Juliet and Dr. Kelly Starrett - Your Back Pain Isn't Your Back

23:36So you're absolutely right to say, how do we get people to care? Number one is that we had an objective measure saying, let's just get to baseline. So supple leopard is about getting to baseline. But the first part of the book is about using the language of strength conditioning as a diagnostic tool. And the second thing that we can wrap our head around in terms of objectives is performance. It's output. It's increased wattage. It's increased poundage. It's increased, not pain. pain we get in the bargain when we have healthier tissues. And this is why the overlap of everything that we're doing with you is that like, I'll be honest, as a physio, the last thing I wanted to do was get in nutrition.

24:09Why? Because I didn't want to have infinite conversations about body composition with every single person, right? The only conversation they were interested in was body composition. And the only conversation I was interested in is your tissues are so crappy. Or performance. Yeah, you can't take this load. Like, no wonder you're gross. I mean, your tissues are tacked down, you're dehydrated, you don't get enough fruits and veggies. like there's no fiber in your diet. Julia, thankfully, kind of brought this, took on that burden. But those two things, we see that people are going to care about their range of motion when they, again, stop being able to do the things they want to do.

24:42Suddenly, I can't ride my bike. I can't run. I can't do the thing that I love. Okay, now we got you. Hey, I lost. What was that thing again? I tore my second ACL. What was that thing again you were talking about? So it's okay for us to realize that we have a lot of tolerance in the system, and we can use that tolerance. But if we always are keeping our eye on output and performance, then we get a lot of these bargains in the deal. But, you know, to your point, no one cares about their hamstring range of motion or their hip range of motion or hip extension until their back hurts. And so let's go ahead and use that as a way in, right?

25:18Suddenly I'm like, ooh, this is – I feel really stiff, and I don't like the way that feels. Is injury,

25:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:you know, largely all of our friends are pretty athletic. All of them. I'm the least athletic person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They all have pain. Every single one of them has pain. And then I think about potentially is there a way that they manage their shoulder and their hip and their knee and their ankle and you do all of these things, which I want to know what these are. or is there an inevitable part of the aging process that we come to accept? I'll start here and say that I do think, especially if you are using your body as a midlife to older person, some musculoskeletal pain is inevitable. I don't think we can avoid that.

26:07And I don't think you can even if you sit in a lazy boy for the rest of your life. It doesn't mean it's every day and it doesn't mean it's always the case. It doesn't need to be chronic. So in terms of expectation, I want to get clear on what. I think it's important to create that expectation. And we have this idea we teach in our 101 course, and Kelly calls it the I3 model, but I'm going to simplify it to the I2 model, where it's like this sort of mental framework we hope people can take on, which is, do I have an injury or am I experiencing an incident? And an injury is like a bone is sticking out of your leg or, you know, it's - You see a physician, night sweats, fever, vomiting, nausea.

26:40You're ill. You need to go see an actual physician. You're bad for somebody, you can't do your job. That is an injury. But an incident is everything else that we experience as a human. And we seem to maybe, those of us who are athletic tend to experience it more often. We tend to have more musculoskeletal pain and little tweaks and pains and injuries. But framing it that way for ourselves, because what we see often is that the moment people feel like the slightest pain, They just initiate this like medical cascade where they're getting MRIs and imaging and seeing doctors and spending tons of money and tons of time on things that we think when you have an incident, you should be able to manage it on your own in most cases if you have the right tools.

27:24And that's really where our work has been for the last 20 years is how do we give people the tools to manage what we think are inevitable incidents if you're using your body? And especially as we age, these are inevitable incidents. But what are the tools that you can deploy? And then if you've actually tried to use those tools and then go to your physician or physical therapist and say, okay, you know, I can't, my shoulder hurts when I put it in front of me. My shoulder hurts when I deadlift or kettlebell swing. I've tried to do, you know, this mobilization and I've done this, this, and this, you know, modality to try to work on myself.

27:58But I can't actually get past it. That's a great time to go see your physician or your physical therapist for sort of common musculoskeletal pain. But we see that people don't have those tools, so they immediately initiate this MRI, medical cascade, doctors. Or they cover it up. Or they cover it up with NSAIDs or bourbon or weed or whatever thing we're using these days. And we think that people really can take care of so much of this on their own just given a few tools and really avoid this whole medical cascade, constant use of Advil, bourbon, and actually take a chance at working on these incident-level musculoskeletal issues.

28:39And let me just add, let's go a step further. Let's normalize that your body's going to be discomforted. I think we think resting state of the human being is pain-free. We all should be pain-free. That's resting state. But pain is such a normal part of the human experience. We want to remind everyone pain is a request for change. There can be real tissue damage and trauma. That happens in pathology. But when we step into a room full of 100 high school water polo players, and I say, how many of you are pain-free? And no hand goes up. And you're like, wait, wait, you're teenagers. What do you mean?

29:15And they're like, yeah, my knee hurts, my elbow hurts, my back hurts, my shoulder hurts. And what we find is that it is a very typical experience, especially in people who are very athletic. And, of course, it's across the regular population, you know, this thing. But if we frame it differently and say, hey, this is, it could be a diagnostic tool. It could get you curious. Hey, my body is telling me something. And what we've said for, you know, thank you, Sacklers, is no, we don't want you to feel that. Well, let's just cover up that check engine line with a black piece of tape because we don't want you to be in any pain.

29:45Instead of saying, hey, what does that mean? And then more importantly, what can you do about it? Because we know it's complicated. You don't sleep. You're super stressed. the way your family believed about pain, your experience as a kid. You know, you all were superstar athletes, and Julia was a state champion rower. So imagine being in high school, being able to suffer in a 2K. No, you're welcome. No one knows that. And I think what's interesting is that imagine that you're 17, and you're like, oh, yeah, my body goes on fire all the time. That's called racing. It's my sport. And then all of a sudden your knee hurts, and you're like, it's not a big deal.

30:18I'm not on fire like in my sport. We have a family that says, oh, lay down. Is there a soft tissue restriction? Do you drink any water? And now we can start to build a layer where people are saying, oh, yeah, of course my knee hurts. I just went on a marathon. Or I went for a big hike and I was cold. Or I'm a busy professional person. I had to work in this workout and then go sit at my desk. So I'm not freaked out when my back hurts because I have a plan. It's such a mindset shift. I mean, I think any time we experience pain, if we don't have a framework for it, we just, people catastrophize. And then, you know, I'm sure we've all done this, but, you know, I had a period of low back pain a few years ago, and I sort of resigned.

30:56We pulled a very heavy raft down on a river against high winds, and Juliette basically rode herself. I was my back hurting. Yeah, rode herself, like, after 40 hours of, like, slugging against this head in your back. I had a low moment of being like, oh, okay, I'm a back pain person. Like I sort of took it on as my identity like this is who I am now and Kelly had to sort of take me out of that My it was just a mindset and he said hey most back pain Resolves on its own in six to eight weeks and literally at six weeks to the day I was like perfectly fine and it was just a mindset chip I've shipped I could have spent that whole six weeks, you know in and out of doctor's offices and freaking out instead I just worked the plan.

31:34I did the things that I knew how to do to manage it And you did not do anything. You did a lot. I didn't just wait. I had tools and strategies, but I didn't just wait. And I had shifted my mindset. And, you know, lo and behold, I did not become a back pain person. First of all, it would be really bad for your brand to bring you to be a back pain person.

31:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:But you both said something early on in this conversation, what the human body should do. Now, I can't help but bring it back to the lens at which I think about things, which is through nutrition and medicine. And there are core fundamental macronutrient needs. However, it's extremely variable. It is person dependent. This person can do well on a vegetarian diet. This person can do well on a carnivore diet. They can, quote, optimize. I wonder, as I sit here at 5 '1", totally jacked, and then say my husband, who is double my size, his movement requirements. I just have to go back to the should be able to do.

32:41Again, how you want to eat, sleep, live your life, we want you to do that. We really try to be agnostic about the way you move. What I can say is, hey, however you're working out, living your optimized, perfect life, let's just take that and we'll test it. We'll drop it in and say, well, is your movement practice, does it have enough internal rotation of the shoulder?

33:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And by the way, if you guys have not had the bill to move, there's 10 vital signs that people can look at, and you have a whole host of tools and diagnostics. Take me through the, and I hate to say average, but a common scenario of the reality of where we exist. Oh, do it. Okay, so you just queued up Kelly to talk about his literal favorite subject of all time. It's a drinking game. And we talk about it at the dinner table and at every party we go to, and that is basically humanity's lack of hip extension. And I think that's the perfect example. Getting your knee behind your butt. Wait, you have to, okay, if you guys are watching this, he is not demonstrating.

33:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Please help the listener who is, also you're not doing hip butt eating. Who cares about hip extension? What even is that? Exactly. What is that? So if we look at how your leg moves on your pelvis, when your leg goes behind your pelvis, like walking or lunging or running or sprinting, right, that is hip extension. Knee behind butt. Knee behind butt. In fact, not sitting on your, you know, when you say knee behind butt, I'm thinking about sitting on my knees. That's a flexion position. That's basically a squat. If you're kneeling down, if your knee is in front of your hip, like you're going upstairs, that is a squat shape.

34:32And suddenly you can be, oh, hey, well, how am I training squat? How much time am I spending in this hip flexion, knee towards my chest position?

34:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Give me an example of other ways that someone, okay, you said walking, sprint, all of those movements. Is there a static position? Yeah. Like a lunge isometric or a Bulgarian split squat. Why do we spend so much time and we're in chaturanga and we're stepping back? If you go to yoga, you're going to see how much time you get into this knee behind butt position, this splits like position, this long lever lunge shape. We always think about it as it's a one legged squat, but really we're taking and getting into a tandem stance. And if you suddenly, if you're pressing over your head and you put your front foot up on a box, that's another way of loading that back leg.

35:20Well, it turns out that one of the things that's useful for us to understand is that our body is going to solve a set of problems however. We're designed for movement solutions. You are designed to move through the environment, carry resources back to your tribe, get up and down off the ground, reproduce and fight and run. You're saying that we're like adaptation machines? 100%. Yeah. And when we see that as adaptation machines trying to do these things, our body, for example, this is a good example. No matter how bad your posture is, and don't, I just mean to trigger the internet with posture being bad, I'm still likely going to get my hands to my face.

36:05The body is designed in a way through evolution that getting, feeding myself is very important. And so when I internally rotate the shoulder, I flex. Even when people have flexion contractures or we see head trauma and someone ends up after a stroke, we see that these internally rotated sort of flex positions, the default is always, I have space, I have space, I have space, because it's so important to bring our hand to our face.

36:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Solving a problem, which is why you see more frequent internal rotation. Your friends with a frozen shoulder, they still have to figure out how to... They will continue to solve. And at low speed, it doesn't matter if you turn your foot out when you walk. Because when you turn your foot out when you walk, your ankle's not really walking like an ankle. Your big toe doesn't really work anymore. But at low speeds, low loads, it doesn't matter. When you land with that foot out in front of you, it's just a less stable, less effective position. It doesn't mean it's not a position we need to be able to adapt as I walk through a rocky surface.

37:03And I have to be creative. And I have to pick up this plant in a weird position or play a sport. But at high speeds and high loads when that foot or do a billion repetitions where that foot is in the back, suddenly I have a bunion. Suddenly I'm misusing or misappropriating my tissues in a way that may cause pain, may not cause pain, but certainly will lead to a decrease in function. Let me just say this, though, because Kelly's always remiss to connect range of motion and pain. But I will say in 100 % of the people who come and fly across the country and spend tons of money to see Kelly for their low back pain, 100 % of them are missing hip extension.

37:45Hands down. 100 % of them. Bold statement. And how about this? So, again, as we're solving the problem in any way, a lot of times we can get away with it. You can do the wrong thing for the wrong reason. And you can still win a world championship. You can still carry a heavy ruck. You can still go super fast. And then one day your brain says, ah, we're sleep deprived. The tissues become sensitized. I'm not digging this. And you're like, but I've always done it this way. And suddenly I have to do it a different way. Well, if we're always working towards restoring movement solutions, giving people back their native range of motion, then we start to unload tissues that maybe are working double overtime.

38:29So your knee is a pretty simple joint. It rotates and it flexes, but it puts up with a lot of crap from your ankle and your hip. And so when you have knee pain, rarely is it the knees that the problem. When we start looking upstream, oh, those tissues are super stiff and fibrotic, and you don't have any hip extension, and you don't have any internal rotation. So your knee is like, bro, I can't do this all. And, for example, this is the number one reason why we see people with elbow pain. They stop losing the ability to rotate at the shoulder. They have to do all the rotation here. And that elbow is just sort of caught in the middle of family custody battle.

39:01And so ultimately you can say, hey, that we can wait around till we have a problem. Or we can say, hey, good technique will require that I'm exposing my tissues and these movements in a shape of the movement language.

39:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You have worked with and do work with very elite individuals. Yes, we can all agree. Oh, yeah. And they are probably tools, their bodies are tools for that specific outcome, that sport. One of the other initiatives that you guys have, you have two initiatives, is you want to, as you're working on your next book, be able to get to the kids earlier. I'm assuming it's because you want to build strong adults. They have a certain need, I'm sure, to be a well-rounded athlete. Athlete is not even the right word. But you're also addressing the majority of the population, which they are sedentary. They need miserability.

40:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:How do we determine what they need to work on? Whether is there a difference between a man versus a woman to prevent these problems at 35, who's been doing a baseline fitness program that is... That's very generous, baseline fitness program. Well, the data suggests that most individuals are not meeting the minimum requirements to not be worse than yesterday. The two days a week, they just changed the ASSM guidelines, but two days a week of resistance training. But as we try to retweet, you and I both have the same goal. We believe, I don't want to put words in your mouth, that we can build more resilient humans, stronger, better.

40:45Have a better society, better communities, better families.

40:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Yes, sir. Let's put off a lot of dysfunction that is preventable. But what is it, hip extension? You've told me that there's the lunge and the walk and then the sprint, but I don't know how to get there. As someone who's listening to this, what do they need to do? Is hip extension number one? Check this out. The first order of business is exposure. When and where can a busy working person start to untangle this? And we have found in our experience in 20 years of working with the superstars, working with all the branches of the government and all the C-suites, is that we're like, I think you should sit on the ground in the evening for 20 or 30 minutes.

41:28Let's start there. I wasn't expecting that. And the reason is that I'm going to get 20 or 30 minutes of end-range exposure. And there's no wrong way to sit on the ground.

41:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And what do you mean end-range exposure? On my butt? On my hip? Do I sit cross-legged? Yes. I mean, yes to all of the above. I mean, the goal with that 30 minutes of floor sitting is to change positions when you feel like you need to. So if you're sitting 90-90 or kneeling or long sitting with your legs out in front of you, if you're super uncomfortable and need to lean against your couch at the beginning, that's fine. Sitting cross-legged is great. But the goal is, you know, we always have this phrase like the best position is your next position. So move throughout whatever positions you feel comfortable, and you'll naturally do that.

42:07I mean, we actually had this, Kelly spoke at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, which is this sort of fancy, like, OG gym. And, you know, he, at the beginning of it, he had everybody clear out all the plastic chairs in this, like, giant meeting hall. Oh, my gosh. And said, hey, I'm going to be speaking for an hour. I'd like you all to sit on the floor. And, I mean, you've never seen people look more stiff and be more nervous and uncomfortable than doing this thing where, you know, you have little kids. I mean, little kids are up and down off the floor hundreds of times a day. Everybody's sitting on the floor all day at school.

42:39It's just this movement we do as humans that we've really lost. And so to watch all these people. Having to lay down to listen to a lecture. In between their 30s and 70s. And, you know, at the end, half their room was laying down on the ground because they could no longer comfortably sit on the floor. And so we just. On their stomach? On their backs or stomachs or sides because just sitting on the floor cross-legged or even long sitting was too uncomfortable for them. Different than sitting in a chair. Yes. So different from sitting in a chair, which we're so accustomed to doing and do all the time as sedentary humans.

43:09And what we love about this floor sitting thing is we know the data show that average Americans across all socioeconomic classes are watching three hours a day of television. So we just say, hey, sit on the floor for 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes of that three hours that you're scrolling on your phone or on your iPad or watching TV, just sit on the floor for 30 minutes a day and people will be shocked at how much better their hips and low back and knees. Oh, our elite cyclists are like, my wattage went up because I sat on the ground. And I was like, what? Who knew? And you know, the other thing that we love about this simple practice is that you actually have to get up and down off the ground at least once a day in order to do that.

43:49And the other story I love to tell is we were on a podcast with a friend of ours and he was talking about how he just had a new baby and his mother and his mother-in-law came to visit and help. and his mother had gotten super stiff and been very sedentary and couldn't get down on the ground to interact with their baby daughter. And his mother-in-law had been working on her range of motion and mobility and always been super active. And she was able to get up and down comfortably on the ground, sit on the ground. And he said he watched his mother-in-law have this much richer experience interacting with her granddaughter than his own mother, who just was kind of stuck, could only interact with the baby sort of handed to her in a couch.

44:30And these women were both in their 60s. You know, they were not in their 80s. They were in their 60s. And he said it was just this stark thing. And it's like, you know, nobody in their 30s is necessarily going to be able to care about being able to sit on the floor and interact with their grandchild. But like those of us in our 40s and 50s, like we can see a future of that. And so this floor sitting piece is just this simple and amazing tool that everybody should be doing every day. And it's like saying, let's start here. Did you eat any fruit today? Let's eat one piece of fruit today. So now we have a behavior in the evening, doesn't push out any other behaviors.

45:05You can do it while you're doing something else. And now we can have the next conversation. Anything sore? Is there a ball and a roller near you on the floor? Now we can begin to start to say, hey, the number one thing is not to add in some complex mobility solution. We have all those tools. We can do that. but to get you spending time in these shapes. It's not that we're not squatting. It's not we've got to spend more time squatting, right? Like people are squatting all day long. We recognize that these fundamental shapes increase our movement language, increase our movement options, and it seems very low tech, but that single behavior starts to do a whole lot of things.

45:41If you begin to do 10 minutes of soft tissue work, you're likely to fall asleep a little faster because you've just had some, like a massage. You just rolled out your quads and now you feel sleepy and then your brain says oh, I know what happens next I go to the bedroom. I fall asleep. We find that people who do soft tissue work fall asleep faster stay asleep longer soft tissue

45:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Work defined as rolling sure what are the yeah? We said sure which means yeah, it's there's probably Only one way to do it wrong well not do it or not get a good enough exposure So when people say like foam rolling X I'm like, what do you mean when you say foam rolling? Because I'll tell you what I mean. What do you mean? Because that's a very hot topic. That's right. Well, I can tell you what we see, by the way, before Kelly talks about this. The amount of times we go into a gym and see people seem to only really foam roll their cats. They don't really do anything. You go into a gym a lot and you see the mobility room and you see the white OG 90s foam roller and they're just foam rolling their calves up and down.

46:42That's what they're doing. That is what mobility means for most people. But there's so much more to it. Well, first of all, let's give the credit that locally here in Colleen, Texas is where those foam rollers were made. And they were like originally like pool noodles or like a side effect of some industrial process. And someone was like, oh, we can roll on these. And so if you're rolling on a pool noodle and it's too painful and it doesn't make change, I'm like, yeah, it's probably because let's add some sophistication. How do we get your brain involved? You know, can we, you know, these tissues all have these biscoelastic properties, which means that it takes a little time for tissues to melt and sag and adapt.

47:21If you put pressure on any part of your body and it's uncomfortable, you found a place to work. We don't know why you're sensitized. Stiff, poor tissue health. You just ran a marathon. Smashing yourself in the gym. Smash yourself. It doesn't matter. But what we find is that if you put some pressure on a tissue and it hurts, we're like, okay, that's great. We can work on that. That's a place to begin. And so what we'll say is resting stay of the human being, your tissues should be not uncomfortable to compression. Not uncomfortable to compression. It should just feel like pressure, right? And that is how low the bar is.

47:57Because if I lay most people down, they're like, oh, this is pain. Were you at our house yesterday?

48:04Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Exactly. And I'll tell people that, yeah, welcome to the game. Have you noticed that people often accept slower recovery and declining physical performance as a, quote, normal part of aging? I don't. And I don't think you should either. Most people understand that muscle requires protein and exercise. What they don't realize is that muscle is only as capable as the cellular machinery powering it. Inside every muscle cell are thousands of mitochondria that generate the energy required for strength, performance, and recovery. Over time, damaged mitochondria can accumulate, making muscle less efficient.

48:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And that's why I'm excited about Timeline powered by MitoPure. MitoPure contains urolithin A, a nutrient shown to support the body's natural process of cleaning out those damaged mitochondria and rebuilding powerful new ones. So if your goal is to stay strong, active, and physically capable for decades, don't just focus on building muscle. I can't believe I'm saying that, but it's true. Focus on the health of the muscle you're building and support it with MitoPure. And thank you to MitoPure sponsoring this episode. And at a time when everything feels like it is getting more expensive. Timeline cut the everyday price of Mitopure.

49:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Today, you can get an additional 20 % off the new lower price at timeline.com slash lion. Don't miss it. Human beings are massaging and working on human beings for as long as there have been human beings. We just think that you can't always have someone in your house to put their hands on you. We teach families how to work on each other. At Berkeley, I teach the teams I work with how those athletes all work on each other. They're very sophisticated about, they live together, they train together, they can work and mobilize each other. This is not skill. You don't need a PhD in this. So first of all, resting state is pain-free.

50:06Second of all, you should, if you're rolling on something, you should be able to take a breath. If you start holding your breath, you're going too deep. Tells us you're in threat. And you should be able to contract underneath the roller. So if it's so painful that you've blacked out and you have lost neuromuscular control, maybe that's too deep. And what we'll say is five minutes of muscle group. Let's work side to side because we're not just interested in the muscle. We're interested in how the muscles interact with the connective tissue, interacting with the neighbors. So I can just think about, can I restore these sliding surfaces?

50:36The second I find something that's painful, I can desensitize it with an isometric. I just contract into there. That's an isometric. Anyone believe in the power of isometrics? Yeah. Right? So now that foam roller becomes a breath piece, an isometric piece. I'm restoring blood flow. I'm changing how the tissues are dynamic. And that's all in my living room. If I have knee pain, I can work upstream on my quads, downstream on my calf. And so that simple rubric of upstream, downstream suddenly means, well, maybe I can take a crack at changing some aspect of my movement system that my brain is thinking.

51:11And I just have to like double click on the upstream, downstream thing. I think it's one of the most important, you know, tactics that we give to people because you really can tackle any part of your body if you sort of say, okay, I've got a little bit of knee pain or my shoulder's hurting upstream, downstream. Like what is upstream and downstream on my shoulder? You know, it is my traps and my lats and, you know, my biceps and any part of the back of my shoulder. You can really, you don't need to even know what any of these muscles are. You can just be like, okay, my shoulder's here. I'm going to put a ball or a roller upstream of my shoulder or downstream of my shoulder.

51:44You don't need to have any medical or physical therapy education. You can just sort of press play to begin, like Kelly said, and really alleviate a lot of this common musculoskeletal pain, these sort of incident-level issues that we talked about. And notice that Julia's not even talking about position. I was wondering. Right? This is very sophisticated press and guess, which we're down with press and guess, which is most people, I don't know. We push on something, right? As soon as we start saying, well, here's a minimum position. What's normal? And then all of a sudden you start to put context to the mobilization.

52:17In physiotherapy, we say, let's mobilize at the position of restriction. So if you're trying to improve your over -

52:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Mobilize at the position of restriction. So if you're trying to put your arm over your head, put your arm over your head and work on the tissues in this arm overhead position. it. And suddenly you're just giving context to the connective tissue and the fascia and the joint capsule and the musculature and the brain. And even just, you know, if you laid on a lacrosse ball somewhere between your shoulder blade and your spine and put your arm over your head and you just took some breaths there, your brain's like, oh, look, this is a position that's safe. You can breathe here. You can take pressure here.

52:50And now we begin to seemingly radically untangle what looks like really complex problems.

52:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:The first thing that you told me is that people suck at hip extension. Sit on the floor. 20, 30 minutes a day. I'd say 30 minutes. 30 minutes. People have time to do it. They have time. We do have to elevate standards. Here's a simple test people can do for their hip extension. It's called the couch test. On your hands and knees, you're going to back your knee into the corner of the wall. Very simple. So your shin is going up the wall. The couch stretch. Oh, yes. The test and the stretch are the same. Your knee is in the corner, your foot is up the wall. All you need to do is, can you squeeze your butt in that position?

53:31And what you see, strangely, is that when your quads are really restricted, you can talk about the anterior line if you want. You can look at the fascia. You can look at the high hip flexors, the low hip flexors. If you're struggling for this position, it's probably hard for you to squeeze your butt. That means any time your knee comes behind your body, sprinting, lunging, your butt doesn't work very well. It becomes positionally inhibited. And so suddenly your hamstrings have to do the work of your glutes and your hamstrings. And you can see this when people do hip thrusts, for example. We suddenly see that you should be able to put your knee in the corner, bring your other leg up into a high kneel, and easily get your back to the wall.

54:12And breathe and squeeze your butt. And that is normative range. My feeling says easily, and I just want to set the stage for most people. This test is really hard. I mean, it's hard for me.

54:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I have glute amnesia. I do, but I really do. Stiff your quads are. You know, we are living in an environment that is causing us to be in flex positions all the time. We're sitting. We're sitting on our bikes. You know, we're sitting in the car. We're sitting for most of our lives. And the couch test or stretch is the exact opposite of this position. So for Kelly, who, like you, is hypermobile or at least extremely mobile, and the rest of us mere mortals from a mobility standpoint, the couch test is really difficult. I am naturally so stiff. I'm like the stiff. I was like, I swear I came out like born, I was just stiff.

55:01And Kelly is so mobile. And so I always try to be like the real person here and say, hey, this is really difficult, but you can improve. And what's cool about the couch test is that the practice is the same thing as the test. And, you know, here you already are sitting on the floor for 30 minutes, and your back is on the couch, and you could just take a few of those minutes to just do the couch stretch as part of your 30 minutes of floor sitting. And, you know, the practice and the test are the same, and you can improve. Will you then improve your now-it-go-so-performance? Yes.

55:38Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:If I am doing this and I'm unamnesia-ing my body and my glutes, will I then be able to, when I'm asked to go into the gym, to do a Bulgarian split squat or a regular squat, now be able to recruit that tissue? Yes. And that's the thing you should care about. Why do I care about this? It allows me to improve my performance by normalizing my native range of motion. Do we have standards in blood panels? We do. So why don't we have standards in range of motion? I'm going to throw something else out there. I was thinking about this. I was hoping we were going to just touch on bloods. I, for the longest time, and again, we have a medical practice, a telehealth practice.

56:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I still see patients. It's called Strong Medical, by the way. And over the years, we've looked at blood panels, obviously patterns. And then, you know, somewhere along in your career, you go, dang. And maybe it's actually the metabolomics. Maybe it's, yes, there's the blood panel, but then maybe it's the byproducts of what those blood panels represent. And again, I believe that that is the next thing that we look at our triglycerides and we look at our standardized, I'm going somewhere with this because it relates to movement. Yes. You're picking up what I'm laying down. Blood panel, that is the obvious.

57:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I get that. And then the flash of insight comes and maybe it's actually the byproducts and not what we're looking at. But perhaps what we're looking at reflects the metabolomics that we are yet to be testing. Correct. So all the things we're talking about is if you had used your body in a way, you just had to go up and down stairs more. You had to get them off the ground. You had to carry things. I'm not saying we should have some romantic, you know, ideal, like we all go to the farm again. It's not practical. But what we can start to say is, what are you doing with your body every day? And what we see is it's very much use it or lose it.

57:45And your body, you know, if you don't put your arms over your head, don't be surprised when it's hard to put your arms over your head. Right. A good example of this, a good proxy for what we're talking about is pickleball. We are such fans. Pickleball and spikeball are the two most important things. Spikeball, I'd never even heard of that. Oh, you'll see. Spikeball for your kids. It's like a game you play in the park. Is the most radical, short game, change in direction, hand-eye coordination, teamwork. Like, you'll be in shapes playing pickleball or playing spikeball that you're like, I can't do that in the gym.

58:18Precisely. So if you get injured playing pickleball, how good was your training program that swinging a little plastic mid and hitting a wiffle ball tore your biceps tendon? What? So we have this nice test. I have tissues that have not been prepared. I have not, you know, I'm doing my Peloton. I don't understand why I tore my Achilles, you know, fractured my tubule toe. I don't understand. And so what you're really saying in the blood panel is that it tells us about the human and the function and the reality of the human. Are you breathing hard? Are you lifting weights? Do you sleep? Do you feel loved?

58:56All those things. And we can say, yeah, just take more vitamin D. Do more couch stretch. But I can really ask. I'm like, that's the lowest form. How do we integrate this into your life so you never have to do this stuff? That's really our goal.

59:10Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:That sounds complicated, right? the idea that we are so good physically that we don't have to make up for our limitation, our movement limitations as humans. Is it person dependent or do you feel confident saying, I want you to be able to put your hands over your head. I want you to be able to do all of these movements, confident that everybody should be able to do these 10 movements and that these 10 movements should be trained. Because also the idea of foam rolling is to identify patterns of restriction. Or get out of pain. Or get out of pain. And then the next component to that is what's after that.

59:55We haven't talked about Built to Move our book. But when we wrote Supple Leopard, you know, it's like a 500-page thick textbook with like photos of Kelly who looks like a child. By the way, it's a side note. Most people don't read it. they use it as like a coffee table book or a place to put their laptop just to raise it up and make it a standing desk because it's so complicated. So we wanted to base it. We actually think of Built to Move almost as like a prequel to Supple Leopard because we wanted to create this book that was actually accessible that you could hand to your neighbor and your friends.

1:00:24And so as we're talking about how do we expand this conversation to like regular people who aren't training, you know, as much as we we in our families are training, We picked these vital signs, and we love the word vital signs because we're like, hey, in the pandemic, everyone was like, you know, telling us their various vital signs that were sort of complicated and medical. And we thought, well, why can't we have movement-related vital signs? So we have a variety of vital signs in the book. Some are more lifestyle-related, nutrition-focused, but we do have some movement-specific vital signs.

1:00:56And I would say everybody should test themselves on those basic movement vital signs just in the same way that you would test your blood pressure and then work to improve those. You don't have to already, you know, show up and be perfect at the couch stretch. But I do think we should all be working towards those positions and that everybody can. And they're just simple tests and simple practices in this book that everybody can do. You know, the couch stretches, the couch test is one of those tests. Getting up and down off the ground is one of those tests. We have a balance test in there. What is the balance test?

1:01:31The balance test is the SOLEC. I'm sure you've heard of it, but for those who haven't, it's standing on one leg, eyes closed. And the idea is that you stand on one leg, eyes closed for 20 seconds, and you get a score based on how many times you have to touch your toes. And what people don't realize is almost all of us can stand there with our eyes open, and we think we're crushing balance, and we're so good at this. But the moment we close our eyes and remove that visual piece of it, all of a sudden you start, you know, we do this in conferences. We see people like, you know, wheeling their arms in the air.

1:02:06And it becomes a really difficult test for most people. And, you know, just like all of these mobility pieces we've been talking about, balance is also such a use it or lose it. And it's such a simple test that you can do. And then the way that we practice it is we stand on one leg every night and morning when we brush our teeth. So again, you don't need to go to a balance class and add one more thing to your longevity listicle But it is something that we think you should test as a vital sign on the regular like where are you with balance? You know the number one reason people end up in nursing homes as they fall in So we do think it's an important and also young people It's the number one reason that young people actually go to the ER to his balls So everybody thinks it's just like an old person thing, but young people We can wait around to have scurvy and then say, oh, you should probably take some vitamin C, right?

1:02:52Or we can wait until you have scurvy. And we just wait around until everyone has scurvy, and then we're like, okay.

1:02:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Well, that's where we are right now. That's right. And the 10 vital signs for the listener or viewer, I'll just mention them. Sit and stand test. You have breathing. You have hip extension, squatting. You talk about nutrition, HRV, shoulder rotation, which I definitely want to touch on. walking, sleep, and then you've got active recovery at tissue work. Damus, anything? No. No. And ideally, what we've done here is said, hey, look, we can have the next conversation about exercise, but let's create sort of a non-technical, well-evidenced set of behaviors that everyone could wrap their head around very quickly.

1:03:37And also just say, hey, how about this? I say, you can wait around until scurvy, or you can eat some vitamin C. right? Or I can eat fruits and vegetables, right? And suddenly you're like, okay, we've actually solved this by going upstream to the diet problem.

1:03:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Thank you to one of the sponsors of the show, and that is Egg Life. Now, I have been eating Egg Life out of my purse since my first book launch. I was traveling. I had 10 minutes to run into a grocery store and pick up something that was high protein. And there it was, a wrap made from egg whites, not flour. It was almost as if the gates of heaven opened and a angel of protein handed me this incredible egg life yes and in fact maybe that's where they came up with the name high in protein they have 11 grams of high quality protein and less than 3 grams of cards it is a low in carbs and clean ingredients these egg life wraps their texture is it's fluffy it tastes amazing I am telling you if you're going to try one new product, this is it.

1:04:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It is so versatile. Egg Life, egg white wraps, they make it easy to sneak high quality protein into your favorite meals and snacks. You can find Egg Life in the refrigerated section at Aldi, Whole Foods, Kroger, Target, Walmart, and more. Visit egglifefoods.com to find a retailer near you. How would you define mobility versus flexibility? Well, so Kelly gave, I think earlier, when he was talking about range of motion, our sort of supple leopard, uber technical definition. But we've realized we needed to expand it because, again, we want people to care. And so our new definition of mobility is the ability to move freely through your environment without pain.

1:05:34and maybe most importantly, do the things you want to be able to do with your body. So we all have different things we want to do. Some people want to play pickleball. Some people just want to be able to walk with their grandchildren around Disneyland for the day. We all have movement goals. Even the sedentary among us have some movement goals. And so mobility is what's going to give you access to be able to do the things that you love. You left a perfect opening to where I was hoping we could get to.

1:06:04Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:mobility and muscle mass. They, I'm assuming, are connected. There seems to be this accelerated loss of muscle, whether it's aging or inactivity. What is the relationship between mobility and muscle and muscle mass? I would say if we have to go upstream and look at if you have a body that's not in pain and that feels good, that you want to go move, it's going to be a lot easier to maintain that muscle mass, right? Because now we have the root. And is out of pain too. Out of pain, that's right. I think I may mention that. We have now all the components that would set us up to be able to go move ourselves.

1:06:46What we see is that most people's movement when they're children, we talked earlier about just being young and fab and being able to do whatever we want with our body. Our movement hall is huge, like a big hospital, double, double pathway. And as we get older, potentially that movement's hallway, pathway choices get smaller and smaller and smaller. Oh, I can't do that. I don't go walking. I can't swim.

1:07:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:But that's through activity. That's through choice of not doing it, not because there's some... Potentially, right? Maybe I got injured or maybe I hurt my hip or maybe I tore my ACL in college and now I'm really afraid to go play in this fantasy kickball league, whatever it is. The key here is range of motion doesn't have to change as you age. It doesn't have to change. No. It's one of the aspects that is, it's going to be slower to adapt because as we get older, it takes a little bit more loud signal for us to hear those things probably. How do you define adaptation? Just your ability to respond to a stimulus.

1:07:45So if you have a muscle strain and you're older, we always like to say you're going to heal at the rate of a human being or slower. Like there's no fast healer. You're just like this is the tissue physiology. So as you get older and you're not sleeping and don't have the nutrition and et cetera, et cetera, your ability to adapt to a stimulus is less. You're going to be sore. You're not going to get the gains everyone else gets. You know, Juliet has this incredible genetics where we do something. It's like she eats the entire apple and I get a bite of the apple. Even though we both have an apple, Juliet is like, And I'm like, I guess I need six apples.

1:08:22You don't have to lose your ability to move. If you maintain your ability to move, it's going to be a lot easier to jump, lift heavy loads, not be afraid to, you know, hey, I can't bend my knees, Kelly. I mean, I put up something recently on the Insta about jumping. And people were like, well, what if? And I got a list of probably 50 comments. Well, I have this, and I have this, and I have this. And, you know, we're like, we need to be clever enough to help people maintain their range of motion and tissue health so they can continue to load in the way that makes sense for them so they can...

1:08:54Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:But it's fair to say if you lose mobility, then you're probably going to lose muscle. I would say that's... And your choices of what... I guess I can do the leg extension machine as my only muscle movement. Your movement choice gets so narrowed that, to me, muscle loss is inevitable. Does that then affect patterns? Oh, yeah. Right now, the landscape really is still in isolation. Not for you guys, but you go and you go to do a bicep curl or a tricep extension or isolated resistance training activities, which I think are very valuable. But it's not thinking about terms of patterns of movement. You know, this is, you know, I worry about my kids.

1:09:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And I'm hearing you talk about adaptation, about the things that we lose, being able to sit on the floor, being able to lift our arms overhead and these vital signs and accelerate that to an earlier generation, our children. Well, you know, even earlier, right, five, six, what becomes normal? Because, again, you guys are moving into the era of you want to help younger athletes. What do they need to, how do they need to start implementing this? Because they're already sitting on the floor. Yeah. Right? They're already, I mean, they're not rolling around, but there comes an inflection point. When we wrote Ready to Run, we had a daughter who was in kindergarten at the time.

1:10:26And all the kindergartners run like Usain Bolt, all of them. They fall. They're on the ball, the foot, midfoot. Like they're all sprinters. They all like get out of the, and they sprint. And then the first grade, half the cohort starts heel striking halfway through the school year. So they change, fundamentally change, a primary motor pattern of smirting. Why does that happen? What's the behavior that changed? What did they start to do in the first grade? They grew and started sitting at desks. Started sitting all the time. They're not on the ground kindergartners. They're not working. Diane. So suddenly - That really hurts my heart.

1:10:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I'm going to make my kids sit on the floor, okay? Whenever we can. And look, you can say, well, I came out of a tradition of X and such. And what we can start to say is, well, that may be true. You did a lot of sitting, but what happened in the rest of your day? And what we see is free play, experimenting, all of that is gone. And we now are recognizing that long-term athletic development, movement development probably has to be a little bit more formal. I need to take my kid to the gymnastics. We got to go put in, you know, parks that look like we had in the 1970s where you could go up the slide and die, right?

1:11:32Not the sanitized, no fun.

1:11:34Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:They still have those. Exactly. And so what you can start to see is I'm going to have to avail myself of as many opportunities to get my kid moving, probably in more formal movement environments like basketball or a soccer league or something, I'm learning. I'm surprised to hear you guys say this. I thought that you were going to say we're specializing kids too early. We are. Yeah, we are. We are specializing kids. We are, but I mean, I think our philosophy is get your kids into, and I think what our focus was when our kids were little was getting them into like what we'd call a movement practice.

1:12:10So a martial art, gymnastics, something where they're really learning how to move their bodies. Our kids are in dance. We have a 5 '11 monster. Dance. She was the worst, biggest dancer there was in ballet, but she was in ballet. Yeah, so dance, gymnastics, a martial art, like any kind of movement practice. And then maybe if they also want to do a sport, a sport as well. I think if we wanted to be living in the ideal world, it would go back to when we were kids where you just went outside and free played. But we also live in reality. Like that's not what kids do these days. They aren't free playing.

1:12:43And so, you know, we do believe that we should get kids into, you know, movement practices when they're little and have them play lots of different sports and encourage that as parents. I mean, I think one of the greatest gifts you can give to your kid as a parent is encouraging them to find a way they love to move. Because I really believe all human beings, even the most sedentary among us, like have a way they would enjoy moving their body, but maybe they never discovered that. And so our philosophy as parents was help our kids discover a way to move their bodies that they enjoy and feels good to them.

1:13:16Because then when they go into adulthood, they know if I swim, I know I feel good. Or if I play this sport, I know I feel good. But for them, connecting movement to their well-being and play was so important for us. And so we are not fans of specializing. No kid wants to do Bulgarian split squats and legs.

1:13:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:My son does. Right. Right. Normal children. He's training for the SEAL teams. That's right. Okay, so we've got to do this. We have an outlier. That's not wrong. I'll hint at, for example, we have a friend who runs a dancing thing called the Fitness Marshall. And Caleb has two other friends, and they just do choreographed dances to popular music. And you can go on YouTube. They have millions of followers. Pick a song and the dance is a family. What is it called? Fitness Marshall. Fitness Marshall. I don't know what you guys just opened up. It is so fun. Guys, I'm changing over my content. So suddenly, if the whole family is mimicking rhythm, putting in sort of coordination, not obsessing about capacity, which is an adult obsession.

1:14:22And certainly a construct of where we've been for the last 20 years, which is as long as I put out more watts, I'm healthier. As long as I put out more watts or another kilo, I'm a better athlete. And we know that that's not true. Right. We're just obsessed. Look, if we just thought the Rogue Echo Bike and Thruster solved all the problem, we would just do that, right? I mean, the Rogue Echo Bike is low skill, high physiology. It's going to kill you, but it's not going to make you better at dancing, turning the corner, cutting, throwing a Frisbee, playing an actual sport, learning a new sport. So for our children, I think if you are like, well, I don't know what I can do, you can start by wrestling with your kids on the carpet.

1:15:05Just that. Let's start that. I got one other quick story to tell you. When my kids were in elementary school, I started this thing called the walking school bus in my neighborhood. And honestly, if someone were to ask me, what's a public health intervention you would do if I were in charge, I would literally eliminate the drop-off lane. I think the drop-off lane is one of the worst things we've done. Most people still live within one or two miles of their kids' elementary school. And yet we've created this, we've changed the whole environment of the front of elementary schools where it's like all about the drop-off line and everybody's driving their kids but they live close enough to walk but in many cases parents are jammed by schedules or timing um or they're afraid to have their kid walk alone understandably um and so we did this thing where we said at 755 every single morning rain or shine we'll we kelly and juliet will be standing at this corner and you get your kid to this corner whether you drive them or walk them there or join us um and we will walk them to school a mile it was like a mile and a quarter and we walk them to elementary school.

1:16:03And we did that for both of our kids. And some days we'd have 50 kids walking with us to school. And then the parents started walking with us. And we had a parent report that she lost like 25 pounds because she had been sedentary before. And she just joined us every day on the walking school bus and it like changed her life. But, you know, that's like a simple, you know, we, and the only change we had to make in a family is we did have to wake up 10 minutes earlier. Like we had to, instead of waking up at seven, we had to set the alarm for 650 in order to get everybody ready and walk to school.

1:16:30And what was awesome for us is like, By the time we started our workday, we'd already gotten, we'd walked there and back, so we'd gotten like 5 ,000 steps. But it's a simple thing that most people live close enough to their kid's elementary school that they can walk with their kid to school. And the research says that kids are probably getting 2 ,000 to 3 ,000 steps a day, not the minimum eight. So if you can give everyone in your family a pill, reduces all-cause mortality, it's walking 1 ,000 steps, right, by 50%. And here we are just saying that, man, our kids aren't moving enough. And if we're going to, and you hinted at looking down, we're like, I'm looking at your blood panel, but I actually need to turn around and look at you.

1:17:06And I need to look at what your family, and I need to understand you for the last 10, 20, 30 years. And what we're coming up against now is we've really removed the need for moving, play. You can hyper-process foods, sedentariness, sleep degradation. It's sort of a perfect storm.

1:17:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Are we overcomplicating it as I'm sitting here thinking? Am I overcomplicating the idea that I think in a very structured way? I think, okay, I need to do rotation, rotational movement. I probably need to do rotational movement three or four days a week because I just don't want to get – and it's just my brain, right, because I'm not telling anyone else what to do. I'm not the expert when it comes – I mean, I'm sitting here with you guys. But I think I need to do some rotation. I need to hang overhead. I need to be able to jump. I started adding in, don't cringe, broad jumps. Oh, no way. We have broad jumps in our program.

1:18:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Okay. In fact, we do seated broad jumps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're so into it. We're into it. Okay. Oh, cool. But I just made that up. I didn't think about, again, I've got two little kids. I'm not moving as much as I need to be. I don't even know what optimal movement time. People say, well, just move as much as you can. Yes, but I'm sure that there has to be, as humans of all, an adaptation, a brain adaptation. I'm sure that the grand human design was that we were going to get smarter and become more efficient. And there's alternatively ways I'm sure that we can adapt. Anyway, rotation, jumping.

1:18:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I think I should be able to hang overhead. I think I should be able to push up, do a push up. I like those. Don't take those away from me. But probably squat, hinge, right? these are. Well, what you're starting to say is if anyone who's a coach is listening, what are your non-negotiables as a coach? So if you work with us and we have an adult training program, you'll see that Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett believe in the sanctity of pull-ups. And you may start by, we're going to get you hanging a lot. And then we're going to use a band and we may be jumping up and moving, but pull-ups are non-negotiable for me because people who pull up have healthier necks, have less back pain, have competency overhead.

1:19:18We have less shoulder dysfunction and that means just as a coach the terminal idea is well i need to make sure that you're spending time in this position because it translates to so many other things the pull-up is so easy to do so you're going to see pull-ups in my program what you just started to hint at is how do i want to expose my body to these fundamental shapes so lunging is a fundamental shape right getting you that knee behind your butt however you want to do that what do you what do you have plotting is a fundamental shape but there's a thousand ways you can but you agree The way you're thinking is cool.

1:19:50Well, that's a great starting place, but that doesn't tell you what the shape looks like. Give me an example. Well, push-pull hinge is saying protein, fat, carbohydrate. Do we all agree? Perfect. Do I need some vitamins in there? Sure. Okay. But that's the list you gave me. What does it look like in terms of how you are bringing your shoulder behind your body? Well, that could be rowing or push-ups or bench press or running. or you can see dips. There's so many things where I have to get my elbow behind me. Pushing up off the chair is an example of what that looks like in a terminal place. You said, I believe in push-ups.

1:20:28Just because I like them. Well, and guess what? That push-up is taking that shoulder into fundamental, important positions of shoulder extension. So no wonder that chaturanga in yoga is such a powerful thing.

1:20:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I do have shoulder problems. My right shoulder bothers me only since actually fixing my hip. Because you have a bigger range of motion there. Crazy. And so now my right shoulder is, would you rather have me do something that hurts and maybe not is perfect versus finding a different way to push or restricting yes to which? So what we can start to say is, should you be able to do push-up pain-free? Yes. You know, we have the greatest tool, test-free test. So let me make a change. But you would rather have me do the push-up than do it, than be pain-free versus not doing it. Well, what I'd say is you need to do push-ups.

1:21:15We need to figure out why your shoulder hurts in push-ups. That's the thing. So suddenly, it's going to be normal that you go through your life and all of a sudden your shoulder hurts a little bit. That's okay. But now we can start to say, I wonder why my shoulder hurts. Is it because my spine is stiff? Is it because I don't have any extension? Is it because I don't have any internal rotation? Have I just even talked to my pec? So can you make the case in your head that like, hey, my quads are really stiff. I have knee pain. My triceps are really stiff. I wonder why I have shoulder pain. I mean, it's almost like they're connected.

1:21:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Because as people are listening to this, they're thinking, well, I have shoulder pain. And they have all, I'm assuming, have experienced these things. And they want to know. Everyone has. Exactly. And they want to know, should I stop? Do I have to solve it? Do I need to find a different way to do it? We believe in regression. and progression. In our practice, and the way we work a lot of athletes, we don't use a lot of corrective exercises. Corrective exercises absolutely work, but they tend to be in the domain of rehab. I'm doing this exercise because you cannot squat yet, so I'm going to use a surrogate for squatting to get those hips.

1:22:25And so what we suddenly see is that people are doing a collection of corrective exercises like clamshells all the time. I'm like, I don't know, what's the we'll record for clamshell. Don't really care.

1:22:34Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Ellie's hates clamshells. Wait, now I'm really offended here. Really? No clamshells? Oh, gosh. You want to do clamshells? You knock yourself right out. Are they going to work? Is it going to help? No. It's going to babysit a tissue temporarily so that I can have that. So, again, what I really like, if you want to do clamshells, keep doing it. So, the key here is that we want to say, hey, here's the fundamental shape that my body should be able to access. the movement language of the gym is really easy for everyone to understand. And if I can't, maybe I can use a position transfer exercise. And a position transfer exercise is a mobilization.

1:23:11Have you ever rolled on a foam roller to improve how your knee moves? That's a position transfer exercise. A mobilization is targeted to restore a position.

1:23:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:A mobilization, okay. When JJ comes over and grabs underneath my scapula and is doing this thing to, I don't know, really doesn't feel so great. Restoring how your scapula is working with your body. But then I can move better. Yes. Yes. Okay. That's the key. What we'd like to do is get to a place where you have a basic working knowledge of your body so that you're like, my knee hurts or my back hurts. I jump into couch stretch and you're like, wow, my back feels better and my knee feels better. By the way. Yeah. And this is what we do with our program. You know, we have people that are from 35 all the way up to 70.

1:23:59It is remote. Weekly coaching. But the thing is, you know, going back to what I said about this longevity, we need a new word, triangle, is that we don't see how you can have a real strength and conditioning program without this mobility piece. Because inevitably, as we've talked about, people are going to experience these incidents, these little musculoskeletal aches and pains and injuries. and they may have to go through a period of modifying and we're all about that. I mean, one of the things we say in our program and work really hard to train people is that we feel like we failed them if we haven't trained them how to modify.

1:24:32Like we want people who've joined our program to join any other strength and conditioning program and walk into the gym and say, okay, today we have pull-ups and I can't do a pull-up, but I know how to modify. So I'm going to hang the band and I'm going to just hang there. So that's part of our program. Part of our program isn't just giving you a strength and conditioning program. Part of it is educating people how to understand how to modify based on their limitations, where they are, their body, and then also include this mobility slash position transfer exercise program into the, you know, it's built in, it's enmeshed with the program.

1:25:12Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You guys have built a company together. You've, many companies, written books. You've been married for decades, decades? 25 years, almost. Two decades, two daughters. Is there one thing that you guys disagree on that perhaps, again, maybe that you still disagree on in health, in movement, longevity? There's some genuine difference of perspectives. I would have never asked that question before, and that's an awesome question. J-Star, I met, it's important to understand, I met her at the World Championships in Chile. Did you just call her J-Star? J-Star. I love J-Star. J-STIZ if you're in there.

1:25:50Quick side note, I was just with our mutual friend Vonda Wright and she found out my nickname was J-Star and she's like, what? I'm with you. I'm going to have to message Vonda. J-Star. Day one, it's class five, it's a huge competition, World Championships. I know a lot about Juliette. She's on the women's team, I'm on the men's team. or competing, that should be the basis for understanding why we're still together. We both love to play. We don't pick up new sports without the other person. We really love to travel and be together. We're very simpatico in the way we see the world. And I think some of that we got really lucky because once you're at the World Championships, I can make a lot of sort of inferences about who you are, what you like to do, your train, your play, your competition.

1:26:35So I would say the one thing that comes to mind is that I like to sometimes program open pieces. Oh, this is a good one. So this seems like I'm going to answer your question. Well, I don't even know what that means. So what it means is I don't know how much volume we need today, but we're going to go until wattage collapses, until technique drops, until all of a sudden we can tell you've had enough stimulus. And I have a range because I've been coaching for a long time. But Juliet's like, no, no, no. I need to know how many rounds I'm doing, how reps I'm doing. I'm like, no, no, no. I don't know because who showed up today?

1:27:12So I love to program these open pieces. He likes to program these workouts where you just you have to be self-aware enough to be like, OK, I now see that I'm sucking. So my workout is over. And that goes against like like I am definitely much more of a rule follower. And I also want to know how to like manage my energy in a workout. So if I don't know how long it's gonna go, then I don't know how hard to push And so it just it goes against like my constitution as a person so we don't agree on that I'll add one too, you know Kelly loves to use the one place We disagree is he always loves to talk about how you should have this normal range of motion And I always think it's mean I'm always like you're so mean because he has this mobility privilege He is just naturally very mobile.

1:27:55I never work on it. And he does also work on it I give him credit. He works on it and maintains it, but he's naturally very mobile. And we disagree on what normal is because as a more stiff person, I want to be normal too. And most people want to be normal. So I think we always disagree on what is normal when it comes to range. Maybe I said normative today for this reason, right? What are our reference ranges? No, I think if you're going to be in partnership with someone for decades, especially working together, And we have real different roles. Juliet's the boss in the brains. We have to be really alighted and trained.

1:28:36We just have to be in that because it's too complicated. It's too messy. There's so much going on. But I think if you understand the first and foremost that Juliet and I really like to play together, that's the thing. Then everything else is just, you know, I don't think we have fundamental differences. Juliet will always want to default to eating vegetables whenever she can. And that's less of a priority for me sometimes. I'll say that one of the biggest upgrades you could do for your physical practice, whatever you like to do, is take the first 15 or 20 minutes of your warm-up and play. So you're like, hey, I need some more rotation.

1:29:15So recently I was just hanging out with a bunch of coaches. They do their formal, some kids are doing their formal, like, I pull my knee to my chest, do my A skips, like I'm getting ready for the NFL. And I was like my other friend, and I was like, hey, grab a medicine ball. We're in this huge field, and all we started doing was throwing the medicine ball at each other in as many different crazy ways. He and I are drenched in sweat. I've had to bend over, squat, throw, rotate. Fun. And our friends were like, hey, that looks like a lot more fun. And I was like, yes. Well, and one other quick story about that.

1:29:45Kelly and I always travel with a Frisbee. Like, I actually have a Frisbee in my suitcase right out there. and it's one of our favorite ways to warm up. It's so boring. You're in a hotel gym that's like a teeny little square and we'll just go out in front of the hotel and we'll throw a Frisbee for 10 minutes and we get some rotation and fun and we run and cut and we just always have a Frisbee with us because we're like, hey, we have this weird idea as adults that playing is for kids, but we think the warmup, for those of us who love to go to the gym, the warmup is the place where you've got to throw in some play and experimentation and just actually make it fun.

1:30:20And you're bringing it back. I'll play. Well done. Bye.