#113-Unlocking Flexibility: How Breath, Brain, and Emotions Shape Effective Stretching with Butch Phelps, LMT, Part 1

Welcome to The Factor Podcast, where we talk about the stuff they didn't teach you in school, how to grow your practice, refine your clinical skills, and get better results for your patients. We're here to help you navigate the real-world challenges of being a healthcare provider, from delivering top-notch patient care to running a business that doesn't run you into the ground. Whether you're fresh out of school or scaling your practice, we're diving into effective cutting-edge treatments to get patients better faster. We'll also talk about business strategies and tactics to help you work smarter and not harder, and the mindset shifts required to thrive as a top performer in your field so you can build a career you love without burning out. If you're ready to learn what works and what doesn't from leading experts, industry innovators, and respected clinicians across a wide range of specialties, you're in the right place, my friend. Let's dive in. What if the real barrier to flexibility isn't your muscles, but your brain? Research shows that the longer you hold a traditional static stretch, The more your nervous system resists, locking the body down instead of letting it release. Welcome back to The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle, and today we're diving into a fascinating conversation that challenges one of the most common practices in healthcare and fitness, stretching. Our guest, Butch Phelps, LMT, is the creator of the Stretch and Release Technique and author of the award-winning book, Stretch and Release. With over 2 decades of experience in muscle science, Butch has worked with everyone from aging populations to elite athletes, and what he's discovered will forever change how you view flexibility, pain, and performance. In this first installment of our 2-part series, you'll learn why conventional stretching often falls short, how the brain plays a bigger role in muscle tension than most realize, and why rethinking your approach could unlock breakthroughs for your patients or clients. So grab something to take notes with and get comfortable. Let's dive in.

And welcome to everybody who came on the, on this podcast today. Very happy to be here. What we're gonna talk about today is, is a different way of thinking about the muscles from what we've thought about in the past. Many things that I had learned over the last 20 years were not things I was necessarily taught in school. And so you'll have plenty of questions, I'm sure, at the end, but we will, we will touch base on all those and help you better understand that as well. So I'm a licensed massage therapist. I focus in neuromuscular massage and also into sports massage. And once I finished school and got from that, I went into what's called aging sciences. How do we age from age 30 to death, from the emotional side as well as from the physical side of that. I was very fortunate that once I finished school, I started to meet some people who became mentors of mine. I had 2 neurosurgeons, a kinesiologist, and actually a physical therapist and a chiropractor who became good friends as well as mentors. And as I started to really understand the muscles from an emotional standpoint, I started to see that it was something drastically missing from that. One of the things that I found, and of course, I experiment a lot on my own body, because at the time, I was dealing with low back pain myself. And I started to look at how the emotional side— and what I'm talking about that is that when you think about the muscles, everything we think, feel, and do actually causes the muscles to contract. and put us into the fight or flight or can take us out of the fight or flight. And so that sort of led me down the path that as I got into working with physicians and with other therapists dealing with chronic aches and pains from people, that became a major piece in, in what I did to help people resolve those issues. So one of the first places that I actually began working was a senior center, and I figured that as I started putting these pieces together, What better place to find than to be working with people who are older, who are dealing with chronic pain on a regular basis? And I was lucky enough that they had 54 retired physicians there. And at first I was intimidated, needless to say, but as I got in and I started working with the people, I was sitting at lunch one day and a couple of doctors came over and they said to me, I got a question for you. And I said, what's that? What are you doing to these people in that room? And I was kind of thinking, uh-oh, this could be bad. I said, What are you, what are you talking about? And they were saying, well, whatever you're doing, they're coming out better than they went in. Can you explain it to us? And I was like, well, let me show you. At that point, it was easier to show than to explain. And so when I got into the room, I had 8 physicians with me there. What was interesting was that when I was done with them, they were like surprised. And many of them had started to show me even some of their own x-rays and asking me questions about their own body. because it was a way of thinking about muscles that we typically are not taught to think. Most of the time with all of us when we're in school, we're taught about the muscles from a physical side. And so when we look at things even from strength training to stretching to massage, we think that in many cases we're fighting with the muscle itself. And one of the things that I learned very quickly was that that was not the case. Then as I started to look at the body as a whole, I realized that most of what we're taught is we actually wind up chasing symptoms versus literally solving for causes. So when you start talking about just chasing for symptoms, that plays into that emotional side of muscles. And when people start suffering from things, when they become chronic, all of a sudden they've been there for a while and the brain then starts to anticipate the pain that they've been dealing with for the last few months or last few weeks. That then will cause those muscles to go into fight or flight and actually cause the muscles to contract, which can exacerbate the pain. So as I started to, to really delve into that, I wanted to, to understand from a stretching standpoint and from a massage standpoint, how could I actually get that to, to let go and actually get that to work? But more importantly, how could I teach somebody how to do that to themselves? And that was really kind of the turning point and a very fascinating part for me, because as I started to look at things like low back pain or plantar fasciitis or elbow tendonitis, I realized that most of the things that I had been taught in school, I literally had to relearn, not from the school's point of view, but from my new point of view of how that brain plays a role in that. So when you're dealing with things like stretching, for instance, we think of stretching as lengthening muscles. In other words, we think that the muscles are going to be lengthened, or that's how most people think, that the muscles are actually getting longer. And the idea is that as you really think about the muscles, the muscles are attached on both ends, which is what we all know. But when the muscle gets tight, it's like taking a rubber band and twisting it, even though the rubber band hasn't changed length, Literally, it is changing length because we're twisting that rubber band. In the muscle world, muscles, of course, are doing the same thing. And as you're twisting that rubber band and the muscles are getting tighter, and again, that tightness can come from even things that you think, things that your state of mind that you're in, as well as the things that you do. So what we're really doing with stretching is we're allowing the muscle to unravel, so to speak, or untwist. And get back to its original length. So when we're talking about stretching and we're holding stretches for long periods of time and we're, we're pulling like crazy on it, we're really basically doing more strength training than we're doing stretching. So when I started to see that and I started to work with people one-on-one, people of all ages, whether they had joint replacements, back surgeries, or just basic chronic pain every day, I started to see that I was fighting with their brain more than I was fighting with their muscles. And then that led me to start teaching people how to do that. So back up a little bit into my background. The stretching that I originally learned how to do was from a guy named Aaron Mattes. Now some of you may have heard of him. He's taught pretty much all over the world. And he created what was called active isolated stretching. And in the active isolated stretching, you hold that stretch for 5, 6, 7 seconds at a time, but you repeat it multiple times. Now, what he was teaching there about doing that was exactly right, and it was getting him some really good results, but it didn't really touch base on the brain side of it. And so people might still try to pull too hard even in that 5 or 6 seconds. And many times would forget and hold it for 10 or 15 seconds at a time. And that's where they were starting to make some of the mistakes. And in some cases, it would actually hurt themselves. Because the thing is, is that as you hold it for long periods of time, the longer you hold that stretch, the more the brain then starts to fight back because it's fearing you're going to hurt yourself. And then the muscle then starts to go into spasms. And before you know it, you can pull a muscle or in some cases, if it's severe, even slightly tear the thing. And that's not what we want to do with that. The second thing that they did in his type of stretching, and another stretching that I've seen, is they strap you to the table. And what I learned from that was that when I work with patients, I would find that the minute I would start strapping into the table, especially for women, what happened was that they weren't sure if they could trust you or not if they didn't know you. And so as you strapped it to the table, you made them basically helpless. Which put a little bit of fear or anxiousness in their thought process. And so when I took the straps away, because again, remember, I wanted to teach people how to do it on their own. So when I took the straps away from that, what I noticed was that their brain started to calm down quicker than it had before. And so I just totally abandoned that idea at all.

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When we're talking about stretching that muscle, what we wanna do is, is number one, we wanna get into more individualized muscles with that. And then 2, we wanna be able to help that person relax the mind so that they can relax the body. Because if they're talking on the phone to somebody, if they are busy listening to something very intently, their mind is off onto that tangent. And all of a sudden, it may make them more tense than normal. And then their muscles will react to that. So what I wanted to be able to do was to get them to relax. And many times I would get them to talk about something that would calm them, relax them, and so forth. And then once I started to stretch them and getting them to breathe with it, now all of a sudden the muscle would start to release. So that was the basic premise of what I was doing. And then as I started to really dig more into the mind side of the emotional side of muscles, then I had to take into account what was that person's state of mind when they came in? I mean, did they just come from where they lost a loved one or they've been sick for long periods of time? Are they a personality that You know, they're driving themselves to be the best all the time. Those are the kind of things that a person will actually have tighter muscles based on their personality or their state of mind with that. So as I'm talking to them, I'm listening not only for when does something hurt, what causes it to hurt, but I'm listening for how do they think about that? And if it's a person who is like, I just gotta fix this, I gotta fix this like right now. That's going to be a person that's probably going to overdo it. And getting them to relax their mind is going to take some extra work. So I know that most of my work in that situation is going to be more on the mental side than it's going to be on the physical side. Versus somebody who's like, I'm 65 years old, at my age, it's probably not going to work well for me. But you know what, I'll give it a shot. Their mind is a little more relaxed. But in that attitude, Now to get them to actually do the work because they don't see the point in it becomes a little more difficult. And so that's the kind of thing I'm talking about, that as I'm doing the intake and I'm really assessing them, I'm also assessing where they are mentally as well as they are physically with that. So when you do the actual stretches and you get into doing it, and some of the basic ones we'll go over today, is that when I look at muscles, for instance, like the calf, To me, the calf is probably the most important part of the human body to stretch. It's actually the foundation of what holds us all up, as most of us know. But the problem is, is that the way we've been stretching the calf in the past, we'd have them lean against the wall, or you have them stand on a slant board, or maybe they'll drop their heel off of a step or, or a large block. What we're doing there is we're actually stretching just the Achilles tendon. There's actually 4 major muscles in that calf area that controls that foot vertically, laterally, like in supination and pronation for balance, but also rotationally. And an interesting thing that I found with that was that when I work with golfers, and I work with about 150 golfers a year, what I found was, was that everyone that would come in with low back pain from playing golf, 99% of the time, their calves and their hamstrings were tight. And all I would do was I would literally stretch their calves and stretch their hamstrings. And they were surprised that I had never touched their back. But yet they go back and play golf and they would not have back pain. And as long as they kept doing the stretches, the back pain never came back. Now I'm working with guys who are 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and even 80s in some cases that was able to stop their back pain on a more permanent basis. by doing these stretches all the time. So when you're looking at doing the calf stretch, for instance, I have them to sit against the wall, sit on the floor with their back and their hips against the wall with a leg straight out in front of them, and we'll use a yoga strap. We never use an elastic band, but we'll use a yoga strap, and we'll put it around the ball of their one foot, and then have them, as they're pulling the toe back towards them, literally breathe out, but allow that muscle to relax for that 5-second hold that they have. And then release it. And then the reason for that 5-second hold is not to have a stretch reflex in the muscle, but then the second part of it, we'll have them do it like 10 times. Well, that repeating 10 times, and I was just talking to a guy this morning who was laughing about it, was that the more they did that without putting in a lot of extra effort, it was like the brain was seeing that this was a safe move. And each time they brought their toe back, they were able to bring their toe back a little more and a little more. To start opening that back up. And that's always an amazing thing to most of the patients that I work on. And then secondly, I would have them rotate the leg so that the toes go outwards so they could get to the inside calf, and then do the same thing again so they could stretch out their inside calf muscle, and then rotate the foot inward, leg and foot inward, so they could do another 10 to actually stretch out the outside calf muscle. By doing those things, you now free up the bones in the lower leg, but also the muscles in the lower leg so that they can do rotation. Not only does it help with their back, but it also takes a lot of pressure off the knee itself because you don't have those tight muscles in the calf that is actually causing that to happen. Secondly, by freeing that calf up like that, now what happens is the muscles in the feet As well as the joints in the feet can actually start to go back to work. It's been a, it's been a funny thing because it's like when I started figuring that out, I actually worked with baseball pitchers who would have shoulder injuries. And I would find similar things. They didn't have the rotation of their lower leg in that calf area. And once I was able to help them and show them how to release that rotation, The shoulder pain then went away. So needless to say, the baseball coaches were happy, but they were surprised at the same time. And when you do the calves like that, you always want to follow that up with a hamstring stretch. And the hamstrings, you've got 3 of them there. And it's like with the stretches that I do with that is that I have a person laying on their back. Most people, when they do hamstrings, they'll lay totally flat. They'll grab the one leg that they want to stretch the hamstrings with their hands. And they'll pull the knee up towards their chest trying to get the stretch out the hamstrings. There's a few flaws with that. Number one is you're actually trying to stretch 3 muscles at one time. And what we really want to do is learn how to get into each individual muscle so that in the rotation of the body, we can actually free that up, which takes pressure off the lower spine. Secondly, I always set the opposite leg up so that the knee is pointing towards the ceiling. With a foot flat on the ground. And because, because the pelvis itself, as we all know, does not have a bend, if I leave that other leg straight out, when I lift the one leg trying to stretch the hamstrings, what's gonna happen is it's gonna tilt the pelvis upward. And now you begin to not only pull the leg towards you, but you also start lifting part of the weight of the leg that's laying straight out. Taking that leg and setting it up so the knee is pointing to the ceiling. Now you flatten the pelvis back out, take that whole part of the body out so that we can now focus just on those hamstrings. And the benefit of that is that that's going to allow me now to just focus on the 3 hamstrings using that yoga strap or using a rope. You can actually turn the foot inward and outward to get the inside-outside hamstrings. And again, you'll do a set of 10 in each of those muscles, holding each for 5 seconds at a time. And then that's gonna allow that to free up. And as it does, now the rotation in the lower body from your feet all the way up to your hip takes the pressure off the spine, but it allows the hips to rotate so that you can actually gain more power as an athlete when you're doing that. So these were some of the little things that I started to put together as I learned from Aaron Mattes about the stretching. I learned from the neurosurgeons about the connection of the mind to the muscle to really make that, that go the way it's supposed to go. Too many times what we're doing, we're trying to stretch several groups or several muscles at one time. And by leaving the brain out of that, we want to go— what happens is that the brain then doesn't know which muscle to let go of. So you start to really pull on somebody's body or they're pulling on their own body. And that then leads them to want to start fighting back from the mind. Even though the muscle feels like it's fighting with you, it's really the mind that's actually blocking that muscle from, from moving. So when a person— when I'm teaching somebody how to do it on their own, of course, I send them home with videos that they could follow. But I know that when they go home, they'll trust me more than they'll trust themselves. And so one of the things that I work with them mentally is to understand how to— what they're gonna feel. So in other words, as they're bringing this leg in a hamstring, they're bringing their leg up. Once they start to feel that tension, what we wanna do there is stop, not try to pull it through, but stop at that point as you're breathing out, then hold it for that 5 seconds, release it, and then when you come back up— Every time, what you'll find out is that you'll find that muscle will go a little bit farther each time. And that always amazes people when that happens. But the thing is, is that it's the mind that you're playing with when you're stretching. We think of stretching as it's a muscular thing, but it's really the mind that you're playing with here. And once you get that person really focused on what they're supposed to feel, now they can start to release and let that go. I mean, keep in mind, we're working on people every day, so we touch hundreds of legs, we touch hundreds of arms, we touch hundreds of backs. But for the average person out there, they teach— they just touch one set of legs. And if that set of legs is very hard or it's very soft, it's irrelevant. That's what they think normal is. And the biggest mistake that most people make is they think, well, my muscles are hard, that means I'm strong. The reality is, it just means that they're stiff. It's what happened. But in their minds, that's not what they're thinking. So we really have to teach them a new normal as we're working with that. From the massage side, because in the stretch and release technique, I'm combining this type of stretching with self-massage that I'm actually teaching them how to do, is that we're not rubbing the leg, we're not rubbing the arm, but we're pinpointing spots on the arm and we're pinpointing spots on the leg That we're looking that can be sore. And as you all know, not every spot on the leg or arm is going to be sore. But as we do that, and we're pinpointing those spots, it's teaching people how to find those spots, and then breathe out and allow them to just let go. And what I mean by letting go is when they breathe out and they let the mind relax and just feel, not dig into it, just feel. What happens is that the muscle will start to relax and soften, and they'll feel it under their thumb once they get used to doing it. From you as a practitioner, when you're doing things like massage, it's like if you feel a hard spot in your idea— and of course, that's the way I was. I was taught to be a deep tissue massage therapist myself. The way we're kind of taught to do that is we really want to dig in and we really want to push this out. Well, the public does the same thing because that's what they perceive as being what we should do. The problem is, is that as you create more pain, that person can't breathe out and allow it to let go. You want them to feel that muscle let go, because once they feel that muscle let go, now you start to create a new normal for them. And that's the real key to it. It's like, and some— I've had some friends of mine in the healthcare world say, but if you teach people how to do that, won't they stop coming to see you? And I always laugh because the funny thing is, is no, they don't. But by teaching them how to do these things, every time they come back, I don't have to start from ground zero. You see, they're working to maintain that. So each time they come back, we can take another step forward, another step forward to keep them growing in what they're doing. And on top of it, as their friends start to see them do things they haven't done in a while, All of a sudden, you get referrals like there's nobody's business. And so that's been the thing that I found the most important and most satisfying part of this is that by working as a team with that patient and that client, what happens is that you're educating them not only just on how to massage your body, how to stretch your body, but a lot of how to live their lives. Because many times, even with Friends of mine who are chiropractors, they'll work hard, they'll get somebody adjusted, they get it back in the right shape. And as soon as the person leaves, they go out and they get in their car where their seats recline, or they go home and they get back into their recliner, and they wait until their next appointment with their chiropractor, next appointment with their doctor or their PT. And so you as a practitioner, you're now coming back to ground zero every time because they don't understand that what they're doing in their lives is creating the very problems that they're trying to get away from.

Mm-hmm.

And so I'll spend time actually training people on and talk to people about what they do in their life every day that they, they actually can help themselves to continue on. So by adding the pieces of the stretch and release technique with the stretching, with the massage, and getting them to understand how much power the brain has in the muscle system of the human body, then have them go home and start to make changes in their lives so that they can actually start to feel better on a more permanent basis. Has been a real winning combination for me and what I do here.

That wraps up part 1 of our conversation with Butch Phelps on rethinking stretching through a neurofascial lens. I hope you're starting to see why static stretching alone often falls short and how the brain plays a far bigger role in releasing chronic tension than most healthcare providers are ever taught in school. But this is just the beginning. In Part 2, Butch takes us beyond theory and into practice. You'll hear specific techniques for targeting the calves, hamstrings, and other key muscle groups, along with strategies to integrate breathwork, self-massage, and the brain-body connection into your care plans. Whether you work with athletes, aging adults, or everyday patients struggling with pain, these insights can completely reshape the way you approach mobility and recovery. Episode 114 drops in 2 weeks. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like, follow, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. And be sure to join us for our next free Factor Masterclass next Thursday, October 2nd, where our topic is neurofeedback in sports with Dr. Kevin Butterfield. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at factor-store.com. That's spelled F-A-K-T-R-store.com, to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands-on Factor Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is for you to help us spread Spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.