Dr. Grayson Wickham is here to help us learn how to stretch better, fix pain, and improve flexibility & mobility with the Movement Vault app.
The topic of “mobility” is continually gaining more popularity, since having good or optimal joint mobility is key to preventing pain and injury, as well as improving performance in the gym, and in our daily activities. The fact is, most people are either not stretching or not using effective stretching techniques, and there is a lot of confusion around this topic due in part to false info and fitness “experts” echoing out-of-date knowledge.
In this show, you will learn why everyone needs to start an effective stretching routine to improve joint mobility, why your genetics are not the cause of lower back pain, and how improving your active joint mobility will change your life forever. Dr. Grayson also reveals the best time to stretch, talks about why joint replacement surgery should be almost non-existent, and shares his top 5 active stretches that everyone should be doing and some practical posture tips.
Visit Dr. Grayson’s website MovementVault and if you want to follow him on Instagram, click here.
TIMESTAMPS:
There’s a difference between muscle weakness and muscle tightness. [00:44]
If you stay in a hunched over position, like at the desk, for example, your body will adapt to that. [05:09]
Many static or passive stretches are not as effective as active stretching and muscle activation exercises. [08:59]
Active stretching is when we are stretching out a joint or a muscle, to its end range of motion, and then we’re contracting those muscles actively while they’re stretched out. [13:32]
It is said that when you are put under anesthesia for surgery, you become super flexible. [17:16]
Mobility is actually the flexibility of the muscle and mobility is more of the joint range of motion. [20:00]
Is there an important harmony between your muscle strength and flexibility and your tendon strength and flexibility? [22:34]
Grayson is a physical therapist and he says that 90% of the injuries that come into his clinic could have been avoided. [27:43]
For body maintenance we do things like brush our teeth regularly. What do we do for maintenance on your joints? [31:29]
Humans are meant to move frequently during the day. [36:53]
People who get super strong and build muscles possibly reduce flexibility. [45:31]
When an athlete is dealing with nagging injuries, what are some solutions? [52:46]
Stress and sleep are things to look at when you’re injured or out of shape. [57:30]
Movement Vault.com shows a better way to stretch, fix pain and injury. [01:00:09]
Most of your physical complaints like back pain or knee pain, are not something you have inherited. You need to move. [01:03:45]
LINKS:
- Brad Kearns.com
- Brad’s Shopping page
- Movement Vault
- Brad Kearns’s Morning Routine
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LISTEN:
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B.Rad Podcast:
Grayson (00:00:00):
I say that 90% of the injuries could have been avoided that come into my clinic.
Brad (00:00:05):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world-ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple, actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype, hacks, shortcuts, and sciencey talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.
New Speaker (00:00:44):
Hi everyone. Enjoy my conversation with Dr. Grayson Wickham. He is the proprietor of Movement Vault. This is an online and app service that gives you guided stretching, strengthening flexibility, mobility, drills and skills, targeting different conditions, different areas of the body, and making you overall more resilient for a healthy, fit active lifestyle. We’re gonna get into some important and interesting topics during this conversation, including learning the difference between these terms that we banter about interchangeably, flexibility and mobility.
Brad (00:01:27):
We’re gonna learn about the difference between static stretching and active stretching and muscle activation. We’ve heard static stretching get trashed so much recently, and he talks with some more detail about the most appropriate and most functional types of stretches, and some of the stuff that you’re doing that might not be helpful, that might be counterproductive. We’re gonna get you inspired to devote little slices of your day to doing some flexibility and mobility exercises. And at the app at the website, you can learn ones that have particular interest to you and perhaps your functional weaknesses. And we talked during the show and even more offline about my hamstring complaints, and he showed me on the screen some great stuff that is part of the Movement Vault offering that I’m going to implement to strengthen my hamstrings. And there’s differences between muscle weakness and muscle tightness.
Brad (00:02:23):
These are really important things to know and understand. I think it’s gonna give you some good takeaway, practical tips and greater understanding. But one of the themes that comes up during this discussion that’s super important is just the tremendous importance of moving more in all manner in general, everyday life. So whatever you’re doing with your fitness activities and you have a great personal trainer, or you go to these classes and you love it, or you’re putting in 30 miles a week on the run, well, that’s all fantastic. It’s better than, uh, sitting on your butt. But we also have this key objective that’s possibly more important than adhering to a devoted fitness regimen, and that is to just get up and move around more. We talk about this so much in our books, Mark Sisson and I. Mark coined the term JFW, just fricking walk.
Brad (00:03:13):
So it starts with walking the ultimate quintessential form of human locomotion. And the more we can walk, we know about getting our steps in and those great goals. But to me, that’s just a small sliver of what it means to lead a more movement oriented lifestyle. I’m so big on my morning exercise routine and how that’s changed my life. And so hopefully with this discussion with Grayson focusing in on this movement objective and dovetailing that with your fitness goals in a graceful manner so you don’t get injured, a very interesting conversation. Grayson Wickham Movement Vault.com. Grayson Wickham. I gotcha. And we are gonna get into some important topics for active enthusiasts to stay healthy, improve flexibility and mobility through the Movement Vault. So thanks for joining me. I would love for you to introduce yourself to the audience and talk about this wonderful app that you started and have built out to be quite an impressive resource for people to at home, work on their flexibility, mobility, pain, and also I think, rethink some of our foundational notions about how you deal with injuries. You sent me some bulleted point topics, and one of ’em is joint replacement surgery should almost be non-existent. So I can’t wait for my knee replacement, hip replacement listeners and friends to, to dive into that contention. So welcome to the show, Grayson.
Grayson (00:04:48):
I really appreciate it. It’s, uh, it’s a pleasure to be, uh, you know, chatting with you and trying to spread some good knowledge to, to all your listeners.
Brad (00:04:57):
So how did you get started in this career track and tell us about that transition from the physical facility which you had in New York, and now you have this, uh, wonderful online presence.
Grayson (00:05:09):
Yeah, so, um, my original training is a doctor of physical therapy. Um, always kind of had a strength and conditioning background, so I’ve kind of had that crossover there. And, um, you know, early in my career I worked with professional athletes, uh, MLB and NFL guys primarily, uh, mixed in with some tennis pros as well. And then, uh, relocated to New York City and like you said, started the practice and, you know, had the practice for about seven-ish years. And, you know, it’s, it’s kinda like any type of, you know, occupation or just really in life in general. You know, if we’re, if we’re really opening up and, and kind of zooming in on what we’re seeing every day, I just, I saw a lot of data points and I saw a lot of patterns and so, and nobody’s a textbook per se, but you know what I realized, and it’s, it’s pretty, you know, seems pretty obvious, but when you’re just seeing patient after patient after patient with kind of a similar pattern in history, obviously there’s, there’s different injuries, et cetera.
Grayson (00:06:10):
But what it comes down to is we’re just, as humans, we’re sitting way too much, we’re not moving enough. And even if we are working out or say running or, you know, doing whatever, what, what we’re doing in the gym or outside, we’re just not moving in varied movement patterns. And so specifically not enough rotation, not enough side to side movement. And a lot of things that we’re doing is just in the, the forward plane of motion. You know, it’s it to get nerdy, it’s the sagittal plane. And so what happens over time, and then couple that with, you know, we’re, we’re hunched over at our desk Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, we’re hunched over our phone, we’re hunched over our book. And so when we’re in these positions long enough, no matter what the position is, our body’s gonna adapt to that. And I say that our body becomes the positions that we spend the most time in. And so, you know, are you going to morph into this, you know, like, position overnight, you know, like over for person
Brad (00:07:07):
If you’re watching on video? Yeah,
Grayson (00:07:09):
Yeah. I should explain that. Yeah. So the, the upper back is, is flexed over the, the neck’s jetted forward, you know, just the whole spine. It’s, it’s basically kind of like the, the picturesque of poor posture that people think about. And, you know, there’s no like magical posture that’s gonna save everyone. It’s, it really comes down to movement. But, you know, if you’re in these, the slumped over posture at your desk or using your phone for long periods of time, again, you’re not gonna become this position overnight, or even in a month or even in a year. It’s just the accumulation of time over the years and decades where then again, your body adjusts and becomes, and all of a sudden now your upper back is extremely rounded, your shoulders are tight. You know, using a a seat rest all the time is essentially kind of taking out our, our mind muscle connection with our all the muscles around the midsection, which a lot of people refer to as the core.
Grayson (00:08:06):
So it’s, you’re using that back rest. The back rest is doing the job that your core muscular should be doing. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that’s, that’s a huge player into the low back pain, uh, issue that we see so much. So yeah, you know, I, I saw this and then I, I started kind of asking people, okay, so are people, you know, are you doing anything preventative wise to maintain your joints, maintain your body? You know, some people, like I said, are working out. Um, and even those people that are working out, they might be doing some stretching or they might not be doing some stretching. And I saw a big, again, pattern that a lot of these folks just, if they are stretching, they’re doing a lot of generic stretches. You know, the same stretches that we’ve basically been taught in middle school and high school, essentially, it’s static passive stretching.
Grayson (00:09:00):
Mm-Hmm. Um, for, for those that are watching the video, I’m doing a kind of a demo of a cross, the cross, the body shoulder stretch. And there’s, you know, there’s many different passive stretch that’d be a passive stretch, bending down and touching your toes. Again, another passive static stretch, you know, for the listeners, the viewers out there. Now, I’m doing a, a kind of standing quadricep stretch where you grab the back of your leg. And so even if people are stretching, you know, they’re just doing these stretches that are not effective. ’cause if we look at the research, static or passive stretching has been shown to increase injury risk and decrease performance when performed <laugh>. Yeah. When performed before an athletic endeavor or a workout. And so, so you
Brad (00:09:46):
Define it as it’s either called static or passive, that’s the same terminology?
Grayson (00:09:51):
Yes.
Brad (00:09:52):
And that’s when you’re standing in one place and you, you’re, you’re pulling with your other arm, like in your demonstration or pulling your quad up. And yeah, I’m familiar with that, uh, idea that you weaken the muscle before exercise, but then there’s so much confusion. We did a lot of research for the Primal Fitness Coach certification around this topic of static passive stretching. And you can think that it’s completely worthless or it’s, uh, important for certain people afterwards. So I’d love to hear your take, and, and then you’re gonna get into the other forms of stretching mobility to,
Grayson (00:10:28):
Yeah. So, I’m a, I’m a big proponent of active stretching and muscle activation exercises, but when it comes to passive or static, yeah. Essentially it’s, you’re stretching out a muscle or a joint, and then you’re just relaxing into that stretch. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And there’s some mechanisms that are happening right there. You know, from a a a neurological standpoint, you know, you’re bypassing certain reflexes, you know, you can get a little deeper in a stretch. But yeah, if you look at the research, again, kind of what I just said before, it’s, you know, if we’re trying to static or passive stretch for something that we’re gonna, we’re hoping to make an active movement better in, or prepare for an active movement just from like, you know, the common sense perspective, even, let’s put the research aside. If we’re doing something passive to get ready for an active endeavor, and it doesn’t have to be a workout or, you know, a run or whatever we’re doing, life is active.
Grayson (00:11:27):
You know, so like, you know, if we’re walking around or we’re, you know, putting away our dishes in the top cupboard, or we’re gardening, or we’re sweeping, these are all active movements. I like to say that, you know, life is a sport, you know, to some degree. And most people that are getting injured are just getting in injured in quote unquote life activities. So, Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Yeah. If we look in the, if we look at the common sense standpoint, it’s like, why are we passively stretching to get ready for something active? And so then we, and then we look at the research, and then we see all these things. So I always tell people, if you have 10 to 20 minutes a day and your goal is to improve mobility, improve even flexibility, decrease your chances of injury, and even try to fix pain, you know, if you are pain, passive stretching is not gonna be a good use of time.
Grayson (00:12:16):
We all have finite time, and we’ve got to, we gotta use those resources, uh, diligently. So am I totally against passive stretching? No, I think there is a place, um, like you said, I think post-workout or if you’re just looking to relax, I like passive stretching. Again, you know, if you’re, if you’re after your workout, you want to get into a deep stretch and really work on just relaxation breath work, getting some nice diaphragmatic breathing in and just in increasing and improving your parasympathetic nervous system response kind of upper it regulating that parasympathetic side. And that’s, you know, the parasympathetic nervous systems associated with rest and digest. And because we’re so stressed out as a, as a world, you know, we got so much technology and fast things going on that we can all use a little bit of parasympathetic kind of bump there. And so, but with that said, you know, if you have 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes three times a week, and your goals are everything that I just said, as far as, you know, preventing injury, fixing pain, improving flexibility and mobility active stretching and muscle activation exercises is really the key. And, you know, passive stretching is, is not gonna get you there, unfortunately.
Brad (00:13:32):
So, active stretching are also called dynamic stretching. Can you describe what, what some examples of that are? It’s moving through a range of motion or something?
Grayson (00:13:42):
Yeah. So, um, I kind of, I just say active stretching. The technical terms are, are more end range of motion, isometric contractions. So that’s a, that’s a mouthful, right? Love it. And so <laugh>, so the, the premise is, and you can do this, there’s a ton of different variations we can put on active stretching. But essentially what we’re doing is we’re stretching out a joint or a muscle, typically to its end range of motion. And then we’re contracting those muscles actively while they’re stretched out. And so we’re, again, stretching it out and contracting the muscles that are stretched out on one side. And we’ll usually do that for a specific hold time and intensity. So say like the first rep, maybe we’ll do at a 50% intensity for say, 10 to 20 seconds. And then typically we’ll actually contract the other side of the joint as well, which is in a shortened position.
Grayson (00:14:38):
And so when we think about the length of a muscle, in a range of motion, right? If we think about our, our elbow bending, when it’s maximally bent, its the biceps at its shortest mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, length. And when it’s your elbow’s fully extended, uh, your muscle is fully stretched out for the most part. And if we look at just physiology, all of us are weakest in our end ranges of motion. So whether it’s the shortened position of the muscle, or the length and position of the muscle, and a lot of times that’s where injuries come into play, is either in a shortened muscle position, shortened muscle length or length or maximal length, uh, position. So getting more stable, getting stronger in those end ranges of motion is, is key. Not only from a physical muscle tendon, uh, perspective, but also from a neurologic perspective.
Grayson (00:15:32):
’cause now, ’cause your, your nervous system, all the nerves that come off your spinal cord run down into your, your limbs and other places, they innervate the muscles and they also take feedback from joint movement and skin and all these other things and kind of report it back to the nervous system. So there’s always that feedback going out to a muscle and coming back in to your spinal cord and brain. And so there’s always a dialogue there between the two. And so your nervous system is always trying to protect you, and your nervous system remembers everything that you did <laugh>. Mm. So if there’s a certain range of motion, that, okay, I don’t really feel safe here. Well, your, your body can increase your neurologic tone. I’m getting a little technical here, so let me know if this is too, too much here. But essentially, your nervous system can send a low level input to a muscle.
Grayson (00:16:28):
And it’s essentially like a low level contraction, which is stopping you from having a full range of motion because your body or your nervous system just, it doesn’t feel safe for whatever reason. We see that a lot in the, the hamstrings with low back injury. Mm-Hmm. So someone that has injured their back previously or is in pain with a low back injury, the nervous system is gonna send an input down to your hamstring muscles, which are the muscles in the back of your upper leg. And so it’s gonna send a low level kind of output down there. It’s gonna create a slight contraction, if you will, and it’s gonna limit how much you can bend over because it’s trying to prevent you from, again, bending over and injuring your injuring yourself, et cetera. So I kind of got down a, uh, a rabbit hole on that one, but, um,
Brad (00:17:16):
Yeah, that’s fascinating. ’cause when we think of, oh, my hamstrings are tight. It’s, it’s more that my brain is sending a signal to tighten my hamstrings to protect me. Is it true, Grayson? I’ve heard like when you’re put under anesthesia for surgery, you, you become like super flexible when that person can bend their hamstringing all the way up to their, their head because their brain’s turned off, uh, such that it’s not really a muscle that’s tight, but it’s all from the central nervous system in terms of our, uh, you know, our, our complaints and our, uh, our our range of motion and so forth.
Grayson (00:17:55):
Yeah, I definitely think there is. I mean, me personally, I haven’t, you know, tested that theory, but I’ve, you know, spoke to neurologists and orthopedists that, you know, that that is typically the case. Obviously there’s like a limit to like how much a muscle can be extended and how much ligaments can be extended. I think when it comes to tight muscles, there is two components of a tight muscle. Because, say if I am, again, going back to the example of a arm cast, right? If I, you know, I have got an arm cast here, my elbow is bent to 90 degrees and I’m in this cast, say for eight to 12 weeks. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>. Well, there is gonna be some physical adaptation to that position because I’m literally not moving. So a lot of the components of a muscle, of a ligament of a joint capsule, we’ll get tight from like a physical perspective outside of the nervous system.
Grayson (00:18:47):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that’s the piece where I see, you know, going back to the, the hunched over position and the upper back and the shoulders forward, that’s the piece where there is some physical adaptation outside of the neurological piece. So there’s, I, you know, from the, the research that I’ve, I’ve delved into and just, you know, the, the data points that I’ve seen out there and the dots that I’ve connected, it’s usually a combination of two mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, you know, if it’s a long-term thing, like a positional thing, little bit more, it can be more physical adaptations and if it’s a more kind of injury thing or, you know, your body’s got that low level tone to a muscle, that’s more the neurologic piece. But yeah, a hundred percent, you know, anesthesia is kind of taking out the nervous system. And yeah, you can do, all of a sudden you’ve got amazing flexibility. You know, you don’t have mobility per se. Mm-Hmm. Because when we think about mobility, we’re thinking active range of motion. Flexibility, there’s nuances, but typically flexibility we define as just being able to passively move a joint through a certain range of motion.
Brad (00:20:00):
So, the distinction there is important. ’cause we use those terms interchangeably in lay person talk. So mobility is actually the flexibility is referring to the, to the muscle and, and, um, the mobility is more of the joint range of motion?.
Grayson (00:20:20):
Yeah. There’s, there’s definitely a lot of nuances there. So there’s a couple different ways I can, I can phrase it. It’s, um, to have good mobility at a joint, the foundation starts at flexibility, and then we add on to that. Hmm. So flexibility would be just the passive extensibility of connective tissue. So that would, connective tissue includes muscles, nerves, ligaments, joint capsule. And so an example of flexibility would be if you were laying on the ground, and me as a PT or a trainer or someone else were to grab your leg, say like a, with, with your knee straight and just brewing it upward to te to test your hamstringing and the muscles, um, on the back of your leg without you doing anything. So you’re, you’re completely relaxed. That would be flexibility. And that would also be an example of a passive stretch.
Grayson (00:21:16):
So then we layer on mobility and mobility’s kind of a combination of flexibility and joint stability and muscle activation. Hmm. So to have good mobility, it’s all about active control. So if we went to that same example, it would be, uh, you laying on the ground and now I ask you to bring your leg up straight to see how much range of motion you can actively Mm-Hmm. conjure yourself using the muscles, um, that you have. So it’s, you, you a have to be able to, you know, consciously activate those muscles, which for the hips not usually a big issue. Sometimes the outside of the hips an issue for using that example. But going back to the, the example of the midsection core muscles, you know, all the muscles are on the low back, the midsection because we, a lot of people sit way too much, you know, our body adapts to it, and we lose connection with those muscles. So even, even doing the first piece of the puzzle is like, okay, I’ve gotta think and be able to connect with those muscles first before I can even activate it to make a range of motion. To create a range of motion. And so yeah, the mobility, you can just think of active and flexibility. You can just think of passive.
Brad (00:22:34):
Hmm. And so we wanna strive for excellent scores in each category? But is there a point where we can become ineffective from being hypermobile or not having, I’ve read about the, you know, the skill of jumping. I like high jumping and I want to have a stiff achilles tendon so it can impart force off the ground. And so if I’m too flexible and mobile down there, it could be a loss of force production. So I wonder how that, how that distinction comes off.
Grayson (00:23:16):
Yeah. You’re a hundred percent right on when it comes to how much because that’s a question I get a lot, um, within movement fall and just, you know, when I’m, I’m speaking to people in general, it’s how much mobility do we actually need? You know, do I have to be a mobility monk and go hang out in a cave for 10 years and do nothing but mobility training? No. I always tell people that, you know, if you’re asking the question, how much mobility do you need, you probably need more, um, <laugh> and most people just do in general. But when it comes to sports specific work, you know, having a stable joint, no matter what joint it is, is gonna be advantageous to any sport no matter what. To have a, a stable outside of the ankle, whether it’s ligaments or muscles, is that’s gonna be advantageous.
Grayson (00:24:04):
Whether you’re a long distance runner, whether you’re a basketball player, whether you’re a pickleball player, um, whether you are a, you know, long jumper, high jumper, whatever it is. So joint stability for sure. But coming down to like active range of motion Yeah, you’re right on. That will be a little more sport specific. Hmm. And that gets into nuances because yeah, you definitely, for like really high output, dynamic, powerful moves, you are gonna need some, some reciprocal, tendon elasticity force production. And like you said, if you’re just too flexible or if even too mobile for that standpoint, you could, uh, lose some of that kind of bounce back in the tendon, in the muscle.
Brad (00:24:55):
Is there also an important harmony between like your muscle strength and flexibility and your tendon strength and flexibility?
Grayson (00:25:05):
Yeah. So if we think about connective tissue, it’s kind of funny ’cause in, you know, in human physiology, and even back to PT school, you know, we got really nitty gritty with things. We had a cadaver that we dissected and we literally saw, you know, this is this muscle, this is this muscle, you know, this is the fascia that covers it, which is a connective tissue that kind of encapsulates all of our musculature, and these are the nerves. But at the end of the day, everything is really continuous. And we can separate, again, going back to the elbow, we can separate the bicep. And when we stimulate the bicep, you know, bends the elbow. But if we kind of zoom out, you know, it really comes down to these fascial lines, fascial planes, the fascia, different fascial lines connect to different muscles in different ways. So, you know, going back to your question, wow, I’m going back, what was <laugh>
Brad (00:26:01):
The, I mean, the interrelation between your muscles and your tendons. Gotcha. And I, I was told like, part of my injury where I had to have surgery for a bone spur into the Achilles was, you know, maybe my calf muscles and my, my leg muscles overall were a little too powerful for the, you know, the fragility of my supporting tendons. And so you have an imbalance there.
Grayson (00:26:27):
Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. It’s, I kind of, I lost my train of thought there, but yeah, the, uh, the continuous muscle tendon unit, the tendon is gonna be stiffer obviously than the, the contractile muscle, which can more so shorten and lengthen. And if you do have, say, you know, your tendons are, are super strong, but they’re rigid or, you know, you have immobile muscles, that could lead to a weak link in your kinetic chain. And that’s what I always tell people is like, that’s, that’s where the, the gold comes in with these end range isometric, uh, holds. This active stretching is you are taking that tendon and that muscular unit. ’cause it’s all continuous and you are, you know, having some tissue adaptation there when you are contracting the muscles at their end range. And then you can even load that more, you know, so we can add some, some weighted movements to mm-Hmm. Isometrics as well, not just, you know, using your body weight. Mm-Hmm. Um, so yeah, if you do have a, you know, any, you know, whether it’s a muscle or it’s a tendon that is, say, weaker or more compliant or non-compliant than another, yeah. You could be at risk for, for injury for sure.
Brad (00:27:43):
So then you get these controversial assertions about joint replacement surgery, and I want to ask you about that directly. And also in general, like the mainstream treatment protocols that we have been subjected to for years and decades where there’s things like, well, you better rest because you’re injured and wait six weeks and then return to activity slowly. The other notions that seem to be evolving now to a more activity related and, you know, rebuilding and, and restructuring and strengthening for injuries, um, how do things look from your perspective, and how long is it gonna take for a complete overhaul of some of this flawed, uh, treatment modalities, including joint replacements and then whatever they do along the way, such as injections or things that are dealing with symptoms instead of addressing the cause?
Grayson (00:28:40):
Yeah. So a lot of good, a lot of good points to dig on into on that one. So I’m, I’m obviously, I take a lot of what I do from science, from research, but research is always 3, 5, 10 years behind, you know, so it’s because it takes time to create a study, it takes time to recruit subjects, it takes time to get funding just to even, you know, get approval from the board. And so all these things take time, and then it, you gotta, you know, write the study, publish it, it’s gotta be peer reviewed, it’s gonna come back with some edit. It’s, it’s a long process. Um, we definitely still obviously need to look at the research, but at the same time, we, as you know, clinicians or PTs or, or just even people in general, just, you need to connect the dots and take our knowledge of the science and the research with our knowledge of physiology, with, you know, common sense and what we’re seeing out there, connect dots.
Grayson (00:29:40):
And so from what I saw, again, from my physical therapy practice, this is my stat. This isn’t, you know, backed by research here. I say that 90% of the injuries could have been avoided that come into my clinic. And so you’re like, wow, 90% of the injuries, how’s that possible? And what’s the other 10%? So the 10%, I just basically say most injuries could be avoided. Uh, there’s a small percentage of people that unfortunately are born with, you know, severe genetic predisposition in a certain joint per se. Maybe they have, you know, an extreme osteophyte in a joint, which is basically, you can think of like a, kind of like a sharp edge. And so that edge, you know, just degrades joints over all. Or it could be like a joint position of the hips or the shoulder, or you could just be unfortunately unlucky and, you know, getting into a car accident or, you know, you’re playing a sport, you get hit on from the side, or you’re skiing and it’s a traumatic injury.
Grayson (00:30:34):
You know, having an amazing mobility, um, body awareness balance probably not gonna help you in those standpoints. But that’s very small percentage of people. And so when we look at that 90%, most people, most pain and injuries could be avoided. It’s, it’s, again, going from that first principle of it’s just how we’re living as humans, you know? Um, if we look at, you know, the evolution of our amazing species, we had to move to live. You know, if we weren’t moving to find our food to, you know, hunt our food, run from things, climb things, build things, all the things, if we weren’t moving, we just weren’t living. You know? So it’s literally part of us. And fortunately we have technology, which is amazing. It helps us do all these amazing things and more efficiently. We got chat, GPT and AI right now, which is, uh, you know, good for certain things, not so much on other things, but we’re just really not living, you know, as humans should live, per se.
Grayson (00:31:29):
And we’re, we’re taking, we’re, we’re feeling the effects of that. And so that’s where an effective joint, I call it just joint maintenance, body maintenance program comes into play proactively. And if we look at the analogy of brushing our teeth. Right? Like most people hopefully brush their teeth, um, regularly, and it’s like, okay, well why do we brush our teeth? Well, I don’t want my teeth to rot out, fall out. I don’t wanna, you know, have a nice smile. And so when we look at that, that’s, that’s just teeth maintenance. That’s oral health maintenance. We do that every day, but what are we doing for our joints? You know, what are we doing for our body? Yeah. We can’t see our joints. Like we can see our teeth and get that immediate feedback. And the human body is extremely resilient. We can get away with so much until we can’t, you know, and when we can’t, that’s where things start to, oh, shoot, and people just blame it on age.
Grayson (00:32:20):
Well, yeah, that’s not really the factor. Or that’s not really the cause. And so again, it’s just all those things that I talked about before, sitting too much, not moving enough. And so if we’re doing our due diligence and doing our, our body maintenance, you know, making sure that our joints move the way that that joint should, then things are gonna work out great. Because when we, when we go back to like physical therapy, you know, we look at studies and it says that the hip should move in external rotation, this many degrees on average and internal rotation on this many degrees on average, and it should be able to extend this much. So we’ve looked at like averages of like what an average hip should do. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. You memorize these things and okay, so that’s, that’s pretty normal range of motion.
Grayson (00:33:08):
And so if we look at that as the definition of a hip and your hips are tight, so I always make the, the kind of funny analogy, like, do you really even have a hip because now your hip’s not moving like a hip Mm-Hmm. And now your knee has to move like a hip Mm-Hmm. And so now your knee is compensating for the lack of a, you know, of a hip per se. Obviously you have a hip, I’m just kind of being a little facetious here, but, and that’s where the injury comes in. Say when one joint is tight and doesn’t move well, whether it’s just tight neurologically or, you know, you got a tight joint capsule, or you just don’t have good muscle activation and control around your hip, well, then another joint has to compensate for that other joint that’s not doing its job.
Grayson (00:33:52):
And so the hip is a very commonplace, and the compensations usually happen at the next closest joint, which is the knee. Mm. And I actually just in our newsletter yesterday, we said knee pain is almost never your knee’s fault. It’s usually your hip or your ankle.
Brad (00:34:08):
Yeah, I saw that.
Grayson (00:34:09):
Yeah. Yeah. And, in the low back as well, you know, it’s usually due to a tight hip and or poor, um, core mobility and stability and control that leads to low back injuries. And so if we couple all that together, I know this is a super long answer. Joint replacements shouldn’t exist for the most part. Again, maybe a small percentage of people that unfortunately have that genetic predisposition or, you know, unfortunately have a car accident, sport accident. Mm-Hmm. Some, some type of trauma. Most of these joint replacements shouldn’t exist.
Grayson (00:34:44):
And, and we’re even seeing the trend where younger and younger people are getting them, unfortunately. And even in their forties Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so yeah, you’re putting, you know, all these foreign materials in your body, and that’s a whole nother story of titanium and, you know, different types of, you know, carbons and polymers and all these good things that, uh, I should say good things in quotation marks. But yeah, from my perspective, looking at the, the research, connecting the dots and seeing the changes that can be made when somebody is following a, an effective stretching mobility, joint maintenance program such as Movement Vault, you know, people start to really, wow, that’s amazing. And that’s kind of, that’s like a, a direct feedback we get. ’cause we, we talk to our users quite a bit. We do user interviews and all kinds of good things.
Grayson (00:35:34):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> we’re really for, you know, for our, our reach we’re relatively high touch. Um, but yeah, we, we say, we hear people all the time, you know, I’ve tried this stretching, I’ve tried PT, chiro, you know, yoga for so long, and this is way different than anything I’ve tried before. ’cause again, it’s that active component and they feel immediately different, you know? And that’s not often something that I hear from somebody that’s doing, you know, passive stretching per se. So yeah, if we take care of our, our bodies, the body’s gonna, you know, repay you. So it just comes down to a little bit of preventative maintenance. Again, you don’t have to spend an hour per day. You know, if you’re doing effective technique stretches 10 to 20 minutes, three to four times a week, you’re not gonna be in that camp where you’re, you know, unfortunately, having to succumb to a joint replacement. And it’s, it’s hard for people to hear, you know, uh, especially, you know, folks that I talk to that are 60, 70, and I was, you know, I’d tell ’em, Hey, we don’t have the time machine yet, but if we did, if I could go back 10, 20 years, yeah, this would be a, a totally different situation. And if we even look at other cultures that just don’t sit as much as we do Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, and are a little more active, you see a lot less prevalence of joint replacements in their culture.
Brad (00:36:53):
Yeah. We hear this line so frequently about humans are meant to move and, it’s so healthy to get up and move around. But I don’t think it’s fully appreciated wire by, you know, our, our genetic coding is for virtually nonstop throughout the day movement. And that’s, studies of modern day hunter gatherers like the Hadzah in Tanzania. Um, this is how our species operates as, as a hunter gatherer for millions of years until recently. And even more recently, like, you know, since, uh, before the industrial revolution or what have you, when, uh, we were, we were still busy working on the farms and tending to, you know, typically hard labor rather than, uh, sitting on our butts in, in modern times. And the widespread destruction of human health, even things like, uh, glucose tolerance. There’s a measurable decline when you sit for as short as 20 minutes.
Brad (00:37:48):
There’s less oxygen delivery and, and cognition with short, uh, you know, duration sitting periods, which are so routine and customary. Katy Bowman talks about mechano transduction and how the cells can become misshapen. And so when you bend your knees sitting at a chair, you can get atherosclerosis in those arteries, be behind the knee, even though you’re a healthy fit person who ran 10 miles the previous morning. And I think that that’s that first step is to realize that we are, we are compelled to move throughout the day and then stack whatever it is on top of that, such as a fitness aspiration or, you know, some of the protocols that you suggest because we’re trying to unwind years and decades of damage driven largely by prolonged periods of stillness. And it’s, it’s an easy correction, and we get instant payback from feeling more alert, energetic, and having our body work better.
Brad (00:38:42):
But I think that’s the one that we really have to, you know, drive home to modern life that it’s like, it’s not normal to sit, we’re not meant to do that. No. I wonder, I just thought of something like, you know how the lion sleeps for 20 hours a day and then hunts for only a 3o second burst, succeed or fail, then they sleep and rest Again. I wonder if, you know, that’s, that’s unique to their genetics where it’s okay for the lion to sleep 20 hours a day, or that common house cat or or house dog that is really inactive a lot of the time in contrast to a human. Do you know, <laugh>, do you have any insight on that?
Grayson (00:39:18):
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great thought for sure. As far as, you know, what I know, and just kinda like what you, what you just stated there. It, it just seems that for humans to have to, you know, throughout, if we look at evolution, we had to do a lot, quite often just to survive and propel the species as a whole. You know, we’re not as powerful as fast as a lion. Hmm. At one point we weren’t even top of the food chain, you know, we were pretty low on the totem pole. If you go way back, um, I mean, depending on how far you go, <laugh>, if we were, um, you know, quite low. And so yeah, as far as, you know, just what I know about, you know, evolution, paleontology, all those things, I don’t think it’s in our DNA to just, you know, sit around and ’cause if that were, the fact we’re, we’re doing that right now, you know, so we’re seeing negative outcomes of that already.
Grayson (00:40:13):
So that’s, that’s basically what most people are doing, you know, so I always tell people, add up the amount of time in your day that you’re not either laying down or sitting down. And that includes everything, like walking to the kitchen to get something outta the fridge, or you’re standing up to make your, you know, cooking dinner. You’re walking to the car, you’re walking to the car from to the, to work. Most people, you know, a lot of people are working from home. And then even adding up the time in your workout or your run or yoga, whatever you’re doing. And even if you are working out, a lot of times you’re only standing up or moving for maybe three hours a day. And so, you know, we’re already in that camp where we’re not moving 20 hours per day, and we’re seeing the, the negative ramifications of it.
Grayson (00:40:57):
And if we look at just the global wealth of, of studies out there, really the best thing you can do for almost any disease state. Now, this isn’t going to a hundred percent prevent any disease state or a hundred percent fix or cure any pre uh, disease state. But one of the best things that you can do for everything across the board is some level of movement or exercise, whether it’s cardiovascular or, you know, some level of strength training, obviously appropriate to you at your time, but it’s, it’s this free thing that, again, is ingrained in us that we just see across the board, thousands and thousands of studies exercise is just beneficial for almost any state of health. And it’s, it’s pretty amazing.
Brad (00:41:44):
Yeah. Nice. I, I mean this, this concept of zone two cardio being highly emphasized as an important fitness objective and, and health and longevity, but I’m, I’m also shouting from the peanut gallery, like, wait, what about zone one where, you know, we can get up and walk around. It doesn’t matter what heart rate zone we’re in, but we’re just moving, I think should be, you know, the foremost emphasis. And of course, it’s gonna get more, you know, training stimulation if your heart rate gets up into a particular training zone, like the maximum fat burning zone. But I think we gotta demystify, the fitness objectives and just get people, and then you make a good point at the very start of the show. Like, if you’re just thinking that you’re checking the boxes when you’re moving in a single plane, like jogging down the street, moving forward, or pedaling a bicycle or swimming back and forth down the pool, um, that’s a narrow sliver of overall fitness competency and good for you for getting out there and putting in your 30 miles a week. But when I, see runners in the park, a lot of ’em are hunched over, like they just moved from the keyboard to their five mile trail, and they’re not showing a lot of musculoskeletal, uh, you know, mobility and overall health and functionality.
Grayson (00:42:58):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s, that’s usually the, the weak link per se, to somebody that say they are a runner. You know, it’s, again, going back to patterns. You know, if we see runners, you know, there a lot of times they’re gonna have the classic quote unquote tight hip flexors. Well, hmm. A lot of times those hip flexors are actually weak as well. So we need to do some hip flexor strengthening there, but usually the outside of the hip, so the, those, even small internal and external rotators at the hip, and even the larger ones, like the gluteus medias, gluteus maximus, you know, classically, tight per se and or weak and or not as stable as they can be. ’cause again, you’re just, your body adapts to what you throw at it, because that’s, that’s the nature of the human, you know, we’re really, really resilient.
Grayson (00:43:42):
We can adapt relatively well. And, if you’re just doing one thing or two things in one plane of motion, your body’s gonna get pretty good at that. But to the disadvantage of some of the other areas of the body, and those are the places and the joints and the muscles that are then vulnerable to injury. Um, you know, it’s a classic example of somebody that’s like doing CrossFit or say a power lifter or, you know, bodybuilder that’s say we’re doing deadlifts, right. Really strong, you know, at pulling from the ground. Again, that’s the sagittal plane of motion. Hmm. I’ve, I’ve heard, I’ve worked with numerous patients and, along along my journey, you know, I can, I can deadlift 400 pounds or, you know, 500, you fill in the blank. They’re, they’re, they’re strong in the deadlift position, but then when they kind of rotate over and tie their shoe <laugh>, or they rotate over and pick up their, you know, 15 pound, child, or that box on the ground, they’re fragile, you know?
Grayson (00:44:44):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> unfortunately. Um, and it’s, it’s kind of tough love, you know, that I, I give to people sometimes. It’s like, you know, humans we’re made to be just malleable and adapt and things. But again, this, this conversation that we keep on happen, unfortunately, we’re, we can be fragile if we don’t check all the boxes. And, and yeah, I, I would a hundred percent echo that as well. It’s like, you know, you don’t have to totally, you know, we’re not trying to freak you out or we’re just, obviously the things that I’m saying is to help you, uh, prevent pain and injury, be a better mover, be a better human. But if you’re just out there, you know, praise to everyone that’s just going for that walk, going for that run, doing something that they enjoy, that involves movement. That’s, that’s the first step.
Brad (00:45:31):
Uh, so speaking of dead lifting and getting super strong in the gym, one of your talking points like there, there’s some misunderstandings about, uh, getting all muscular and does that, uh, reduce flexibility mobility in some way because your muscles are so, uh, you know, highly trained and you’re tight as a drum to your detriment? Possibly
Grayson (00:45:56):
It can. So the first piece there is, again, your body adapting to the things you do the most often. So a good example would be say, a pull-up. ’cause even reversing, like we all, all had, I shouldn’t say all. Most of us had pretty amazing mobility flexibility when we were, you know, just a young child, one, two, and then, you know, you throw some cushy shoes on us with heel lifts and all these things, and then we start to sit, um, our body adapts to that, you know, then, then that, that amazing mobility range of motion flexibility slowly starts to narrow and narrow and narrow and narrow until, you know, you are in that position where you’re, you’re not flexible. So your body’s adapting to that. So if you’re in the gym and say you’re doing pull-ups per se, um, and you’re just doing say, mid-range of motion pull-up.
Grayson (00:46:50):
Hmm. So instead of going like a dead hang going all the way up so that you’re, you know, the bar’s touching your, your chest, that would be a full range of motion if, say you started with awesome shoulder mobility with, you know, putting your arm overhead and then say over the next couple of years you were doing a lot of pull-ups, just in that mid-range of motion. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, well, your body is most likely gonna adapt to that. You’re gonna get really, you’re gonna get stronger in that end range, and your body’s not gonna maintain those, I should say, your body’s gonna get stronger in the mid range and your body’s not gonna maintain that stability and tissue extensibility in the end ranges of motion. Hmm. See a lot of that in more of the bodybuilding, females and males where, you know, maybe they’re just kind of chasing that, that mid range of motion pump, et cetera, which is, hey, you know, there’s definitely a place for that.
Grayson (00:47:43):
But I’m always a huge, and so if you are getting, you’re doing that stuff often, you’re increasing hypertrophy, you’re getting more muscle mass, lean muscle mass, you could definitely, um, get tighter per se if you’re not doing, you know, say like movement fault outside of that or doing an effective stretching mobility program out of that, outside of your lifting. Um, so I’m always a big proponent in moving through a full range of motion, whether, whatever the exercise, whether it’s a squat or a pull up or a pushup. Now that full range of motion is specific to you in that workout. And so, um, you know, you might be, say you can perform, it’s like the squat. Everyone’s like, man, if you’re not, you know, going down to parallel with your femurs or your thighs to parallel, it doesn’t count as a squat.
Grayson (00:48:34):
Well, a lot of people can’t actually perform a squat down to parallel with good technique without their knees caving in without their low backgrounding. And so if they force the joints to move past what their mobility limits are, then that’s gonna, again, cause compensation in the other joints. And in this case, in a squat, the knees are gonna have to compensate the feet, might the feet and ankles might have to compensate by lifting off the ground. The low back might have to compensate by rounding. And so then you went past your mobility limits. So in this case, that person would want to not perform down to the parallel Mm-Hmm. Which, you know, a lot of people are going for and come up just a little bit. And so if you are the best, one of the best ways to maintain your range of motion, just like moving in all types of patterns, side to side, left and right in your, in your day-to-day activities, is just to perform these exercises in the gym to your full range of motion that’s that’s right for you without pushing it too far, where you’re gonna push some compensation and potentially joint wear and tear due to that compensation.
Grayson (00:49:46):
And then the joint wear and tear leads to pain and injury. And then as you work on your mobility and continue to perform full range of motion movements, even at like a very high intensity or high weight amount and getting specifically pretty muscular, you can still have amazing mobility. It’s just mm-hmm, <affirmative> how are you training and are you doing, uh, some things outside of your actual squatting, deadlifts, pull-ups, pushups, whatever you’re doing to ensure that you are not only maintaining your range of motion, but improving it.
Brad (00:50:23):
Right. And then coming back to the bar and showing that technical competency at all times where whatever your range of motion limit is, you don’t mess around. You always execute perfect form, even if it’s abbreviated. And then over time work gracefully toward, you know, let’s say a full range of motion or in the classic example, putting more weight on. And I think that’s the big mistake we see is, you know, they just want to reach the number so they’ll do anything to get the bar off the ground. And I see, you know, the posts on Instagram of these people rounding their backs and pulling a giant weight off the ground, it’s like, well, you didn’t <laugh> that. That’s not really dead lifting 500 pounds because you, you know, it’s supposed to be done by your muscles, not your compression of your spinal disc or whatever cringe you’re seeing on, on the video.
Grayson (00:51:16):
Oh yeah, a hundred percent. It’s, um, the sacrifice of, you know, plates for functionality. Yeah. You might get away with that in the, in the short term, but, you know, health performance, unless you’re a professional athlete, obviously you still wanna execute with, uh, good technique, good form if you are a pro. Yeah. Um, now you know, how you training if you’re a pro athlete or a really serious about fitness is gonna look a little different than if you’re looking for, you know, health longevity with some performance in there. ‘Cause we can have all of that. But most of us have to look at, uh, health and fitness as, you know, as a marathon, not the sprint. And, um, I always tell people too, when it comes to joint mobility and range of motion, you know, if you’re working with a trainer or you’ve got that trainer in your head, and going back to the squad example, it’s like, alright, your trainer’s saying, you know, keep your heels on the ground, you know, keep your knees, you know, pushing away from each other. Keep your back flat. And once you get past your, your, your specific mobility limits in that movement, there’s no matter what the trainer’s gonna say to you, Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> or your inner trainer’s gonna say to you, no matter how much you’re focusing, you just can’t maintain good technique at that point. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it’s just, it’s not, it’s not possible if you’re joints are tight and you’re trying to demand something of them. Mm-Hmm. <laugh>, there’s, there’s no around, there’s no magic that’s gonna
Brad (00:52:38):
Happen. Yeah. There’s gonna be a, there’s gonna be a backdoor. Yeah. Where, where you a a screw up. Yeah,
Grayson (00:52:44):
A hundred percent. Yeah. Yep.
Brad (00:52:46):
So speaking of harboring ambitious fitness goals, and we also want to promote health, longevity, injury prevention, it seems like a slippery slope, at least sometimes to me. We were talking offline about my nagging insertional hamstringing problem, and I’m doing all manner of flexibility and mobility drills and trying to take care of my body and eat right. And get enough sleep. But you know, when you’re out there trying to, you know, achieve fitness breakthroughs, I think we, it gets tricky. And I wonder if you can, you know, give a shout out to the athletes that might be dealing with nagging injuries and what are some solutions we can pursue?
Grayson (00:53:29):
Yeah. Uh, you know, to that, I always tell people when I hear about their pain or injury, it’s like, you know, I, I feel it, you know,
Brad (00:53:35):
I feel your pain, man.
Grayson (00:53:36):
I feel your pain. You know? So now that we got you on Movement Vault, hopefully, you know, we’ll work on that and, um, improve that, that, yeah. ’cause you know, it’s basically you got some inflammation going on in your, in your, your hamstringing and, you know, we can, it’s all, I always like to go down to root cause. Um, it’s like, okay, what’s the root cause? Like what joint is in you specifically is a little tighter or Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> maybe not as mobile. And so that can help a lot once we, you know, so if, to get to your question, if we do have someone that is more passionate, pushing themselves harder, pushing the limits of their physiology, the first question is, you know, what are you doing? What does your training look like? Is it well structured?
Grayson (00:54:21):
I’m not saying you, you know, specifically, but just a conversation I would have. Um, you know, are you, are you following a good period periodization, uh, uh, schedule for your training? Is it, is it smartly, um, you know, programmed, are you, are you doing all the things? Are you getting the sleep? Are you getting the nutrition, adequate energy, et cetera? Are you doing, again, obviously I’m passionate about movement prevention, all that stuff. Injury prevention. Are you doing an active joint maintenance, you know, routine, uh, such as Movement Vault? Mm-Hmm. And if you’re doing all that, then yeah, sometimes if you’re just pushing your body to its limits, um, checking all those boxes that you just did and that you’re doing is definitely gonna help. Because if you weren’t doing those things, you’d probably be in a lot worse shape. Mm-Hmm. And not even to be able to perform at the level that you’re doing now.
Grayson (00:55:11):
And so, yeah, I always tell people that because you have these ambitious goals, that you are putting, ’cause all this is just stress, you know, you’re putting that extra stress on your tendons, on your muscles, there is a chance that you’re just gonna, you know, push too hard one day. Maybe you just didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Um, and that caused the kind of cascade of the nagging pain. Or it could be more of a progressive thing where you do, it’s just a, a joint mobility thing, or it’s the joint mobility is keeping you, again, from performing whatever you’re doing with good technique, whether it’s even just sprinting, you know, there’s, there’s obviously a whole bunch of different camps of, you know, what does good sprinting technique look like? And it’s overarching probably relatively the same, but it’s those little nuances based on who’s coaching it, which could be, you know, pertinent to, you know, the athlete in front of you, depending on, you know, their limb length, torso length, um, where they are in their training, et cetera. So, yeah, it’s, I always tell people, even if you are, you know, a high level athlete all doing all these things, it’s, it’s non-negotiable. Like you have to do that. Um, it’s <laugh>. So if you have these, have these ambitious goals, you’ve gotta do the other things to build that foundation to propel you. Mm-Hmm. Because if you get injured, if you have pain and injury, I mean, that’s gonna take you outta the game, you know, as a whole, you know. And, um, yeah,
Brad (00:56:45):
You don’t want, I mean, it’s <laugh>, especially at my age, maybe not when I was younger, but like, number one, athletic goal, don’t get injured. Number two, number three, number four and number five are so far down and less important that, you know, that’s my sole focus now. And then we’ll see, we’ll see where things unwind from there. But if you’re injured and you’re on the sidelines, you lose your conditioning to such an extreme that, you know, exceeding your capabilities by 10% and making a mistake and training. It’s like a ridiculous look back to go, geez, why didn’t I just do, um, you know, 11 workouts that month instead of 17? What was I thinking? And then you’re, then you’re kind of hoping to become more sensible in the future.
Grayson (00:57:30):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s human nature, you know, especially when you have that competitive drive. It’s always the do more is going to have better, you know, results. And obviously I keep tying this into stretching, but doing more stretching, passive stretching isn’t gonna give you greater results. Doing more, you know, time under tension in your workouts throughout a month, given time, um, and how much, you know, say load you’re moving during that month, um, that’s not always going to be the best approach. You’re going to burn out your nervous system. You’re going to push your connective tissues, your, your muscles, your ligaments, your tendons, maybe over that threshold that’s right for you per for that month. You know, you could have other things when, you know, when I talk to a lot of athletes, or I shouldn’t even say athletes, I talk to people that come into me with an injury.
Grayson (00:58:21):
One of the questions that I ask is, you know, how’s your sleep? You know, how much sleep are you getting? What is the qual, how would you rate your quality of sleep? Um, do you feel well rested? And then we talk about stress levels and what’s going on in your life at that time. And more times than not, they’re, that person is more stressed out in things other, if they are working out. You know, there’s, I see people that do work out, see people that don’t work out and they will have more stress in their lives at that time, which then is like the feedback loop to affect sleep and then sleep’s affecting stress. And so we all have this stress bucket that we can fill up. And then once that stress bucket fills up, whether it’s through workout, workout, stress, sauna, sauna’s amazing. I love sauna. We were talking about sauna for a second.
Brad (00:59:15):
Because you live in Scottsdale and you go outside, it’s a sauna in the summertime.
Grayson (00:59:19):
<laugh> Exactly right. <laugh>. And, uh, but that’s the stressor on your body. All these things that are good for us in the right doses are stressors, but once we push it too much, if I sat in a 200 degree sauna mm-hmm, <affirmative> for an hour, obviously I wouldn’t be able to, but that’s, that’s gonna be too much for me. So as we fill up that stress bucket, things start to topple over. That’s when, you know, pain injury, disease comes into play. And, um, yeah. Athletes with, with, uh, ambitious goals are, they’re not, um, you know, they, they still kind of conform to that stress bucket as well. And based on your genetics and, you know, all the things, nutrition, sleep, et cetera, it’s gonna determine kind of how big your stress bucket is. So it’s a, it’s an analogy that I just, I use a lot of times. Um,
Brad (01:00:09):
So when we go visit Movement Vault.com, describe the experience for the user and how one can subscribe and then plug into some great guided exercises that, that target, uh, different goals and different, different issues.
Grayson (01:00:28):
Yeah. So Movement Vault, the kind of the one sentence, explanation, uh, that I give to people is Movement Fault is a better way to stretch, prevent, and fix pain and injury, and kind of keeping in everything we just talked about. Movement Vault focuses on active stretching, muscle activation exercises, and we throw in some muscle and fascia relief release, uh, techniques as well. ’cause that has its place. Um, with kind of going in on another topic here is like foam rolling, right? Like foam rolling is, has its place, but if you’re just foam rolling, that’s not gonna, you know, create a stable joint. Hmm. Um, so,
Brad (01:01:07):
And if you have to foam roll twice a day, seven days a week, let’s look at your training protocol because you’re probably, uh, overdoing it or doing something wrong.
Grayson (01:01:17):
Yeah, a hundred percent. You’re gonna, again, you know, we’re kind of going on a tangent here, but Yeah. Foam rolling, you know, rolling on your mobility ball, even going to a massage therapist, a really skilled manual therapist, that stuff is great. Definitely has its place. And it’s, it’s, you know, at the research at this point, it’s making more of a neurological, going back to our neurologic piece, impact on the muscles on the nervous system than it is physically breaking up muscle, per se. Hmm. And so when we’re doing that, we’re kind of opening up the, the window. So if you say foam roller, your, your lats per se, and you’ve got tight lats, then you feel that instant, like, improved mobility Mm-Hmm. Because it just sent that input to your nervous system, it relaxed the tone in that muscle, then boom, you open up your range of motion, but then that’s gonna be short-lived.
Grayson (01:02:08):
So then you have to actually use that range of motion. That’s where the active stretches come in. But, um, going back to Movement Vault, yeah. So we, we focus on the active piece. Um, it’s a daily, uh, class every day, so it’s anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. Uh, we know, you know, folks don’t have an hour to do this stuff. And, and so it’s been methodically, um, iterated over the past decade. And so, Movement Vault’s been around since about 2018. And we just launched our iPhone app, at the end of last year. We totally redeveloped our web app. And, and yeah, we’re pretty, pretty excited, pretty pumped about it. And, um, yeah, it’s the daily routines are anywhere from focus on one area of the body to three. Sometimes we have full body routines, um, and so you can do that class for that day, say today’s like a hip and an ankle day.
Grayson (01:02:57):
Or if you’re like, yeah, you know, I wanna focus on my upper back and shoulders, or I wanna focus on my feet. You know, that’s a, that’s a whole nother topic, is we have feet, days. So we say, you know, there’s like the, the, the saying, don’t skip leg day. We say don’t skip feet day. Mm-Hmm. Because, uh, foot mobility, big toe mobility is so important. So many people skip it. So we do have certain feet days, we’ve got neck days. It’s, it’s a full body, uh, program. And so if you’re following the daily classes every day, you know, we hit everything over the series of the month. But you can also use the filter search to, you know, filter out through 1500 other plus routines. And we have specific, uh, pre-workout routines. We have specific recovery routines, which are a little more gentle and do work on some, some breath work.
Grayson (01:03:45):
We got complete programs, um, specifically right now, more so in the injury, pain and injury. We’ve got a low back pain program, which is will sequentially bring you through like a 16 week rehab, um, you know, kind of journey as if you were, you know, working with me or one of our skilled practitioners, one-on-one, and we’ve got neck pain and we’re just about to introduce our, our knee pain program. And so we’re gonna, we’re basically the spot to not only help you fix your pain and injury, but also to prevent it. And so that’s, that’s basically what we’re, we’re trying to do as a company as a whole. If we can really change the narrative of, yeah, we have to do these, these, this joint maintenance stuff to be able to be pain-free, not have these joint replacements, not have to suffer with three outta 10 low back pain and just say, Hey, that’s part of life.
Grayson (01:04:44):
My dad had it. My, my brother has low back pain. It’s just in our genetics to have low back pain. And I hear that way too much. And listeners out there, you’re probably a lot of you are resonating with that, you know, it’s like, yeah, my mom had a bunion, I’ve got a bunion. My dad’s got bad knees, I have bad knees. No. You know, so like, how was your, how was your grandpa or your mom or your brother, how are they living? Are they doing effective stretching? Are they moving enough throughout the day? Well, you can rewrite that narrative by doing, you know, your body justice. And it, it only takes, you know, 10 to 20, 20 minutes a day, as long as you’re doing effective stuff, you know, three to four times a week. Is it better if you’re doing it every day? A hundred percent. But, we get people are busy and, um, yeah, so you can go to the app store, just search Movement Vault for the listeners out there, it’s movement, just like it says and V-A-U-L-T Movement Vault in the, the iPhone app store for the Android users. We redeveloped our web app. So same functionality, and you just go to our website, Movement Vault.com and, yeah, use our web app from there.
Brad (01:05:49):
Grayson Wickham bringing it. Thank you Dr. Grayson. Very nice stuff. And inspiring, getting us focused on doing some good work. I think visiting your website will be very valuable people, so I appreciate you spending the time to describe everything, and thanks for listening people.
Grayson (01:06:08):
All right. It’s been a pleasure and it’s been, uh, been fun, Brad. So thanks for, uh, having me on. Da
Brad (01:06:12):
Da da. Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email, podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.
