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Muscle Dynamics

we're gonna take the first crack in the most simple in orations of what we're doing. How do I fix a position? And one of the key concept here is that we need to make sure that we have a set of skills and tools that actually are appropriate and where I can measure a fact and see effect now one of the systems that sort of kind of we've been engaged in forever and ever is that we're like, Hey, a muscle is tight. Let's stretch it right, that must That must be the case. Earlier, we had kind of intimated that there are probably some other pieces relating to why that musculature is short. The problem with this is that. And as soon as I try to call out a single aspect of the system that when I'm never, ever doing, I'm never catching the intra related nous of all of how these tissues work. Remember, you're sliding surfaces their time about the connective tissue, your ah, muscle driven system. You have joints, you have the connective tissue around the joints. And so what we need to be thinking o...

f is how do we mobilize the entire system sort of all it wants all moss, if you will. And so the key concept here is that if I remember what the stable position is and I put myself into that stable position that I'm naturally going to bias and emphasize those tissues accordingly, I don't have to remember what the spiral lines of the fashion are. I don't have to remember what the pronation is of the peck reach overhead. I don't have to remember what the rotator cuff does, and these different All I need to do is put myself into the best approximation of the position that I know is the end range and full motion. And then I can spend some time in that position. So that's a good model. It kind of integrates all of these systems together. The problem is this that you know what ends up happening a lot of times is okay. You know, someone like my hamstrings are tight, so let's put myself in this position. If he has ever done this like stretch before, well, we make some basic movement errors, right? Um I really stretching anything. I feel stretch 30 because my big selfish hanging on the hamstring Well, it got me for a second again. Beware. Straight. Turned out slightly and he's came in. Okay, Next time you do it again. Truck little kittens in the back. Sacrifice. Now, look, here's the deal. I want to make a muscle for me. Ready? Get tight. Get tight. Now I'm gonna play stretch, Teoh. You feeling? Stretched? Its a great stretch, isn't it? So what's going on here? What's going on here is that this neural muscular system is under tension. He's resisting this position. Can you stretch, comma? Change the relationship, how this muscle works when it's under tension like this? Not so much, huh? I mean, I can hang on this for a long time, and eventually he'll fatigue. And then maybe I could get some change them, but eventually, I mean, come on, look at those things, right. But the problem is, most of us are oftentimes putting ourselves under tension positions. And when I'm under tension, I can't affect some of the contract all features. So what I need to do is try to put myself into situations where I'm not under tension. So what's the problem? Say, with working on your middle splits? What's the problem with this basic shape in position, right? Is what is that? The whole time I'm trying not to die. Right? My hand. My mom. Adductor Zahran. Things were horrible. I'm in a terrible shape. I'm cold. I'm gonna concrete floor in Seattle. But I am not going to get a lot of mobilization down here because I am an end range freaking out. So one of the questions is how do I adopt some of these shapes where I can not end up putting myself under tension because it's not a very effective model. The one of the things that we want to do And I want you to understand my school for physio is a political Samuel Merritt, and it's attached to the world Center for P N f. You guys are heard of P n f before it stands for appropriate, deceptive neuromuscular facilitation member. The Jill talked about the appropriate sectors or those kind of cells in the position is that let us know where we are in our bodies, right? Your joints, your skin, the musculature, the tension ear's all of these things. Give me input about how I am in moving in space and where I am sort of in the world around me. Well, these guys in this clever place at Kaiser Vallejo figured out that they could use the bodies of mechanical position sensors to facilitate movement. Isn't that seem like a reasonable idea? So my school was attached directly to this, and one of the techniques in there is a technique were pulled out. We're gonna take 1% of 1% of what this beautiful body of knowledge is about rehabilitating after strokes or or spinal cord injuries. And what they've done is, they said, we use a technique called contract Relax. And the idea is your muscular system isn't just of a machine. It's a machine with a beautiful piece of software. And if we did the software engaged with this system, then suddenly we can start to affect much larger changes. And this idea is called contract. Relax now, before we get all up in your paradigm versus my paradigm, hard style versus loose style, right? What we want to be thinking about is the only thing that matters in our paradigm. Schema is testing retests ability and reliability. Can I make some changes and can I see changes. So you have some voodoo Priestess who breaks the chicken neck, rubs around your leg and you're a little bit more mobile afterwards, and you can do every time I believe it, right? I watch you squat mawr and your positions or better, I'm in. I'm a believer at that point, but more importantly, I like a set of tools that are instantaneously accessible to people that are simple and effective. And these are the tools through my time as a coach in my times of physical therapist to help me quickly to get into these these areas. Now, this contract relax, model means all I'm gonna do is build tension in the muscular system that I'm trying to change. You did that yesterday. Oh, I'm feeling like I'm having a visceral response when I push on my viscera, the viscera t. And when I'm laying on that ball and feeling gross and like I'm gonna vomit, What did I do? I contract in my belly and then released. One ends up happening is I get this neural muscular signal to relax that that muscle tissue and this contract relaxed technique becomes very, very effective when I'm getting into vulnerable tissues like my abdominal, my abdomen or injured sites where tissues have been injured or people are stiff or what's going on. And so what ends up happening is that this gives me a really great technique to be able to start a conversation. And if it isn't short and in fact, a shortened muscle fiber tissue, then it's going to respond to this contract. Relax, paradigm. It's gonna respond to this contract. Relax, model. And so the key concept here is that I'm gonna be in a position of end ranging this. So whatever position I need to be in and here's the deal, remember yesterday Intimate intimated that your brain is actually wired for movement. It's not wired for musculature, is it? You actually don't have selective control over any muscle in your body. What we do is we'll do muscle testing for people who have had spinal cord injuries because we're trying to assess at what level the injury is, that's appropriate. But since your body is actually wired for movement that you know if we will wire the monkey brain, this is how they figure this out there where the monkey brain, the monkey picked up the banana chip fed itself and then they move the banana chip over and was completely different. Neural pathway shing It lights up differently, right? And then they were like, Well, what happens? We give the monkey arm, give the monkey robotic arm and just wire it. And the brand monkey thinks about going for the banana chip Shing. It wires up and picks it. And so with the robot arm. And what ends up happening here is that we aren't wired for musculature. We're wired for movement, so the thing that I need to mobilize is the movement. So is it accurate to say I'm ever stretching your hamstrings? No. What it's actor to say as I'm stretching a movement, my hamstrings are involved with that piece of movement. Does that make sense to you guys? And when I say stretching what I really mean, you'll notice that I don't use that word lightly. I don't use it all because there's so much confusion around. It's like using the word core what I mean by your core, the muscles that look good at the beach like your cobra, what we mean by core your diaphragm. Before yesterday Do you even know that you're die from this part of your core? Your pelvic floor? Your your specter of your butt? Is that part of your core? Well, it is. All of these things are part of that system. So we mean it specifically is. Let's when we talk about stretching. What we're really asking is what are what are immobilizing? What are we just trying to change? And this contract relax means that I'm going to stiffen the position. What muscle were you thinking of tensing yesterday when you're laying on the ball? No idea. What I did was push into the ball and resist that position. Because this is a really effective way for suddenly to me to work on a position. Let me give an example. Most of you guys have heard of this thing called reciprocal inhibition, which means that if I contract my biceps, it releases my triceps. Have you heard that kind of stretching before? Yeah, that makes total sense, right? I contract Mike wants and I release my hamstrings. Great. Well, okay. If that's the case, what is the opposite of this position? Does anyone know what's the opposite musculature? That's tight. here. You have no idea. I have no idea. I mean, what is this? This is like gristle in here. I want you to contract the opposite muscle of the distal insertion of the pectin e ists crosses into hip collection extract. Like I didn't know what that means. It's made up. And the concept here is what I know to do is that I can resist this entire position. And as soon as I resist this position, I'm gonna count for all the musculature that's tired of that shit following me. And that means it's something very easy. The contract relax. Technique is very, very excellent because I think about how strong my hamstrings are. If I just put a little tension on him, I'm probably not gonna get anything I want out of. Why? Because my hamstrings can resist hundreds of pounds of load, and if I would take hundreds of pounds of of force to try to change that. But since our muscles are neural mechanical, if I get my brain involved in the project, it suddenly becomes a very, very simple proposition. So this contract relax. We're gonna hold a position for five seconds. So it's five seconds of resistance resistance, then 10 seconds off. And here's the key idea is that there's not really any time off or do is we're gonna move into that new position and hang out there passively. So it's five seconds active, 10 seconds passive. And I repeat that. Wait a minute. How long I repeat it? We probably should talk about some programming ideas. Oh, this is why you need tohave a schema in your head for how we're gonna get this done. OK, so here's some programming ideas. A very simple, simple basics. One every day. This is a seven days a week model and that I need you to think about. Position is a skill. How long do I need to work on skill? How much time do you have? Is a busy human being with a family and a job, So I got trained. I know that you have 10 to 15 minutes a day to work on these things. Very simple. If you dedicate 15 minutes a week, that's 15 minutes a day. That's 90 plus minutes, a week of noodling around, and the variations are endless. You can work on soft tissue. You could work on the joint capsules. You can work on just your shoulders every day it becomes sort of an open ended exploration, which is what I want to do. People ask me all the time Can you put a routine together for me? And I'm like, No way. Because as soon as I say, do these six things, you've missed the other 4000 things. When is it happening is I want you to start the conversation with your body. Were you like you know what? I have been talking to my calves or my ankles in, like, a month. And so now suddenly, there's a conversation when I'm exploring those things. How long do I need to explore? 10 or 15 minutes a day. And I know you can work that into your busy schema because you guys are so busy. In fact, the modern our is like a modern miracle of training That hour of training I've got to get you warmed up. I've got to teach a skill. We gotta get your stronger. We gotta get some metabolic conditioning and we don't talk about nutrition. Right? So my ideas Hey, I want my athletes and my people to be working on this. The worst and most greatest frustration I have is a physical therapist is when people come and see me. And I'm like So what you doing for your problem? They're like nothing I'm like. So you just want they there and me just, you know, pixie with my hands. And they're like that Great. And I'm like, get out of here. So what I need you to do before you see any physician before you see any physical therapist or physio, chiropractic physician or Aussie path is that you need to be working on this 15 minutes a day for a couple weeks so that you start to have ah, good schema so that you can help that person figure out what's going on with you. You should be able to lay it out for them based on the fact that you're spending 10 or 15 minutes a day, which is a very reasonable idea to perform maintenance on sort of the most important vehicle for this thing and for our creative listeners out there, think about how much you make spend journaling or creating that perfect tweet. Like 15 minutes goes like that, right? And so what I'm asking you to Dio I've never spent 15 minutes. It takes me It takes me 40 minutes, Always 40 minutes, Right? It's a tweet button, but we laugh, We cry, changes the earth. That's strange stands. But the key is that Imagine if during that time you were working on your squad also. So you know the key is 10 15 men today and we're going to say two minutes. It's sort of our minimum dose minimum effective dose. So the research says is complicated because what am I really measuring and what the What we know is I that sometimes it takes at least two minutes to make some of the soft tissue changes. Some of the tissue changes like that. Some tissues are a little bit grisly. One of the type one errors we see a lot of people like up. I rolled my whole body. I'm like you rolled your whole body on a foam roller like you stuck yourself through one of those machines. I'm like, Well, how long did you do that? It took me like, three minutes. You rolled your entire body in three minutes. That's a pretty colossal waste of your time, so the issue is stay on something. Now it's physical therapists. I'm trained this way. I'll get on a tissue and tell it changes, and I'll stay on that tissue until stops changing is not very reasonable. So I'll stay working on that piece as long as there needs to be changed and I'll stay on that piece a zoo long as I'm making change. So if something I get into a my diaphragm and it takes me 10 minutes to get underneath there, that's the whole piece. So I always prioritize quality over quantity. It's not about getting a ton of work done. Tomorrow will fix the rest of your shapes. Tomorrow we'll get into those grow defeat. But today we're gonna get some work done on the proper area. So there's two minutes of a minimum dose, right? And then we can start thinking about this way. If I have something that's popped up into my consciousness of having pain, address your pain, address your pain and that's upstream and downstream. Because this is sort of the top air. This is the greatest problem right now is what stiff? What's hurting? That's the thing that's sucking up your creative energy. That's the thing that's getting in your way of playing sports and pain causes a whole bunch of complex down regulation. You get stiff because of pain. You can't contract a Zhar it against pain. Right Pain causes psychological problems. All you need to do is tweak your back and walk away with a backache for a while and see how that impacts your ability to, like, have a fun conversation with people, right? You're like, Wow, that girl's Sochi! But she's such a drag, but her internal pain is driving a lot of the psychological processes. So Bryan Mackenzie will be on later today says this. He's like by pain is the indicator that you're violating the rule of biomechanics. Okay, so now I have this indicator. We don't like it, but it's an indicator now tells me I need to address that. So this is what I'll go to. The top of my priority list is the thing that's causing me the most grief on. Once I've resolved that, then it becomes this open loop where I'm working kind of often down this chain, up and down the system for 10 or 15 minutes a day, and I literally will have some of the best athletes in the world and I'll put him down. And they're like, I'm not giving any pain, No penny, depending up Quads hurt. No, it's great. And then I get on those quads and they turn out to be freakishly, freakishly stiff. And the issue is that unless you're exploring because remember, I don't want to use painters of diagnostic tool. I need to be kind of actively looking. The key concept here is that you have lives and businesses and families in. The last thing we can do is have you spend hours and hours and hours a day working on this. If you are an Olympic athlete, you could warm up and cool down and do all the things. But that's not what it looks like to be an active Marine to run a business to be with your family. But I know you have 10 or 15 minutes a day, and if you know, I wrote a poem a day for, like, 200 days 300 it was insane. But once I got into that practice wasn't a big deal. And if you ask my wife, Could I do the splits like things ages ago, she'd be like, No way what I've done as I started to work on it. And when I'm watching TV, you know, I hang out for me in a book. If I'm on the phone, I'll throw my hip up on the table and start working on something. So the question is, when do when? Is it more appropriate for me to work on this? My feeling is we're back to this conversation of one or zero. If you're it's 2 a.m. You wake up on your stiff. Maybe that's not the best time to attack yourself with a lacrosse ball, have a shower, get up and going, have some coffee. But if that's the only time you could do it, guess what? It's one or zero. Are you putting in the miles or not? Are you working on your tissues or not? And what we've happens? It turns out that when I looked at the piece of my doctor work, I was that barriers to adherence. And so what kept people from doing the things that they said they needed to dio and actually knew they needed to dio. Well, turns out the more steps between you doing something and actually doing it, the less likely you are to do it. And so if I set up all these preconditions, your core temperatures can be active. You have walked for 15 minutes. He will be three hours after a meal rides. You'll be in a perfect sense state with candles. It'll never happen. You'll be like It's not perfect. Or if I said to you, Hey, we have to do your whole routine. What'll end up happening would be like I can't do the whole routine today it's gone. I'll do it tomorrow and you end up putting it off. So here's our deal 10 or 15 minutes a day when it works for you after exercise. Fantastic. This We're not talking about exercise during this course we're not talking about, you know, the training during this course of systems. But I'll tell you, is that if you can't put your arms over your head and you're about to go over head with something and exercise, or if, like you're about to go swim and you can put your arms overhead, maybe that's what I'll work on before I go put my arms over my head. Repetitive, Lee, in the competitive exercise environment that makes sense to you guys Very simple.