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Easy Soft Tissue Maintenance

Yeah, let's do one quick here. You were just talking about children, and we have one here from one of our users on Facebook, and they say, "Hi, Kelly. "How do you get a four and a half year old to sit better? "He's just starting school, and now he has to sit "for hours in a classroom." Any help for their four-year-old kid? Nope. (laughing) Hopeless. So, children need a movement practice, too. And here's a way to think about being a human is that you have the conduits already set. They've been pulled and poured so that your brain is wired to extend your hip. In fact, you're wired for movement. And without getting into too much of the details, what you have to do then is pull the wiring through that. So much of the interesting thing that's happening in the world right now is we're talking about flow states and Rise of the Superman is an amazing book out there right now, and we're talking-- Steven Kotler. Right, that's right. And we're talking about patterning and practice and habit...

, and we've really kinda gotten into the neural science of this. The problem is practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. So, imagine, first and foremost, the position you adopt 90% of the day is the position you're gonna be in all the time. So, as we talk about movement practice, okay that's the bigger scheme. I have to do some things to practice being a human and keep an eye on it because it's a moving target. But one of the things that we want people to do is, and this has been the big message of Creative Live, when we worked with you guys in our book, is that it takes 10 or 15 minutes a day of doing maintenance and those maintenance can be done with a wine bottle, a lacrosse ball, a roller-- That's the kinda maintenance I like right there. (laughing) Yeah, it's about down regulation, baby. It's interesting, but we work with plenty of professional athletes, who, the only way after a big game and traveling, the way that they can go to sleep is they have to smoke marijuana, and that's the only way they can turn off to actually sleep. And I think, I'm not gonna generalize about creatives, right, but I'm just gonna say that what we know is that is a mechanism for people to really take a crack at hey, I can't sleep, my body feels terrible, I'm caught in this sympathetic go go go state. How do I manage that? And people manage it with alcohol every night, they manage it with poor sleep, we get into this bad cycle. So, what we're advocating for is 10 or 15 minutes of soft tissue work a day, and there are great resources (mumbling). Great. And so, the very first thing that you can do on the road is plan on, or at home, is no matter what, you are gonna commit to 10 to 15 minutes a day of rolling around. And the rules are simple. For example, lay on the ground for me. Should we, a little bit more room, do you think? Sure, sure. Let me put that back a little bit. So, let's have you on your back. And this should be done anywhere. Is this just for people that have this or are you talking about everybody. Yes. That's the right answer. (laughing) (coughing) We can talk specifically about what we tend to prioritize. So, I'm just gonna show ya a technique that we call smashing. Oh, great. So, it's no big deal. It's very, very old school. Like human beings have been trying to fix other human beings since there were human beings. So, I'm just gonna press a little bit on his quad with my foot. And many of you are engaged in and work around us and you guys know what we're doing. We smash regularly. How does that feel? It feels terrible. (laughing) Now, I don't know if you can get the camera, but see how it snaps back and forth? It's like what bone is that? It's not a bone. It's not a bone. It's a muscle. That's a muscle. Okay, so what's happened here is a larger impact of sitting and sedentary lifestyle, which is what we're trying to rail against. We need to, with the DE agent friend, and he has a trunk on his car, and he keeps all the scary weapons in his car, like the bag of death is in the back of the car, right? And when he gets out, he always walks past the trunk, and the reason he always walks past the trunk is that it becomes his dominant motor patter, that when gets out of the car he always walks to the trunk. So, when he gets into the scariness, where does he end up? The trunk. He doesn't have to think, "Where's my weapon?" It's in the trunk. And we call that hiding the reps. What we're gonna try to do with everyone is get as much tooling in and monkeying around with yourself so it's not one more thing you have to do. And the reason I'm showing you this is that when we're sitting, are you guys sitting or slouching again? Do you have your abs on? It's impossible, isn't it? It's impossible. Okay, so you already see that you're gonna be screwed, no matter what, sitting. No matter what. And we can talk about why that's such a crushing impact and why it's crushing the runners. So, as I push on your leg, one of the things that happens when I sit is that I don't have a good mechanism for supporting my torso, and so what ends up, I'm either gonna, if I'm balanced and braced, I'm just gonna float around on my hipbones, and just no way. What ends up happening is I have two choices. I either can sit with my legs really out in a strange way. This is weird. 'Scuse me, ma'am. That's right, it's totally weird. Please don't look at my crotch, Chase. Or, I'm gonna sit like a yogi, and that's not gonna go well, either. So it's impossible to sort of use the environment. So what ends up happening is I use a lot of the structures involved with locomotion and stability. My psoas, which is the filet mignon of the human being, muscle inside my hip, this big quadriceps, which goes from your knee to your hipbone, and this muscles in the back. What ends up happening, we call these the four horsemen. What ends up happening is they get short and fibrotic and stiff because they're holding you up. Now, when I say sit, you're like, psh, I got this. (verbalizing) So what's happening is that now, it ends up expressing itself in the tissue quality. And you can imagine that he sits eight or 10 hours a day, doesn't know, can't get around that, but doesn't have a plan to sort of undo that damage. Now, the reason I show that is that we want people to become very familiar with the quality of their tissues. You should know what's normal and what's not normal. You should be like layers of warm silk sliding over steel springs. And so, if you find that your tissues are fibrotic or stiff or feel like beef jerky, is that normal? No. No. And can you stretch beef jerky? Not so much. You sort of got that (growling). Like dragon lady. So, what we're seeing here is that I found something that just stretching and pulling on may not change. Now, two things, one is quickly easy to identify these areas on yourself. When you clonk over something, snap, what is that? Unless it's a bone, the chances are it's not normal. So if it's stiff or feels like beef jerky, it's not normal. And these are the guidelines for being able to start to treat yourself today with a rolling pin, with a Chinese soup spoon. It doesn't matter. You can Google myofascial release or foam roller and get going. Grab a ball out of your kids, and you can probably use one of that 80 to 200 lens. Yep. I know it's the most expensive roller of all time. (laughing) You just threw up in your mouth, right? So, here's the deal. The second piece about this for everyone to start to be able to take care of themselves, is that tissue that are normal don't hurt. So, as I pushed on there, did that hurt? Yes. It's shouldn't hurt. It does. And what that tells us is that those tissues are under such tension and become so fibrotic and adhesed that it's like running the e-brake on your car non-stop. And so, yes, you can still drive your Ferrari, and many of you do, right, Doreen in the audience is a brilliant squatter, but still has restrictions in her hips that she's addressing, and what ends up happening over the long haul, she was a high-level cyclist, et cetera, et cetera, spin instructor, over the long haul, she runs that e-brake on her Ferrari too long, the wheels start to catch fire. And so, we can identify is something normal? Well, it doesn't hurt when I press on it. And you can see, let me show you how much pressure I'm putting. Put your arm out real quick. This is how much pressure I'm putting on it. How much is that? Not very much, sadly. Now, if I load that up, that's still not too bad. This is my foot, it doesn't feel great. But that's probably 100 pounds. Now, let me show you what 100 pounds looks like on the quad-- No, thank you. See, and that's the idea here is that you can get started right away with just any tissue in your body. And that's the lowest form. Pop on up. Is this a 15 minute thing that I can do like everyday? Has to be a 15 minute thing you do. And that's crucial. You cannot-- Spoken. Here's the deal, you have a whole body you're responsible for. So, I was just doing an interview with a magazine about stand up paddling, and he's like so, you're saying that I have to address your feet? Well, I'm like, well, do you use your feet? What point did you get excused from shoulder class? You need all of these things. You're a system of systems. Your hips have to function well so that you can stabilize your trunk. For example, what we know is that diaper industry in America, adult diapers, adult diapers, two billion dollar problem. And the reason we're seeing that adults need diapers is that we're doing so much sitting and it turns our pelvic floor off. And the pelvic, we're sitting in a bad position, diaphragm gets compromised, pelvic floor gets compromised, we'll talk about why that's such a big deal later on. And because I'm not standing with my feet straight, when we opened the show, you actually had your feet together which is brilliant, and as we devolve, we start to see our natural tendencies, and those natural tendencies tend to unwind me. If I stand like this, or I'm not doing a lot of standing or moving, then my hips don't function, and suddenly, I can't stabilize my spine effectively, my pelvic floor doesn't turn on. Why do I care about my hips? Because I don't wanna pee myself when I sneeze. Well done. Fair enough. Now, all you have to do is Google prolapsed bowel Olympics. Don't do that. And we've done that for ya. So, the point is, the pelvic floor is crucial. So when we start to think about addressing these problems, 10 or 15 minutes a day, of the whole system. You don't have to fix everything today. That's the other piece. That's one of the things I wanna sorta get straight is I post, again, I was high performant, went to college on a soccer scholarship. I would consider myself a good athlete. Then over the course of 10 years, I stopped thinking that I need to maintain my body, because I was a good athlete or I could naturally move. Now, when I think about what 15 minutes a day, it's 15 minutes, like oh, my god. 15 minutes sounds like so much, and if you're folks at home or in here, like I don't have 15 minutes. I got the kids, I got the, I can't even tell you how much time, money and energy I'm sinking in now, 10 years later, trying to undo not having done 15 minutes. And again, to reference your earlier class, maintaining your body, that's one of the things like, oh my god, I can actually do this. It has to be reasonable. So much of the work that we're doing is looking at interventions, again, that scale up from kids to adults, but also can fit into your life. It works well when you have a guru following you around, stretching you in between. That would be fantastic. Can you imagine? Raise your hand, you want a personal chef, personal massage therapist, personal coach all the time. That'd be great. It's creepy all the time. But sometimes, that would be amazing. (laughing) The problem is is not functional, it's too expensive, it's not practical. So what we've gotta do is start working on that. So, one of the areas to start on is to think 10 minutes at night before I got to bed. And this is, we can tie this into being able to fall asleep, is one of the ways that we can down regulate, one of the ways that we can turn the system off is through soft tissue work. Is that working on the fascia and the connective tissues, one of the signals for your body to relax. How many of you guys ever had a massage before? Oh. When you stood up, did you wanna fight someone and lift heavy weights? (laughing) How'd you feel? Your voice is all low. That was really amazing. That's my wife's voice after massage. Hun, did you pay her? The massage therapist. So, the key is, what you've already triggered it in is that you've tapped into that nervous system response. So if you are a having a hard time sleeping, or you've wound up or traveled, 10 minutes before you go to bed is an easy intervention. And you start rolling on anything. If anything hurts. You fly Virgin, sometime? The back of the screen says touch anywhere to begin. It really doesn't matter where you start. Start on your feet. Start on the thing that's bugging you. And for most people to understand, when they go see a physician, 50% of the musculal-skeletal problems, or 50% of the problems a physician will see are musculal-skeletal, that means it's pain related to movement and the mechanics, the bio-mechanical system. Most of those problems are simple fascia myofascial kind of interface, tacked down problems. And so what I'm telling you is you can have direct impact on your pain and the quality of your life just by taking a ball and putting it where it hurts and moving it around. It could be that simple. How many folks in the audience have back pain? I'd say two-thirds. So that's, I'll just confess to you, that's from this, and this, and click, click, click, and sitting. All that stuff. I've got this sort of medially rotated shoulders. That's nice, we actually call that douche bag shoulder position. Perfect, that's me. I got it. What you work out? 'Sup? (laughing) And here's the deal-- But mine's not from working out. Mine's from doing this for a long time. And so, the connection here is like-- Right. Okay, so-- My back is all jacked up. And we did this in Creative Live, and the way we look at all kind of movement quality is we say good movement happens in a wave of contraction from trunk to periphery, from core to sleeve. That's the definition of functional movement. So, when we're saying that, well, I better get my spine organized first, then I can get the primary engines of my hips and shoulders organized, and then I can generate force more effectively that way. So, if I start to move, and the first thing that happens is that I slouch, am I in a very organized position? No. And so, one of the first things that we kind of address is that that's a way that I can start to think about recapturing my function. The nervous system is priority number one. And instead, if we can optimize your spinal position, head position, then we can start talking about everything else, because I certainly influence my diaphragm function, that when I'm bent over, go ahead, everyone collapse a little bit in your chair, just like ugh. Feels so good. It does feel good. Open your mouth, too. Take that tension out. (laughing) Okay, now watch. Take a breath for me. Where'd you all breathe? In your chest. So, is that where your diaphragm is, in your face? No, what happens is, and we see this with little kids, we'll get back to that-- I'm so happy to be here with you. This is great. In your face! As soon I sit down, what we've done is basically made it very difficult for your diaphragm to function. And you diaphragm is one of the ways that we can access our parasympathetic nervous system. It's the way that we breathe efficiently to fire up that VO2 max, right? And so what ends up happening is if I start to compromise that, I start breathing in from my neck, and I use my accessory breathing muscles, which turn on when I'm under peak soccer playing load. (heavy breathing) And the problem is, it's 30% less efficient and I start to stress out, what? All the neck musculature. So what ends up happening is now I'm pulling on these tissues which are pulling on my scalenes, part of my neck, short neck flexors, attach onto my first rib, make a nerve sandwich, and all of a sudden, my hand starts to go numb, why? Because I'm stuck over, wretched position, and look what your head is. So your head weighs 10 pounds, just roughly. Yours is a little bit lighter. It's carbon fiber. But the rest of us, like that three-quarter camera that everyone's shooting now, it's not an accident we got smaller. But ends up happening, is for every inch in front of your body your head is, it's plus 10 pounds. It's four-thirds, actually. Three-fourths, four-thirds? Is it really four-thirds camera? It's a micro four-thirds camera. It's okay. Keep going. The folks at home are like I got one thing on Kelly Stewart. Bam! Bam! We took the little Olympus that you guys suggested to Africa and we look so good. Yes? Like I look so-- And your posture was awesome the whole time, 'cause it's like this big. It's so small. This camera's so small. That's why for me it was the third-fourths camera. So, what ends up happening, though, is for every inch my head is in front of my body, it's plus 10 pounds. So it's 22-pound head, 32-pound head, 42-pound head. And now, how long does that take? And now I've also put a kink in my nervous system, and now my short neck flexors have got tight. And now I've pulled my jaw out of whack, and now I start to do a TMJD problems, or I grind my teeth at night. You're literally describing my existence, and I hate it. And so, what we start to see is hey, my hands are going numb. Well, look what the position you're collapsed. And so you're internally rotated, collapsed. So the best way to abate the problems of smoking is not to smoke in the first place. Or, if you're gonna have to be in these compromised positions, understand you're gonna have to uncompromise yourself, and that's when you can start to develop a practice. So, as we work on sort of the most important thing, because how many of you guys have knee pain, for example? Okay, we have some athletes with knee pain. Some humans with knee pain. Now, you can still function pretty well. It gets in your way, it's a drag, but how many of you guys have wrecked your back before? Tweaked your back, bad back tweak? Raise your hand. How debilitating was it? Extremely. How much sex did you wanna have? That's the only time in my life I haven't wanted to-- A lot, but less. I always point that out, 'cause some people were like true fact. Also we see that you don't wanna lift heavy weights, do you? You're afraid to pick up your kid. You're afraid of your livelihood. I have to go shoot this wedding, I don't if I can. It's a big deal, it's a red flag. And that's because when you injure your nervous system, or compromise your nervous system, your body reacts in that it's such a threat to your survival as a human being that it will shut your force production down and shut your whole body down, and the pain around that, it's a hard bell to unring. When you ring your nervous system bell, even just a little overextended, step out of the airplane with a heavy bag, your body reacts in kind. So, one of the first things that we can do to ameliorate some of these things, ameliorate some of the issues of spinal compromise is that we can work functionally on some of these areas. And one of the first areas around people who are creative or kind of are generating or typing or living or sort of in a bent over position is we go after the thoracic spine. Now, chase has a little bump here. Can you guys see that little bump in his neck here? We call that a camel hump. Sexy, right? Now, as soon, go ahead and bend over and assume that you're shooting position. And you've shot me, and it's cool. It feels cool. But the whole time, I'm like, what's that crease in his neck? His neck looks fat. Can you guys see that? So, all you have to do is walk over and understand that that's the crackling of the human being right there. If we're gonna eat him, and deep fry that skin, that's the first piece. What's happened here... (laughing) Awesome. TM, human cracklings. What's happened here is that his body has made this area very stiff. Trying to basically hold his head back out of position. And so, one of the things that happens is that as soon as his body gets stiff here trying to adopt his position, it doesn't matter how he tries to get his head right, try to get your head right, do you see how he's hinged here and so he's basically mechanically blocked, and so it doesn't matter. So if we look, sit side, and this is a physical therapy, dorky thing, but he's ear, the center of his ear should be over the center of his shoulder, center over his hip, and just right in front of this. And you can see that he's a little bit forward, in spite of working on it. And that's the key. All I need to do is work on it. I don't ever have to hit the standard, although that's what you should be, but I move towards working to optimize my function, and that's enough, typically, to get the human out of pain, and functioning better. So, you don't ever have to be 100% on the test. If you get 50%, do you remember in college, you wanted 64% and you're like pass this. I'm graduating from college. If you get 64% of this, the creatives didn't go to college. I get it. (laughing) But if you get 64% of this right, your body's gonna start to self correct, and it's such a miraculous machine that it will start to up regulate and heal itself. So, understand that it's so incredible that not only has got stiff here, but his body started to put down fat and connective tissue to literally, physically pull his head back. It's literally tenting the skin here. And we see the same thing happen in people's low backs. That the musculature turns off, 'cause we're sitting and the body starts to infuse fat into the muscles. We call that moth eaten, or fatty multifidi, so the musculature is really clever. Your body's got your back. It's literally gonna hold you up. But the first thing he could do is what? Put a lacrosse ball here. Lay on a foam roller here. Try to deal with that. And how does he know? Well, he gets on it and it's stiff. So, let me show you for example. This is one of our tools. This is called the gemini. Do I still face this way? No, what I'm gonna have you do is this could be two baseballs laid together, this could be two lacrosse balls taped together. Can be whatever you have laying around. It can be a foam roller, ever, for a start. It can be a small Voss bottle or something. But all he needs to do is I'm gonna have him lay on this thing for me, okay. So just lay down. Put that right in your neck. This is gonna be-- In that area. Yeah, great. Now, head down. Now, couple things. We said one, it shouldn't hurt. And number two, it shouldn't be stiff. So, I bet if you lift your butt up, something's gonna happen to you. What happens? Oh! Yeah, it hurts. It's gotta hurts. Great. So what he's gonna do there is he's gonna spend time on that area. He doesn't have to clean up his whole spine. The clock is now running. He's gotta get 10 minutes of work in to start getting something done and when the 10 minutes is done, chances are he'll feel so good he wants to do a little bit more, that's okay. But he's off the clock then. And that's the way I need you to think about this. You don't have to resolve your disfunction 100%, you need to start. And for those coaches in the audience and those people who are listening, if we have athletes come into us or people engage in a movement practice, one of the things that we see is that people do zero work on themselves until they break. And then it's like whoa, whoa, let me see an ART practitioner, chiro and a physio, and it's too late. You've got to start a practice. That's literally one of the things why I wanted to host this segment, because I'm living proof that I didn't do any of that before-- You didn't need to. You're Chase Jarvis. Now, I feel like I'm sinking a disproportionate amount of time and I wish I just would've put that time in ahead. So, notice that I'm just letting him bake here. Yeah, it's not pleasant either, by the way. Two minutes is sort of our minimum dose. So don't move anywhere else. Stay on an area for at least two minutes until you start to make some change. It just takes that long. And that's not very scientific. Maybe there's some studies that show us it takes that long to make soft tissue change. What we find is that's a minimum therapeutic dose for you to actually realize you didn't need to foam roll your whole body in eight seconds. Now, one of the things that he's doing a fantastic job of is breathing. But if you lift your butt up, and drive that thing in, what do you, op, eh. (groaning) Fighting. My god! Taking a big poo! Something's wrong! (laughing) And what you'll see is that, in order for this to work, and the way we know it's not too deep is that he continues to breathe. Piece of cake? Yeah, sure. Ish? Now, does he have arms? Can he move his arms over his head? Do that for me. Ah. Ah. And this is one of the reasons people develop shoulder pain is that because their thoracic spine is stuck, the top of their ribs are stuck bent over. Their shoulders can't get out of the way. And any time you go get your stuff out of the overhead compartment, your shoulders jam in and have a car accident. So, the easiest way is just to remove the car accident. Does that make sense? So, if you're bent over, this is one of the things that we recommend for all our Air Force pilots, for example, all our helicopter pilots in the military, who are stuck with helmets, flying in a bad position for six or seven hours a day. All anyone who's at a computer, you've got to spend some time, this is one of the first places. Hold a baby, shoulder goes where? Ugh. Head goes where? Ugh. So, you can wreck yourself. Those little monkeys, they're so bad. Hold a baby in a good position. How difficult is that? Where were we, Juliet? We were just in like-- Blue Barn. Blue Barn. Yuppie salad capital of the world. We'll get a call from them later. And this woman was holding her baby like, ugh, and like fidgeting and I was like she wonders why her hips hurts and her shoulders are all messed up. She's overextended. You can see the bones, kind of bone-on-bone there, which is not so different than any of the pro photographers that we see rest that massive camera on their hip. So, you've got to think I'm gonna undo that, and the lowest common denominator is I'm gonna work on my soft tissues, and I'm gonna start with my spine. So, you worked on there. Yeah, I'm tired. Go down one notch. Perfect, oh there's another segment. Now, here's the key. You're gonna discover where you're tight and where you're not tight. So the very first thing we're gonna go after, and do you think changing his thoracic spine's gonna prove his VO2 max? You bet. Imagine trying to breathe into a really steel canister when I should have this supple, amazing system. So, I up regulate. Everything functions better. My shoulders function better. I can breathe better. I don't have the neck pain because I'm addressing the muscles that are holding my neck. And you can work your way all the way down to the bottom of the spine. Can you imagine doing that with-- I can. I don't wanna do it right now. (laughing) And so here's the deal. Have a glass of wine, or whatever you, relax. Take a hot shower. Set yourself up for success, and understand that the first time you put your mom on the ball, she's gonna be like what the hell is that. And it's painful. And it's very shocking because most people haven't had any therapeutic touch, and they don't realize how painful they are. So, mitigate it. Make it less painful. Put a towel over your ball. The key here is that we can take off so much low-hanging fruit if we just take a crack at this first. That actually, right now, I feel better. I did not enjoy it when it was underneath my body. And so, we know that it's not normal if it's painful. And you gotta be able to breathe. And when you come up, that's that test retest. Well, I feel like I can get my head. Let's do it from the side. You looked at his head, earlier. I saw you. Is that better, same or worse? Can you tell the difference? I don't know. Does he look less camely? Is he more sexy? I think so. That's obviously the test, right? Question. This is actually a note for making it less painful. What I've found, and a lot of people do, they get car buffers and they just kinda let it vibrate the muscles, and what you'll find, just do it right here, you'll feel those ropes just start to release. Sure. (speakers drowning each other out) If you wanna go through security with a car buffer, you just go right ahead. You can also buy it-- There are a lot of ways. We were just in Korea, and they had one of those German fat jiggling machines. Remember that thing? And we laugh, because there's some people. Men would come in and use it, working out. (mumbling) But I put it on my leg and the Korean attendant was like what that's guy doing? And it's like bruh. And it's amazing, right? But I just need a 400 pound machine everywhere I go. Or I need a therapeutic-- Can we talk about this for a second? This is one of your proprietary tools, isn't it? It is. And I know it looks like some other things. In fact, we usually say it. Use for external mobilization use only. (laughing) The key here is that we were seeing that two balls taped together was not, those were designed for sport, not designed for your body. So this is actually allows us to get your scapula out of the way, it fits your anatomy and actually blocks those motion segments between the joints. And in the Maintaining Your Body class on Creative Live, you walk though all of these tools that you guys have at the Mobility WOD store and this is called the Gemini? That's called the Gemini. And you can pick this up, what something like this costs? It's about 30 bucks, is that it, Joe? Here's the neat. If you think you have to have some special tools to start making a change in yourself, you're a fool. And what I never want is you think well, I don't have my special ball-- Thing. Thing, I can't do it. You're gonna look around. Grab a smooth rock. Grad something. A coke bottle. You can get started on, Mexican Coke, obviously. Yeah, and I actually travel now, thanks to Dave Werner, I travel with one of your little-- Lacrosse ball. Yeah a lacrosse ball. It's so easy. It's crazy easy and it works. That's the thing. In just a matter of five minutes. And I don't even, necessarily, sometimes, I'll admit, I don't get on the ground. I just lean up against a wall and five minutes of that. For us right now, it's one or zero. Especially when we're talking about pain. Are you doing it or not? And what you've found is that hey, I don't have to create a whole idea or a whole schema around treating. A ball in the short neck flexors, suddenly I can unglue my neck, I can get into my peck, I can work on these things while I'm, this is another one of our balls. We call this the Super Novito. But the idea here is that you can be winding up or working on the grisliness all the time and you don't have to be very skilled, and you can be in an airplane, you can be reading your email, and it's pretty miraculous how much work you can get done if you get it in there. Again, trying to relate what we're talking here specifically to the folks that might be watching Creative Live photographers, you hold this camera's heavy, you hold your 10 pound Nikon D4 with an 80 to a long time, your forearm is like cranked. So, I just take that same ball. Again, I travel with one lacrosse ball, and I just roll out my forearm a little bit-- Amazing. And same thing with people who are using a mouse all day long. Oh, yeah. It's crazy helpful. If you're a runner or a person who walks, imagine a busy person will take 10,000 steps a day. If you're on your feet you'll go 10,000. 10,000 loads in your calves. Have you ever stretched your calves or smashed your calves or gotten a massage in your calves. Probably everyone has done something, right? You're like oh, my calves. But think how many times you've taken care of your forearms. How many time's that happened? Zero. Zero. It's amazing. When we talk to people, have you ever worked on your abs or rolled out your obliques or any of the muscles? And people are like, I what? I'm like when you're sore-- I rolled 'em out. (laughing) You wish, son. When you're sore through your abs, what do you do for 'em? You eat ice cream, you look in the mirror, you're all jacked, you hope they get better on their own. But these are just muscular systems, and the forearm is one of 'em. One of the easiest things you can do is, we'll do it right over here, is on a counter, you can lay your arm on top of a ball or two balls taped together and literally lay on it, and now I'm reading my email. And look, all I have to do is move around into any ray. We call that informed free styling. Go find out. But your forearm's so tight. So you're having elbow pain or your wrists are hurting or your hands are going to sleep, you know what's right upstream in between those things? Your forearm. So get started. We even, at the gym, do forearm smashing. If you lay on the ground, and have your loved one step on, smash your forearms out, it's miraculous. I actually, I experienced no forearm pain when you were stepping on because that's actually one of the areas that I roll out. How do we know what tissue is normal? It doesn't hurt. And it's not stiff. So if you're working on something, and it's not a problem, move on, 'cause you've got dirty lies. And starting with, let's get people going, and then we can have a greater conversation. Great, let's get some questions from the in-studio audience, if we can. I know we got some folks at home that wanna talk. There's a question right here. Yeah, I just had a question on using the Gemini or the two lacrosse balls, or whatever. Say if you have a structural issue, like scoliosis, I have a slight scoliosis, does that affect, or does it have a huge affect on people that might have that or can you still do it, or-- This is a great question. The one thing, is if you ever feel like it's above your head, go get some help. Go see a profession. Comma, it's not illegal to put a ball on that tissue and roll around on it. So, you are pretty jacked. You have big quads, you're wearing, you're at the right shoes. How many times has your scoliosis affected you? Not much. Oh, weird. So, what we find is that a lot of people have rotations and twists in their body. My right hand was my dominant paddling side. My right shoulder would always come forward. So, what happens now? Should I treat this separately? No, I address what's in front of me. So, take a crack at it, make some change. You have every right to do that. If you feel like you sneeze and your scoliosis puts you in the hospital, then you're probably already aware of the problem. But typically what we see is when we bow strings, or you see a bow, this is from Thomas Myers, thing bow string, and if you're bent, what side do you think you're short on? Ring. Right, so if you're bent, what side are you short on? It's an easy way to start to approach those things in a realistic way. One of the reasons we like 10 or 15 minutes is that you don't over do it. 'Cause some of us are like yeah. (mumbling) That's right, I'm gonna roll. Put all the lacrosse balls on the ground. I'm gonna slide out. (laughing) And what we've seen is a dosed response. Dosed response. Get a little dose and if you're a little bit sore 'cause you put a lacrosse ball on your butt for the first time and it was really sore, then go work on something tomorrow. That's another commonality that I see is that it seems we are actually really good at diagnosing our problems because they are painful. And whether, again, you're a photographer, a designer, you sit a lot, you travel a lot, you know where you hurt and if I'm picking up what you're putting down, I just gotta address that first, 10 minutes, and see the improvement. And eventually, it won't hurt. And so, when it stops hurting, then what? Then we stop doing it? No, now's the chance to be ahead of the curve. Stay above what we call the line of suck. If you dip below that tissue tolerance, it doesn't matter what you're doing, it's irritable, all I have to do is get above that tissue tolerance line and maintain. And then, have this be an exploration. People are so talented at their craft. They're so talented in their lives and they have just been disembodied and disenfranchised when it comes to understanding how their bodies work. How to eat, how to sleep, all those things.