Podcast
Relationships and Adventures on Two Wheels with Jenny Johnson of CYCLERIE | Ep. 76
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 76
EP. 76 | Relationships and Adventures on Two Wheels
With Jenny Johnson of CYCLERIE
Jenny Johnson is the founder and president of CYCLERIE, a children’s cycling education company based in Erie, Colorado. There is a huge decline in kids outdoors doing organic play that is healthy. Therefore, CYCLERIE was born from a need to have children to get outdoors and getting them to appreciate the nature and the open air, rather than turning to their iPad or TV screen
Jenny Johnson created CYCLERIE in 2019, and it launched in 2020. They offer bike programs like camps, kids’ cycling training, and events. Today, CYCLERIE not only attracts people from the Erie community but also from Lafayette and Broomfield.
Episode Highlights
00:38 – Jenny Johnson’s motivations for founding CYCLERIE
02:50 – Overview from CYCLERIE’s Learn to Pedal and Adventure Bike camps for kids
03:41 – How COVID impacted CYCLERIE
08:02 – A tip for getting your child to ride a bike
09:51 – Biking trails to consider taking your family
13:30 – What to consider when buying a bike for your child
17:45 – Other biking events and camps to consider for children
About Jenny Johnson of CYCLERIE
Background:
- Founder and President of CYCLERIE in Erie, Colorado.
- Passionate about children’s outdoor lifestyle.
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Dr. Antonio Gurule 00:09
Awesome. Well, welcome back to the Live Loud Life podcast. Today I’m sitting down with Jenny Johnson, and we’re going to be talking about her newish-
Jenny Johnson 00:19
2020
Dr. Antonio Gurule 00:21
Okay, 2020. Newish, but been around for a few years. But what they’re doing in the local community East Boulder County, Weld County, with biking and family. So welcome.
Jenny Johnson 00:32
Thank you for having me.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 00:33
Yeah. So talk to us a little bit. It’s called CYCLERIE. What is CYCLERIE?
Jenny Johnson 00:38
Yeah, CYCLERIE. CYCLERIE, the name, was sort of tossed out there. It’s French for the word cycling. So it’s kind of a play around words, Cyclerie. I didn’t know that at the time because I’m a Spanish person more than a French person. But that was kind of a fun twist. But it’s Cyclerie meaning, you know, based in Erie, tried to circle around the Erie Community. But also, we get a lot of people from Lafayette and Broomfield. I created it, probably in 2019. It had been brewing for a while, but 2020 was when we launched it.
01:17
I always had neighborhood kiddos coming over to our house, and we were constantly just kind of exploring together on the bike. I was kind of the fun mom, but it was something I love to do. So I thought, you know, a lot of these kiddos aren’t getting the chance to go outside. Or maybe their parents are busy, or they’re usually just turning to an iPad or the TV screen. I started researching it, and there’s a huge, huge decline in kids outdoors in that organic play, which is so important in life. And as children, especially if you try to speak to a kiddo about climate change, when they’re seven, or you know, environmental facts, you’re just not going to get anywhere with a seven-year old or an eight-year old. So, or as young- our campers are as young as three and four. So but getting them outside in nature and having that experience just, I don’t know, it invests the value in them, I think, for future appreciation of the outdoors and just being a kiddo and playing.
02:18
And so that’s how CYLERIE started. And then the bike aspect of it is so cool because we’re able to get from point A to point B, much faster than we would walking or hiking. So it’s just more kids on bikes, and you get more adults on bikes by getting more kids on bikes. So that’s my philosophy is just getting more people outside in nature and building confidence.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 2:40
So walk me through a little bit like- so they’re on bikes- I think you just had a camp that just ended?
Jenny Johnson 02:50
Yeah. So we have multiple camps. Right now this summer, we had two. So we have a Learn to Pedal camp for the really young kids. They’re just maybe on training wheels. Or it could be older kiddos that just haven’t learned yet. And we’ll usually break those age groups up. There is a Learn to Pedal camp that’s Monday through Thursday, three hours in the morning. And then we have another camp, which is alternating weeks called Adventure Bike Camp. And that’s where what I was talking to you about, where we go somewhere. We have a destination. We usually meet at Star Meadows Park in Erie, and we ride to various nature areas. And then the last day of camp is Ice Cream day. So Dairy Queen, usually, but we try to hit up some other local spots if they’re open at 10 a.m.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 03:41
That’s really cool. I think that- obviously, that kind of self-developed or starting to develop in 2019, but then 2020 launch, if you will. I think that came around in a good time because so many kids were then yet put in doors for longer periods of time having to catch up with school based on COVID and everything, just being stuck. And or, you know, they’re kind of like hesitant about playdates because it was inside. So it’s like, this is all outdoors. It’s all exploration. And I think that’s so important, too, because so much of what we try to, at least, encourage for other parents, or at least for our own kids, is just that exploration model of just seeing where things go and develop.
Jenny Johnson 04:19
Yeah. I was devastated, honestly, in 2020 because I had been brainstorming this idea for several years, really, since my oldest, who’s now almost 10 started riding a bike. And then whenever March 1st, I was going to launch it 2020, and then that was right when the pandemic really was starting to become full swing. And I was just crushed, but like you were saying, turns out there was a bike boom, a whole bike, what are they calling it, evolution or revolution, that’s happening.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 04:50
You couldn’t buy bikes anywhere.
Dr. Jenny Johnson 04:49
Couldn’t buy bikes anywhere because so many families were getting out on bikes. And kids’ bikes were booming. I also sell children’s bikes. It’s not my primary business at all. It’s just more of a complementary aspect for kiddos that are at camp.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 05:06
Is it like specific types? Or is it like Striders for just like introductory type of stuff?
Jenny Johnson 05:12
It’s kid-specific bikes anywhere from the Strider size, which would be the 12-inch size tire all the way up to 26 inch tires for the older kids. So pretty much any kiddo that’s not yet able to fit an adult bike.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 05:25
Yeah. So that being said, obviously your passion for biking and kids. How would you- I mean, obviously, I think most people know Striders like the thing to do, but why is that such a beneficial tool for kids learning how and or, as a sidebar to that, should they be using training wheels at some point in time?
Jenny Johnson 05:48
Yeah, so, you know, I hate to say it’s one way or another because if you’re willing to get your kiddo outside, like whatever works for your family. However, from an expert’s point of view, training wheels are a lot harder to teach to balance. If they’ve been on training wheels before, I can always tell at camp, which ones are the Strider kids and which ones are the training wheels because training wheels are essentially converting your bike to a tricycle? You’re not really learning to balance. So if you can’t get a Strider, that’s even your size for your kiddo, if say they’re seven and they haven’t rode yet, you can always take the pedals off of any bike and turn it into a Strider bike. And that’s much more beneficial teaching them to use certain core muscles and balance rather than leaning from side to side.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 06:35
Yeah. That’s a good point. Now, I do have another question. Well, my oldest what he struggled with was he could kill it on the Strider. Like he could go down hills and do everything. But the point when then trying to get them on the pedals, he never could understand like propulsion was all like this. How do you then encourage kids, from a propulsive mechanism, to being here grabbing your feet and pushing versus understanding how the pedals actually work?
Jenny Johnson 07:03
Yeah. It’s tricky. It’s incremental, just like with anything. So a lot of repetition. There is some an option to bring a trainer bike, a stationary style bike that can set up where the bike is still stationary, but the kiddos are on the saddle getting that motion without going anywhere or with risk of falling, just like an adult does at spin class around a peloton. It’s a stationary bike. It teaches them the different cadences.
But when they’re really young, that’s hard for some of that to click. So we just incrementally go from picking our feet up, gliding, frog jumping, and then eventually they’re putting one foot on the pedal. So it may just start with that quick, they have a dominant side. And then it just natural progression and over. Usually our camps are four days, the private lessons I’ll do are usually three to five lessons, 30 minutes each, and it’s just that small incremental repetition.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 08:02
And well, the good thing about kids, too, is like they catch on to things mostly fairly quickly when you have the repetition. They just get it so fast. Yeah, well, it’s funny. Speaking of ice cream, my oldest, he was being a stinker about- we got on this because we bought them new bikes. We got him a new bike, it was bigger, all this great stuff. And he was kind of intimidated by it. And, you know, we kept asking him, it was like weeks until he even wanted to try it. So he’s into bribery. Like, “Hey, we’ll go get you ice cream if you go ride your bike.” And this was Saturday 8 a.m. He’s like, “Are you serious?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “All right. Let’s go do it.” We went outside and he rode it like he’s been doing it for like a year. Just like that, he just took off.
Jenny Johnson 08:41
I hate to call it- yeah, it is bribery, and it almost always works. But I think part of it, too, is just autonomy, like giving them- they have the power and the vehicle to get to where they want to go. And once they figure that out, it’s pretty inspiring, I think, for them, even as an adult. I rode here, and it’s pretty nice.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 09:00
That’s, I think, the hard part as you had mentioned with kids like in commuting and stuff, sometimes you can have that opportunity. I would love to be able to commute every day to work just on the bike. I think it’s such an amazing. I did it in college. I lived at CU Boulder okay. I had a car. I think I put like 1,000 miles on my car in like the four years I was in college. I never drove anywhere. I rode my bike everywhere
Jenny Johnson 09:25
Then you run into people that organically you wouldn’t in a car because when we’re in a car, we’re-
Dr. Antonio Gurule 09:30
You’re shut off from everything.
Jenny Johnson 09:31
Not to say that I commute everywhere. I still use my car yeah a ton with three kiddos and multiple pickups, and we do activities in Boulder, but just having that ability when you have the time to go on your bike is pretty cool.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 09:44
So being now, so you’ve moved from Texas. How many years have you guys been here?
Jenny Johnson 09:49
Since 2018. So four years.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 09:51
So figuring out the area, I think a lot of people like to know, too, what are some of the more family-friendly. Most trails around here are family-friendly, but it could also be like elevation gain and things like that. What are some of your favorite trails around here to take let’s say like a family that either has someone on a Strider and/or learning to pedal but not too intense?
Jenny Johnson 10:13
Yeah, and you can- before I get to the location specific, you can bring a bike trailer and maybe get your kiddo to pedal halfway with the agreement, like hey, if you get tired, the bike trailer’s here. We can throw you a small bike safely in there with you and get from point A to point B. The Coal Creek Trail is very flat and docile. If you’re looking for more of a mountain bike trail, Heil Valley Ranch, H-E-I-L, Heil. People get it confused with Haul. Heil Valley and Boulder, they have a fun schoolhouse loop.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 10:46
Okay. I didn’t know that.
Jenny Johnson 10:46
Oh, yeah. It’s a mountain bike trail. So I probably I would think starting at like age four, maybe even boulder. You never know. [crosstalk]. Yeah, if your kiddo has never been on mountain bike trail, it’s a good starting point. There is some elevation gain, but Valmont Bike Park is great, too.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 11:05
Yeah, we love that one.
Jenny Johnson 11:05
Just to test out your skills, and you’re not far from home. The cars usually, you know, they’re in the parking lot if you need to go grab a snack. I guess the main thing is always bring snacks. That’s what we always say at camp, ride, snack, you know, game, ride, snack, game. And yeah, Coal Creek Trail. And also just if you have bike paths in your neighborhood, we have several where we are, but it’s kind of easy if you can go from the house or find a quick path to school. Before you take your kiddo out, maybe do some of your own research. I just say keep it simple and try to find somewhere fun that has a destination. It doesn’t have to be ice cream. We have a ton of fun. The kids love just finding any kind of water.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 11:47
Yeah, water is key. Anything they can [crosstalk]. That’s awesome. What have you heard of the TowWhee strap? That just reminded me.
Jenny Johnson 11:56
Yeah. I haven’t used one.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 12:00
Yeah, that was a huge game changer for us. My oldest, for some of our rides, because he could go far. And he actually- it was crazy. At four-and-a-half, we love going to Frisco for the marinas and we would ride from Frisco to BRAC. And his little legs, he rode from Frisco to BRAC and back. It was like 10 miles round trip. But some of those hills were tough and elevation’s different, too. So the TowWhee strap is a retractable toe strap, which is huge, because what we had used previously did not retract and it almost got caught up in the tire. So that’s super helpful. But even just small little things, we’re just like, hey, do you need a boost, hook up, and then pull them over the hedge and you can go. That’s a fantastic tool to have.
Jenny Johnson 12:43
You probably don’t want to hear this being a chiropractor, but I tend to push them up by grabbing their shoulders, which is so bad probably for your back.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 12:52
No. I do the same thing, too, because oftentimes you don’t want to hook it up.
Jenny Johnson 12:55
I’m like, oh, what did I do? That’s right. I pumped.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 12:57
You’re pushing them.
Jenny Johnson 12:59
Yeah, I’m riding up the hill pushing their back. We call it giving it a boost. Like do you need a boost? And I’ll do it for kids at camp, too. Even though it is Erie, there are still some significant hills. They’re not for kids. That’s the other aspect is getting a quality, lightweight bike is pretty key because imagine if you were or I were trying to ride an 80 pound bike somewhere, but that’s the weight to power ratio that we’re dealing with in some of the big box store bikes. And you would never expect yourself to be able to do that. And we’re expecting our children to do that and up hills.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 13:30
That’s a good point. We’ll talk about some of the- you had mentioned spikes you saw because that was some of the things we ran into is first and foremost, A, it was kind of tough when you have a kid, you’re like, well seems crazy to spend X amount on a bike when they’re, A, growing out of it fast or, B, just learning. But it has made a significant difference because some of the ones we had, A, they were heavy, B, being that they were used, not really tuned up well. So bearings are very dry and gritty and it’s cracked, to say the least. When you’re thinking it, you’re just like man, not even also having gears, their torque output or [crosstalk] based on torque is significantly change. What makes it so much harder for them, even when they’re just trying to learn. So what do you guys recommend?
Jenny Johnson 14:13
You know, if you can find a good use bike, if you don’t have the budget, because some of these entry-level kids bikes, say for a four- or five-year old can be $300 or $400 that are the high quality bikes. If you don’t have that upfront money, if you could look for a good quality used bike and, you know, obviously take it to the bike shop and make sure everything is functioning and safe. But if you do have the ability to get into the $400 or $500, depending on the size, market, you can buy that, hand it down to siblings. The resale value is excellent on the higher quality bike. So you almost always get back at least 50% of what you paid for.
I don’t want to drop any name brands, but I would just say that there are kid-specific design, not something from the bigger box stores. They’re designed specifically for children, meaning like their brake levers are the right size. Because so many times, you just go into these big stores and the brake levers, it’s a flashy looking beautiful bike, but they can’t even break and stop. I’ve seen that so many times. At camp, the kids or their parents will come to me, like, Oh, they’re just really timid. And I look and they can’t even stop on their own because the brakes are adult levers that they just throw in a kid’s bike and then throw it on the shelf and sell it with the cute basket.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 15:34
Yeah. That being said, do most kids bike from an early standpoint? Do they start with a coaster brake or are they trying to get more to lever brakes? Because I found maybe it’s because levers are too big, but I feel like just the grip strength of kids, it’s kind of challenging to pull levers. So is that partially why they have coaster brakes or are coaster brakes advantageous?
Jenny Johnson 16:00
I personally don’t like coaster brakes. But even some of the higher quality brands will put a coaster brake on their teeny tiny bike. But when you’re going downhill or if you’re in any kind of loose gravel, the coaster brake can cause you to skid. And when kids are naturally trying to find that cadence and that pedal forward, a lot of times they’ll pedal backwards and then they stop and they don’t know what’s going on. But you and I probably grew up with coaster brakes. We’re obviously totally fine. I didn’t learn ‘til I was, you know, a little bit older, five. But you see these two- and three-year olds riding and they’re able to grab the handbrake. You can adjust the brake, too, on the kid brakes so they can grab them a little easier.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 16:42
There is. If you have a bike that has coaster brakes, there’s a way to take the coaster brakes out. It’s actually not that hard. You just YouTube it. You just take apart the hub and you just take the pads out.
Jenny Johnson 16:51
Yeah, a lot of the companies that they sell they have a free wheel kit. If it comes with a coaster brake, you can buy the free wheel and swap it out whenever your kiddo is ready for that handbrake set. All the bikes that I used to teach with at camp and in my experience teaching tons of kiddos, they’re absolutely fine with the handbrake, even some Strider bikes now that have no pedals come with a great practice to teach them that because it’s the stopping power is also so much quicker. They can stop a lot faster with handbrakes than they do that the coaster brake action.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 17:23
And I think just, like you said, the coaster brake as they’re trying to learn that cadence is just so confusing when they’re thinking pedals move, I go forward, but then they go backwards, and then they stop and it just throws them all off. That was at least one of the tougher things for our kids. My son, though, now that he knows how to do it, he loves coaster brakes.
Jenny Johnson 17:43
You can do those with the handbrakes, too.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 17:48
True. So one camp just ended. How often do these camps run?
Jenny Johnson 17:53
So normally, it’s just the summer okay. And 2020, when school was out of session, we did fall programming and a lot longer summer session. But with the weather in Colorado in October, it can be dicey. We ended up having to cancel a few later fall sessions. But yeah, I might do a fall program. 90% sure of that just waiting for staff. I’m always unsure of- the staff that we have is usually college kiddos transitioning off to college or they just graduated high school and they move out of Erie after school. So once we get our staffing figured out, then we go ahead and open the program. So it’ll probably start in like September, October, and it would just be four or six weeks, once a week. So in the summer, we do pretty much daily, Monday through Thursday, 9 to 12. And then the fall would be once a week, just like you would go to dance class or you could go to soccer practice weekly.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 18:53
So that’d be like an evening class, not weekend?
Jenny Johnson 18:55
It’d be like an afternoon, probably like 4 to 5:30 is what we’ve done in the past.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 19:01
You guys ever go up to the Erie Bike Park with the age group?
Jenny Johnson 19:06
Yeah, we do. Our summer camp this year, we always have- naturally there’s sometimes more of an advanced group. And then there’s a group that’s a little more cautious. And so those breakout into two different age groups, advanced and beginner. So the advanced group this year, they went to the pump track because they’re able to ride longer, too. So from Star Meadows Park, it’s probably, I would say, five to six miles round trip to get to the pump track and back. So the group that wanted to hang out closer to home, we did that and still explored and saw, you know- we think of ice cream store that day we went nature discovery. And then the older kids were like, we really want to go to the pump tracks, so we made it happen. Sort of let them decide what they’re going to do and when there’s a safe route to get there. The pump track’s really fun. It is one of those places is where you just have to know the rules, which way to go, because there can be other kids there and it can be dangerous.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 20:06
I’ve seen a couple collisions there. But it’s fun. And the kids love that. It’s such a fun thing for them to do.
Jenny Johnson 20:13
Yeah. And it’s a great starting point, too, if you are thinking about doing some mountain biking. The pump track is a great way to just get used to the hills and gravity.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 20:21
That’s awesome. Well, I know it’s kind of in the infancy- well, not infancy. It’s been around for a couple years, but what are some of the- do you have any other plans or things with it moving forward that you want to be able to do with it?
Jenny Johnson 20:34
Yeah. I would like to get more grownups involved. So we’ve thought about doing-
Dr. Antonio Gurule 20:41
I think that’d be huge. Because I know like my- I mean, my wife knows how to ride a bike. But, you know, we’ve tried doing some mountain biking and stuff. And she’s like, I just don’t really know how to approach or deal with even obstacles and things like that.
Jenny Johnson 20:54
100%. I learned to mountain bike in Texas. So mountain biking in Colorado, I had to step up my game, big time. So I can see why the barrier to entry is there. because mountain biking trails in Colorado aren’t green trails always. And there’s this machine that you have to learn how to operate and make sure the tires are aired up and the chains lubed and everything has to be dialed. Then that’s half the battle just to get out on the trail. So I can see why there are a lot of people that are hesitant to get involved in the sport. So we’ve thought about having some clinics, obviously teaching families and parents. All right, here’s what to do if you get a flat tire. Here’s a flat tire clinic. If something were to come up, we’re going to give you the tools so you feel empowered to go out there. If something were to happen, you can change your flat.
21:42
Also, just basics in mountain biking classes, maybe just starting out with trail etiquette. Like if someone’s coming up behind you and you feel panicked or nervous, you don’t have to get over right away. You get over when it’s safe and announce when you’re coming. Just basic trail etiquette, just to feel comfortable. And then we’ll get to maybe more of the small drops or going over big hills or big rocks and roots. But yeah, that’s how I see it moving forward is doing some group rides, family group rides, then maybe some clinics, especially more for the moms that are involved, because there’s so many moms that come to me saying I don’t even know what bike to buy. What about the bike trailer? And what do I need to connect a bike trailer to my bike? Like there’s a lot of details? And I’m always trying to remember, okay, not everyone’s been doing this for 10 years. And this is new to everyone. So what may seem easy for some people, I just tried to break it down and make it open to everyone because there are so many people in the last two years that have gotten into cycling with the pandemic. And it’s sad to think that their equipment is just sitting in their garage because they’re feeling stumped.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 23:00
I think that I was thinking too. We saw a lot of people just like, What do I do? And then just bought it? And like you said, just kind of sits there and not actually being used?
Jenny Johnson 23:07
Yeah. So we’re thinking about- not just thinking. We are planning some programming and have that-
Dr. Antonio Gurule 23:15
And we’re going to have some races and all of that.
Jenny Johnson 23:20
Yeah. It does need a location to have a hub to get this all started. And then oh, man, I have so many ideas for the racing. I would like to call it events more than racing.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 23:27
Yeah, no, yeah. It’s great.
Jenny Johnson 23:29
You know, some kids just love the competition. And, you know, just having- giving to kids what we would have as adults, like a little podium and some pedals and just fun prizes, quality giveaways. That’s also on the radar, too.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 23:45
That would be awesome.
Jenny Johnson 23:47
Yeah. The single track is a little dicey to have a race there. For some kids, it can be intimidating, but it could be somewhere in like a flat field. It doesn’t have to have huge hills or jumps. If anyone has any recommendations or any opportunities that they’re aware of, please connect with me because I’m looking for some opportunity.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 24:05
Yeah, I’ll keep my eyes open. Speaking of races, there was an obstacle course race I recently saw on some random farm in East Erie near I25. Yeah, it was off a county road. It was off Erie Parkway. And south of that, and I was just like, what are these people doing? And they were running an obstacle course race out there.
Jenny Johnson 24:29
Okay. It may have been The Recess Factory.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 24:33
I didn’t look up what it was. I just saw an obstacle course.
Jenny Johnson 24:37
[crosstalk] open anymore, but it used to be like a mud run type setup.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 24:41
It was only like a month ago.
Jenny Johnson 24:42
Okay. Yeah, I’ll have to have to connect you with that person, but I’m pretty sure that would have been what it is. But yeah, but it was on foot, right? Like a foot obstacle
Dr. Antonio Gurule 24:51
Yeah. It was exactly like what you’d see like a Tough Mudder or Spartan Race, but it was just in this field out there.
Jenny Johnson 24:59
Because I know the RadRover event that the town does is really popular.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 25:02
RadRover, I have not heard of that. What is that?
Jenny Johnson 25:06
So RadRover, the town of Erie, they do that every- I think it’s July. It might be coming up- I’m not sure. Don’t quote me on the dates, but last year it was in July about this time. I think they used to try to have like a kids triathlon, and it wasn’t as successful. And so they just focused more on keeping it simple to RadRover, like one sport, and that seemed to do really well.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 25:27
So that’s a biking event?
Jenny Johnson 25:28
No, sorry. It’s an obstacle course event. It’s put on by the town of Erie, but I would like to do something like RadRover, but only do the bike instead of incorporating any kind of like swim bike run. Keeping it simple for kids that’s key.
Dr. Anthono Gurule 25:45
Yeah. Limit the variables.
Jenny Johnson 25:45
Yes. Yes. Yes. But kids’ triathlons do happen, but there’s a lot involved to get there.
Dr. Anthono Gurule 25:50
For sure.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 25:50
For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, also from just set up, but liability issues with water and stuff. That’s a whole another game.
Jenny Johnson 25:56
And I think just exposing kids to that, not even competition, but just hey, like, my neighbor is doing this. Like this is a normal thing. Like we go out and we run together and we have fun and we high five at the end. And, like, I don’t know, for me, I’m not super-fast, but I love doing little races, cyclocross events and things like that.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 26:19
I don’t even think of- I just think of two. Like we did the turkey trot last year and our kids had a blast. And it’s the thing that everybody does every there’s five knots and races all the time, but there’s really not- and granted, I think it’s harder to structure bike events like that because there’s road closures and things like that from my kids’ perspective. They love anything like that.
Jenny Johnson 26:39
And it can be small. Doesn’t have to be anything grandiose. And I don’t know, I just love the community aspect of events like that, whether I’m going fast that day or not. Yeah, like at the end, you know, everyone’s hanging out, it’s family oriented. So I pursue that for Erie.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 26:56
Have you done the Venus de Miles since being out here?
Jenny Johnson 26:59
No. I do cyclocross. And actually, funny enough, my kiddo got me into that last fall because it’s basically like riding a road bike on gravel. So it’s a unique kind of- richer in a way.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 27:16
Jump over obstacles, do crazy stuff.
Jenny Johnson 27:19
Yeah, you carry your bike. So I primarily mountain bike. I do some road biking, but the cyclocross was really fun. And most of them are in Boulder. I would love to see one in Erie because the cyclocross races have men’s, women’s, and little kids. And so it’s a family event that everyone can do on a Saturday.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 27:41
I think they could do. They just need to find or there’s enough open-
Jenny Johnson 27:45
Permitting and getting people out to Erie. I think a lot of people, in Lafayette too, I think a lot of people think this area is still like cows and pasture. But you know, there’s such a market for young families. And no, it would be great to not have to drive into Boulder for every event.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 28:04
That’s awesome. Well, I’m looking forward to seeing all those things come up. I think that’s going to be awesome. And we’ll keep an eye open for what happens for fall. And so I should say, before I forget because I’m always bad about this. How do people learn more? Where do they find more information? How do they connect with you if they wanted to get into the camps or just stay in the loop about when camps are, when events are, so on and so forth?
Jenny Johnson 28:28
Yeah, so it’s cyclerie.net, C-Y-C-L-E-R-I-E. cyclerie.net. I’m most active on Instagram. It’s @cyclerie. So you can find me there. I’m Jenny Johnson. I have a Facebook page as well and a website that has all of the program information. So we always have summer programs. The registration usually opens March 1. And if you’re ever interested in private lessons or getting a group of kids together, too, we do that year round as long as it’s not too cold. If there’s not snow on the ground, we’ll usually have our bikes out as a family
Dr. Antonio Gurule 29:04
And then do you guys have like a newsletter or anything? Or is that where most things are announced? Like if there are group rides or anything coming up or anything like that?
Jenny Johnson 29:15
Yeah. We’re actually kicking off a newsletter this fall. Previously had just relied on social media. But I know a lot of times that can just be inundated with so many events. So the newsletter and direct email is going to be our next method of communication for bigger events.
Dr. Antonio Gurule 29:32
Great. Well, thanks for spending time and sharing about this. I think this is awesome. I can’t wait to see how it builds and grows because we’re huge on just family bike rides together, too. We have the trailer, we have the TowWhee, we love packing up and just be like, Hey, we’re going to go somewhere new, ride, see what happens. So this is amazing what you’re doing.
Jenny Johnson 29:54
Thanks for having me.
–
EP|75 with Rebecca Bach of Mecha Fitness | Being Your Best Even When You Are At Your Worst
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 75
EP |75 Being Your Best Even When You Are At Your Worst
With Guest Rebecca Baack of Mecha Fitness
Rebecca Baack is the owner of Mecha fitness. In this episode we’re going to talk a little bit about her background with Mecha, her extensive fitness journey in the fitness industry, especially in the Colorado area, as well as her training philosophies.
Highlights
Guest Speaker (Rebecca Baack) Intro: 00:29
Intro to Mecha Fitness – 03:50
Diversity in Mecha Fitness: 05:15
Denali Adventure – 11:29
Can you be at your best when you’re at your worst- 4:00
Embrace the Suck – 19:46
Mecha Fitness https://www.mecha.com/
Mecha on IG: https://www.instagram.com/mechafitness/?hl=en
About Rebecca Baack
Background:
- Owner of Mecha Fitness
- Diverse Training Philosophies
- Has an extensive background in the Colorado Fitness Industry.
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Can you be at your best, when you’re at your worst?
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mecha, people, denali, cardio, summit, strength training, core, hiking, yoga, grit, locations, altitude, pandemic, fitness, training, love, add, guide, deadlifts, power
SPEAKERS
Anthony Gurule
00:29
All right guys, welcome back to another episode of The Live Loud Live Podcast based in Lafayette, CO. I’m here with Rebecca Bach. She is the owner of Mecha Fitness. we’re going to talk a little bit about her background, as she was sharing her extensive fitness journey in the fitness industry, especially in the Colorado area.We’re also going to get into some of her training philosophies. Finally, we’ll get in to some of the more recent adventures she’s been doing. I’ve been following along on social media, which actually looks really epic. We’re just gonna kind of chat and see what Mecha and you’re about. So thanks for having me. Yeah, so Introduce yourself. Give us a little bit about the as far back as the history if you want to. My name is Rebecca. I am the owner of Mecha Fitness in Boulder and Louisville two locations. I’m the co owner of 34 core power locations around the US and a co owner of Ape Co Movement school which is located in Boulder and in Edgewater down in Denver. When did you first start? You were the first franchise with Core Power correct? That was back I want to say mid 2000s. I opened core powers first franchise location, Broomfield east, okay, so over on 144 symbol, and then core power franchise for a while to a couple of their partners. Then they stopped franchising for a while I had I opened also the Flatiron small location, okay. And then I joined forces with some other co workers I knew from the telecom industry. So my background is in telecom, corporate strategy. And we combined our locations and then continued to expand. So in total, we have core powers in North Denver, South Denver, suburban Chicago, the Carolinas, Charleston and the Phoenix, Arizona area. Wow. That’s awesome. Yeah, a long time. Yeah, a long time. So I did that was the core power for probably like, little over 15 years. And then so you guys probably can’t see on the video here. But we’re sitting in a very different room than what core power would be. So walk me through what was the journey of starting Mecca? Like how did that transition into in now? What is this.
02:52
so I, there’s a lot, there’s a big journey on this. So core powers, corporate parents had exercised a buyout option of the core power locations. I’m part of that transition was set to occur in April 2020. And we all know what happened in April 2020. And so we kind of got stood up at the altar in that transaction, and then took them to court for that. And that’s still in the legal process right now with them. But as part of that journey, I could see that that was coming to an exit, whether I wanted it or not. Yeah. And started looking for other opportunities. Mecha was owned by two other owners. So I I’m not the founder of Mecha. It had shut down during the pandemic, like everybody had to you know, so I purchased it out of COVID shut down, and then reopened it. And then grew it to this location here in Louisville.
03:50
So obviously you had a very strong feeling about the possibilities of Mecha. Yeah, to be able to revive for Yeah, I tried it when I was at core power. So it used to be on the Pearl Street Mall, and it was called Coco fit. Not on the Mall area, but on the east East Pearl Street. And a lot of yoga teachers were were going there because they loved it because it’s similar to yoga and that it’s really slow paced and about mindful alignment, but more strength training focus to it. So I loved the brand. I love the concept back then, since then, the owners had added on the cardio element to it as well. So there’s a second, there’s kind of two concepts under one roof. So this this room that we’re sitting in, which is the low impact strength training room, and then the other room which is the low impact cardio hitt room so took that on and expanded it to Louisville in 2021. So I’m curious to get your perspective on this because someone who does not do enough yoga, but having conversations with those that enjoy yoga is a I think it’d be valuable to get your perspective for someone who has so much background in that, but yet also doing strength training. And then also seeing you do deadlifts and things like that. Right? We’ll get into that is, how do you where do you how I’m gonna say one is better than the other? But how does this benefit someone who strictly does yoga, thinking yoga? Is enough strength? And that’s obviously a very specific definition for the person. Sure, right. But I think enough people do yoga, we’re like, Well, I’m getting strength training through yoga, but I feel they need some more. So how could this be different? How would this benefit them?
05:35
Right? Right. I mean, I would say, like, the first principle is just do movement that you love. So if you love yoga, and it keeps you coming back, then awesome, keep doing yoga. At some point you sort of tap out on yoga, it’s all bodyweight-based in yoga. So you can’t add weight to it in any kind of realistic way. So you just get to a point where there’s no juice in the squeeze anymore. What’s nice about the resistance classes we have is it’s all spring-loaded tension. And so you can add weight as you go, you can constantly be progressing in this room. It feels, in your body, similar to yoga, and that it’s mindful and slow. So that’s really why I think people in some ways, I mean, they you know, yoga is awesome for a lot of different things to but it I guess, quote unquote, kind of graduate from yoga as their physical practice, because they just top out and you know, the bodyweight holds of it, and they need more resistance to
06:41
- Yeah, that’s, that’s such a good point. And like you said, there’s, it obviously depends on the goals, the context of the person. And yes, doing the thing that you enjoy keeping you back is huge. So that’s good. It’s a good stepping stone and into some other stuff. So then the cardio piece, which is in the other room right next to us, right? What are some of the equipment that are pieces of equipment or things that you guys utilize over there? Yep. So
07:03
we use Versaclimber. Over there, which now there’s not that many gyms around that use it and it is killer. It’s a great low impact, contralateral workout too, so good for your brain. You can add resistance to that machine as well. So you can do a resisted climb on it. So we use Versa climbers, we use assault bikes. So rogues assault bike, and which is common in the CrossFit industry, most people are familiar with that. But that is also killer piece of equipment. And then we use skiers, so a standing skier, platform, and then we have weights, free weights, we have a pull up rig, TRX, slam balls, all kinds of equipment. So you know, it’s different every day, depending on what day you come. And, but you’ll always be on those three cardio machines and doing like some kind of cardio challenge. And then some sort of floor work challenge as part of that.
07:52
That’s awesome. I mean, that was, I think that’s what’s so great. It’s just it, it gives you the taste of what people liked, but then also like diversification, because I know for me, and bias Lee, I have certain things that I enjoy more, and I don’t diversify enough, which is, you know, that’s another conversation. But that’s good. It’s good, because you can hit all those different things in such such a different time. Yeah. But for you and your training, you’re adding another layer to that walk us through some of the training that you currently are doing.
08:21
yeah. So I also do just heavy strength training. As we’ve talked about before, I have a gym in my garage. So you know, classic lifts, front squat, back squat, deadlifts, benchpress, you know, the classic ones. And so I like to do that as a compliment. Actually, I would say that’s like, my main probably my main focus is strength training. And then I’ll take resistance maybe twice a week. I like resistance because it’s unilateral work largely. So it’s good for stabilization of both sides of your body because as you know, as a strength trainer, you tend to in any move like a deadlift, like dominate into one leg. Yeah. And so you have to be you have to constantly be managing that trying to make sure both legs joints are equally strong and you’re getting like same tension both sides to prevent prevent injury or weightlifting, you know, so a lot of people love this room that do that kind of bilateral work like cyclists or runners so that they can work on one side of their body and the other and get symmetry. So I like this work for kind of my this is sort of my accessory in my core work yeah, and then I’m a big believer even though cardio is not my favorite thing to do. I mean, I love hiking, I will get cardio hiking, but hitting that like max heart rate threshold like one to two times a week just a minimum dosage, you know of a couple minutes of maybe some sprints or whatever it is that’s like really pushing your cardio threshold. I’m a big believer in that for just health and wellness and longevity in your life and also being able to then pick up when someone asks you if you want to climb a 14 or and it’s like right away no problem you know you don’t get altitude sick and it’s it’s fine. So
09:59
does Your training also include like a subset or baseline of steady state or is that just basically the hiking that you get? So yeah, is sufficient for that. Yeah. I mean, I would say that for steady state cardio, that’s when I just do the stuff I enjoy, like a walk with my dog or a hike or something like that. But yeah, I never just get on a treadmill or just, you know, go for 45 minutes or something like that. That’s not my, my personal preference. Yeah, that’s no, that’s great. I mean, and that’s what, that’s what so many people I don’t think are doing well, I see. I see. I feel like a dichotomy of not doing enough and or doing too much of it. We’re not seeing the balance of having some steady state. They think just redlining all the time. Oh, yeah, is the best.
10:44
Yeah, I definitely, you know, try to talk people out of that coming every single day to Mecha, taking Dell, you know, double up both classes, because what’s great about Mecha is the workouts are short, they’re only 50 minutes long. And they’re very intense. And that’s how I like if I’m going to, if I want an adaptation in my body, like hit the intensity really hard and do it for a short amount of time, like minimum viable product, you know, no more than that. Because then you get wear and tear on your body and just things start breaking down. And I think in Boulder County, in general, we all like fitness, because it’s like our mental health, too. So you got to be mindful about the overtraining, just like you said, because we actually enjoy it. You know, a lot of people just didn’t enjoy the fitness and can tend to overdo it.
11:29
For sure. Yeah. And I think I mean, the minimal viable product term is something I use a lot too, because it’s like, wow, we enjoy fitness. Like, wouldn’t you enjoy doing other things other than just fitness? If you can get what you want out of just doing this? Would that be enough? For sure. And most people would agree. But then yet they think, Well, if I get it out of this, if I do more than wholesale get more, right. But sometimes it goes the opposite direction. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That’s a good point. So with that a lot of this has been obviously supplementing and supporting some of your recent adventures. Yeah. I’m curious to hear how some of those were. Sure. So what you’re referring to is I just I attempted to summit Denali. Let’s see that was last month. And my training for that was largely like strength training, a lot of spine stabilization and isometric spine strength. So a lot of one arm heavy, carries nice, you know, for a mile on the other eye, that is where you would use a treadmill sometimes. And strength training work for that, getting a lot of like load in the hips. So my hips could stabilize my knees, you know, work in that whole chain up and down. And, and then the, you know, cardio realm, because I needed to work that but sort of hypoxic state that you have to be in at altitude. And it’s a great way to do it in a short period of time. Like, it’s hard for me to do sprints, or like run outside sprints or something like that. So being able to do that on the Versaclimber where it’s not impact. And I could just completely gas myself and like hit that max heart rate threshold in 30 seconds, and just do that a couple rounds. That I mean, I went into Denali being just feeling really strong really fit until I got to the top. And when we crashed and burned, was it. Do you think it was sheer altitude? Factor? Yeah, for
13:25
sure. So I was starting to show signs of of high altitude pulmonary edema. Like I really fought for that summit hard. I got to summit day, I lasted, I don’t know, seven hours through summit day. So got through all the technical terrain. And you’re at your like the very last part, you’re literally like at the base of that final Hill, it’s maybe a third of a mile. It’s the first time you can actually see the summit from the entire time you spent on Denali, like you can’t see the summit until really right there. And I started having like wheezing, you know, with my breath. And like we were at a final break the break where you get to take off your backpack and go without your backpack. And that’s it, you’re done. And I was just like a puddle on the ground. And it like really terrible flu like symptoms, and the guide was like you still gotta get down. Yeah, so I don’t think you should I think like you need to just chill and rest and I sobbed. It was all I mean, I just was so crushed. And I was you know, I was also just crushed because the youngest guide had to stay with me. So I limited his ability to summit so I just felt terrible about that too. And that was super humbling. But then the hardest part was in getting down because all the technical part of the route I’d already done, so I had to get down that piece. And the guide you know, there’s there’s all sorts of like protective equipment on Denali, like stuff where you clip in. So in case you fall like not everybody falls and you’re safe. Because of the state I was in, they were worried about me bending over and clipping and unclipping into the carabiners. Oh, yeah. And so the guide was like you, me, and in this another client that was on the trip, are going to travel down unhooked. And I was like, I’m not comfortable with that, you know, because I like that. I mean, we’re all going to risk our lives, like, Isn’t there another way? And he’s like, No, this is the safest way. Like, I don’t think you should bend over, like clip in and clip out. And so none of us will clip in. And I was concerned, because, you know, I had done a lot of research about Denali, and where are the places where there’s been accidents in the past. And so, you know, we had to travel down these sections, which are, you know, you’re literally walking a tightrope ledge, foot in front of foot, and it’s a sheer drop off, and we didn’t clip in. And so I just was like, you know, I really am a believer of training grit. And one of the levels of grit is like, can you be at your best when you’re at your worst? And so I just like, the whole time, I was thinking, like, I gotta be at my best, even though I’m at my worst, because if I slip and start sliding down, and they can’t self arrest me, like, all three of us go down. So just trying to make every step perfect. On the way down, which I did, and we got down. But then like, once I was at kind of the bottom of each technical section, I had to melt into a puddle for a while. Yeah, sure, recover is just took everything out of me to get down there and keep every one that was on my team safe and be safe. And it was, it was pretty challenging. I mean, one of the most like humbling experiences I’ve been through for sure, to where, like, at the end of those two days, there’s sort of two days of technical climbing to get down, you know, I would just be a puddle, and my, my tent mate, who was the one who was on my rope, would like, take off my boots, change my socks for me, you know, bring me food, just do everything she could to take care of me, like the whole team carried a lot of my weight. But right around right around 11,000 feet. Like it’s just changed, I just perch right back up. So it really was that altitude and, you know, like, I really, I would like to try it again. I hope I get a chance to try it again. I learned a lot. One of the big things I will do differently next time is I will take the freakin Diamox which is altitude sickness prevention medication, I wasn’t taking that in the dosage that was recommended. And so you know, that in addition to a whole host of other things that I learned, but it was also I don’t regret any of it too. Because like if I just strolled to the top and been able to take like the sweet Instagram photo, you know, to my eyes, sacks and everything like that. I learned so much from this and it really cracked open my heart in a way that I think I needed you know, to experience having people need to take care of me and to be the vulnerable one and to be the weak one. And so no matter what I don’t regret like any moment of that journey it was a fantastic and amazing
18:14
that’s an amazing story. I’m so I’m so obviously medication helping outside of that. I mean, we have big peaks, but is there any way to get additional high altitude training? Yeah, I mean, you you can like step on a mountain, right? Like you can like buy the expensive tent that you sleep in, you know, in your house. So you can like do that. Yeah, I think that’s what a lot of people that live at sea level do. Yeah, I I did like some winter fourteeners a lot of winter hiking. And I have no problem at 14,000 feet. I mean, a lot of the people on the team were feeling sick at 14,000 feet, and not doing well. And I was I was fine there. It was 17,000 feet was where I started not to feel great. I didn’t sleep the night before we summited. And I, when you get to the next camp, the high camp at Denali, you have to build camp too. So I was like sawing ice blocks out of the mountain. Like we had to like stack ice blocks up around our tent. You probably didn’t get to bed till 11pm that night. And then you’re at 17,000 feet, so it’s hard to sleep. I didn’t sleep at all that night. I woke up the next morning already nauseous, no sleep, having a hard time getting water down. I mean, it was kind of like already a train wreck from from the start, which was the summit of Denali
19:30
20,330 I believe or 20 Somewhere around 20,300.
19:35
so in you had mentioned being a believer in grit, right being your best at your worst, and just from a cause. I mean, I think most people would understand this, but how does your everyday training philosophy and mentality like built into it?
19:51
I’d say a lot of it is doing things that suck. Doing stuff you don’t want to do. I did a lot of cold weather hiking. I did a lot when I was tired, still getting up in my garage doing back squats, even though I just was exhausted or didn’t feel like it. Just pushing through and that, you know, that sort of saying embrace the suck. Trying to find situations where you have to embrace the suck.
20:24
Do you do anything? So this is a failure because Jaco willing, he talks a lot about this, right? And a lot of people do, right. And it’s using physical suck to harden you mentally. Right? Which, which makes sense, right? Because you just have to overcome something. Is there anything that you do from a mental perspective that’s consistent that helps with that?
20:46
Yeah, I would say opening opening gyms in the middle of a pandemic. That’s definitely a good mental challenge. I opened really like three three gyms across two different fitness concepts throughout the pandemic. So that takes a lot of hard work, a lot of grit, a lot of smarts, a lot of just scrappiness. So that is one of them. You know, I haven’t been back since the pandemic, but I was a practitioner of jujitsu prior to the pandemic. And I think that is an also a fantastic way to build grit and calmness under pressure, you know, literally under pressure. They’re like, so somebody laying on top of you and just like waiting for them to make a mistake. You know, that patience? Yeah. So that that one as well. And it’s something I’m always seeking out and thinking about, like, if I’m if I don’t feel like I’m being challenged, emotionally and spiritually, I’ll think about like, what would be something that I could take on? That would be a struggle that would push me in that way? Where I could learn.
21:54
That’s amazing. I love that. Yeah. Thanks. I mean, I think that’s a kind of a cool way to wrap up. I don’t have any other questions. Other than maybe if there’s anything you wanted to add about how you added it’s the cardio, the resistance training, being supportive of obviously bigger goals, but Yet can be a standalone as well alone. Yeah, obviously, not everyone has Denali goals. Sure. I know it’s a little bit better or differently tailored. But is there anything else you wanted? I mean, that was an awesome story. Is there anything you else you wanted to add or any other like big mission that you have coming
22:31
big mission?
22:33
You know, just like enjoying life, figuring out work life balance? I have kids too. We talked about that, and figuring out like, how do you get them to build grit? You know, how do you push them? Let’s add a little bit that I mean, because I wouldn’t say the majority of people listen, our parents but a lot of people who are part of Live Loud, are parents, but a lot of us are younger, right? Parents, right? Meaning our kids are like my oldest is six. What are some of the ways you’ve tried to instill that mental toughness and grit and teaching your kids like, hey, the worlds not all roses and butterflies?
23:08
Definitely. I mean, I’m a big believer in chores. It Oh, and giving your kids chores. I had a lot of chores growing up. And that was what like someone who used to work restaurant industry told me that’s the first interview question she would ask people is what choice did you have growing up? They couldn’t answer that. She’s like, interviews over. Yeah. So I’m a big believer giving them chores Yeah, just a simple response for that. But yeah,
23:33
it works really well. Yeah. It also just, I mean, from early get go, to his chores, and a sense of not like you have to do these things like hey, we’re part of a family. This is a collective thing together as part of this being a unit. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That’s awesome. For sure. Well, this was amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. I love the gym. This is an amazing setup. And I loved hearing that story. And hopefully we get to see a Denali Summit. Fully someday, maybe in a year or two. Yeah, really. Back to the drawing board. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Thanks so much for Antonio. Perfect, that was fun. Thank you a super wild adventure. I mean, I loved it. And you know it’s funny because we the only
–
The One Question Your Provider Should Be Asking You EP|73
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 73
The One Question Your Provider Should Be Asking You
With Dr. Antonio Gurule
Sometimes we’re unable to do the things we want because of pain, being out of shape, or simply lacking energy. Therefore, we need help from a professional. With many chiropractors and physiotherapists to choose from, sifting through to find the right one can be difficult.
In this episode, I uncover one way to tell if a chiropractor, physiotherapist, and healthcare provider truly cares about your interest and will get you the results you’re looking for.
Episode Highlights
01:13 – Alarming musculoskeletal pain stats in the US
02:03 – The pain management crisis
06:10 – What’s your motivation for dealing with pain? What do you want to be able to do?
07:44 – My problem with functional improvements and assessments
10:23 – The question your provider must ask
13:00 – One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to achieving your pain treatment goals
14:50 – Trustworthy coaches, personal trainers, physiotherapists, and chiropractors are an investment, not an expense.
About Dr. Antonio Gurule
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Antonio 00:00
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. happy that you’re here. I’m happy that you’re listening and you’re jiving with our content and our message here.
00:25
What we’re about. If you’re new here, our role is to help guide you to the adventures that you’re made for. Obviously being chiropractors and coaches, we do that through a multitude of different approaches, but we try to meet you where you are. And that’s a little bit of foreshadowing into what we’re talking about today.
00:45
What we have found is families deserve more from their healthcare providers, and we hope that we can fill in the gaps of the message and the questions that you are not getting answers to through the knowledge and expertise that we have. And we do this in a subset of different niches and specialties of which is, primarily prenatal, postnatal, and pediatric care, which is what my wife Dr. Nichelle does. But then outside of that is just musculoskeletal pain. And I heard a stat the other day. This was kind of a reflection off of COVID 2020 and 2021. This is not what we’re referring to, but it started with the mental status of the United States adult. This was just the adult population, not to mention what was happening on with adolescents, teens and, kids is that 40% of them were at an elevated stress level, compared to what they were previously. It just added so much more stress on that.
01:46
But on top of that in, and stress having part a play in that, is at any given point in time, it’s estimated that 35% of us are dealing with some form of musculoskeletal pain. That’s a lot. When you look at the total population of the United States, we’re just talking about United States stats, 35%, a third of you, one out of three, is dealing with some form of musculoskeletal pain.
02:11
Now we know that a lot of this is being mismanaged. i.e., there’s an opioid in pain medication crisis. That’s been what’s going on with fentanyl from just a drug perspective of what’s being prevalent on the streets as well, is there is a crisis around how to manage pain. And most of this is dealt with a numb suppressing sort of approach. In reality, when we have a better understanding of what pain actually is and what’s happening, we can take grasp and form some form of autonomy around our pain.
02:50
Now, there are a subset of cases. I always say this because someone’s like, oh, what about this? What about this? There is obviously a subset of pain that needs a multifactorial approach that might include some form of medication. But as seen this week in particular with three hot low back cases. When we say hot low back cases, this is your typical, I bent over and my back went out situation. I can’t walk. I’m about to go to the hospital to get medication, but I don’t want to.
03:20
It was all dealt with a movement approach, of which we were able to retrieve 50% reduction in pain mitigation with a few basic exercises, explained in a certain context and form to help these individuals get control of their pain in this immediate set so that they can start gaining some momentum in a positive direction rather than going through a negative feedback loop. So what we’re seeing is this approach of not understanding how to actually manage musculoskeletal pain.
03:55
Now, when you’re in this world, as obviously most of the listeners are not, is you see this constant battle of- and this is true in any industry, to be honest, of like how to best approach these. You know, you have one side that thinks this, you have another side that thinks this. Look at just how our nation’s run of just a two-party system, and then the complete opposing views of those and realistically not getting a lot of stuff done in that, but this is not a political show is.
04:25
But that’s what we see. We can’t find a middle ground of understanding that you have to have a patient-centered approach. And that’s what today’s show is. If you feel that you have been, or your case or your musculoskeletal pain or your injuries have been mismanaged, because you got one person saying this, you got another person saying this, you want conservative methods, but you don’t want to take medication, but yet at the same time, they’re not getting you anywhere because you’re self-reliant on not only medication, but maybe physical therapy or chiropractic adjustments. If you feel that your case has been mismanaged, this is the show for you. This is how to manage musculoskeletal pain. And this is through one question and one question alone.
05:07
Now this is a ‘who’ not ‘how’ question. Meaning, this doesn’t necessarily tell you the how; this just indicates the appropriate question to determine if you have the right provider who will provide you, who will be the ‘who’ for you providing the how, the means, so on and so forth.
05:29
And this is a question that we’ve heard in multiple different areas from multiple different people in one way or another. Some have obviously coined the term to be theirs, but it’s something that’s been around coaching and marketing and advertising. Realistically, this comes down to the trust factor and the trust factor is whether you as the client, patient, or member trust the individual.
05:56
And if the individual is asking this question and they’ve gained your trust, then you know you’re on the right path. But the question sheds light to the underground or the underlying truth message or goals that you’re trying to accomplish. So it’s really more about you as the client and patient as a self-reflection, but it’s hard to know that if you’re not being asked the question.
06:30
A thought process is important because when you’re dealing with musculoskeletal pain, if asked incorrectly, the answer is, well, I just want my pain down. Well, why is that important? This has been asked, like the five whys. You just keep asking why, you keep asking why until they finally break down and cry because they know the real answer.
06:58
I’m just kidding. They don’t always break down and cry. They know the answer because you’ve dove in far enough to determine their true motivation. Now, when we’re dealing, obviously, with musculoskeletal pain, it’s less about immediate pain. It’s more about, well, I can’t do X, Y, and Z, which are important to me. And I would like to do that.
07:22
And to name off a few of these most recent back cases is I love gardening. It’s summertime in Colorado. I want to be able to garden. I want to be able to enjoy my yard. I want to be able to enjoy the outdoors. And I can’t do that right now because of my pain. Or I lead an active lifestyle. I want to be able to go paddle boarding. I want to be able to go hiking. I want to be able to do those things. I want to be able to get down on the floor with my grandkids or my children to enjoy time with them, but I don’t feel comfortable about that. I want to be able to sit in a meeting and not feel like death when I get up.
07:55
And this is more of a motivating factor for vocational improvement, whatever that might be. And in reality, what it looks like is it’s very draining mentally and you want your energy back.
08:09
And so we now start to see a different criteria on what goal outcomes we should be looking for. Many a times, providers, such as myself are looking for “functional improvements”. And this is dictated by the insurance model. Meaning they want you to go through a checks and balance list to determine if there is functional improvement to understand if your treatment is showing improvement.
08:42
Now, there is validity to that. Meaning a lot of times these functional assessments are based on, well, getting dressed in the morning is easier. I’m able to do more activities, but from a functional improvement, what others are looking for is just like, I’m able to measure your stability or quantify your stability or quantify your range of motion.
09:08
And that has improved. Thus you must be improving. And I think there’s a time and place where that could be important, but for me, I hate that. I don’t think it’s valuable. I don’t think there’s a lot of great carryover to the conversation to you as a client, member, or patient of really understanding what that even means.
09:28
Now I could say, yeah, you look like you have about 30 degrees range of motion, and I can ballpark that and describe it, but it has to be put into the total narrative of what we’re actually trying to do, i.e., your goals of getting back to X, Y, and Z.
09:42
So I always ask, what are the things that you want to be able to return back to? That gives me a clear, defined movement pattern or criteria of which we’re trying to achieve. And then we mold and blend our treatment approach to be able to do that. So if you want to be able to do gardening, oftentimes you have to pick up a bag of mulch or some compost or something like that that could weigh anywhere between 30, 50, or maybe more well. Here’s a kettlebell. I’m going to teach you how to pick up an odd object or a box or something like that that weighs a certain amount. And that way, you gain a specific parameter idea and feeling and more context – again, context, context, context – around how to move, navigate, and manage the pain that you currently have, but then also in the future to reduce it.
10:32
Now, coming back to the question. So the question that we ask on every single new patient that comes in the door that we’ve been treating and, or if there was a new issue or a new problem that we’re trying to solve is, Hey, if we’re sitting down here now, depending on obviously the length of what we’re talking about. Sometimes this length will change, whether it’s three, six, a year, or three years. We’re just going to pick three to six months to just start the narrative.
11:05
I’m just going to read you here to make sure I kind of get it right. Obviously this speaks off differently depending on the person. But if we’re sitting down here having the same conversation three months from now, and you’re looking back over the past few months, what has to happen for you to actually feel confident or happy about the progress that you’ve made in your recovery to make that this was a successful investment in your time, energy and money.
11:43
This is an open-ended question to allow you describe what’s important in your life. What are the things that you can reflect upon that you really want and that are really important. And oftentimes this is described in a way that is not forced upon, but someone will ask you like, well, do you want to be able to do this? Yeah that would be nice. That’s not motivating enough for you. And it’s not that motivation is the key to this, but if I’m able to tap into and understand realistically what things you want to be able to do, I can better approach that.
12:26
Now this is the question, again, that every single healthcare provider should be asking whether you’re coming in for cardiac support from your cardiologists, maybe your rheumatologist, so on and so forth, so that they can navigate not only the management of that, but then address it appropriately with maybe medication, but also with an appropriate referral, not just the standard cookie cutter.
12:51
Well, you need physical therapy. You need to get your heart stronger. You need to get your joints stronger. More times than not, musculoskeletal conditions should be managed on, we’ll say a progressive subset of physical therapy in chiropractors and rehab professionals, but personal trainers and strength conditioning coaches, with the caveat of understanding about pain management. I think there’s obviously a subset of personal trainers and strength conditioning coaches who are just kind of the same run of a mill. Hey, we’re going to put you in a group, bootcamp, doing this and make you stronger. Things need to be tailored.
13:29
That’s the approach that we’re trying to get to is when you’re dealing with musculoskeletal pain, unfortunately, and I do apologize that this is the way it oftentimes goes, is unfortunately this changes the narrative and context about how things should be approached. And some get more musculoskeletal complaints than others. And that’s just the nature of it.
13:55
But I always try to emphasize the gift of injury. Be blessed that you’re able to actually move and navigate through a lot a lot of these situations. Many people are actually not able to do that. But be blessed in understanding that your body’s trying to tell you that, Hey, what we’ve been doing in the past is not working. And if you want to live a long, loud, active life, something has to change, and this is your body’s way of telling you, just like I wish I was able to have a certain thought process that I see others are able to accomplish. It’s just not the way that my brain thinks. And I have to go through sometimes along the route in order to achieve a certain goal, results, or just even a mindset and thought process that I’m trying to go through where others it just seems to click.
14:44
It’s just how it is. And unfortunately that takes more time, energy investment. Based on my knowledge, I don’t have to invest as much time, energy, and money in coaching from a health perspective as far as like nutrition and personal training, so on and so forth. But for me, I have to invest more time and energy on someone who can help me navigate my thoughts and mentor and coach from that perspective.
15:15
It’s based on our strengths. The question again, helps you navigate well, what are the important things? This same question is asked in a different context professionally and personally. Well, what has to happen if I was to go with a coach? What has to happen in my life?
15:33
For me, reflecting back, that would say this was a successful investment of time, energy, and money, both professionally and personally, over the next three, six months, year or three years. I would answer with, well, I want to be able to be here. I want to be able to do X, Y, and Z. I want X amount of revenue. I want to diversify into maybe other investments or something like that.
15:57
So you just have to understand that the friction that you have in your life, whether it’s mentally, whether it’s musculoskeletally, whether it’s, a form of health cardiac– but basically just your lifestyle, your health. We all have some friction at different points of life. And your investment is an investment. Your payment is not a cost, it’s an investment, but the due diligence of making sure investment is properly allocated should be navigated through questions such as this.
16:40
If someone’s just going through this, you know, checking on the box and saying, yeah, we can help you. This is pretty standard. Here’s our protocol. So on and so forth. That’s not what you’re looking for, right? You’re investing a lot in this and your provider should be diving in and trying to understand what your goals and motivations are in, in relation to musculoskeletal pain and why that’s preventing you from being able to do that so that they can bridge and connect the gaps to get you back to that quickly.
17:09
Obviously it’s very motivating, but more importantly is getting you back to that with the utmost confidence in whatever you were dealing with before. So for instance, in that case before of gardening and lower back pain, my patient Michelle, that was dealing with, it was not about getting her back to gardening.
17:27
It was getting her back to a point where she felt confident in any sort of gardening task that she would come past: picking up a bag of mulch again, picking up a bag of compost, picking up a large rock that needed to be moved from A to B and having the knowhow of how to pick up odd objects, but also how to leverage her body to be able to do it, but also have the strength and capacity to be able to accomplish it so that she didn’t fear having a recurrence or something like that.
17:57
So, once again, the question that I want you to consider, not obviously asking, but if someone’s not asking you, this is like, Hey, this might not be the person to team up with you. This might not be your who for your how, is if we were sitting down having the same conversation three months ago, and you’re looking three to six months ago, and you’re looking back over the last few months, what has to happen for you to feel confident or happy about the progress you’ve made and the investment of your time, energy and money and your care. And then you share it.
18:39
So if you’re not getting these questions as described previously here, it’s a thought-provoking question. It’s intentionally framed in a way to have you reframe and reference what is actually your goals outside of just pain reduction and management, when we’re talking about musculoskeletal pain and finding the right person and provider.
19:11
Oftentimes while, as we know, manual therapy is very beneficial, oftentimes it’s just having someone work through these questions with you to help you get the right answers and the right direction. In this same example, obviously Michelle, who saw me with some lower back pain for gardening. She was nearby and she was able to come see me and the power of manual therapy and adjustments provided a catalyst to the system.
19:42
But we have worked with other individuals from San Diego all the way out to New York that are going through the exact same thing. And we simply frame the same question and did an evaluation virtually to help guide them. Hey, this is what I’m seeing. This is where you are. This is how your pain’s being described. Based on that history and examination of what I’ve asked you to do, I have a strong feeling it’s this. And if you want to get back to X, Y, and Z, gardening, snowboarding, hiking, riding your horse, whatever that is, here’s the best approach that we can do, that we’re going to build mobility around these joints because it’s really important for you to have mobility here and here to reduce added load onto your lower back, as an example.
20:24
It’s really important for us to go through stability exercises, oftentimes seen as core exercises when we’re talking about the lower back, but here’s how I want you to approach it. So more times than not, this is a conversation of navigation, not essentially implementation. And then finding other obviously resources if manual therapy or adjustments or something like that might be needed.
20:45
So, we always say the foundation of recovery is that narrative in that conversation of understanding that, and there are obviously proper diagnostics of knowing the context of the situation. And then the manual therapy is simply a catalyst. It does help you get there faster if someone knows what they’re doing and they do it well, but it’s not always needed.
21:07
So I implore you to dig deep. You are vetting me as a provider. Obviously, if they’re a referral, they come trusted from obviously who referred you, but it’s still, in my opinion, your responsibility to vet your providers. I encourage anyone coming in to ask questions about what we do so that I can get them to get to this, so I can have a conversation and be able to ask these types of questions, so that I can know if they do trust me. Because if there’s no trust in that relationship, it’s not going to be a successful relationship. You’re not going to see the amount of success that you could see if you’re working with someone that you actually trust.
21:52
So, if you don’t trust your provider, I encourage you to find a new provider. There are plenty of providers out there. Now, those trusted providers sometimes come at a premium, and that premium should not be again as a cost. This is an investment, and oftentimes it saves you actually time, effort, and money in the long run because you’re able to get the results that you want based on that question a lot sooner than if you were to go with your standard run in the mill situation.
22:21
So if you are digging this, please share it with someone else who’s been frustrated of going through the system. We appreciate if you’re digging this to give us a comment, to like, to subscribe, to share this so that we can get this message out that there are providers out there that want the best for you, and that are not just trying to push you through the system and push you through the wheel.
22:44
And if you have any questions specifically about certain topics, we’d love to be able to address those. So please shoot us a comment and you can shoot us an email at hello@liveloudlife.com. Our social media is @live.loud.life on Instagram. And then we have you can check this out on YouTube. We have a number of different pieces of content and videos on YouTube, helping you deal with musculoskeletal pain from a number of different issues, prenatal, postnatal, pediatric care, so on and so forth.
23:17
So thanks again for tuning in, guys. Live loud. I hope you have a wonderful week, and we’ll see you next time.
–
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
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
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
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
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
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
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.
–
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:
Subscribe Live Loud YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiveLoud
Visit the Live Loud website: http://www.lifeloudlife.com
Like Live Loud Facebook page: https://web.facebook.com/liveloudchir...
Follow Live Loud on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/live.loud.l...
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
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
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
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
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
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Fatherhood With Trevor Hall EP|42
Parenting,Health & Wellness,Podcast
February 2, 2022
0 Comments29 Minutes
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
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
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.
–