs, so on and so forth. I you know, I got my weights dialed in, I do three sets, three sets of 10 of everything. And or, you know, honestly, for most people, it’s, I just, I just go until I can’t do anymore, I blast it and then I just cycled through so on and so forth. Nothing wrong with that, you know, different goals, perhaps, but just that’s what we’re trying to say. So now, again, that was kind of that first initial thing to at least get us a starting point of how to add weight and change weights. So the three sets of 10 or tough at tens, a really good place to start. This could be no different. If we’re talking about pressing, if we’re talking about like TRX rows. If we’re talking about deadlifts, lunges, you know, that’s a good good place to start.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:16

Now, as a side note, when we’re talking about certain levels of strength, right, we’re talking about getting stronger, there’s there’s different elements of strength that I want you to kind of take in consideration, because when you look at like, let’s say, like a bodybuilder, obviously strong. And they’re oftentimes doing these failure sets, you know, high rep, lighter weights, where you’re going to a lot of pomp, and a lot of fatigue, to elicit a certain adaptation for hypertrophy and growth, and also strength. But you can’t do that with heavy weights, right. So the heavier weights, as we were saying, We’re doing three sets of three. So when you’re looking at strength development, which will come with some muscle building and hypertrophy, but a lot of that strength development is from a neural component, that neuro muscular relationship is really being enhanced through that. And from a fatigue standpoint, to elicit being stronger, you have to lift heavier weights. And in doing so you can’t do those three to five sets of 10+, 10 12,15 reps, or whatever it is. you’re more likely going to be staying in, you know, three, maybe five sets with three to no more than really five reps. So a five by five set, that’s still 25 total reps of work. And you’ll be able to do a heavy weight with that. And it really just kind of depends on how its programming, you know, put into play with how much rest. But when oftentimes, when you’re looking at doing like deadlifts, and squats, and these bigger compound movements, where you’re adding a ton of weight, and you’re trying to lift heavier weight, right, you might only be doing no more than 10 total reps.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:04

So that might be a three by three, which is nine reps, five by two, which is 10 reps, right? Or you could just go 10 sets of one, you see what we’re saying here? But if you’re if you’re doing that, without a heavy enough weight, you’re not going to really most likely be eliciting the adaptation that you’re looking for.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:23

So again, coming back to the person here listening to this and unsure that’s probably not going to be where you’re at. But notice it did come into play when we were talking about having a light, medium and heavy day. Right?  Because again, often times we’re not hitting that kind of edge and we’re seeing that the comfortable weight which is which is completely valid and fine if you’re newer and you’re still trying to just figure out exercise technique and everything like that. But if you’re the person who’s been doing this, and I got, obviously someone in mind here, been doing the exact same workout for 10 years and nothing’s changed, you’ve increased weight, obviously, when we’re when we’re mixing it up here, going heavier, heavier than what you were doing, we’re going to drop those sets and reps to not hurt the body and overstress it so on and so forth.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:15

So, congratulations, taking this next step of trying to figure out, hey, what do I need to do to get stronger? Well, we know we need to lift some weights. I don’t I don’t, I don’t know what movements, I don’t know how many sets, I don’t know how many reps, I don’t know what weight to choose. So you got to start playing around. Now I will add, getting a trainer, getting a coach, doing a consultation, something that helps you get a starting point. it helps with a lot of the kind of uncertainty and starting off. And that might just save you some time and effort. Not that you have to go with someone that has like a very, very long program. But oftentimes just finding someone who’s like, hey, I need you to help me just kind of get going. That’s a great place to start. And then you can kind of take off from there.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:59

I hope this was helpful. This is again, the approach that I took years ago, as I was starting to get into weightlifting. I had some people that I was helping out. I was I was following someone, that’s also super beneficial. Have a buddy, a buddy who’s been doing it. But you know, I like exploring and trying to learn things on my own so I’d watch videos on technique, exercise selection, so on and so forth. I practice the movement, film myself, watch those videos side to side, compare and see how you know it’s playing and working out, and then and then practice the movements, see if I’m able to lift more? did I create any injuries or sore spots where it shouldn’t be? And then I would just kind of play with those.

 

Anthony Gurule  16:37

And then as I started to learn more and more, then I started to change the weights and the weights and the rep schemes based on my goals, based on all the research that’s out there on exercise Science, right. there’s a lot of people put a ton of effort in on how to elicit the best response that you want. But again, if you’re the at home Doer who’s just looking to maintain this this level of health and fitness and get a little stronge,r little tones, a little bit of fat, this is a way to do it, push, pull, hinge, squat, carry. you know, add some light days at some medium days, add some heavy days, get outside walk, drink water. you know, it doesn’t take rocket science here.

 

Anthony Gurule  17:21

But oftentimes that first hurdle of exercise or sorry, choosing the right weight in the rep scheme can seem very daunting if you have not done a lot of it. So hopefully this helps you get kick started a little bit and at least point you in the right direction to hopefully get some momentum, but do not hesitate to reach out for help it it really, it really saves you a lot of time, money and effort in the long run, just getting a little bit of guidance and direction if you feel like you keep hitting these roadblocks, or speed bumps that are that are significantly slowing you down.

 

Anthony Gurule  17:52

So happy lifting. Thanks for tuning in guys. Please make sure to like, share, and subscribe if you’re diggin the content. And if you have any special requests for topics to chat about, or any exercises you want us to workshop or break down or go through we’d love to love to hear that so we can make this as applicable to you and the things that you have going on. So till next time, guys, live loud.


Live Loud Chiropractic

Enjoying Results and Not Just The Process EP|70

Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado

Episode 70

EP|70 Enjoying Results and Not Just The Process

With Dr. Antonio Gurule


Enjoy RESULTS and not just the Process

We have all heard “love the process” or Focus on the process.”

Yes the process is important and I encourage this mentality as well, but if you are not seeing results, then the process might not be the right one.

How do you know if you are not also screening results…

Connect With Dr. Antonio and the Live LOUD team:

hello@liveloudlife.com

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Address: Live Loud Chiropractic and Coaching Top Chiropractor and Physical Therapy in Lafayette Colorado Serving Boulder County Boulder, Longmont, Louisville, Erie, Broomfield, and Arvada Colorado


About Dr. Antonio Gurule

Nutrition Building Blocks Broken Down

Background:

  • Father
  • Doctor of Chiropractic
  • Owner of Live LOUD
  • Personal Trainer & Health Coach

Anthony Gurule  00:00

Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, I’m your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My wife and I, we co-own Live LOUD Chiropractic and Coaching here in Lafayette, Colorado. We are just outside of Boulder, Colorado in Boulder County. And our mission is to help families. We want to help make families stronger, so that we can build a stronger community. We want to help guide you to the adventurous life that you and your family were meant for. And we do this through chiropractic and coaching. chiropractic, obviously being more of a hands on approach, more of a clinical conversation, clinical diagnostics, but the coaching aspect is really what we believe is, you know, the foundation of what our system methodology, whatever you want to call it is, because a lot of this comes around through just coaching suggestions and recommendations. also, you know, obviously within that comes into clinical prescriptions of certain things to eat or supplements, so on and so forth. But it’s coaching a lifestyle, it’s coaching, it’s coaching a philosophy and a foundation about how to live an active healthy life as an individual, and setting an example of a healthy active life for your family, for your immediate family, for your friends, and more importantly for your community. So stronger families to make a stronger community as a whole would be a win win, right? And that’s what we want to be able to do. we want to be able to help fill in the gaps in the holes that you’re maybe not getting from, from other roles and conditions.

 

Anthony Gurule  01:43

And today that’s in particular where we’re going to talk about. it’s going to be a little bit more of a shorter episode because this is more of a quote unquote, you know, just discussion around how to lay out a framework and a better understanding of how to work out or what exercises are safe or maybe not safe during pregnancy. This is a very, very common question that we get.

 

Anthony Gurule  02:12

My wife Nichelle has created a mini course that has some workout ideas, recommendations, and prescriptions than laid out into a workout. She guides and  educates other clinicians on how to broach this topic as a chiropractor, how to better serve prenatal patients through chiropractic care, but also exercise recommendations and prescriptions, having recommendations with other personal trainers within the community whether that’s CrossFit whether that’s Orange Theory, chatting with coaches and owners and saying hey, if you have prenatal patients and they’re having these types of symptoms, or this has happened, here’s some better recommendations, not modifications. We call them lateralizations–you’re just you know, you’re doing something something different or something else we you know, we borrow that term from Charlie Weingroff, who’s a physical therapist and strength conditioning coach. But it also and also doulas, right, doulas and midwives and OBs who are directly involved with the prenatal process from nearly conception all the way through, having this conversation. we know that exercise is important during pregnancy,

 

Anthony Gurule  03:19

There are so many different studies that talk about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy, not only for the mom, but also for baby, which is quite interesting. They’re seeing increased cognitive-what’s the word I’m looking for? Excuse me, their cognitive output as a as an as a child through as they age is actually better from moms that actually worked out during pregnancy.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:50

Now this is tough, right? How do you define working out or exercise? it’s different for everybody. But we want to, and we encourage that, and yet we’re sympathetic to the different stages of life, aches and pains, so on and so forth, which obviously would limit what you can do from an exercise perspective. So you know, it’s a bit of a gray area on determining what is working out? what is exercise? What are the physical guidelines or recommendations for pregnancy? And without getting into the like, nitty gritty detail of every single thing. And obviously, every potential situation, if you had this versus this, what could happen? we’re not gonna be able to do that. What we just want to lay out is what is what are we trying to accomplish here, and we want to encourage you to stay as physically active as possible.

 

Anthony Gurule  04:41

And one of the things that constantly comes up is, well, should you add something in that you have not already been doing? Let’s say for instance, someone just through the stages of life with work and kids or whatever that is, they were not able to work out as much before they got pregnant, but now that they’re pregnant, whether they have more time or they understand the importance of exercises during pregnancy, well, would we say, “Well, you haven’t been exercising, so you shouldn’t do too much.” No, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really make sense. Now, we would encourage not to do too much, there’s obviously, you know, a too far swinging the pendulum of the other way. But we wouldn’t say “no, don’t exercise because you weren’t doing something before,” we just have to find those first few stepping stones to help them start to gain some momentum. and help hold their hand, if you will, So that their technique and they feel confident about lifting, or how far they’re walking or whatever that is. And that’s an important topic, because a lot of times people want to add things in, but they weren’t quite ready or weren’t doing them before. And they then assume that they’re not able to do them at all. So you do have to take that in consideration, there is a ton that you can do, and that you can still add, even though you weren’t doing them prior to pregnancy.

 

Anthony Gurule  05:54

Now on the big questions is, is it safe? you know, outside to contact sports, or different things like that the majority of what you’re going to do is safe for pregnancy, right? Rock climbing, we have pregnant patients that have been rock climbing before, obviously, there’s a certain inherent risk with certain sports or activities. You know, you could fall off riding your bike, you could fall over running, right, so we’re not encouraging any of these by any means. We’re just kind of, you know, setting some suggestions, if you will. And you have to take into consideration.

 

Anthony Gurule  06:31

Now, there are certain things to consider when you’re talking about like weightlifting, and how heavy and the intensity that you’re doing. And if you’re doing Valsalva movements, which is essentially holding your breath to maintain a more rigid or stiff torso, as you’re seeing changes in blood volume and blood pressure, you know, you do have to take that in consideration. And that is again, of course a conversation with your provider that is managing your, your pregnancy, but we recommend Mama’s weight lift, or do resistance training. During pregnancy, again, we talked about about load management and the intensity and things like that, but you can still lift and do fairly intense things. And it’s a fairly as a you know, as a scale and a wide range during pregnancy and see a ton of benefit from that. Now, are we trying to hit one rep maxes and PRs during pregnancy, I mean, some would argue yes, but I would argue, why, that’s not really an accurate representation of what your strength is anyways. So you know, you do have to to kind of keep manipulating the numbers and the weights and the intensity and the sets and reps in order to do it. But weightlifting and resistance training is safe, and it is effective. Now, outside of that, there’s not a lot of unsafe things to do, again, outside of contact sports, or things that would elicit, you know, potential trauma to you or baby based on impact we’ve had, again, not our recommendations, but some have tried very just easy scheme, because they’re in the winter months, and they wanted to and they felt very confident about not falling. So you know, you have those types of things.

 

Anthony Gurule  08:16

Overall, again, we’re talking about movement. You need to move, and it’s good to get your heart rate up. And it’s good to breathe hard. So that doesn’t mean just because you’re pregnant, you can’t do HIIT training or circuit training or CrossFit or Orange Theory. But you do have to listen to your body and understand certain signs that would indicate that things might be too much, right? Now those are going to be different for everyone, but a lot of this comes down to you know, lightheadedness, you know, breathing too hard. Certain aches and pains within lower extremity, chest, abdomen, so on and so forth would be obviously like your more extreme ones. If you’re becoming pale or anything like that, I mean, again, these are the same criteria, though, that would be if someone else was working out or training too hard. So it’s realistically the same thing. It’s just that your threshold level for all those most likely have gone down. And depending on what type of an athlete you were before, you’re going to be maybe a little frustrated that you’re not able to do the things you were able to do previously, which makes sense. But if you’re someone who wasn’t exercising before, you’re probably going to be a little bit more hyper aware of that, of just feeling that shortness of breath or that uneasiness. So again, we’re not saying you have to push through that because we’re not trying to set yourself up for a strength and conditioning program to increase your metabolic capacity to increase your strength and conditioning during pregnancy. We’re trying to help you maintain a healthy active pregnancy.

 

Anthony Gurule  09:54

Now, walking. walking is great. but in general, we encourage you to do something above and beyond walking. Obviously, again, certain things would dictate that you would not be able to do so. And this is again, any exercise. Any exercise that you do during pregnancy needs to be consulted with and work through and have a conversation with the primary physician who is managing your pregnancy, whether that’s your nurse practitioner, your midwife or your OB or obstetrician, right. But we would encourage more than just walking. walking is fantastic, but that’s kind of like your baseline minimum, right? Just like our activities, or recommendation activity guidelines. We want a few days a week of where we’re kind of just doing this steady state getting our steps in, you know, kind of pushing ourselves, we’re huffing and puffing, but still just kind of at that conversational level, but you’re not really getting a lot of benefits outside of that.

 

Anthony Gurule  10:55

So if you’re just walking, high five. kudos. can you do something more? Can you do some bodyweight squats? Can you do some bodyweight, you know, good mornings? can you do some walking lunges? do you have a suspension training, we’re able to do some bodyweight rows? Do you have some bands that you can do some rows with? You know, there’s a lot that you can do that allows you to get a little bit more out of that. Now, again, this all comes back down to preferences of exercises that you like to do, because that’s gonna allow you to maintain the most consistency, but then also the intensity that you like to do. And we do encourage having an open mind and at least being willing to try some high intensity things that allow you to still get your heart rate up a little bit. And it’s okay to lift more than five or 10 pounds. And not saying that that is a bad thing. There’s programs out there where it’s all directed around that where it’s lighter weight, high rep, but I just don’t want individuals and mamas to feel like they’re not able to do more and or being ashamed because other people are just saying they should back off because they’re pregnant. “why would you need a lift that much?” It fits within your strength, and your comfort, and your wheelhouse, that is totally fine.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:05

Again, you if you’ve been doing that enough, you understand the risk reward ratio and having a conversation with your practitioner has driven us to kind of help navigate and guide as you start to get further through pregnancies, what things maybe we need to change or manipulate. But that’s totally fine. Now outside of that, the question around safe also comes up around core exercises. diastasis recti, pelvic floor strength, so on and so forth, we want to enhance the capability of understanding how to control tension within your abdominal wall and your pelvic floor through pregnancy, because the pressure is increasing due to baby taking up more space. But we’re not we’re not necessarily we’re not gaining more strength, right.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:45

And so what a lot of people assume it’s when we’ve seen this, is “I don’t want diastasis. So I’m doing more core work to prevent diastasis from happening.” diastasis recti will happen in 100% of moms, it’s estimated at the week 35 Everyone will have some form of it. Now it is technically not a quote unquote diagnosis, though, until 12 weeks postpartum, because it is a normal thing that everyone will get. So you can’t diagnose someone with something that everyone will get–doesn’t make sense, right? So after that, though, if you still have weakness or spacing issues, then we can have a you know, a stronger conversation about putting a diagnosis on that.

 

Anthony Gurule  13:26

But what we’re trying to enhance and help is what exercises are quote unquote, not safe versus unsafe, but adding too much pressure or tension into the abdominal wall or the pelvic floor and creating more laxity. again, as that pressure for as baby’s growing starts to put more pressure on the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall. If you’re doing more things that increases the pressure within the within the abdominal cavity that’s going to push on that separation even more and/or push on that pelvic floor even more, creating potential incontinence or prolapse issues and/or more bulging and doming within the abdominal wall stretching out that separation or that gap even further, potentially making the recovery process more challenging or slightly longer. I’m not saying that it will but potentially, so we do have to take that in consideration. So we go through activation exercise of the pelvic floor, of the abdominal wall so that you better understand how to control those pressure increases while you’re lifting or exercising so that you simply can stay at a management level.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:28

And that in turn, helps you get through pregnancy of understanding how to lift up your older kiddo, having to lift up dog food or anything like that. It’s just managing and controlling pressure. So there’s really not anything that I would say that safe or unsafe. Now, things that we would advise against for core exercises is sit ups or crunches. You know a lot of those things that create like hanging knee raises and different things like that during pregnancy. A lot of those things that create a lot of intra abdominal pressure and tension. and especially during a flex position, that tends to put a lot more pressure on the abdominal wall, the separation where diastasis will occur as well as the pelvic floor.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:09

So, you know, while we never say never, there’s definitely a category of things that we definitely urge against because the risk/reward benefit and again, risk not being “injured,” But risk of potentially putting more pressure and making the recovery process  on the other side harder, is not is not something that we find to be as advantageous. But you can still get the benefits of quote unquote, core exercises through full body movements such as goblet squats, such as deadlifts, you know, depending on the phase that you’re in, push ups, which are, you know, a dynamic plank. or being able to do a TRX row, which is a reverse plank as you’re just lifting yourself up. three point rows where you’re on, you know, two hands or doing like a row on a bench, where you’re in a tabletop position that’s adding anti rotation exercises. So there’s a ton that you can do that still highlights and isolates, the core isolates, sorry. that highlights and will emphasize core activation, but through a full body compound movement. And what’s great about that is during pregnancy, depending on your energy levels, it’s hard to do all the little isolated accessory and all these separate exercises as it is. So it’s kind of nice being able to combine everything, so you get more bang for your buck, especially if you’re a parent and you’re on and you’re on baby number two or three, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  16:31

So what exercises are safe for pregnant women to do? All are. reduce or eliminate for sure contact activities, different things like that. the increased risk activities of you know, trauma and things like that. Outside of that you’re managing pressure, I would definitely encourage reducing anything that’s heavy lifting, that’s, that’s requiring you to do Valsalva moves, you’re having to hold your breath for an extended period of time. that changes blood pressure, so on and so forth. But outside of that, Pregnancy is a completely safe time to do all exercises. we definitely as we highlighted, urge and encourage, you know, certain things over other ones just for you know, added bang for your buck or full body movements, so on and so forth. And that, but outside of that you are free to do what you want.

 

Anthony Gurule  17:19

If you want guidance, though, you know, there are there are trainers out there that work specifically with prenatal patients. we would love to be able to have that conversation with you if that’s something you want to bounce back or navigate. Because we do want to encourage as much as we can. A very, very active pregnancy through exercise working out or however you want to describe that. So if you found this beneficial, please like share, subscribe. if you’re pregnant, I hope you can utilize this and take some of the information for you and yourself. If you have anyone else you know… a relative a family member, a friend who is pregnant and they’re unsure they’ve been you know asking this question what things I don’t know what things I can do. I don’t know if it’s safe for baby share this video with them. We’d love to be able to provide a better frame of reference and or context to be able to ask better questions so that they can find the workout program  or the movements that work best for them during their pregnancy. Until next time guys live loud .if you’re currently pregnant, Congratulations, and we look forward to helping and serving in the future.


Over Correcting & Cueing Exercises EP|69

Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado

Episode 69

Over Correcting & Cueing Exercises

With Dr. Antonio Gurule


Trying to heal a tweak or injury? Dr. Antonio speaks about over correcting, muscle activation, movement patterns in this week’s episode of the Live Loud Life Podcast.

 

Episode Highlights

3:00 – Example of tennis playing patient overcorrecting back movements

7:00 – Reestablishing a better movement pattern 

8:30 – Importance of filming your movements – Getting a coach’s eye 

13:00 – Activation of muscles

18:00 – Muscle isolation 


About Dr. Antonio Gurule

Nutrition Building Blocks Broken Down

Background:

  • Father
  • Doctor of Chiropractic
  • Owner of Live LOUD
  • Personal Trainer & Health Coach

Anthony Gurule  00:00

Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live Loud Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, your host of the Live Loud Life podcast, I co-own Live Loud Chiropractic and Coaching with my wife, Dr. Nichelle, here in Lafayette, Colorado. We’ve been here for a number of years now. And our big focus and goal is to help guide you to the adventurous life that you are meant for, we believe families deserve more from their health care providers. And if we can create stronger families, we can create a stronger community at home. And that’s what we’re here hopefully, hopefully helping you to do. We see and help from a number of different issues, and ages from, you know, newborns all the way up to grandparents and older populations that are trying to get stronger, that are trying to move better, that are trying to deal with maybe some arthritic pain, so on and so forth. So if you’re wanting to move better, feel stronger, and decrease your pain, hopefully, we can help you do that.

 

Anthony Gurule  01:09

Now, that being said, today, what we’re going to talk about. we this is a spin off of one of the previous episodes, which I think will air a week or two before this. But this was a direct reflection as to a patient interaction that I just had. So you know, we’re, we’re having this conversation. And I was like, we got to talk about this, I gotta put something down about this. And this goes along with the corrective exercises and the accessory exercises that we talked about, like, as I mentioned in that previous episode, which is good, right? There’s good. There’s benefit, especially when you’re injured, or dealing with something to be able to isolate and work on some of our weaknesses and imbalances.

 

Anthony Gurule  01:53

Now, what we’re going to talk about today, though, is the analysis by paralysis of over calculating, and over emphasizing certain nuances about these exercises, and that getting you wrapped up and hung up without progressing. And, in particular, and I do this to some degree, so I’m going to give you kind of like both sides. And again, what the answer always comes down to is context, finding the right thing, for the right person, at the right time. And oftentimes, I’ll make an, you know, a clinical assess or a clinical judgment. And I’ll and I’ll suggest something and we’ll you know, you got it, see how it works, right, you gotta, you gotta actually do and see how it plays out. And sometimes I’m wrong. And, you know, other times, we just, hey, we’re like, hey, we were we were right there, we just need to, we just need to step to the side a little bit and do it this way, or something like that. As Charlie Ryan Groff calls it a lateralization, right, sometimes you just gotta move to the side. So we’re doing we’re on the right path, we’re on the right track, we just need to step sidestep and do it this way for a little bit, and then we can keep kind of going forward. And so this particular individual– racquet player, right, tennis, pickleball, you know, those types of things, and was dealing with some hip issues, which is not uncommon for those types of sports, because there’s so much decelaration in loading and rebounding that is very challenging on the hips. And that as a side note is something for because pickleball seems to be a very popular sport in kind of like my parents age, not that it is only for that but if you don’t have the conditioning to be able to do that last description of deceleration and rebounding so on so forth, it can it can be it could be potentially problematic.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:49

But anyway, so hips up, but then was also dealing with some flexion intolerant low back kind of like, you know, the classic stuff that we always see that usually is a result of kind of getting hung up on something doing too much too soon, too fast, so on and so forth. Nothing Nothing sinister by any means. But yet flexion being oftentimes demonized of hey, don’t flex when you’re doing something, was the was the over calculation or analysis paralysis that he was getting hung up on. And again, so here’s the other side, I do recommend not flexing the lower back for many patients. But normally this is when I’m seeing someone that is very acute, and flexion is something that really sets them off. So it’s one of those things like hey, affliction sets you off. Wouldn’t it be prudent and just not flex for a little bit so that we can down regulate and desensitize everything in in having the conversation about we will at some point and we need to flex is fine. But if you’re going to pick up your kid or unload the dishwasher or something like that, it might feel a little bit better if you hinge more or squat more and so that it’s more in the hips and the knees and the legs.

 

Anthony Gurule  05:05

But for this individual, I’m trying to just reestablish like new hinging patterns. The over calculation on what should be happening was getting them hung up. And he was overcorrecting. So he was feeling, he’s like when I’m just basic hip hinging, basic hip hinging, Good morning type of movement, it was eliciting back pain for him, and we’re watching it. And I was like, I really don’t quite understand what’s causing pain here. Because the typical flexion intolerant and pain stuff that he was describing, he was not flexing at all. And in turn, he was actually hyper extending. So as he was going through the motion, as he was hinging, he was being so cautious about not rounding or slumping his lower back that he was just overarching. So that was actually in turn trading a lot of compressive forces on the lower back.

 

Anthony Gurule  06:00

But also those muscles were just like, locked in. And that was more of the pain that he was experiencing, it’s just those muscle contractions were just so intense and locked in, that was actually eliciting his pain. And so ultimately, this came down to is just like he was kind of, you know, he was getting some of this, some of these exercises from a PT and was just looking for a different perspective, maybe a little bit of more manual adjustments and things like that, interestingly enough, we haven’t really done much of that, because we sidetracked to the movement issues, if you want to call it. and what we started peeling off is, you know, I understand we’re worried about flexion.

 

Anthony Gurule  06:46

But this is no longer an acute or subacute thing. And when you’re talking about chronic flexion, intolerant, lower back pain, like you got to start flexing and not being worried about that micro loading.

 

Anthony Gurule  06:58

But what we wanted to do is still establish the movement pattern. So we changed, we changed the description, or we changed the goal, better yet.

 

Anthony Gurule  07:08

The goal previously was don’t round your back. And so when he heard that, I was like, Okay, well, if I don’t, if I don’t want to round my back, I might as well just hyperextend and go the opposite way.

 

Anthony Gurule  07:17

And that was creating a lot of, again, compressive force and low back and a ton of muscle tension that was then eliciting pain because the muscles were just just rockhard locked in. And so well how do we get him to hinge then and squat and move without the overcorrection of hyperextension?

 

Anthony Gurule  07:34

Well, we had to change the description of what I wanted him to actually do, accomplish, and or in this case, feel. Because the question commonly is when they get home, even if you send a video or description is like,

 

Anthony Gurule  07:46

Well, how do I know if I’m doing it Right? Well, how does it feel? Right?

 

Anthony Gurule  07:50

Are you are you able to initiate the feeling that we’re going for? And what I always suggest, which is for any of you out here, learning a new movement or anything like that, is you do two things, you do the movement and you internalize the feeling right? What areas of my body are working?

 

Anthony Gurule  08:09

Do I feel balanced? Do I feel in control. You know, if you’re working with a great practitioner, they’re going to kind of help you with these things. But don’t chase activation, this is the second part of this that we’re going to talk about in a moment here. Don’t always choose activation.

 

Anthony Gurule  08:28

But then what I want you to do is I want you to film yourself, set your phone up, film yourself doing it. So you have now this external frame of reference, you have the Coach’s Eye.

 

Anthony Gurule  08:38

So you can then immediately look at the film or the video, replay it and look and say okay, well, this is how it felt. And this is how it looked. Right.

 

Anthony Gurule  08:51

So now you have this other piece of information that is very vital to you putting those two pieces together and formulating the best new movement pattern that you can. And that is a fantastic way of learning newer movements and practicing things to get to accelerate that process if you will.

 

Anthony Gurule  09:12

Now, the so the, so sorry, we’re gonna get to the activation. So what we were focusing on is, okay when we want a hinge, right, so how can I help you hinge better?

 

Anthony Gurule  09:24

and start to look at what we want for the hinge. And so we talked about balance. All we said was, we talked about the foot tripod, ball of your foot, the big toe ball, the foot outside ball, the foot and then the heel, right? It’s kind of like a tripod.

 

Anthony Gurule  09:41

As you’re going through this hip hinging pattern or good morning or what would be like a bodyweight deadlift, I want you to just to first and foremost, first five reps, is think about how your feet feel, right? Do you feel balanced? Are you too far on your toes? Are you too far in your heels?

 

Anthony Gurule  09:53

Are you collapsing side to side? Good. After about five reps, five or six reps everyone can tune in and usually find a pretty good balance point, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  10:03

Okay, next, we’re going to work our way up, right? What do you feel? What do you feel your hamstrings doing? Right? Okay, every time we go into a hinge, I feel my hamstrings kind of stretch like a rubber band a little bit.

 

Anthony Gurule  10:12

It’s not intense, but I feel I feel that backside of my body kind of stretching and loading, if you will. And then, you know, this would be these are just examples I’m giving for this individual person, you know, if someone’s dealing with knee pain or something like that, we would say, Hey, do you feel how that pressure gets taken off of your knees, or increases on your knees as we’re going back and forth?

 

Anthony Gurule  10:32

these are all of these things that are super helpful. And by cueing certain feelings that in turn then can help the individual when they’re at home, recreate the movement pattern that we’re looking for, especially when you’re trying to manage and monitor pain, but also trying to enhance a certain area.

 

Anthony Gurule  10:52

And this is where the kind of activation model if you will, comes in. so we’re working up, and then I had him say, you know, he’s so worried about his back. I’m like, Okay, well, do you feel your back working? And he’s like, yeah, it’s it’s really intense, like the muscles are, like, really rock hard to track.

 

Anthony Gurule  11:07

And like, well, they should be. If we’re trying to maintain relatively neutral spine and send to our hips, your lower back muscles should engage, because they’re preventing you from rounding. But that’s the difference of over contraction, and overarching, so then I’ll encourage him to do one rep, or you’re arching your back. And he’s like, Oh, that’s way more intense, okay, well then do it the other way.

 

Anthony Gurule  11:27

Okay, that’s a little bit more balanced. So now you really set the frame of reference of what like an over arching or over contraction movement looks like. So it’s kind of like, the good and the bad right away. And they can start to again, blend the pieces together and put everything together to have a better understanding about what movement we’re actually trying to look for.

 

Anthony Gurule  11:48

Now, then, and oftentimes too adding weight to some capacity can really help enhance this right, when you add a little bit of weight, you can enhance balance, you can enhance certain areas that you want to load more or increase to help them elicit that feeling to so there is benefit to adding weights.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:09

And this was part of our conversation, because his previous PT said, I only want you to do bodyweight, until you master how to do this, there’s no there’s no reason to add weight. I don’t buy that. I don’t think that’s good.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:21

I think there’s plenty of times and places in which adding weight can actually be performance enhancing for the thing that we’re actually trying to accomplish. So don’t get too hung up on not being able to add any sort of weight until you understand how to do bodyweight exercises.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:39

Now, the activation, this is the second part of this, the activation, he was so hung up on like, Well, I’m not activating the areas that I need to be activating. And while I talk about activations and you know, having to entice dormancy out of certain areas.

 

Anthony Gurule  13:02

First and foremost, what you need to understand about activation is if you’re moving through the motion, somewhat, credibly, if you will, then more than likely you’re activating right so for instance, he was talking about a glute exercise, this is your kind of classic Jane Fonda, you’re laying on your side and your your abducting are lifting one hip up towards the ceiling.

 

Anthony Gurule  13:28

He’s like, Well, I just don’t feel like my, there’s one side of my hip that’s activating, but the other side isn’t activating. And I was like, well, is your leg moving?

 

Anthony Gurule  13:36

And he’s like, Yeah, Mike, well, then it’s activating the muscles that you’re trying to, quote unquote, target or activate.

 

Anthony Gurule  13:42

If they’re not, if the leg is not moving, then you are not activating. If you are moving, then you are activating. So don’t get hung up on feeling like you have to have this burn or this intense feeling to quote unquote, activate a certain area.

 

Anthony Gurule  13:57

Now, we might want to draw attention to certain areas, because we know that they can be beneficial from a stability or force generating standpoint. 100% there’s validity to that. But what we want to encourage is like Don’t get over calculated by trying to be precise about activations in certain areas that need to be squeezed more or  engage more or not,

 

Anthony Gurule  14:26

because that was getting him again, too hung up on the precision of doing something perfectly before he can do anything else. And then in doing so, that overcorrection or precision was was limiting his box so that anytime he was outside of that box, it was pain or it was bad or it was you know, I need to go back.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:46

And so what we try to do is just get more into a movement flow state is just like hey, let’s throw out activations, calculations, over corrections, and I just want you to get more into what you are familiar with which is sport. play tennis a lot and pickleball.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:05

So it’s like, when you’re outside of, you know, maybe having some precision with the flick of your wrist or how you’re hitting and aiming, there’s precision in that calculation. But when you’re talking about drop steps and chasing the ball and deceleration, you’re not going to be as calculated on that.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:22

Now, many people will argue with this, and I do agree with their counter argument to this is, it’s one we’re talking about this is you’ve done it so much when you’re an athlete, that that calculation is running second nature, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  15:37

So yes, there is some benefits are practicing this from a calculated perspective. That’s why there’s cone drills and different things like this, where you’re running and then you see a target and you need to decelerate and turn, to calculate how to reach a ball and trajectory yet, there’s calculation right, but what we’re saying in this point in time, he is over calculated, he is over analytical, and I want him to just start getting back to play.

 

Anthony Gurule  16:02

So we were just doing some basic cosec, side lunges, side shuffles, drop step type of things, to encourage the same hip hinging patterns that we were doing, but more in real life movement, so that he cannot over calculate himself into this box of limitations, if you will.

 

Anthony Gurule  16:19

And we didn’t even talk about activation, don’t even worry about activating, all I want you to do is touch target, come back, touch target, come back, run forward, touch back, hinge here, touch back, lunge to the side, touch your inner knee, come back up, lunge to the other side, touch your inner knee, come back up.

 

Anthony Gurule  16:35

So he was able to accomplish everything that we wanted to do with minimal pain and discomfort, because we took out the over calculation and the activations. Okay. So I think that’s an important component, because too often we get wrapped up into the rehab purgatory as Dr. Craig Liebenson uses.

 

Anthony Gurule  16:53

And in, we get stuck there, because we’re worried about calculation and precision, and you need to be able to do this before this and this. Sometimes it’s beneficial to just run ahead a little bit, test the water, see what happens, create some encouragement, create some confidence, and then we can, you know, come back and re layer and back and forth.

 

Anthony Gurule  17:11

But that’s part of what the game is, is it’s just this constant back and forth of trying to find the right thing to help move the needle forward without going too much, create an injury, but then also not like having something that’s weighing you down constantly.

 

Anthony Gurule  17:25

So that was just, you know, what I thought to be a very critical sidebar in conversation that we had in his his rehab process. This is only our third time seeing.

 

Anthony Gurule  17:37

So a lot of this conversation groundwork has to be done early on, so that we’re not scrambling and playing this kind of like pickup game later on. But too many people that are just okay, we see an issue. Here’s the protocol or the program that works for most people, and you just need to do it right.

 

Anthony Gurule  17:54

If you’re not seeing results, you’re not either activating the right things correctly, or you’re not doing it enough, or you’re not doing it well enough. Well enough. And so, you know, they they almost feel guilty about their own progress, not happening because they can’t seem to activate and get things going. Right.

 

Anthony Gurule  18:18

Where in my mind, it’s not there’s not enough of a goal, or there’s not enough enticement for the body to even want to do the thing. Because we’re not challenging it, there’s no novelty, that would elicit an activation pattern that we would even want and the isolated principle, while good from maybe a post surgical and very acute setting, It’s not as beneficial when you’re trying to get back to a sport. isolation is still fine, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  18:48

When often we see isolation oftentimes with bodybuilding and you can still even isolate as a corrective or an accessory as we were talking about, if you need something to kind of pick up then it’s slightly deficient compared to everything else. 100%. But that cannot be the foundation of a rehab approach.

 

Anthony Gurule  19:06

And one last note, before we wrap up here I want to talk about for the activations is understanding like, what, what we really even mean by activation, right? Activation again means the muscle is activated or contracting.

 

Anthony Gurule  19:22

Thus, in turn, moving the body part. As we already said, I don’t think I don’t think this is activating, okay, well, like do the movement. okay, your leg moves to the muscle has to be activated otherwise, you will not have been able to complete the movement. Fair enough, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  19:38

But when you’re looking at discrepancies, he was basically like, well, this side is burning all the time. So it must be over activated and the other side is not burning, so it must be under activated. And in my opinion, at least in this situation.

 

Anthony Gurule  19:56

The reverse is actually true. The burning side is the difficient side. the burning side is the side that is getting overworked from these basic leg lift exercises, that that means it is it doesn’t have the capacity or the endurance to do all the reps.

 

Anthony Gurule  20:13

So it’s overworked. It’s not that it’s not activated, it actually is activated, it’s just not strong enough. However you want to say it, to be able to do all that in that in turn while it’s burning, and then the other side, that’s fine, that side is fine.

 

Anthony Gurule  20:28

So I would actually say, the side that’s burning more, needs a little bit more time and attention. And that’s sometime is the downside of these isolated exercises is you’re doing something that’s too isolated for the muscle’s ability, whereas when you’re doing these side lunges, I’m still working the same hip components, it’s just not isolated.

 

Anthony Gurule  20:48

So I have the surrounding help of all the other muscles, connective tissue, so on and so forth, to help build the strength along with it. So that’s kind of a just additional side thing we should be considering when we’re talking about activations.

 

Anthony Gurule  21:01

So to recap, what we need to understand is sometimes being too precise, being too calculated being too focused on certain individual regions and body parts and or movements before you can do more, could actually be detrimental to the overall progress of what you’re trying to accomplish. Right, we have to keep the goal in mind.

 

Anthony Gurule  21:27

While it might not begood to say, Hey, if you want to end up playing tennis, let’s just start playing tennis and kind of just like, you know, tinker around as we go. No, that’s that’s going from zero to 100.

 

Anthony Gurule  21:39

Right, we need to build more stepping stones. But at the same time, if you want to get back to tennis, and yet you’re just doing clam shells, or isolated hip exercises, because your hips hurt at some point in time. Or you need to learn how to hinge because that’s really important for hips and lower back.

 

Anthony Gurule  21:56

That’s going to be a very, very long road to recovery. Now, again, because there will be someone who says it well, what about this, this, and this? Yes, context, it might be important at the same time, but as we were saying, you cannot depend on that from a long term perspective.

 

Anthony Gurule  22:13

And you have to be able to integrate that into the whole thing. And if it’s in in making sure that it’s not slowing down, or holding back at the progress of your patient or client.

 

Anthony Gurule  22:24

So keep moving, hips are important, I ain’t gonna lie, spine neutrality, hip hinging, important to a certain degree of context, it’s okay to flex the spine. If it hurt in the past, flexing forward is okay. And actually doing it more could encourage more spinal flexion and familiarity with flexion and create some resiliency and comfort and flexion.

 

Anthony Gurule  22:47

But if you’re going out in gardening for two hours, it might be prudent to hinge a little bit more so that it’s not on your lower back. You see what we’re getting at here. Explore, understand your body, start getting to a movement in a flow state and understanding that we’re looking for balance and feeling to elicit–so sorry–to complete the task at hand, change the task, make it more complex, add something novel, right. all of these things are going to help you understand your body better, how to move better, how to encourage more movement and ultimately, feel better, feel stronger, and move better. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Live loud.


Getting Over Fear of Injuries and Pain EP|68

Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado

Episode 68

Getting Over Fear of Injuries and Pain

With Dr. Antonio Gurule


Having an injury or pain is never fun. Being able to set up a plan helps you gain the confidence you need to overcome the fear associated with pain and injuries in a progressive way. 

Episode Highlights 

5:00 – The importance of building confidence around past injuries

8:00 – Digging into what patients were previously told about their injuries

10:00 – Compression and slump test for back/nerve pain

13:00 – Giving the patient what is best for them as an individual 

18:00 – Exposure therapy– “Dipping your toes in the water”


About Dr. Antonio Gurule

Nutrition Building Blocks Broken Down

Background:

  • Father
  • Doctor of Chiropractic
  • Owner of Live LOUD
  • Personal Trainer & Health Coach

Anthony Gurule  00:09

Welcome back to The Live Love Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, your host of The Live Loud Life podcast. And I’m just so grateful to have all these different mediums of sharing, you know, information and whatnot. I think today, our generation more than ever, it’s honestly, I was reflecting upon this the other day with, you know, a friend. And we were talking about how, you know, when we were in middle school, we used to get my mom used to give me 15 cents to call her on this on the payphone in the mall, when the movie was done. So she can come pick us up. And it’s just, it’s just, it’s so funny, because this is just, what 20 years ago, and what our parents have gone through and what that next generation is, and what generate like my grandma, you know, Nichelle’s grandma grandmother who just turned 90 is still around, it’s just, it’s just, it’s just mind boggling. The amount of information that’s being passed around how fast informations changing and updating for, for better or worse for, you know, we’re not getting into the debate of that, and in just in just how we can communicate and share your thoughts and how, more importantly, you as a, as a consumer, if you want to call it that, but more so you as someone who is curious, can can can google or youtube anything and find a resource that teaches you or explain something, from Khan Academy to Udemy to all these different things. It’s amazing. And, you know, I hope that we can, through our, through our somewhat specific knowledge, shed some light on some situations and some issues that are beneficial to you to family members to loved ones. And that this could, this could help you in some way.

 

Anthony Gurule  02:11

And that’s what I honestly my biggest struggle and getting hung up on is trying to not perfect this but like what do you want to know? What do you what do the listeners, are curious about? My curiosity? Obviously, you sheds in certain ways, and I think that, that peels off and is shared with other people. But you know, I do want to make this relevant. So if you have comments and suggestions and topics, we always love hearing those to better suit these conversations about certain topics.

 

Anthony Gurule  02:48

now, basically, so I obviously have expertise in certain areas and not other areas. And if it’s something I don’t know, hopefully I’ll bring it be able to bring on a guest and share their thoughts and their knowledge. But today, we’re going to, you know, not a lot of housekeeping. This is my new office, we’re pretty amped, don’t mind the mess on some of that stuff. We just moved into a new property, I was hoping to actually shoot this particular episode on my new deck with this view of the mountain range and whatnot.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:18

But we’re super blessed. With this new home having a little bit more space for our homeschooling opportunity, to take full force with our kids getting dirty in the mud and exploring with toads and worms and chickens and ducks, our neighbors have horses. So it’s a pretty wild opportunity. And we’re just obviously super fortunate and blessed to be able to, to embark on this new journey. So with that, I’m hoping we’re you know, obviously a lot of time and effort being put towards getting the house set up. But utilizing our garage space, which is not massive, but being able to create some more content in the garage gym, around certain things and helping people move better. helping people understand how to how to kind of manage pain, how to move better, while managing pain, you know, kind of blend those things at the same time. How to be more mobile, how to get stronger, and that’s what I feel I’m best at. I’m not the best with nutrition, I’m not the best with hormones, um, you know, those are, those are important topics. I’m not downplaying those. I just don’t enjoy working with that stuff as much and I have a number of colleagues who I refer to out for that stuff. So if you have some concerns about those things that happy to bring those people on, but if you’re, if you’re wanting to get stronger, move better and eliminate your pain, you’ve come to the right place.

 

Anthony Gurule  04:53

If you want to live an adventurous life and live loud and not feel limited by previous injuries. or hesitations or reservations, about being scared about, you know, your injuries or that maybe injuries your parents have might have had, and trying to build some confidence around that. I know we can help you out with that. And that’s an that’s an in, I intentionally kind of lead us use that to segue into our conversation today, which is how to create confidence. And this in particular cases is about lower back, but how to create confidence after an injury. And that is one of the more challenging tasks when we’re dealing with recovery, how do we get you to feel more confident in your, in your abilities in your strength, in your, in your balance, you know, whatever that might be following an injury and, and in particular, what we’re talking about here is lower back and, and you know, it’s one of those, it’s one of those things when it rains, it pours like, you know, like, every now I’ve seen a ton, I see I see a ton of low back cases. But it’s one of those things like when you when I started seeing, like I get a couple of severe or like acute things. And I see a couple more. And the the theme, this week that I came across was this massive hesitation and reservation of having a disc injury, or back pain. and the hesitation or reservation, rightfully so we’re not discounting, you know, or downplaying what their fears are. But one in particular individual was worried that they re herniated, or had another disc bulge or injury, they previously had a discectomy from a sequestration years ago. And now they’re having, you know, fairly substantial radicular pain, which is referred pain down the leg with numbness and tingling and some burning, all of which are typically associated with the pinched nerve root, which is usually usually a response to inflammation and possibly a disc bulge or disc herniation.

 

Anthony Gurule  07:12

So you know, rightfully so they had a long road to recovery with a substantial injury such as this, this previous disc injury, and then this other individual, not as severe, but it’s been this like, underlying chronic thing that has just really been not, not robbing them, like she’s able to run, not run sorry, ride her bike and swim and do a fair amount of exercise. But her big hesitation is, I don’t want back pain, because my mother has suffered with back pain for over 35 years. So she feels that if she was to have back pain, she would end up like her mother, which is basically, you know, I wouldn’t say disabled right now. But as she describes it, she’s not able to do really much of anything. And so we have these two, although similar, you have very different cases of individuals who are extremely fearful of the diagnosis and the prognosis as it pertains to lower back pain. Now, this is where, as a clinician, you need to be very careful about your words.

 

Anthony Gurule  08:23

And we’ve had, I’ve had specific conversations up with both of these individuals about what they have been told, because I want to set, I want, I want to set the framework, and I wanted to know, the lens that they’re looking through and the perspective that they have for what they were previously told. And I don’t think their conversations with the practitioners were wrong, per se. But there’s a certain bedside manner, as they call it, that is needed when approaching sensitive topics such as these. And this is this is very true, you know, for conversations with pregnant patients, such as diastasis recti. For infants with tether oral ties, but it is our role and responsibility as clinicians for us to tell the truth based on what we believe to be true based on and support and giving supporting evidence. That’s the biggest thing. Because I think there’s a lot of clinicians who believe something to be true, but don’t have necessarily concrete supporting evidence. And that is, again, a debate for another time which we will not get into. This is always that’s obviously more of a, quote unquote, clinical debate.

 

Anthony Gurule  09:41

but we, we did a few specific tests. After our history and examination after the history examination for both these individuals, I, I fairly definitively knew where the quote unquote The epicenter or started the pain was, you know, based on the questions we asked the symptoms are describing, so on and so forth. And then we do a few, we do a few tests, and the tests are provocative tests. And the whole point of provocation tests is to provoke is to manipulate and shape the individual and push in, in pride in compress and stretch to determine what the source of where the pain is coming from. Now, this is where things get confusing, because when you chase the sight of pain, that’s where things can be a little bit muddy, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  10:39

Obviously, this one individual has pain on their legs, so we’re not examining the leg, because it has a very clear, clear dermatomal ridicular pattern. And the other individual had what she described as hip pain as she points to her glute medius, inside hip butt area. And she describes it as hip pain. And everyone keeps saying, well, it’s not your hips, your hip’s, fine, but they didn’t give her an answer as to like, why it’s actually hurting. And we know we did a more extensive test. But what we what we started with was a simple compression and slump test. So we have her sit into a chair. So if you’re dealing with lower back man justice, you do suggest you do this as we describe it, because I don’t want you to flare something up. But you sit, you sit up nice and tall, kind of towards the front, you grab the bottom of the chair, and you pull yourself into the chair as you’re compressing your spine, right? And we do this in a nice upright posture. Where our, you know, the curve of our spine and everything is supporting us. No pain. And we simply asked her to slumped, massage into her lower back, so her lower back is now flexed forward, and she leans forward, and then she pulls down on the chair again, and lo and behold, what hurts,?not her back. Her hip!

 

Anthony Gurule  11:53

So we start to ask then, what, what was the only variable we manipulated the pelvis tucked under a little bit, not that much. And so realistically, the only variable that we manipulated was lumbar, flexion and compressing the lumbar spine under more flexion. And that created a referral pain down into the hip. So the hip where she is feeling all the symptoms is not actually the source of what’s actually wrong.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:23

And same goes through for the individual with the leg pain, we performed a very similar test, and we were able to provoke some of the symptoms and we we tread lightly when someone’s that acute with leg pain, because we don’t want to piss things off a lot, we have a pretty good amount of information, part of the diagnostic process for provocation test is also reduction of symptoms. So if I can do certain things that I know decom–, quote, unquote, decompress the spine or open something up and things get better, we’re like, Okay, well, it seems like this is probably the cause, because we were able to eliminate the pain. So both are true in both directions. And, and this is what’s important, because with both of these individuals, they never had an examination or an assessment like this. And the assessments were all tailored around where the site of the pain was. well, moreso for the hip individual, the previous individual with the leg pain, again, that’s pretty cut and dry thing as a clinician, you’re not missing that. The big fault. This is a side note, the big fault with his case previously, was the insurance model and how it screws over the patient.

 

Anthony Gurule  13:27

And I know insurance is great. And it helped cover a lot of obviously the big costs for these things. And I agree. I agree that a conservative bout of care needs to happen before you go through more extensive treatments such as MRIs and injections and things like that. But what I have learned over the years is having the ability to go outside the lines every now and then to give the patient what’s best for them. If a patient is dealing with severe burning pain that we assumed to be a result of a disc herniation and inflammation, they oftentimes are not able to get steroid injections and oral medication until they go through about a care. And I think that’s wonderful. I think that’s good. That’s what I do. Like I agree with that. But I have found in my years that if someone’s okay with doing a steroid, it might be the difference of them having a horrible life for weeks and months and door getting a little bit better and getting some momentum in the right direction.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:36

And so this individual was getting spotty injections because they weren’t able to get an MRI yet because it wasn’t authorized through insurance because they weren’t done with their 12 sessions a PT so you know it gets it’s it’s unfortunate that it goes that way.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:51

But bringing all this back so this individual, obviously having back pain before and now Dealing with something similar. He’s just like, what is what’s going to happen like, I do not want to I cannot do surgery again. So obviously has major reservations about it. then the other individual, whose mother has been suffering with back pain for 35 years, like, I can’t have back pain. My mom’s had back pain, like it’s genetic. It’s, it’s something that I know will haunt me for the rest of my life. And so we had, you know, after we did the provocation test and kind of determined severity, I immediately go into how can I help you make your pain better like this. And we have a handful of exercises, I’ve gone through these exercises multiple times in a number of different either videos or podcasts episodes, we have some YouTube videos that show how we treat low back pain and neck pain, this pain, we’re going to film those again, because those became I ramble on those became way longer than I wanted. So I’m going to condense those to make them better for you.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:50

And recently, we had a testimonial of a previous college athlete who had a failed microdiscectomy as well. And she’s back to deadlifting. But we start with, we start with a few different exercises to help you help you find ways to reduce your pain. Now, if I can teach you how to do that, in between our sessions, you can go home, and you have so much autonomy and power to be able to handle the pain that you’re experiencing, will it be will it will it go away, maybe maybe not. But if you’re going day in and day out, like sweating bullets, not knowing when the next time your back’s gonna lock up on you, that’s a shitty way to live. That’s very, it’s very, very challenging to go day in, especially if you’re a parent and you have kids, I can’t pick up my kid, I can’t do this, this and this, that’s tough. But when you have a few different things, and a few different tools, and you’re like, Well, you know what, I know it’s not gonna be perfect, but I got I have these things, and I feel good with them. Because they make me feel good. There’s power in that. And so we give the diagnosis we give our thoughts we support it with we give evidence support, or based on our examination, and we say Hey, this is what we think is going on this this why why bla bla bla, that disc this, it disc that the nerves, this the muscle spasms here. that we’re for pain, so on and so forth. But I’m going to show you how to handle that. And right away, we teach them those things. And like, wow, this actually feels great. This is the best I’ve felt in days, weeks, if you know, I feel like I can actually walk I feel like I have, you know, a little pep in my step. And, and so then we come right back is like, Hey, you remember that thing you were so scared about? How do you feel about that? Now, are you still as worried as you were before and 99% of the time, like, you know what? No, I feel better about it.  it’s not gone. But yet their worry And their fear associated with it has gone down because they have they have more control. It’s the unknown and the lack of control for the majority of us, that makes it so challenging. And whether it’s, you know, the lack of control, because you’re dealing with something that someone else has, and you’ve heard, or you’ve seen them gone through it, or you or yourself has gone through it. And you don’t want to go through that again. But you were never given the tools to get a grasp of this.

 

Anthony Gurule  18:10

Now this, again, is just the tip of the iceberg because we’re just trying to manage the immediate, and there’s yet still a rebuilding process of building confidence. And, and that’s the next phase through various forms of stability, mobility, and this is true for all regions of the body, not just lower back, I, you know, I wanted to state that. So it’s not unique to just lower back.

 

Anthony Gurule  18:37

But I just completely lost my train of thought, oh, confidence, but just like anything else. And, you know, I’m a big fan of Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist in, in Canada, who describes when someone’s afraid of something, the worst thing that you can do is remove them from that situation. Right? We have so much fear around certain things that by taking yourself away from it is not the right thing to do. Now, throwing you down in deep end is also not right. But we call it exposure therapy.

 

Anthony Gurule  19:17

This is something that has been known for a very long time, right? And so, you know, I call it exposure therapy, I say dipping your toes in the water, you have to try the thing that you’re afraid of. And if you have the support of the clinician’s eye watching you, you feel better about doing it. And, you know, I’ll guide you, I’ll cue you, I’ll help you. And as you’re able to do the exercises, the movements or the things that you’re afraid of without pain and feeling better, This light bulb goes off in your head, and your body starts saying oh my gosh, this is great. It doesn’t hurt.

 

Anthony Gurule  19:57

And you have this kind of this aha moment and glimpse into the future of what’s actually possible. In an instant of time, we’re just like, wow, this is crazy, it doesn’t hurt and the thing that I love the most is when someone like does a rep and they’re like, ah, oh my gosh, this is horrible, it hurts. And then we kind of just help, you know guide position, whatever that is and they do it again, it’s like I don’t feel it at all, you’re just like you know and see, see what’s possible?

 

Anthony Gurule  20:26

And and then we have a conversation about the future about what we’re able to do what we want to be able to do so on and so forth. So I want to leave you with some encouraging guidance that there is, there is the possibility of being able to do more. I don’t know what you’re going through, I don’t know the injury, the aches and pains, the history of what might be going on. But if you feel like you’re at the bottom, I promise you, there’s only up to go. And what’s beautiful about that is you just need to find the right door.

 

Anthony Gurule  21:10

I might give a suggestion, and it doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean what we’re doing is wrong. It doesn’t mean what we’re trying to attempt is not the right thing. You just have to try another door. There’s many roads to Rome. And when you find the right path for you. Hopefully, it’s hopefully it’s an avenue that you enjoy. It’s not always that way. But I promise you that things will get better. It takes dedication, it takes patience, and it takes commitment, just like anything else. I’m guilty of it more than anybody else, the quick fix, the want this done now. But it’s the it’s the daily grind. And if anyone has, you know, the the perfect saying or way to bring this all together, I would love to hear it. But it is again, it’s the daily grind. No one wants to hear the journey is better than than the destination because everyone’s thinking about the destination. And I agree with you. It’s much better to think about the day where you feel amazing. But it’s the day and day and commitment of movement, mobility, stretching, stability, training, eating, right, sleeping, right, all of these things that create the more resilient body that will allow you to feel confident to overcome the current hurdle that you’re on, and any other hurdle that you might be coming across as a result of life.

 

Anthony Gurule  22:32

Here’s a newsflash for you, you’ll feel some pain in your life. This won’t be the last time. But if you got someone on your side, hopefully live out chiropractic and coaching can be that team for you, to workshop to navigate to be a sounding board for these things, that makes it a lot easier. Rather than waiting till it becomes like this chronic thing that’s been festering for five to 10 years, stomp on it. If you feel good about trying to explore your own body and figure it out all the power to you, that’s what we’re about.

 

Anthony Gurule  23:07

But if you have any sort of reservation just reach out to someone, it’s a lot easier to just say, Hey, I got this thing going on. I’m not quite sure what it is, you know, it’s new, it’s not horrible. But I don’t want it to get into something it’s a lot easier to deal with an issue before it becomes an issue. And when given the appropriate suggestions. more times than not you’ll just take care of it. So I hope that this has provided some of you some more confidence about what’s what could happen. What sorry, what’s what’s was waiting for you as far as the ability to move the ability to be stronger, the ability to be pain free. the ability to enjoy the things in your life, without the hesitations and reservations because you have confidence in your back and your ankles and your knees and your hips, whatever that might be. There are resources I guarantee even if you said you’ve tried PT chiropractic massage, orthopedics, MD whatever it is, I guarantee I guarantee that there are things that you have not tried and or it was not just the right time for you that will help you live a louder life. So until next time, folks, live loud.


Implementing Corrective Exercises & Accessory Movements EP|67

Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado

Episode 67

Implementing Corrective Exercises & Accessory Movements

With Dr. Antonio Gurule


Want to change up your exercise routine but don’t know where to start? Tune in as Dr. Antonio talks about body awareness and the importance of building up to new movements for rehab and strength. 

Episode Highlights 

4:00 – Proprioceptive awareness

8:00 – Example of hypermobility

12:00 – The importance of building up to progressive movements

20:00 – Example of corrective movements 

24:00 – The importance of “shocking the system” and mixing it up for your body


About Dr. Antonio Gurule

Nutrition Building Blocks Broken Down

Background:

  • Father
  • Doctor of Chiropractic
  • Owner of Live LOUD
  • Personal Trainer & Health Coach

Anthony Gurule  00:00

Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live Loud Life Podcast. I’m Antonio, I’m your host of the Live Loud Life podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about some training principles here. And we’re just gonna dive right into it, we don’t have a lot of housekeeping or anything like that.

 

Anthony Gurule  00:26

Oh, just a small note, has nothing to do with training. But we do have a short mini course out for those of you who are pregnant right now, or if your partner’s pregnant, we have a little mini course on teaching you how to not suck at giving your pregnant partner a massage. We believe heavily on being able to offer some body work at home, to help with the aches and pains that your partner might be having. But not only that, like it really helps you guys increase your relationship and your bond during this time, which sometimes things can feel a little weird or a little odd being pregnant. But not only that, it helps with the birth preparation process. So having additional hands on care in between our sessions, or if you’re not even seeing a chiropractor and acupuncturist or prenatal massage, having that hands on care really helps with the the preparation of labor and delivery. So if you are interested in that, if you’re pregnant now and you want your partner to not suck, you can get this for them and say, “Hey, watch this, it’ll literally tell you what to do.”

 

Anthony Gurule  01:30

If you want to be proactive and your partner is pregnant, you want to be able to facilitate and help out with that, then that’d be awesome thing for you to just get on your own and follow through. It’s short, it’s a two hour course we go through some anatomical landmarks that teach you, you know where to press how to press what to do, you know how to be safe and effective, so on and so forth. So if you’re curious about that, we’ll throw a link in the show notes for that. And we will also be will also put it up on our website, which is liveloudlife.com. And we have it spread across all of our social media accounts as well. We’re most active on Instagram, handle is @live.loud.life. And then obviously on Facebook, you can find us pretty easily as well.

 

Anthony Gurule  02:11

But today, what we’re gonna be talking about is accessory exercise. And so oftentimes, we get into this some referred to as like the rehab purgatory, or corrective exercise purgatory, so on and so forth. Meaning we over emphasize the importance of needing to be able to do basic things before you can do complex things now, in theory, and just from surface face value, that makes sense, right? That makes sense, we need to be able to handle a lighter load before heavier load or simple things before more complex things. But what we wanted to walk through today is, you know, how do you apply these accessory exercises, corrective exercises, and when should you be advancing these, and when should you be continuously, including them and kind of just more like the philosophical foundation as to like why we do a lot of these things.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:15

Now. As always, context is most important, right? When you’re talking about these exercises, being able to apply them at the right time, in the right place, with the right load, with the right intensity is what makes things really hard, right. And for many coaches or, or rehab professionals, that’s kind of the art behind it, of understanding the individual and where they’re at, so on and so forth. And so when you’re talking about applying it to yourself, it gets a little bit more not confusing, per se, but just a little bit more difficult, not having someone to kind of like have that external view of knowing what might be best for you. But as you start to learn your body more and more, you’ll start to understand where your deficits are and where your strengths are, and where we need to spend a little bit more time attention. But what we’re trying to provide here, if you will, is in giving these corrective exercises or these accessory movements.

 

Anthony Gurule  04:11

Often times we’re trying to enhance and improve the proprioceptive awareness that we have for our body. Now what is proprioception? Proprioception is essentially your body’s understanding of where it is in time and place. So for instance, right now, I, my body understands that I’m sitting on a bench. And right now I’m trying to be mindful of my posture. Not only because it’s a little bit more comfortable, but it also looks a little bit more pleasant than me just slumping in front of a microphone, right? So my body has this awareness of like kind of how I feel and what my posture and position is.

 

Anthony Gurule  04:51

Another example would be my shoulders down by my side, my shoulders up above overhead. Now, because I’ve done a good amount of shoulder rehab and strength, and, you know, focus and intention, I know that my range of motion outside of me hitting these massive earphones is pretty much at full flexion or AB duction where my biceps are pretty much at my ear. For a lot of us who don’t do that a lot, when we go through these range of motion exercises, and I say lift your hands up overhead, and they get to here. And you know, I might ask like, Hey, do you feel like your arms are reaching towards the ceiling, or as far up as they can? Or at full range of motion? You know, whatever the question might be. And they’ll say, Yeah, and I’m like, well, you’re actually only at about 100, and maybe 50 or 160 degrees, we want to be at 180. And so you show him that difference of 30 degrees of what they thought they actually had. And they they get very perplexed, you’re confused, because Oh, my gosh, I thought I thought my arm was straight up overhead, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  05:43

So we see that there’s a lack of understanding and proprioceptive awareness about their shoulder complex, at least in that context of moving the arm up overhead. So that’s, that’s just an example. Now, other ways we could think of proprioception is like a balancing exercise, right? doing like a single leg balance, we’ve taken off a point of contact. So now it’s more challenging for your body to balance  on a stable surface, such as the ground, which is one foot, so your body’s proprioceptive awareness feels itself tipping forward, backwards, and side to side. And it’s making these micro adjustments and corrections, to keep you balanced.

 

Anthony Gurule  06:23

Now, this is a really important concept, because oftentimes, these corrective exercises and accessory movements fall into this category, not just balance in general, but the greater concept of proprioception of how to fine tune our motor control to elicit the output that we want, right, because when we’re talking about fitness, or exercise, or working out or training room and sport, you are intentionally trying to do something, you’re intentionally trying to create a movement, you’re intentionally trying to push, pull, squat, you know, whatever as an outcome, right. So there is a motor control component to this. And the way in which we do that (control being the key word here) dictates efficiency, dictates strength, dictates power, dictates elegance, poise, whatever that might be, if you’re talking to you about something like dancing, right. And so the more repetitions you do, obviously, your ability to fine tune that motor control enhances. Now, if we’re at a deficit for whatever reason, let’s say easist example that you had an injury, right? The motor control component of that region in could, even globally, diminishes slightly, because you now have a broken kind of link in the chain, if you will. So when we’re talking about gross motor movement, gross, meaning like full body movements, and this goes beyond the thing that I get oftentimes irritated because it’s overused, it does make sense, but it is overused in the context of it is, everything’s connected to everything right, like, if your pinky toe’s broken, it’s going to affect the way that your left shoulder moves or something like that, you can make a strong argument for that.

 

Anthony Gurule  08:19

But what we what we mean realistically, though, is just like our body feeds off of other regions, right, so an example would be, if I’m going to kick a soccer ball, I’m running. So both feet are running so you know, classic movement that everyone does. But as I come to approach the ball based on the target, so now I have visual acuity problems here, like I have to fine tune and focus on something. So I now have to look at the ball and look at my target. And I have to know where the ball is while the ball is moving. And I have to be able to place my foot in the position that I wanted to hit based on where I want it to go against the target all of while, I have to be able to plant the opposite foot in a position that allows me to be stabilized so that I can torque about my stance leg, my hip, and then my torso pivots around. So you can see there’s a lot of moving parts when you’re talking about these kind of complex movements.

 

Anthony Gurule  09:17

And if I had an ankle sprain on either side, more importantly, if it was on my plant side, which is where I’m going to be absorbing all of my force, as I’m decelerating from running. That’s going to affect how all of this stuff comes into play. So when you have an injury, or we revert back oftentimes to these quote unquote, corrective exercises or accessory movements, to regain what was lost as a result of the injury. Now, it doesn’t always have to be an injury. It could be compliancy, right? I go through based on the season of life, I do a lot of the same things over and over because it’s effective for what I need right now. There’s a lot of holes in gaps within that, because I don’t do a lot of extra accessory correctives, I kind of do, you know, main compound lifts to suffice for what I need right now based on time, you know, goals on and so forth, or maintenance. And now, when, because of that compliancy of doing the same thing over and over, which is not wrong, right, there’s no wrong or right here, I will develop tightness in certain areas, because I may be sitting down filming more content or editing content, I might develop, you know, hyper mobility in some areas, because I’m doing the same thing over and over. And I get compliant with the movement and not having as much intention into it. This is just, you know, kind of rough examples, if you will. And so we see, oftentimes, we get this like creep of situations coming in, whether it’s hypermobility, or tightness or something like that. And thus, then we need to address those.

 

Anthony Gurule  10:59

So oftentimes, that’s what we see in our office. And oftentimes, because these aren’t really like overuse injuries, although they can be, we see someone come into our office with these like kind of dull aches and pains, it’s nothing really significant, that would elicit like, hey, we have significant tissue damage or an injury. But because of the compliance of what we’ve been doing, more times than not really, it’s tension, we’ve developed tension in certain areas, and then that tension affects how we’re able to move with the activities that we like to do. Thus, we create altered movement patterns that allow us to still achieve the task. But now we’re kind of taking shortcuts, whereas what we were able to do is very efficient, and very congruent with how maybe that movement should have been done. And now taking that shortcut, we’re trying to just work around the stiffness rather than dealing with it. And now we’re creating potentially even more issues down the road. So you got to kind of really re scrape everything down, and kind of build that back up.

 

Anthony Gurule  11:57

So that’s where these accessories or corrective exercises can come back into play. But what happens is, we oftentimes focus on the need to be correct in order for you to then progress to the next level. And in my mind, while that is true and beneficial, we do need to go to that next level, I think sooner than we think, to give the body context of to why the corrective, or the exercise, or the accessories are important and how it’s how it’s building that path or that step stone to the thing that you actually want to do. And so very often, and that’s where we look at progressions and regressions within, you know, movement patterns. So, you know, as an example, we could say, Hey, someone wanted to get back to, you know, Olympic lifting and doing like a barbell snatch, well, there’s an overhead squat component, there’s obviously an element of being able to be stable with your arm overhead, while you’re descending into overhead squat, which means that barbell is going to be shifting and your center mass is gonna be changing. So obviously, there’s a lot of complex things in that. And if you’ve suffered a shoulder injury, and that’s what you want to get back to, we have to find some ways in which the corrective exercises are going to help build you up to that. So, you know, it might not be overhead snatching right away, but a landmine press might feel fantastic and not elicit any pain. And that is similar to us being able to have a locked out overhead shoulder position, and I can transition my body into in a way in which I my arm feels like it’s more overhead, creating that compressive stability through the shoulder, and we can add that with, you know, a half lunge position or something like that. So it’s not the same, right? It’s not the same, but this can be considered an accessory or a corrective exercise leading up then to overhead squats and snatches and things like that, right. So the the nomenclature of accessories and corrective exercises doesn’t simply just mean, you know, foam rolling or, you know, isolated banded exercises or things like that, while that is a component of it and good, those could almost be more considered as like,  warm up exercises where we’re priming the nervous system, we’re releasing tension within certain areas so that the joints can move to the range of motion that we want to then perform the exercises that we need. Right. So and I don’t want people to get caught up in the you know, this, the semantics of like, what we’re trying to name these things, right, because I think that gets confusing.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:42

What I want you to moreso focus on is what were the real deficits that you that you need, and can we build right like a ladder or stepping stones to help you rebuild from that. And it is a constant game of going up and down.  I use the concept is like the game Chutes and Ladders, commonly you’re going to climb up and then you’re going to come down, because you’re always trying to find out, like where that next threshold is of being able of your capabilities. And when you when you’re knocking on that door, there’s gonna be a few times where you backslide a little bit, and you’ll get a little bit of aches and pains or, or, you know, whatever that is, and, and that’s okay, because then you know, okay, well, that path got me there fairly quickly. So I can recreate that path. Again, go back to the corrective exercises, the lifting patterns, the intensity, the sets and reps, things that I did. And then you just need a micro adjust whatever possibly causes you go down. And that could just be simply recovery or something like that, doesn’t mean you did necessarily anything wrong from a lifting or training perspective, might just been a recovery perspective.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:45

But I think adding these accessories and corrective exercises consistently throughout is beneficial, because the compliance factor that we had indicated before, and all of this, again, comes back down to goals, right? What are the goals that you want to be able to do? What are the pain points that you actually have, and if there’s things that are limiting you from being able to progress to those goals, and so on, and so forth, then yeah, those are the things you need to address.

 

Anthony Gurule  16:13

But from a timing perspective, you know, corrective exercises might be the thing that you need to focus on the most. Right, when you’re dealing with a certain season of life, in a certain area, and you’re having more pain or discomfort, or whatever that is, but yet you need quote, unquote, you need to train, and we hear this a lot, which is, which is there’s nothing wrong with it. Like, for my mental sanity, I need to go train. That is great. But we have to also, you know, take into consideration what training really is, right. training from a, from a global scheme involves a lot of things, it’s not just, you know, rubber hitting the road and pounding it, right, that is an element. And it’s great to do intense workouts and push yourself to the edge. But there might be a time and a place where you need to focus a little bit more on the collective and the accessories to help clean up some of the gaps or the limitations or some of the sticky spots, that’s then not allowing your rubber to the road training to be as effective. Right?

 

Anthony Gurule  17:20

And what is it going to be? Well, I mean, you could go on Google or YouTube and type in “accessory exercises for the shoulder” or “corrective exercises for the back of the hip, and you will get bombarded with a ton of exercises and information. That might be an awesome place to start. I mean, we post that same content on YouTube, to hopefully help someone find a little piece of nugget of information out there that could make all the difference wonderful, saves you a ton of time, money from going in. But that might not always be the case, right? Like we throw that out there just like hey, you know, this is something to try. But if you’re really, at this breakpoint, have mentally struggling with what to do or anything like that, it really helps having someone just go through an evaluation and realistically the the cost and the time that it takes to get that pinpoint evaluation, and then the exact information that you need to make the change really saves you a lot of time and money in the end as well. So you know, it really just kind of depends on the person like I am, I am guilty to a fault of being a DIY er and trying to tell I just run my head into a wall. And then I’m like, Okay, I can’t do it, I need to reach out to professional, right. Nothing wrong with that. And if you want to try that with your body, I love that like exploring, and trying to figure it out that again, comes back to the whole concept of proprioception, and awareness, the more you can explore your own body’s range of motion, strength capabilities, proprioceptive, balance, you know, all those things, the more input you’re going to have, and the more general awareness you’re going to have. So that when something is awry, you know, well, I can fix this or I can’t fix this or I know what to at least try and know, like kind of what avenue to at least go down so that when you then hit up a professional if you need it, you can say Hey, this is what’s going on. And I know what’s going on because of this, this, this and this and like that makes my life awesome. That makes my life so much easier, and that’s awesome, I get a sweet, I see where you’re at. Let me see if there’s anything else that you might have missed from just like, you know, because I can do more motion palpation and trying to figure out like specific joint range of motion limitation, so on and so forth if you’re in the office, and then we just kind of combine all that information together. But I’m a huge fan of that. And that’s that’s, you know, half the reason why we’re having this exact same conversation again, coming back to the awareness, the proprioception model, and using correctives or accessories to help facilitate that.

 

Anthony Gurule  19:52

now, again, very broad examples, but let’s use some examples here of or philosophy principles or philosophies, zero, but let’s use some specific examples to see if that helps kind of clear things up. So the shoulder, right, one of the more obviously, complex joints out there. So what would some accessory or corrections look like? Well, traditionally, we see, and this gets demonized, so I apologize, because I’m going to then kind of do that again. But banded exercises where we’re simply just doing like external rotation with a band pulling like this internal rotation point like this. And then it might be there, those are really good actually. Right, they can be fantastic for priming, the nervous system that’s activating the rotator cuff.

 

Anthony Gurule  20:41

It creates torsion and some compressive load, depending on the angle, and distractive load in the shoulder complex, which can help build up the resiliency of the tendons in the connective tissue, which again, fantastic, but it cannot be like the only thing, it needs to be expanded upon. So for instance, we can take that same concept, and crossover cemetery, or just wall mounted bands, or cable machines are great, because now I can do more complex movements where I might be doing like a face pull. So I’m grabbing cables that might be crossed, and I’m going to pull them up kind of towards my face. So I’m creating external rotation as I’m coming into AB duction and a little bit of flexion on my shoulder. So that’s a really good way to take that same concept and then add on to another level.

 

Anthony Gurule  21:28

Now going above and beyond that is how do we again, continue to strengthen the rotator cuff? Well, the rotator cuff is expanded upon and strengthened through compressive and distractive load. So we can then take that same concept and then maybe add it to like a TRX, where I’m using my body weight, and that body weight is trying to traction my arm. So I’m strengthening the rotator cuff through that. And I can do a face pole there. So I’m taking a higher load from the cables or the bands, and doing it more complex because now I’m adding a dynamic plank as I’m holding my body, you know, still, and I’m pulling that up through from their compressive loads, right? Why don’t need to go through an external rotation per se, but I can then add a crawling movement where I’m going through translation as I’m crawling against the ground, and I’m going to be having a compressive force. And as I’m crawling one hand has to go through kind of flexion and AB duction as I go above my head. And then it’s going to pull down using a little bit more lats than the upper back per se. But it’s going to be activating the rotator cuff to maintain good shoulder centration as I translate and pivot over my body over my shoulder, right? So it’s a completely different type of movement. Now this would all be indicative of like, well, what would I need something like this for? Well, it would depend very much on the sport. These are very common things that we do for bootcamp goers, CrossFitters, so on and so forth. Even just weekend warriors, as you’re talking about activities that you might be doing outdoors, right, like rock climbing, or mountain biking or anything like that. These are great just proprioceptive movements that can be used as accessories and/or correctives to enhance your awareness and capabilities around the shoulders, then of course, we would want to strengthen the shoulders through you know, push ups or TRX rows or pull ups or military press so on and so forth. But we sprinkled some of these in, to make it challenging, but to again, just put your body in a position in which it does not have a choice but to get that information and enhance upon it proprioception and again, awareness coming back to that same thing. So oftentimes, when we’re programming or giving these, they’re kind of just sometimes they seem silly, but they’re sometimes they’re just fun. But again, they’re they’re intended to be kind of challenging and novel, because that’s where you’re going to be getting new information. that compliancy coming back to that when you do the same thing over that information comes back to your head. And your body’s like, oh, yeah, I’ve seen that before. This is all good. I know what to do. Which is great. Because when you get to that subconscious level, when you’re looking at like the learning model, you don’t know what you don’t know, you now know that you don’t know you’re making intentional decisions to change that. And then it becomes subconscious, where you the changes that you were trying to elicit now are just done automatically.

 

Anthony Gurule  24:08

So yeah, there’s a certain element of skill and knowledge that you’ve just done it so many times. But it’s good to change the system, right? It’s good to shock the system and just give it a little bit of novel information, so that it becomes new, and then your body actually has to pay attention and process it. And that’s really what we’re looking at and what we’re trying to do. So if you’re adding corrective exercises or accessories in this manner, that’s fantastic. Keep going mix it up.

 

Anthony Gurule  24:34

If you’re not, this episode is again more for you. I think it’s a great thing to add. And again, if you don’t know what to do, you can start with Google. You can start with YouTube, you can start with a consult with someone and they can give you better suited movements for you, your goals, aches and pains, so on and so forth. But again, as I say before, as I said before, we love encouraging the exploration model of trying to figure out how your body actually moves, so on and so forth, and then see where you get and then, you know, ask for a little bit help to go above and beyond that, if you will. So, I hope this was beneficial. It was a reminder to myself that I need to add more of these correctives. And just kind of, you know, get back to the exploration play model of figuring out my body and then still, you know, reverting back to the basics and the foundation, the bread and butter of compound lifts, squats, deadlifts, swings, cleans, military press, so on and so forth. Because those offers so much bang for your buck, that if you’re doing those, you have more time to then go through this exploration model where, whereas not, again, not wrong, you’re kind of classic bodybuilding, where you’re hitting certain regions of your body with a lot of different exercises throughout, that takes a lot more time. If that’s your goal, nothing wrong with that, you know, bulk up, that’s awesome. But if you’re someone who’s trying to, which again, is more so speaking to the population that we treat, family, kids, busy, if you’re trying to like kind of pack these things in, the compound lifts that we just described, you get a lot more out of those full body movements, and then you have a little bit more extra time to spend on the correctives and accessories if you will.

 

Anthony Gurule  26:15

So I hope this was beneficial. Please make sure to like subscribe and share if you’re diggin this. Make sure to follow us on social media as we indicated on Instagram, @live.loud.life. You check out our website as well where we have a lot of this content also in blog form, depending on how you just want to consume the information that’s gonna be helping you and that’s www.liveloudlife.com.  no dots in between. Liveloudlife.com So thanks for tuning in, guys. We’ll see you next time.


How to Improve Oral Health Naturally EP|66

Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado

Episode 66

How to Improve Oral Health Naturally

With Sarah Wands


Tune in with Dr. Antonio and holistic dentistry specialist Sarah Wands as they discuss oral health. The effects of fluoride, nutrition, and bacteria on your mouth. 

 

Episode Highlights

4:00 – What’s the deal with fluoride?

9:00 Daily practices to help with oral health

11:00 Eating hard cheese at the end of your meal

15:00 Good and bad bacteria in your mouth

17:00 Mouth taping to prevent mouth breathing

23:00 X-rays

27:00 Top 3 tips for oral health


About Sarah Wands

Background:

  • Certified holistic nutritionist
  • Holistic dental coach
  • Owner of Root Raise Rise

Connect With Sarah:

Sarah on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/root.raise.rise/

Anthony Gurule  00:08

Alright guys, welcome back to the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Antonio, your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. And today we have Sarah Wands, on into we’re going to be talking about dentistry and holistic dentistry, functional dentistry, we’re trying to come up with like, what the name really is, but you know, it’s one of those things that’s kind of sometimes buzz wordy, but welcome. Thank you. And I’ll let you introduce yourself talk a little bit about, you know, your past your your, not your CV resume, per se, but what you’ve been doing and what do you do now?

 

Sarah Wands  00:40

Yeah. So thank you for having me. First of all, I love your guy’s practice. And I feel like we’ve known each other for a while. But, so, I’m Sarah Wands. I’ve been in dentistry for 10 years as a dental and surgical assistant, I just recently left after the birth of my daughter, she’s now coming up on a year and a half. And so I really wanted to fuse my background as a certified holistic nutritionist as well as my experience in dentistry to offer Holistic Dental coaching. So that’s what I do now. It’s essentially private coaching related to oral and dental health.

 

Anthony Gurule  01:22

That’s awesome. And so we were kind of chatting a little bit before, you know, get a little bit of background kind of helping me get an idea of where we want to go with this. And what you just mentioned was really great, because and rightfully so we give credit to certain professions based on more or less the, the letters behind the name, right, which is, which is fine, because they’ve gone through a lot of schooling and everything like that. But even like within our profession, you get to a sometimes complacent level where when you’re talking about it, or I’m gonna back up. We were talking about this came up with about a pediatrician and talking about the whole crawling CDC guideline that’s like another whole thing. But it was essentially like we saw kids, we’ve seen kids that are fine and have no health issues because they didnt crawl, like I understand that right?

 

Anthony Gurule  02:15

And you can see healthy or people being without disease without intervention. But some people want a different lifestyle. Some people want to be more proactive. And I think that dental coaching is great, because I mean realistically from what I remember about my dentist telling me was brush your teeth and floss and come in every six months, and then you occasionally which is gonna lead us to our first question, do a fluoride treatment because you need this in order to not get cavities and have healthy teeth, so on and so forth. Use it oh, this is a different one, I think come up Listerine and different things like that, to kill off gingivitis and gum disease and things like that. And it sounds like there’s a little bit more to the story.

 

Sarah Wands  03:03

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that those general approaches and recommendations haven’t changed much. I you know, I think slowly, in different areas, dentists are starting to shift their focus on to supporting the body more versus

 

Sarah Wands  03:20

disinfecting, like you just said. But I think dentistry really mirrors the medical approach in general with what it’s doing. And I think we’re just a little bit behind on current information.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:35

So on that, let’s kick it off with with fluoride.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:39

That’s a big one. For you know, those are family, your family very similar to some people that are coming into us who are wanting less toxic. Take the things right now our body can handle toxins. This is like the big argument like well, we’re exposed to toxins and all these things all the time.

 

Anthony Gurule  03:57

But as you had already indicated, even with other things, there’s an accumulation level, right? And when you’re doing repetitive things, such as fluoride treatments or having it in toothpaste on and so forth. So what’s the what’s the 411 on fluoride?

 

Sarah Wands  04:11

Yeah, so you know, a fluoride I think we’ve all experienced it in I would say three main ways, which would be you know, in our toothpaste at home, at the dentist with you know, the little painting or the swishing, right. Oh, trays, the foam trays

 

Anthony Gurule  04:27

And they’re foaming out of the mouth…

 

Sarah Wands  04:28

yeah, just you just die and as a kid. And then the third way being fluoridated water, which most communities have at different levels. And it’s it’s kind of been touted and it’s a strong belief within the dental field that it’s absolutely essential for preventing decay, especially in, you know, poverty level communities. However, the actual evidence and research doesn’t support those claims. So and that’s not to say that fluoride doesn’t harden the teeth at does. But in order to harden the teeth, it actually has to pull minerals further out from the teeth. So it creates this kind of issue. So without without getting too crazy, without getting too far deep fluoride can actually weaken the teeth more so interesting. Yeah, florid can actually weaken the teeth more so and they did a really interesting pretty large study. They audited multiple practices, their insurance billing, and they wanted to know okay for practices that did more frequent fluoride treatments on kids, did they have a lower incidence of cavities and needing fillings, and they could not find a correlation. So of the offices that regardless of if they had, you know, high and frequent fluoride treatments billed for their kids, they didn’t have a lower incidence of cavities.

 

Anthony Gurule  05:55

Wow. Yeah. So the thing that we are assuming it is doing hardened teeth to prevent cavities, it’s not actually it is not happening.

 

Sarah Wands  06:02

And you look at how much we’ve raised the level of fluoride, which is completely unregulated and not tested for safety, by the way, it has not correlated in a, you know, lower incidence rates of decay. And in any community.

 

Anthony Gurule  06:18

what are obviously a little bit more of a deep dive of it could be possibly a bunch of different things. But what are some of the big concerns of high levels of fluoride?

 

Sarah Wands  06:27

So, specifically with fluoride in water lines is a big issue for your body. Because it not only are you getting it when you’re drinking it out of your tap, but you’re also getting it with any bottled juices.

 

Sarah Wands  06:42

And babies, whenever you’re mixing formula together. Anything that’s packaged, that has water in it, that’s going to have a fluoride factor to it unless it’s been purified water. And what they’re seeing with that, as they’re seeing in increased rates of ADHD in those communities, especially women who are pregnant and had frequent fluoride exposure, their babies have higher levels of ADHD, autism, cognitive disabilities, speech delays. So it really does, it really affects your brain development In those earlier years, especially,

 

Anthony Gurule  07:18

that’s interesting. So going back to Now, assuming that it was supposed to be doing the hardening teeth, when this, you know, one of the things we were chatting about beforehand, as well as like, what then would parents like us do when we have kids who obviously want to eat certain things on and so forth.

 

Anthony Gurule  07:36

But if we don’t want the fluoride treatments, and we’re trying to be, you know, mindful of filtration and things like that, what are the ways in which we can harden the teeth to prevent decay, cavities, so on and so forth?

 

Sarah Wands  07:47

Absolutely. And that’s where I come in, really, because just like you said, so many parents and families are becoming aware of the effects of Florida and they want to avoid them.

 

Anthony Gurule  07:57

But their big question is, okay, well, if, if we’re not doing fluoride, what do we do? And, and so my big approach is, you know, it’s looking at, why are your kids getting cavities? Why are they? Why are their teeth experiencing mineral loss? and just different other lifestyle factors. And so just for general prevention, I mean, it really comes down to diet and making sure that their mouth isn’t hanging open all day long.

 

Anthony Gurule  08:39

Yeah. And then as far as, I guess, a consumer product, because obviously those things take time to work on and first and foremost needs to be diagnosed and actually looked at, but most of us assume and no good daily hygiene for our oral health is good, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  08:59

Obviously brushing, brushing and flossing. So in terms of like, outside of dealing with deeper dive things of diet in life, or sorry, breathing and different things like that, what are daily practices that you recommend people do to to help in conjunction with the lifestyle? Things are changing.

 

Sarah Wands  09:17

Yeah, I think that’s going to be pretty standard across the board. You know, without looking at individual factors, I think,

 

Sarah Wands  09:27

You could brush before eating nobody really likes doing that. But you know, if you’re going to wait until after breakfast, wait at least 30 minutes so that your pH and your mouth can balance out a little bit.

 

Sarah Wands  09:42

Oh, yeah. You don’t want to start brushing your teeth when they’re in a de mineralized state.  Yeah. So your teeth are at their weakest at right directly after eating. So I would say you know, either brush right away, or you know, have your breakfast and then brush. brush and floss.

 

Sarah Wands  10:01

You asked what you know, if people are avoiding fluoride in their toothpaste, then they can really go with a hydroxyapatite toothpaste. And hydroxyapatite is essentially the mineral that makes up the majority of our teeth. So when you have that in a toothpaste on your teeth, it can actually mechanically fill in to weak spots in your enamel.

 

Sarah Wands  10:21

So, brush with hydroxyapatite if you if you don’t rinse it out after that’s ideal floss. If anyone you know was working on imbalancing, their oral biome, sometimes they can do like either an essential oil mouthrinse or a brand I like is Brio tech mouthrinse that can be helpful. I know a lot of people like their mouthwash. So that’s a really great swap.

 

Sarah Wands  10:46

But without talking about diet stuff throughout the day, one of the main things to focus on is after you eat, helping to balance the pH in your mouth and getting those minerals back on your teeth as soon as possible.

 

Sarah Wands  11:00

And without even making significant changes in your diet. Two ways to do that is to eat hard cheese at the end of your meal.  And I can explain that more if you want to by eating hard cheese at the end of your meal. It helps to balance the pH in your mouth, make it more alkaline so that those acids aren’t, you know, work in their devilry all day, but also supplies a lot of the minerals that your teeth use to remineralize right after you eat.

 

Sarah Wands  11:32

there’s actually some really cool research about other countries, they did a study with kids, they didn’t change their diet, they didn’t have great diets to begin with. But they didn’t change their diet, and the only thing they changed was adding one ounce of hard cheese after they ate and their cavity rates dropped. Like significantly.

 

Anthony Gurule  11:50

what would be an example of a hard cheese?

 

Sarah Wands  11:52

like cheddar cheese or parmesan or and it could be like goat or milk or you know, cow or whatever. But that can be significant impact, believe it or not. The other thing that’s a great thing to integrate is Xylitol gum, okay? Xylitol helps neutralize acids in the mouth and helps the teeth get back into that remineralisation state.

 

Sarah Wands  12:10

So, you know, for kids where obviously picky eating is an issue, right? And it’s hard enough as a parent trying to help your kid eat a healthy diet and an ideal diet. But if if you couldn’t change those things, or maybe you co parent, or you have other guardians that and you don’t have full control of their diet.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:31

Yeah, grandparents.

 

Sarah Wands  12:34

Grandparents we already know. You know, if you can get them eat, like cheese after meals or just send your kid was in Xylitol gum. Yeah. Interesting. It’s a great mitigating factor for those tough diet changes.

 

Anthony Gurule  12:48

Before I forget going back the hydroxy apatite. is that right? what are what are some brands that people can look up to that have that?

 

Sarah Wands  12:56

Yeah, because not all brands are great, actually. So hydroxyapatite toothpaste brands I love, we’ll be Rise Well. And there’s a small company of like a family owned company out of North Carolina calls happy tooth toothpaste. They both have Hydroxyapatite options. They’re really great.

 

Anthony Gurule  13:16

Now being that they that in particular, is the mineral Correct? Is the mineral that the tooth is mostly made of, and that’s going to fill in the memorization as you go. Is anyone creating a because you talked about mouthwash too. Is there a way in which or if anyone’s doing like a, like a mouth wash, where you swish it around, and you try to hold it? Or? You You know, what I mean? Is there anything outside of just gum in which hydroxy apatite and Xylitol I guess, can be applied and used to help with that for maybe someone who has a more serious case of demilitarization or something like that.

 

Sarah Wands  13:56

sure Yeah, both of those companies actually have mouthrinses that how okay have Xylitol and there I look at mouthrinse and and I like to distinguish between mouthwash and mouthrinse because mouthwash is more of clearing out bacteria in your mouth and the good bacteria as well. mouthrinses I like to look at more of as supporting your mouth’s natural biome.

 

Sarah Wands  14:21

So whenever people do have you know more chronic decay issues or you know, gum disease or periodontal issues a mouthrinse can be helpful if it’s you know, xylitol or more neutralizing essential oil based

 

Anthony Gurule  14:35

Oh, nice that…I just had a question I apologize it literally just ran out of my head.

 

Anthony Gurule  14:44

So we were Oh so the bacteria that’s what it was? Yeah. So very commonly as common practice in encouraged by at least one viewers younger dentistry and things like that is the mouth wash. So your Listerine and your things like that. So that’s Zapping everything right?

 

Sarah Wands  15:01

Yeah, you know, what’s interesting about most mouthwashes on the market, even prescription ones is they’re actually acidic. So completely counterproductive to what you want to have in your mouth.

 

Anthony Gurule  15:13

So why are they prescribed than just that you’re killing bacteria, right? You’re killing good and bad. But the thought is that if you have too much bad, then that’s what’s going to be causing an issue.

 

Sarah Wands  15:22

I don’t think that conventional dentistry really acknowledges the existence of the oral microbiome in general, they don’t really honor that, you know, environment in your mouth. So what they know is there are six specific strains of bacteria that cause cavities, Periodontal Disease, Gingivitis, bad breath, all of those things.

 

Sarah Wands  15:45

And so their thought is, okay, well, let’s just kill those. But they don’t respect the fact that there are certain strains of bacteria in your mouth that you want to keep colonized. And so when you bring in something like Listerine, or mouthwash, you’re really just disinfecting everything. And it, it just creates more of an imbalance. That’s kind of like taking antibiotics in your body. regularly.

 

Anthony Gurule  16:08

Yeah, well, and going back to which we did a previous podcast, if anyone is interested, we talked about holistic dentistry for tongue ties with Dr. Liz Turner in Lakewood.

 

Anthony Gurule  16:21

So this comes back down to how does the bad bacteria grow? diet, lifestyle, mouth breathing? Can you touch on some of that, and how that obviously, just like, our poor diet, and everything else can mess with our gut microbiome, diet and mouth breathing effect with our oral microbiome?

 

Sarah Wands  16:39

Yeah, so just like any other microbiome in your body, like your gut microbiome, everybody has to like, lots of different bacteria in their body at any given time. Yeah. And same, same thing for your mouth. So you really just want, you don’t want that overgrowth of the bad bacteria, you want that kind of balance happening, and you know, leaning on the good bacteria being more predominant.

 

Sarah Wands  17:03

So there are there are different theories with that, you know, a lot of conventional dentistry will point to, you know, acidic foods and sugars, and they just tell you, like, brush and floss more, which disrupts those strongholds of the bad bacteria.

 

Sarah Wands  17:17

Yes. But then they tell you, you know, snack less, cut your sugar, don’t eat acidic foods, which isn’t realistic for most people granted, but it all of that misses the part of supporting the good guys. So you know, what can we do to support the good bacteria in your mouth without blasting, you know, antibacterial washers in there.

 

Sarah Wands  17:41

And, you know, that can come down to it, there are different factors like mouth breathing, you know, if your mouth is dry, your mouth is open. That is just a playground for bad bacteria to flourish. So you know, if you sleep with your mouth open at night clenching and grinding. During the day, even people notice that that’s a huge factor. And certainly acidic foods and sugar are a factor as well. But you know, eating neutralizing foods, like fresh fruits and veggies. Fermented foods are a great source. Anything with dairy is fantastic. Anything mineral mineral rich with bone broth is going to be great, too. So I try to tell people take care of your mouth, like you would take care of your gut, because what’s happening in the gut is going to show up in the mouth eventually and vice versa.

 

Anthony Gurule  18:34

Yeah. with the fermented foods, right? So just because I know that that’s amazing for microbiome, so you essentially all the things that we’re saying for the microbial gut biome is going to essentially affect the oral cavity as well, just because, yeah, consuming it directly from there, right? that’s awesome.

 

Sarah Wands  18:56

You know, the, the only nuance there, of course, because there’s nuance in everything is for someone who’s experiencing inflammatory gut issues, leaky gut, IBS, things like that. You see those issues with your gums and your oral tissues as well. And for those people, sometimes, uncooked fruits and veggies and fermented foods aren’t appropriate for them yet. So, you know, that’s something that to take into consideration as well. You know, whenever someone has any kind of chronic disease in their mouth, gut health should be one of the first things people look at.

 

Anthony Gurule  19:31

Yeah, yeah.

 

Sarah Wands  19:32

So that’s the only time I would say that, you know, it’s not the same for everyone

 

Anthony Gurule  19:41

From the previous episode, right. So one thing that I have not done yet because I know I have a tongue tie,

 

Sarah Wands  19:45

I can see I can see.

 

Anthony Gurule  19:48

And I have a tongue thrust and I am habitual mouth breather, like during the day I catch myself but you know, the underlying cause is not being addressed. I just sit there and I’m open and When I when I, when I sleep, I know I sleep with my mouth open and I’ve tried mouth taping, but it’s so hard for me to breathe through my nose that then I just rip it off at night because I’m just not getting enough air.

 

Anthony Gurule  20:12

And so I have not done the thing that I know I need to do mostly because it’s it’s a process, right? But for adults, right? You’re kind of like, why do you know these things? Like the conversation of tongue ties in these things seem more prevalent when you’re talking about kids per se. But as an adult, you do have to realize and understand like, there’s still things that can be done. I’m not too far gone, right?

 

Sarah Wands  20:34

Yeah, no,

 

Anthony Gurule  20:34

but there are underlying things that sometimes you need, you know, additional support for our intervention for or if you want to call it microbe surgery, I don’t know what that originally would be called microsurgery.

 

Sarah Wands  20:48

Yeah. So, you know, having oral ties can show up and it looks different in adulthood. You know, it can because at that point, you know, some people have already experienced a lot of dental work because of those factors. And so, you know, they probably been told at that point that they just have bad teeth, or soft teeth, or whatever. Or they clench and grind, or they have a lot of different body tension or migraines. And so it looks a lot different in adults, because they’ve had that issue for so long. But it’s definitely not too far gone at any point you like you say, obviously, the first step for helping you breathe at night would be like, Okay, well, let’s tape your mouth until you can, you know, look at your underlying causes. root causes are important.

 

Sarah Wands  21:34

But let’s help mitigate where you’re at right now. Mouth taping is great. Unless you can’t breathe through your nose.

 

Anthony Gurule  21:40

Yeah, then you’re just suffocating.

 

Sarah Wands  21:41

Right, which it adds an extra step for you, it means you, you have to go to an ENT, an ear, nose, throat doctor and they have to scope and make sure there’s no obstructions, which is critical for kids too because you don’t want to take your kids mouth, and then they can’t breathe at night for sure. You know what I mean?

 

Sarah Wands  21:57

As adults, you have more control and awareness over it. But it just adds that whole extra step, which I know is great for you.

 

Anthony Gurule  22:04

Well, and that’s what’s great about Dr. Liz Turner at Fox point dental she has the imaging capabilities to look at airway obstruction and everything, which is good, which is I need to get it I need to get it first and foremost.

 

Sarah Wands  22:15

Yeah, because they can take a comb beam scan, a 3d scan, and they can see your nasal passages and your throat. With an ENT it’s a little bit different because they can evaluate you while you’re laying down they can see exactly what your airway is doing. Yeah. And what your nasal passages are doing when you lay down when you when you relax.

 

Sarah Wands  22:32

So it’s different. And let the scans are definitely helpful for diagnosing.

 

Anthony Gurule  22:37

well, and I’m sure because I on on any given basis like when we go to get our dental checkups and cleaning, which is this is prompting the next question is I seem to always have way more cavities than Nichelle does. now she’s definitely better at flossing than I am. I will admit that excuse me. But I do think it has to do more so with the fact that I am constantly mouth breathing. Yeah, bringing in the bacteria, everything else you had talked about.

 

Sarah Wands  23:02

Yeah, because when you nose breathe through your, your nasal passages are that filter, when you breathe through your mouth, you don’t have anything to stop that bacteria from coming in.

 

Anthony Gurule  23:11

which fortunately enough, I don’t get sick a lot. But when I do I get sick, sick.  I don’t get sick a lot, even though I do a lot of mouth breathing. But that being said, I have in again, bad apples in any profession. Right? So, you know, we got to we got to call it what it is. But the evaluating the diagnostics for cavities and dental health, I have felt that there’s been a stronger shift towards relying on more technology to do that, ie X rays.

 

Anthony Gurule  23:43

And we’re talking about all of this beforehand to is when do, when would someone you know maybe speak up and say, hey, it seems like we’re doing a lot of X rays. Are those needed, right?

 

Anthony Gurule  23:54

Or, you know, kind of just being that advocate, obviously, for more so for your kids, or even as an adult understand. It’s just like, it seems like that’s a lot of X rays to rely on for finding cavities as opposed to the dentist actually doing an examination and looking so is there a benefit to doing the X rays?

 

Anthony Gurule  24:12

In general, as a screening, is there a benefits to doing X rays to seeing the underlying Silent cavities that are apparently under the enamel that could be dealt with before they become big cavities?

 

Sarah Wands  24:25

Sure. Yeah. So we could go in so many different directions here. Let’s just start with you know, we were talking before we started about different philosophies on X rays, and it’s hard as a patient to know what’s needed and what’s too much.

 

Sarah Wands  24:42

So my best advice is when you’re, you know, finding the dentists you want to partner with, you know, ask them what their philosophy is on X rays, if they’re if their philosophy is led with what your insurance will pay for, office policy. That’s not going to be a best fit for you or your kids.

 

Sarah Wands  25:06

A better approach for X rays X rays, first of all are, they are an important diagnostic, you know, tool to have, and we’ll talk about that in a second. But a better approach and philosophy to look out for Well, if you’re, if you’re looking for a dentist is risk based assessment, and their level of prevention, some dentists are more aggressive, some are more, you know, watching weight.

 

Sarah Wands  25:29

But, you know, if, if you know, and they know that you really don’t get cavities, much, you don’t have a lot of dental work, you have a pretty good diet and you take care of yourself, you probably don’t need X rays that often, you know, and I’m not gonna give a frequency, you have to work that out with your dentist. But if if you know and they know and you have a history of cavities at every visit, or

 

Sarah Wands  25:53

you’ve had a lot of dental work done, if you have implants or root canals, crowns, bridges, you’re going to need more monitoring, monitoring. And there are other different diagnostic tools. But there’s really not a great way to see cavities starting between the teeth, unless they’re too big, other than using X rays. But x rays, their purpose isn’t only checking for decay. It’s not always a great sign if your dentist doesn’t take thorough X rays, you know, as a new patient, it’s really good idea to have a full set every five years, maybe one, you know one that shows everything, because what’s important is that they’re also looking for any jaw cancers, any cysts, evaluating the bottoms of the routes that are not seen on routine X rays. There are different, you know, especially if you’re having your airway evaluated, you know, those 3d scans can be important. But having that full scan is important for for cancer checks and looking at any you know, the bottoms of your roots especially. So, you know, it’s hard if you get cavities a lot, or if you’ve had a lot of treatment, you’re you’re going to need more monitoring. Yeah. And it’s just it’s really comes down to philosophy, I would say. But, you know, if you if you’re someone who does need X rays more frequently, you’re doing things to help support, you know, glutathione levels, and just cellular health in general, upping your vitamin C around that time can be really helpful.

 

Anthony Gurule  27:30

That’s fantastic. What are some of the some of the what are, you know, one or two of the main things we might already touched on? So it could be like, yeah, what we said about this, this and this, but if you were to boil it down top one, two, maybe even three, like what are the top main tips, if you were, you know, I can see the blog post three best things, right.

 

Anthony Gurule  27:53

But like, you’re kind of like, you know, kind of like you’re kind of like your anthem, the thing that you like to really talk about and make sure people know when it comes to general good, holistic, functional, whatever you want to call it. Oral Health, like you’re like, these are the things that I really encourage people to look for and do.

 

Sarah Wands  28:14

Oh, gosh, that’s a good one.

 

Anthony Gurule  28:17

Like diet, right lifestyle, obviously, like starting from start starting from the bottom, like making sure the foundation of what good obviously health is because you could do you know, he said we talked about similar to like, like you use weight loss as an example, right? Like, you can be working out as hard as you want. But if you’re not eating well, and if you’re not sleeping, well, you’re not gonna get results, right.

 

Sarah Wands  28:39

Yeah. So you cannot out brush your diet. That’s yeah, it’s a bumper sticker. Oral Hygiene is not the top can like, factor for what determines if you get cavities or not. Your dentist might tell you otherwise. You know, their only advice like you said before is brush and floss more.

 

Sarah Wands  29:00

And you might get shamed into, you know, you might go in, you’re like, Hey, I’m brushing and flossing a lot of time. And they’re like, I know you’re not because you look at your mouth and you’re like I swear and it just turns into this guilt trip thing every time you go to the dentist because you’re like I swear I’m doing this but it’s not working. It’s because you cannot out brush What’s going into your body. So if I could, if it could only be three things it would be mouth taping if you can, and then getting minerals and fat soluble vitamins. So if you’re not getting magnesium, calcium phosphorus into your body every day, and you’re not getting enough vitamin A, D and K especially vitamin K especially then your teeth are never going to have the mechanical tools to rebuild early decay in the enamel. weak spots.

 

Anthony Gurule  29:59

And then as a side note, we talked about fluoride, right? What’s the best way that you have found or or products that help filter the normal levels of fluoride that are put into most water sources that we see?

 

Sarah Wands  30:14

Yeah. So you know, what’s interesting about fluoride in the water supply? Just what, there’s such a, it’s such a huge topic, but the EPA is actually currently in a lawsuit. Oh, four unsafe fluoride levels in the water lines. So that’s a whole separate thing, if you want to look into the lawsuit that the EPA is dealing with right now, because it is a it is interesting to say the least.

 

Sarah Wands  30:42

But I, if it’s accessible to filter your fluoride, I mean, reverse osmosis is going to be the gold standard. There are a lot of other countertop countertop options like Berkey, Aqua true is a reverse osmosis on your countertop, that’s going to get the most fluoride out.

 

Sarah Wands  31:00

And then if that’s not accessible, doing you just find Bill water, bottled water that’s been filtered, is going to be the next best thing.

 

Anthony Gurule  31:08

Do the, I don’t have those now, but it was like in college, I thought it was like the thing that was best, you know, good enough, but like, do the Brittas And those things, do much of anything?

 

Sarah Wands  31:19

No, they don’t touch fluoride.

 

Anthony Gurule  31:21

they don’t touch flouride? what do they filter out?

 

Sarah Wands  31:23

I mean, they they take out chlorine to an extent and some of the hard minerals, and you know, some percentage of the heavy metals. But they they’re not going to get like different types of bacteria out. And I mean, they might get a mild amount of sediment out of your water. But unless your filters specifically taking out the fluoride, I mean, you have to look for it. It’s not going to work to have an attachment on your faucet or a pitcher.  Unfortunately, it tastes better because it has less chlorine.

 

Anthony Gurule  32:00

Well, that’s all the questions I had, is there anything else you want to leave us with? Before we wrap up?

 

Sarah Wands  32:08

You know, I would just say that the reason why this in a profession came up for me is there’s such a wide gap between, you know, conventional dentistry, people have their dentists that they like, they’re great dentists, but they’re missing the boat on true prevention and nutrition guidance.

 

Sarah Wands  32:28

And a lot of people don’t have access to biological dentists. And, you know, the care that they’re looking for, for whatever reason, distance, finances, etc. And so I love being able to bridge the gap, and help people with all the things they can take care of at home to take care of their teeth in a holistic functional way.

 

Sarah Wands  32:50

You know, and it just kind of takes some of that pressure and work off a dentist’s a dentist can only do so much in the office, so much of it is at home. And it’s it’s such a new topic for people. So self guided workshops. so that people can really dive in for themselves.

 

Anthony Gurule  33:36

Well, and I’ll make sure you get all that. Make sure you got all the correct links, everything but we’ll put obviously all that in the show notes and stuff so people can easily just click and find it.

 

Sarah Wands  33:44

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This was great. I mean, I learned a few good things and about certain topics and obviously as a reminder to myself, you’ll get myself checked out. I do too. I mean, people are who work in dentistry they

 

Anthony Gurule  33:59

we’re always our worst.

 

Anthony Gurule  34:02

Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it.

 

Sarah Wands  34:04

Thank you.

 

Anthony Gurule  34:04

All right. Take care guys.


How to Treat Shoulder Pain: Conservative Treatment Options & Rehab Programs

Condition Series: How To Treat Shoulder Pain

If you’re like me and you’ve ever had aching shoulder pain before, it can be super frustrating. Now, as humans, right, we depend so much on our hands. So what’s important is our hands are attached to our arm, which is attached to our shoulder. So anytime we are going to grab something, pull, reach, push, do what humans do, it becomes very frustrating when you have an achy or painful shoulder.

Now, this can be dealt with in a very easy, systematic way, if you know what to do.

Hi, my name is Dr. Antonio, I am the owner here at Live Loud Chiropractic and Coaching with my wife, Dr. Nichelle. We are based out of Lafayette, Colorado in Boulder County. Our aim and our focus is to help guide you to the adventurous life you are made for. And we do that through a number of different ways ranging from chiropractic and coaching. Now, in that middle is really where the magic happens, because that’s where we come together as a team to make a plan on how to actually dive in and deal with some of these common conditions such as lower back pain, neck pain, and in this case, shoulder pain.

PLAY VIDEO ⬇︎

Why You Have Shoulder Pain

Now, what’s important to understand about shoulder pain, and this is the same thing we say, with all the other issues that come into our office is outside of significant trauma, there’s a reason why you have pain.

What does that mean? Well, in the case of shoulder, we’re looking at repetitive use injuries. So in this case, or an example we might say is, “Well, I started having shoulder pain after joining a new a bootcamp class or CrossFit class, or some sort of workout class.” okay, well, we see a change in the amount of load in which the shoulder was actually experiencing. So it would make sense that that might be part of the problem. So we have to address treating something, i.e. like a shoulder injury, we have to understand the mechanism of how it actually started. Because if I simply just rub on the tissues, work on adjustments, and help you deal with the pain, what’s going to what’s going to prevent it from coming back, if you don’t address how it actually started in the first place?

if we take a step back, ask you about your lifestyle, ask you about your recovery, ask you about how what you’re doing for training and working out, how intense is it. all of these other factors that actually have more to do with your shoulder pain than simply what your spinal alignment looks like, that’s going to give us way better of an idea of what to do in the program and the plan to set you up with to actually deal with your shoulder pain. Okay?

 

Now, one thing that I do want to add to that is we are very much about maintaining momentum, right, you’re coming into us because you’re frustrated, you’re not able to work out, you’re not able to pick up your kid, you’re not able to get up and down off the floor, whatever that might be. And you feel like you’re not able to keep moving forward with life and/or you might be even moving backwards. we want to help you maintain that momentum. So we are going to encourage you to keep moving, to keep exercising as best as you can. But what we’re going to be able to do for you and help you through the coaching and the chiropractic assessment model, is help you look at the things that we know to be the main triggers for you, so that we don’t keep spinning around in this pain cycle.

Right. If we can break the pain cycle and get you out of there, then we’re going to be able to layer on top of that, better movements, better rehab, better strength, better mobility, whatever applies to you. And then on top of that, layer in our soft tissue skills, whether that’s dry needling, MRT or cupping, as well as adjustments so that we can maintain the proper range of motion and joint mechanics that you need for your body and especially your shoulder.

So if you have had shoulder pain before, or you have a chronic achy shoulder that you just can’t seem to get over, and or if you have a loved one that’s been dealing with a shoulder issue, constantly reaching over grabbing their shoulder, This video is going to be very helpful.

Shoulder Evaluation & Assessment

Alright, so we’re gonna be walking you through what a shoulder evaluation and you know, expedited treatment would look like. So essentially, what we’re going to be deciding through our evaluation, obviously, your history is going to be determining the direction of where we’re going, as indicated in the intro to this video, when we see a peak or a spike or a change in load, or a change in exercise program, whatever that is, we’re gonna see common areas that are aggravated more.

And those are typically impingement type of syndromes, bicep tendonitis, rotator cuff irritation, those are going to be your three kind of primary focuses. Now the reason why those are happening, that’s what we have to decide and dive into. We’re trying to determine the underlying causes of those, it’s very easy to diagnose what is irritated, but it’s harder to figure out what are the actually precipitating factors that led us to that.

Looking at range of motion, proper range of motion for the shoulder blade, shoulder, thoracic spine and the neck are going to be our most critical things to look at.

Basic Shoulder Range of Motion

  1. Take both arms straight up overhead. We’re looking for 100 degrees of flexion. And ABduction as she comes up, and we want to see if she can get that nice and vertical. We’re also looking for any catching points, or painful parts within that arc.
  2. Next we’re looking at internal-external rotation and extension of the shoulder. So she’s going to take this hand, reach behind her head and touch this opposite shoulder blade. So we want to again, look at nice vertical arm here.
  3. Right arm underneath over to here. Great. So now we’re looking at internal rotation of her shoulder and extension. And we want to look at shoulder blade movement here.
  4. Left side underneath over to here and we’re looking to see you know, comparatively side. Do we need symmetry? No. You do not need to chase making sure both sides are symmetrical. We are asymmetrical human beings.
  1. Tip the chin down, touch her sternum.
  2. Extend back, as far as you can.
  3. Look over your right shoulder. Awesome, look over left shoulder.
  4. Ear to shoulder, tipping side to side. Wonderful.
  5. Stand feet together. And she’s going to look over her right shoulder. And then she’s going to twist her whole body to the right. I’m looking at ankles, hips, low back, mid back and neck with this gives me a good global range of motion. Good, back to neutral look left, turn left.
  1. Keeping legs straight, toe touch, we want to look for thoracic spine flexion here.
  2. Come back up, arms up overhead, and then lean back as far as you can. So we want to look to see what our extension looks like.

 

Modified Sphinx

1. Come up on your hands and knees. Cat cow. we’re getting a good global assessment of how the spine moves.

2. Move your feet forward just a little bit. Sit your butt back towards your heels. Now move your hands back a little bit, this is going to be you can go back a little bit further. By moving her hips back, that locks the lower back from being able to move more.

3. Now in this position, because again, we’ve locked out the lower back, we can go through the other ranges of motion. So obviously, we get a little bit of hip shift, but from here, I can really start to see how the spine bends side to side. So we’re kinda like windshield-wipering the spine here and going side to side.

4. Now next is we want to look at rotation again. So there’s a way for us to isolate more about the rotation that we want to see from the mid back. So from here, you’re going to put one hand behind your neck, and then your other elbow is going to drop down.

Now, as indicated, right, some of the main things that we run into bicep irritation and impingement type of syndromes. And impingement is something that will happen with range of motion as you come up overhead, it’s the level that how it’s a level of impingement that could be created in an issue as dictated again by the scapular limitations that we might see.

 

Looking at How the Shoulder Blades Move

So what we’re going to look at here is how the shoulder blades should actually be moving. So as we already were showing, as this arm comes up overhead, we want to see how far this goes. Now, if that shoulder blade is pulled down, and back or too tight, she’s not going to be able to, to raise it as high. So we’ll test this right just as a as a proof of concept. So if I hold her shoulder blade, and I say now take your arm up overhead, you can see how it just kind of stops, right. So we oftentimes do this unintentionally, because we’ve been queued, keep your shoulder blades down and back, thinking that’s the more stable position. But in doing so that actually limits your range of motion. So if I’m locking this down, because I was acute, or I think that’s the better way to do it, and this is coming up and over, you’re basically banging your your arm or your humerus, the ball up into the socket roof. And that creates impingement sensitivity, whether it’s a rotator cuff, the bicep tendon, so on and so forth. So we want to make sure that that shoulder blade is moving well, this is this is one of the primary things that is oftentimes overlooked, we focus on massaging bicep tendon, working on the rotator cuff, the upper trap, and not knowing that we actually have to queue and promote that scapular range of motion.

So some of the things that we talk about is making the arm long. So if she’s here, and let’s just say for instance, she was actually having a pinch here, one of the cues that helps prevent that and or improve her symptoms is by simply asking her to make her arm long. So I’ll say, hey, try to reach out. So in doing so, you’re actually going to promote scapular protraction. And that’s this lateralization of moving away from midline, as opposed to pointed down and back.

Now, this is still stable. Yes, pulling down and back is stable for rows and other things like this. But we have to now train this. So if she was to make a fist, and now to say, make your arm long, and now resist me, she’s craving stability through a protracted shoulder blade position. Okay? Now, this is critical, because more times than not is we just don’t have the stability out there. So we think pull down and back to make us tighter. So that’s something that we have to we have to test out and make sure that that is an appropriate position. Now, this is also important for the rotator cuff because the rotator cuff muscles, they all start from the shoulder blade. So the relationship from the rotator cuff from the shoulder blade to the actual ball, right your arm, the head of the humerus, needs to be defined and improved.

So if I’m again, retracting, but yet this is wanting to come out, well, you see this battle between the rotator cuff muscles, the shoulder blade is being held back, the arms trying to go up and the rotator cuff muscles don’t know what to do, they’re not able to stabilize and adequately hold on to the shoulder if we’re having these opposing forces. So this is another reason when we’re looking at rotator cuff injuries, that we have to improve the scapular mechanics to improve the whole relationship on how everything is moving.

Now, outside of that, if we’re looking at rotator cuff issues, we’re going to do our standard testing of hey, resist here, resist here, fine. This helps us again, determine the exact tissue or the exact area that is angry. Again, that is the easy part that it’s very easy to find, hey, this is the this is the issue that everything’s kind of stemming from, but we have to understand and know why. And more importantly, what are the things that we’re consistently doing on a routine basis, whether it’s at home, whether it’s in your workout, whatever that is, that’s consistently insulting the tissue and making that wound or injury quote unquote, fester and linger. So that’s more important than actually understanding the site of pain. of understanding what you should and should not be doing from an acute injury to a sub acute injury or a chronic injury to allow you to progress further forward to be able to do more things.

Compression

Make a fist. Scaption is going to be about 45 degrees off the midline. Now, what that simply means is the head of the humerus is going right in line with the socket, and the shoulder blade from this position.

So this essentially gives the rotator cuff and a lot of the muscles the best force tension relationship, meaning it’s at its strongest point, right.

So for compression, all we’re starting with here is just hey, resist me, I’m gonna push down against her as she fights this. And this is a compressive load into the shoulder. So this allows us to first initiate what a conversation of compression resistance actually looks like. And then we would put her under load, such as a bottoms up carry, or in a plank position, anything in which I’m pushing into her body through a compressive force, and she has to resist that and maintain the shape and the positioning that we want.

Now, you might feel shaky in these positions, and that’s okay, that’s your body’s, that’s your body working with your muscles to figure out how much load or how much strength that it needs to present with what it’s being asked to do.

Distraction

Trust fall. you’re just gonna lean back. Okay, so from here, you can see that there’s traction from her shoulders, right. So if we had a suspension trainer or something set up, go ahead and pull your hips towards me a little bit. Now just bend your elbows and do a row. So pull up right now lean back, right. So this is just a mock kind of what a row would be on a suspension trainer, a TRX. So this is perfect, though, because I’m creating distraction from her shoulder. And she has to resist her body being or her arm being pulled away from her. This strengthens the rotator cuff more than almost anything else that we can do outside of these like just single exercise of internal external rotation.

So these are phenomenal to be able to build more resilience than strength, because we have to be able to pull ourselves up from the ground, or we have to be able to push ourselves up on the ground and starting with these basic exercises are wonderful for rehabbing and retraining the shoulder complex.

Now outside of that, what we’re also going to do is carries, right. we talked about distractive loads, if I was to just grab a couple of weights, couple dumbbells, couple kettlebells, that’s constant distractive load down into my arm. And if I just simply resist that, and walk for distance, as if I was like carrying a wheelbarrow, that’s a great exercise for building a lot of strength and load into the shoulders, and not compromising ways that might be pinching or adding to that.

Downward Facing Dog & Plank Exercise

A full plank has a lot of compressive load. Now what a lot of people have trouble with shoulder pain is getting up into that position. So we can train this by going through compressive loads into a downward facing dog position. So from here, all she’s going to do is lift her hips up towards the ceiling. Right? Now we see a somewhat vertical position here.

So I can retrain an overhead position that might be troublesome with the dumbbell or pressing weight through a compressive load that she’s able to control. Then she’s gonna come back to a plank, right? And now she’s in control.

 

Conclusion

So if this is something you’re dealing with shoulders are pesky, right?  it’s a ball and socket, so it gives us a great amount of mobility. But because of that, it makes it more complex when dealing with these injuries. Especially if you’re someone who’s hyper mobile, we oftentimes just hear “Stretch, stretch stretch,” you’re oftentimes going to see the need for doing more stability training so that the shoulder feels comfortable while going through ranges of motion. And then we can layer in mobility on top of that.

So if you found this to be helpful, and you’re dealing with the shoulder injury, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. If you have a family member again who’s dealing with something like this and they’ve just kind of been put through the wringer. We’d love to have a conversation with you or that family member or a friend to help them regain shoulder mobility and function so that you guys can live a loud, adventurous life. Thanks for tuning in guys.


How To Heal A Disc Herniation Without Drugs or Surgery

Condition Series: How To Heal A Disc Herniation Without Drugs or Surgery

If you have been told that you have a disc injury, disc bulge, disc herniation, or anything to do with a disc within your lower back, this video is for you.

Oftentimes, when we hear disk injuries, disc bulges, and disc herniations, and most of us think that means immediate surgical consultation or immediate surgical needs. Now, in some cases, it is very pertinent and important to be co-managing this with an orthopedic surgeon. But for the majority of cases, that is not the case. So my goal here today is to help reassure you and give you some confidence in your body and in your back, if you have been told that you have a disc injury, a disc bulge or a disc herniation.

I’m Dr. Antonio Gurule with Live Loud Chiropractic and Coaching. My wife and I have owned Live Loud  Chiropractic and Coaching in the Lafayette, Colorado in Boulder County area for seven years. I’ve suffered with this. I have treated many patients with disc bulges and disc herniations. In addition to myself, and what we have done through all of our education and learning and teaching and trial and error of working with people is helped to come up with a system that helps you determine:

  1. If it is a disc herniation or disc bulge
  2. The severity of that
  3. What to do next

PLAY VIDEO ⬇︎

The Problem with Disc Herniations

You have to have a proper assessment and evaluation to determine what are the triggers and the things that make things worse. Disc injuries usually don’t respond well to rotation and flexion. That being said, if you were to be picking something up where I’m flexing over and bending forward, that is going to be compression of your spine under flexion.

And that is what’s going to be putting the most load on the disc. If a disc is trying to heal from an injury, it’s going to be very hard when you keep pushing on that disc and eliciting more pain and damage. If that’s not being addressed from your PCP, your physical therapist or your orthopedist, then what’s the use? Just putting medications, drugs and, you know, maybe some core stabilization exercises on there is not going to help, you’re going to keep spinning yourself in the loop by recreating more pain. the more pain you create, you’re going to be more sensitive to the pain, which only heightens the amount of pain that you feel. And all of a sudden you’re stuck in this loop.

Disc Herniation Assessment

Today we’re going to walk through a basic example of what a disc examination and assessment might look like. And some of the common cues that we give for movement and some of the common active rehab movements that we give early on and throughout to help you get over the disc injury.

Now again, this is the basic example that helps. This is in no way intended to say that this is for you. Because every disc injury is different in how it happens, the chronicity of the cycle will change and dictate what we need to do. You need a custom plan to help you once and for all get over the disc injury to create more confidence so that you can lead a healthy, active loud life. And if you’re interested in that, please follow along and I think you’ll enjoy this video.

Flexion Intolerant Low Back Pain

So as we already indicated, the more common presentations of lower back pain that we see are what we refer to as flexion intolerant low back pain. Now flexion intolerant, low back pain simply means your back does not tolerate flexion. How is flexion presented out throughout the day? well bending over to pick things up. We have to also consider though when you’re sitting, right and we kind of slump. compression is where things most gets sensitive or irritated when we’re talking about flexion intolerant low back pain.

Now with that, as we already indicated in the intro, these are commonly seen with disc injuries. Now disc injuries does not mean herniations, it does not mean bulges, you can have an annular tear, or some sort of disc sensitivity from an injury, and or from trauma-based and or repetitive based loading patterns that create a essentially desensitized disc. So these are the important things to understand. And what we’re going to try to show today is how we tease out or understand that this is more disrelated, or some sort of compression and flexion irritation.

Now, if you already have been told you have a disc injury, and has been confirmed or an MRI, the good part about that is we can expedite that and just understand the sensitive patterns, as we already indicated, we want to know how sensitive is inflection, whether that’s standing or sitting, load, so on and so forth. But if you’re unsure, and you just have this this back pain that’s been either chronic subacute or whatever that is, we want to determine what is actually the sensitized issue and what are the positions and movements again, that are craving this recurrent pattern of pain that you’re not able to get out of.

Because once you understand that, then we can very temporarily splint this so that we can allow the body to not become so sensitized to that pain cycle, and then reintroduce that later on.

The example that we commonly use is if you had a cut on your knuckle and you kept bending your fingers, that scab or that cut would essentially keep opening up in prolonging the healing process. Whereas sometimes you might need to actually splint or hold that finger straight for a while to allow the healing process to occur. And then after everything’s healed, we regain mobility and function back to that. That’s essentially how we treat disc injuries and these flexion intolerant lower back injuries.

So what we want to look for is, again, what are the positions that are most problematic for you? And then we have a few early intervention tools that I’m going to share with you today that will help you in that early sensitive or painful process.

Now, again, these are great for this early intervention, they’re also very well used and beneficial for just kind of like a daily spinal mobility or scrub, even if you’re not having pain. And if you’re someone who commonly is bending over a lot, labor workers, even those that are more sedentary in a desk position.

 

Movements for Looking at Range of Motion

  1. Bend down and attempt to touch toes. Any pain there?
  2. Feet together, arms up overhead, and then lean back. But we do have to keep in mind, if this hurts so much, what your body will commonly do is throw you into an extension where oftentimes you’re kind of walking around like this, because you don’t want to go forward.
  3. Heel drop test. Stand up on the toes, and with legs straight, drop hard on the ground.
  4. Compression of the spine. Sit at the end of the table, sit up nice and tall, then grab the end of the table and pull yourself down. Any issues?
  5. Still seated, kick one leg out in front of her and hold that up. Any tension? Does that go down the leg? Does it create burning symptoms, numbness on and so forth?

 

When we’re looking at disc mechanics, the disc sits in between the vertebral bodies. So if we flex the spine, round it, and add that compression, we want to see if there’s more sensitivity. More likely than not, if it’s a disc injury, we’re going to see with that compression and flection and these types of movements, increases a pain, potentially symptoms down leg if it is more of a disc herniation or bulge. And that’s what we need to determine for the extent of the injury.

 

Basic Movement Patterns for Herniated Discs

Now, in knowing all that, what do we do, right? Well, we already know that the disc is injured, and we have a flexion base injury. So this is where we come into the knuckle model, right? We need to temporarily help her “splint” this so that we don’t keep putting more and more pressure to the back of the disk where the injury is.

 

These are great for two main reasons. They help reduce the pain sensitivity, and help with the healing process.

  1. Hip Hinge

The reason why this is important is we’re always bending forward, right, you’re bending forward to pick something up, you’re unloading the dishwasher, you’re washing your face, your hands, we’re typically in a bent over flexed position. If this causes pain, we need to get to a position here where I can load more of my hamstring and my hips to reduce the load on the lower back. The lower back is still being loaded here. But the but the load is reduced.

  1. Supported Squat

So in our office, we have a suspension trainer or a TRX. You can also use rings or anything like that. At home, though you might not have that equipment. So what we use is a banister, or a kitchen sink, and you’d essentially just hook your sink, she’s going to be using my hands though to just demonstrate this moment.

Stand with a wide, open stance. Holding on to your support, lean back into your heels a little bit, not just your hips, like your whole body leaning back like you’re waterskiing, right?

So there’s two ways in which I try to coach this. So what I want you to try to do is, don’t let your hips go backwards as much, I want you to try to go straight up and down.

Now the second way we coach this is I want you to waterski more, so I want you to really set your hips back away from me. Really move the hips away from her hands. So in doing this, we’re actually decompressing the lower back.

But hands are anchored this way, what’s in the middle? lower back. So on each rep, that lower back is getting a little bit of traction and a little bit of decompression to help relieve a lot of the tension and aches and pains that we get from that compressive feeling of having these lower back injuries.

  1. McKenzie Extension Variation

On the ground, get onto your stomach in an upward-facing dog motion. Shift your weight into your hands and let your hips drop gently. Do multiple reps.

Conclusion

So again, these are the basics. First and foremost, understand pain. Second of all, work on some of the stabilizing muscles that help stabilize the lower back so you feel more comfortable.

These are kind of like your core exercises, but done in a specific way so that we’re not again picking at the scab, then we look at mobility for the mid back and the hips to make sure we have everything we need, then that’s our foundation of getting back to strength, power, agility, or whatever sport or activity that you enjoy doing.

It’s got to go through this progressive plan. We layer in again, soft tissue, dry needling adjustments, all the things that help act as a catalyst. But if I can give her these tools, she’s able to control her pain, so much better at home. And then it doesn’t feel like this end, this end diagnosis, “oh, I have a disc herniation. And all I can do is take medications and sit around.” No, we say this is your medication. These things work oftentimes better than muscle relaxers and ibuprofen and drugs because it maintains your mobility and it gets your body more confident about how to move rather than just sitting and waiting for the pain to return only to come back super stiff and weak.

So if you want to deal with your low back in a very progressive yet conservative way, this is this is how to do it. If you want to just take drugs and wait till it works, that’s totally fine. But most people want to get back to their life. And if you want someone advocating for you to help you through a disc herniation, disc bulge, or disc injury, we’d love to be that advocate and that support team for you. If you found this helpful, please feel free to reach out to us. If you have a family member who is dealing with low back pain, which is extremely common, and they’ve been through the wringer over the years, We would love to have a conversation with them to see how we can support them, whether in the office or even virtually having a consult or conversation over the computer. Thanks for tuning in guys, live loud.