What to Do When You Can’t Move Without Pain

If we don't function well, if— because you can have a very muscular individual, but it doesn't mean that they have a very strong core or that they can lift something or that they have good balance. So as we build muscle and we build strength, we want to make sure that the nervous system is coordinated and organized in a way that it can use the structure that we're creating.

Tom Swells, welcome to Beyond Diagnosis.

Thanks for having me, Rita.

Oh, it's great. I look, I had you on the show last time, loved it. I love your work. It's so foundational and, you know what, really common sense for everybody, like across the board. I find it's not just directed at younger people who want fitness, but it's directed at everyone who wants to maintain muscle. And that's what we're going to talk about today is muscle, but especially balance, the fit, the flexibility as we age.

Yeah.

And also, um, most importantly, strength. So, you know, there's a lot of benefit to having that overall strength as we're going into our older years and once we're actually in our older years.

Yeah.

So, you know, I'd kind of like to start with, you know, your perspective on fitness as we age, because I think there's a lot of information out there saying as you get older, you must, you know, maintain your fitness. But would you say it's more important to go beyond just that kind of fitness aesthetics and really be concerned about strength and that core strength, flexibility, and obviously keeping your balance so you don't fall as you age?

You know, looking good is— it feels good to look good, but if we don't function well, if— because you can have a very muscular individual, but it doesn't mean that they have a very strong core or that they can lift something or that they have good balance. So, as we build muscle and we build strength, we want to make sure that the nervous system is coordinated and organized in a way that it can use the structure that we're creating. And, it's a combination of balance, mobility, we'll call mobility and flexibility, we'll kind of call that same thing even though they're slightly different, and strength. And then, the odd time we might need to move a little bit quickly, we might need to run up the stairs or run across the street to grab our child or pick up something a little bit heavier than usual. That's where capacity comes in. And, when we're looking at strength, flexibility, just overall athleticism or human performance, it's always good to have that reserve in your back pocket for the just-in-case moments, right? To just be strong enough or flexible enough or have enough control of our body for the everyday thing, that's important, but what if we stumble? What if we trip? Well, now we have to overcome gravity and multiple times body weight because now gravity is imposing some demands on our body that we now have to decelerate and prevent ourselves from hitting the ground. So, this is where strength and control come in. So, we want to always look at the body and we want that reserve, so we need to push it a little bit every day, not a crazy amount, but enough to cause a disruption in homeostasis, a disruption in— the body's kind of comfort zone, then it has to adapt. And then, it has to get stronger. It has to create that resiliency to that stress or adapt to that stress. And, that comes in the forms of many things, cardiovascular. First week, we walk 1 kilometer. The next week, we do 2 kilometers.

Okay.

The week after that, we walk 2 kilometers a little bit faster. So, we can change all these different variables. We can increase volume, we can increase intensity, we can increase duration. But, it doesn't have to be a lot. Adding more pounds to the bar, just make it 1 pound for every week if you're doing upper or lower body. But, it's got to be meaningful. It's got to be a little bit difficult. If it's too easy, well, then there's no stress. There's no reason for the body to adapt because the body and the brain is a very good adaptation machine. It's really efficient at conserving energy because that's just survival.

Yeah.

So, if we do the same amount of exercise every day and it's not stressful to the body, well, guess what? We actually get worse because the body gets so efficient at that, it can now spend less energy to do the same amount of work. And, that's the point. So, when we start to look at exercise or fitness and movement and we're doing the same thing over and over and the same weights and the same routine, well, you're probably declining because your body's an efficiency machine. And it will stop expending more energy than it has to. And when something's easy, it just, it stops, it stops adapting. Well, we can go about this in many different things and many different ways. And for people as that entry point, people say, well, what's the best thing to start with? I'm like, the thing that you enjoy the most. If it's yoga, start there. If it's lifting weights, start there. If it's walking, start there. If it's biking, do that. Right. And then start to build those other components on top of it. So at least you start that momentum to start carrying forward to overall athleticism.

So would you say that it's a combination for— especially as we're aging, would you say then, as from what you were saying, it's a combination of fitness and strength, not just one or the other? So don't just focus on just weights, like do things that give you that cardiovascular health.

The heart needs to be stressed as well. It's a muscle. And, when it's working kind of at its zone 1, zone 2 through the day, that's a good thing because it kind of pumps oxygen to the tissues. But, the odd time, just like a muscle, we have to push it. So, if we push it closer to its 80%, 90% maximum for a very short period of time and let it come back down, that's a good thing. You've stretched that muscle, you've worked it, but then you've allowed it to recover.

Mm-hmm.

Because what, again, what if you have to run or exert yourself in a very strenuous way because of an emergency? You don't want to have a heart attack. You don't want that heart to fail underneath the stress. So, you know, we have to push the body in all of its systems a little bit each time so that we're not only looking for improvement but prevent it from kind of falling behind or degrading over time. Because again, the body will Not use energy if it doesn't have to.

You do hear a lot of people saying, and I have, I have read it on social media around, oh, don't worry so much about the cardiovascular as you age, it's all about weight-bearing.

Sure. So if we're looking, yeah, if we're looking at kind of the number one predictor for longevity, it's going to be leg strength more specifically, right? Quad strength. Because if you have strong legs, you can get yourself up off the ground. If you have strong legs, you can climb stairs. If you have strong legs, you can go downstairs safely. If you have strong legs, if you stumble, you can stop a fall from happening, right? A lot of falls, you trip, that one leg goes out to take a step, you don't have the strength to decelerate yourself, all of a sudden you break a hip. So, if we're looking at one primary factor, the research is showing it's leg strength. And also, when we have stronger legs, we do have better balance regardless of how you train the legs. So you can do it from a leg press machine, that will improve balance. But, and also when you're working through full range of motion, now you're improving flexibility. So if we are just stretching the quads, we'll use the quads for example, and we're not adding resistance or strength in that range that we've created, well, we've created a range that might be a little bit weak. Because we haven't added resistance into that new lengthened tissue. So, resistance training, I would say, from a longevity perspective, if you're going to do one thing, is strength training. And then also, if you want to get cardio in there, if you're holding the resistance and you're breathing, heart rate's going to go up, blood pressure is going to go up. If you're doing higher repetitions, well, now it's a form of muscular endurance. So therefore, it's a little bit of cardio. Okay, so you can kill a lot of birds with one stone. And if you're working through a full range of motion, now you're working on flexibility. If you're going to focus on one thing, get strong. It's never a bad option to be strong because once we have strength, it's easier to build those other components on top of it. We'll use the example of flexibility. So people who do yoga, and I'm not picking on yogis, they'll come in and they can put their head through their legs and they can backbend and and they can do all this amazing stuff. But when I test, they come in and they're like, my back hurts, my neck hurts, these things hurt. I'm like, well, it's obviously not a flexibility problem. You're not stiff, but it feels stiff because they're like, oh, my muscles are so tight. And I'm like, you can put your head through your legs. Your back is not tight. But when I test their muscles, they can't hold tension. They collapse. I'm like, it's a strength problem. You've stretched away all of your strength and your ability to maintain tension. So all of a sudden what we do is we get them into the gym They're climbing, they're carrying weights, they're doing push-ups, they're doing, you know, groundwork, core work. And all of a sudden, within a couple weeks, they're like, oh, my back and neck pain feel better. Well, we didn't stretch anything, but we applied tension so that it helped their posture and they weren't fatiguing and falling into these, you know, into this range of motion that they didn't want to fall into because they stretched away all their strength and they stretched away all their tension. So it didn't— it didn't impair their flexibility. But it did create balance in their system because they, they went too far to the flexibility side of things that they stretched away a lot of their strength and control. And the nervous system was sending signals saying, hey, something feels off. I'm going to create these signals for you to pay attention. Now we need to change this because we're— we've gone too far the other way. And then you look at the strength of my powerlifters who are very stiff and tense, but that gives them an advantage to lift heavy weights because they can rely on that tension. Well, if they're coming in with pain and back issues, I'm like, okay, well, let's help restore some of this mobility back so that it's easier to get into those positions with loads and your nervous system's not fighting you against the tension in your body. So, it really depends on the individual what they're coming in with as well. So, some people I need to add mobility, some I need to add strength, some we just need to add some balance.

Mm.

But, one simple test That everybody in your audience can do is stand on one leg with their eyes open. Can you do it for 10 seconds, yes or no? And can you do it on right and left leg?

Great.

If you can do that, now do it with your eyes closed. And a lot of times people lose their balance pretty quickly. And people don't realize— I didn't know my balance was so bad. I'm like, well, when was the last time you checked it? Like, when was the last time you stood on one leg and closed your eyes to see If everything's organized and coordinated. When we check that, now they have a realization of, oh my, like, I have to work on this. I'm like, yeah, you do. And that's probably why, you know, when you're lunging or you're walking or you're running, you've got some pain issues in your body because you're not standing on one leg in a static position very well. So ballistically or dynamically, it's probably not going well for you either because you're doing all kinds of weird compensations to try and get the job done, and your nervous system knows that. It's part and parcel, and you can very simply organize and create programs around strength, mobility, and balance. When you combine them all together, it becomes that full-body longevity type of program. And I would add periodically, run as fast as you can and jump off stuff. Just because if we have that ability to still jump, we have the ability to produce power to some degree. And also manage gravity. And, if we have the ability to move quickly, well, that just stimulates the heart as well as all the fast-twitch muscles in our system to help grow, release growth hormones, and also tell the nervous system to keep firing on all cylinders. Because if we're doing kind of slow steady state all the time, well, that's just— we're telling the nervous system we don't need to move fast anymore, we don't need to move heavy things, so it will just start to downregulate.

Yes, well, that certainly has dispelled that notion when I, when I read it where everyone says, oh, I got fit and I'm really healthy just by walking every day, like the same walk, the same pace, you know. So what you're saying is that's just not enough, especially as we age.

Right.

And there was a few— my mind was kind of going off as you were talking, like especially when The stretch— you've stretched your muscles away is something I've never heard. And that is actually— a very good friend of mine does yoga. She's been doing yoga for nearly 40 years, and she's got very thin, elongated muscles. Yep. Yep. You know, so yeah, I was thinking of her, like, as you age, having those very thin muscles made— like you said, may not get you off the floor. If you fall, you need to maintain that. That leg muscle is so interesting. And then I was thinking of how would that help people who have vertigo, for example? Like vertigo, or that you suffered from, you know, bouts of dizziness.

Sure.

And you're always a bit anxious about falling. So for those people, would their primary concern be to make sure that their quads and their legs are strong?

When it comes to dizziness or vertigo or BPPV or any kind of— the important thing is finding out what is the cause of the dizziness, right?

Mm-hmm.

So, because we have 3 balance systems, we have the visual system, we have the inner ear vestibular system, and then we have proprioception. So, just the body awareness thing. And, most of the time, people come in, they're visual, they were highly reliant on the visual system, which is why people can stand on one leg with their eyes open because they can orient Yeah. But, as soon as we take away the visual system, now they have to rely on the inner ear vestibular and the proprioceptive system. Most of the time, people's vestibular system works just fine. It's the proprioception, it's their body alignment or their ability to stack the body and make those small adjustments based on just feeling alone. That's where we start to kind of lose most of our balance as we age. The inner ear, the fluid does start to thicken. And that can be a cause of some of the dizziness, especially if we move the head in space. That fluid doesn't move around as quickly, so that can be a cause as well. Then of course, with the visual stuff, we have macular degeneration, then the visual system starts to go. But if someone's having dizziness, I have to find out what is the cause of that dizziness and can we treat that? Because we can get them as strong as possible, and yes, if they lose balance, They're going to have a lot less likelihood to fall because they're strong and they can catch themselves with the proprioceptive system. So it's never a bad thing to be strong and get their legs strong, but it is important to find out what are some of the triggers or the causes of that dizziness as well as getting strong.

At what stage or what age do we start— if we're not real gym goers, sure, what stage do we usually start losing our core strength that then starts leading down to this path of—

It can start as early, you know, as in our 20s or 30s.

Oh.

You know, if— yeah. So when we're younger, you know, men and women were typically playing sports in school, and then like the bodies are young up to the age of 25, and then things are kind of fully matured at 25— brain, body, everything. And then afterwards because we end up falling into a lot of sedentary jobs. We're not physically active as much anymore. And it's not that the body can't maintain that. Like, you know, we can maintain hormone levels and muscle mass, like, naturally, um, well into our 40s, 50s, 60s, right? Even they've done, they've done work with, um, I think it was a subset, it was a male group, and they were in their 80s or 90s, and it showed after 6 to 8 weeks of resistance training, they were able to increase the size of their muscle. Muscles can still grow even into old age. They just have to have the stimulus. Is it as much? No, because we don't have the hormones, we don't have the resources, we don't have the blood sugar. There's lots of factors, but it still shows that we can still get strong and improve muscularity even late into adulthood. It's really the environment that we're putting ourselves into and it's the lack of stimulus or the need for the body to continue to adapt and continue to keep muscle because muscle is very expensive. It's metabolically expensive. And, if we're not using it, it will atrophy. We talked about this before. When I was in the hospital, within 2 weeks, I lost 50 pounds because my body was just liquefying all the muscle from the rhabdomyolysis and the toxic shock. But, that shows how quickly— that was not a priority for my body. It was like it needs to survive. So, it was taking all the resources it could, pulling into my organs and my brain to make sure I don't die. And muscle was not important at that time.

Yes.

So, it's just like, we need to get rid of this. This is taking up too much energy. So, it quickly goes away, especially in a state of disease, but it's also probably one of the most critical organs. We'll call it an organ because it helps control blood glucose, it helps store glucose, it helps manage insulin sensitivity, it helps with growth hormone. Like, it does so many different things. It's not just this contractile tissue. You know, you look at some of the work by Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and, and, and Layne Norton and all those, you know, muscle experts, and they talk about this, you know, All day long. And, they're a big proponent on the more muscle mass you have as you age, the healthier you're going to be, the more you can stave off a lot of these chronic illnesses or metabolic disease. When people are just saying, well, I'm just walking, it probably got them healthier than where they started, but it won't continue to improve unless they're doing more, unless they're adding in these other components.

Right?

We can go back and we can look at the difference between a marathon runner and a sprinter.

Yeah.

Who's got more muscle mass? I'm not saying one's going to live longer than the other, but one definitely has a bigger head start in glucose management and maintaining that muscle mass than the other. And one, yeah, will probably have a stronger heart, but at the same time, chronic cardio doesn't really do much good for us in the long run because we can get these oversized large hearts, we lose muscle mass, and again, it's just chronic stress. But I'm not knocking people who love doing what they're doing. Keep doing it as long as it's working. But if it's causing orthopedic problems or you have, you know, imbalances in the body, think about adding something else in.

That's the point, isn't it? It's about balance. Balancing it out. If you love walking, you love marathons or whatever, think about doing some strength.

Strength.

You know, build a little bit of muscle, maintain your muscle. And that's what I'm hearing. It's not so much as we age, it's not so much about building muscle unless you need to. It's about making sure that your muscles maintain their strength. And especially what I'm hearing is that it's so important to maintain that muscle For people who are diabetics.

Especially because it's— the muscle is, you know, the number one glucose store. Like, you have your liver that holds 200 grams of glucose, but the muscles will hold much more. And the more muscle you have, the more glucose you can manage. For those who are under-muscled and we're consuming a lot of carbohydrates and we're not utilizing those carbohydrates for fuel, well, guess what has to happen? It either It can't be left in the bloodstream because that's not good. So it needs to be converted to fat. And then we end up storing that because if all the muscle— if all the muscles are full of glucose and the liver's full of glucose, but then that's also a major cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So now the liver gets overwhelmed and it starts to get all this fat around it because of poor glucose management.

So that is really one of the keys, isn't it?

Yeah.

To managing that glucose is to have really good muscle mass.

Yeah.

Or muscle— yeah, muscle mass, I guess, beyond just strength. You have to— you can't have those very lean— I'm not saying that people that do have lean muscle that there's something wrong, but as long as you're maintaining that muscle and you're not wasting away is really important. And I want to go back to when you said about maintaining muscle, you know, you can do the The jumps and the squats and that sort of thing. But what about people who are older or have some like pain or chronic pain?

Yep.

What should they be doing and what kind of routine would be good for them? You know, especially like 45+, 55+ kind of age.

This is— that's where machines are great. Like if you go to a gym Do the leg press, do the leg curls. Machines are safe, right? There's no balance required. They're very low entry for a learning curve. You can learn to use them within seconds and get an idea of how they fit to your body. But it's somewhere to start. And I used to be very much on the train when I was younger in my career, I'm like, oh, machines aren't functional. Everyone needs to do bodyweight squats and everyone needs deadlift and everyone needs to swing kettlebells. And then, as I got older, I realized I'm like, well, if you do a leg press machine and say it took care of some weakness in the quads and all of a sudden you can squat better and you have better balance, well, guess what? That was functional. A leg curl or a leg extension machine, if it created balance and better control or awareness or strength in the leg around the knees and all of a sudden you can jump higher and squat better, I'm like, That was functional because it was the outcome that matters, not what it looks like. You know, it's not available for everybody to be like, hey, I should squat with a bar. You can sit on a machine or you can very simply put a chair behind you and sit down to the chair and then come back up. You can do simple chair squats or you can do what's called isometrics. You can stand up against the wall, slide down the wall to 90 degrees, 45 degrees, and sit there for 10 seconds. So now the muscles are working without moving, and you're getting strong at that angle. And actually, you're getting strong 15 degrees above and below. So there's a 30-degree carryover that you're getting strong through. So you do, you know, you stand up and you squat to 90, and then you come back up to 60, and then you go to 45, and all of a sudden you strengthen that full range of motion of a squat because of that carryover, that overflow effect of strength development. And isometrics, the nice thing with that is you don't have to worry about weights or resistance collapsing on top of you. It's like, well, when I'm tired, I just, I can stop doing it. I just stop pushing into the wall, right? So we can use all kinds of different forms. And isometrics are some of the earliest exercises we do from a rehab perspective. If, if doing range of motion is contraindicated, well, I can get somebody to just, okay, fine, lean up against the wall and just push your elbow into the wall. There's tension happening and strength developing, but there's no movement. So therefore, we're not disrupting anything.

Yes.

So, stand up against the wall, push into the wall. We're sitting at our desk right now. I can push my hands into the desk and almost try and push myself up off the chair. And, my lats and my pecs and my triceps, they're all firing up. So, I can develop strength by simply doing something like an isometric. So, there's lots of options for people. It's just starting somewhere, right? Isometrics are always a great— we don't need equipment for that. We can just use our body weight. And, you know, we can, we can use chairs, we can use our body at specific angles, but start somewhere. So we don't have to think, you know, I don't have balance, I have knees. And if there's pain in a certain range of motion, and I'm going to keep referring back to the squat, Well, I tell people, I'm like, well, if you have pain at 90 degrees, don't go into it. Go up, stop just shy of that. Because again, if you get strong there, guess what? You're getting strong below the level of pain because of that carryover. And then when you stand up, you go into a squat, you're like, oh, I can squat deeper now without pain. Awesome. Because now your nervous system said, oh, I feel safe here now. I'm going to let you go lower. So developing strength through that range of motion and doing some of those little pauses or isometrics will help the nervous system start to kind of calm down and remove a lot of those pain signals. Because the pain signals or discomfort might be there because it just feels unsafe or unfamiliar because you've never done it before.

And it's so true about the isometrics. I mean, that is an exercise routine that someone— say they've never been someone who likes exercising and they're already 60+, you know, maybe they're even 70. Well, you know, and they feel stiff, etc., how doing exercises of your own body weight is a perfect entry point to what you were saying. Because especially women, I don't know, you know, and I can't— I don't want to be general here, but especially in your 60s, 70s, sometimes, you know, you're kind of going, I'm feeling tired, you know, I've done a lot. The thought of going into the gym and now working out Isn't something that, you know, revs them up. So something as simple as those exercises would be great.

And we can even remove another barrier there. So, okay, we don't have equipment at home, just get on the floor, do some glute bridges, do some dead bugs, do some planks. Like, there's lots of stuff we can do on the floor. And by getting on back onto the floor, we're building a relationship with the ground again, and we're improving our mobility, we're improving our proprioception and awareness. So that if by chance we have an incident with the floor, aka a fall, we know how to kind of collapse and absorb forces with our body because we have now a relationship with the ground again. And this is where we first learned to move. And going back down to the ground and doing very simple things by putting our hands on the ground with various supports, we can build that relationship with the ground and also restore a lot of the I love that about a relationship with the floor because that's where you're going to be when you fall.

So it's about, you know, instantly knowing what to do to get yourself back up, especially for older people when they're by themselves, that when they live alone, you know, that can be really scary for them. So what kind of preventative strength exercises can adults do? Well, I do think the most important thing is to get up and move. like now to avoid muscle loss in the late— in later life? And, you know, just something that can easily fit into their routine if they're not gym goers, for example.

Number 1, check your balance. Stand on one leg. Can you do it? Yes or no? Okay, cool. At least now we have a little bit of a baseline. Squat. Can you— can you lower yourself down to the floor? And how far can you do it underneath your own Power. And if you can't get all the way down to the ground, that's okay. But if you work that pattern, if you just hang on to— you don't even need resistance. If you just practice that pattern, maybe to a chair, touch your bum, pause, don't, don't sit down, and then stand back up, well, all of a sudden you're now creating strength through that range of motion. And then as you get stronger, you use a slightly lower chair, or you use a stool, or you start to work your way down. Because the squat It's really the first pattern that we learned to stand up. So the bottom of the squat, people often think, well, that's the end position of the squat. Actually, that's the start. Because where did we start? Well, we started crawling on the ground, baby squats, and stands up. So the bottom position, the top finish position is standing. But again, if we go back down to the floor and we kind of work some mobility and we kind of play with our movement down there, Mm-hmm. We can help restore maybe some of the ankle mobility, the hip mobility, the control, and the posture in that lower position. But to answer your question, I would recommend a lot of people just go back down to the floor. Okay, practice sitting in different positions: straddle sit, shin box, cross-legged, you know, you know, long sit. Put your shoulders behind you to open up the shoulders. Practice some glute bridges, lifting your bum. Practice rolling, get into some crawling. A lot of that stuff will help restore a lot of the, the shoulder, a lot of the shoulder postures, a lot of the neck, a lot of the core stuff, and a lot of the hip tightness. And we don't have to sit there and think about, well, what exercises do I do? Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and just explore. Just move around, see how many, how many different positions you can get in and out of. Right, right, and left. And if something feels a little sticky or a little bit off, stay there, do an isometric, and just work on some breathing to teach the nervous system, hey, we need to tease this out. Let's, let's stay here for a couple breaths and see if that opens up a little bit, because maybe that tightness is there because it's unfamiliar. So all of a sudden we breathe through that, you're like, oh, that just freed up. So now we've just created more options to move. Everything, every movement is an exercise if you sit there and do repetitions of it. But if we think about variety and how many, how many ways can I move in different combinations and different patterns, well, now, now your brain's— your movement brain is going to start thinking like, hey, how can we get creative? It's going to dial in and it's going to, it's going to start to get excited and really pay attention to what you're doing. Now all of a sudden you've been moving around for 10 minutes, You didn't even realize it. Timer goes off, you're like, well, that felt like 2. But it's because your brain was now engaged with its environment and it got excited and it started to pay attention and feel different things. And now all of a sudden you stand up, you're like, oh, I can walk easier. Well, it's because you just did a bunch of mobility, core work, proprioception. You're turning your head in space, you're rolling around, and the brain had to pay attention. It fired everything up a little bit more effectively because you You stimulated it. You created novelty in your movement variety. It wasn't just this linear up and down, forwards, backwards. You were moving all in all 3 planes of what we can do in different ways. And the brain and the nervous system had to pay attention and figure stuff out. And that makes it fun.

God, I couldn't love what you just said more. Honestly, what it's done, I think, for many people who are a bit resistant to getting into an exercise routine, especially if they haven't done it for a while, or they're experiencing pain or some form of condition that seems to be putting them off engaging in exercise, is you've totally removed the idea of perfectionism. It has to be done a certain way. You have to sit a certain way. You know, like, it has to be structured. What you've done is given people permission just to get on the floor, start rolling around, start stretching, start moving your arms up and down, or, you know, one leg up, one arm down, sort of doing those brain exercises. And you've just given people— it's almost like you've given them permission to play. And you play. Yeah.

That's exactly it. Kids don't learn structured exercise. They play, they explore. You give them a playground, you don't have to teach them or coach them how to use the playground. They'll figure it out, right? You give a balance beam— we have 2x4s in our clinic, we create balance beams— and I'm like, walk across that. I don't have to coach them. I'm just saying, don't fall off. And then, you know, the first time across, they're a little bit wobbly and they're a little unsure and they're looking down and they're holding their breath. I'm like, okay, take a 60-second break, do it again. Now all of a sudden they do it 10 times better. They're more relaxed. I'm like, what happened there? Your brain figured it out. I didn't coach you. I just said, don't fall off. And if you did fall off, well, your brain's like, well, we made a mistake, so we should probably do something different next time. And that's exactly how we learn. When we think about our environment as, you know, we start to think about it as more of this place to explore and play. As opposed to, oh, the thing I have to do that's structured and boring, because exercise is boring. But when we, when we, when we can kind of flip our perspective on more play and exploration, it's way easier to want to do that than the structured thing I have to do. Now it's the fun thing I get to do.

Exactly, exactly. And I find so many people would be more attracted to doing that And also, it sounds like by doing that, you develop a better relationship and understanding with your body that, as you were saying also, that you didn't realize that you could have. Or you have a better— maybe you are, you do suffer from chronic pain, but you have a better understanding of your pain. Instead of sitting in your pain, you, you personally are saying, oh, I can reach So far, or I could stretch so far with the pain and I'm really feeling it, as to somebody else saying to you, oh, you know, stretching you and you saying, oh no, that's pain. You're doing it yourself and having that relationship with yourself.

Yeah, you're paying attention to it. You're realizing, okay, this is uncomfortable, but it's not causing harm, right? So understanding the difference between discomfort and pain Sharp pain, electrical pain, like, yeah, we just, we probably moved into tissues that is signaling. It's a pretty strong signal saying maybe we should pay attention. But, you know, that, that discomfort of, ah, you know, like a tight muscle or like a range of motion that doesn't feel familiar, that can be a pain signal or a discomfort signal. But once you start to kind of recognize that and then you start to just breathe into it or stay there for a moment or two, and then you realize, oh, you know what, that just went away. Understanding the difference between that discomfort and pain is key. Now, if something's repeatable, if something, oh, like every time I bend this way, pain, pain, pain. Okay, there might be some structural thing there that might need a little bit of a further assessment. We don't want to keep pushing into it because we might flare something up. But knowing the difference between, you know, a discomfort and a consistent pain signal to know, you know, if this is there a lot more than it should be, then we can work around that or find the expert to find out what's causing that pain. The whole idea of even adults taking their kids to the park, what do most adults do? They sit there and watch their kids play. Go play on the equipment too. It's not weird and creepy. It's only weird and creepy if you think that is. If you're there by yourself— And your kids aren't there? Yeah, like, people are gonna go, hey, where's your kids? Oh, my kids aren't here, I'm just playing on the playground. Like, you need to go now, right? Don't do that. But we, we put our— we put these stipulations and restrictions on ourselves as adults, like, oh, we can't do that anymore. I'm like, well, you didn't lose it, or, or it's not, you know, you, you didn't stop doing it because you got old. I mean, you stopped doing it. So So you lost the ability to do it. So go play on the monkey bars, go hang off stuff, right? Chase your kids around, play with them. Who cares what people think? If anything, they're going to be envious. They'll be like, oh, I should probably be a better parent and play with my kids too. But as adults, we restrict ourselves from this ability to play again. Or maybe we stop playing because we're like, well, I'm an adult. I don't do this anymore. I'm like, Yeah, but you could, and your body would probably thank you for it. And then you also just got a bunch of exercise in and you didn't even realize it.

You're mentioning the playground actually took my mind— I love that, I love that example though— actually took my mind to, um, water exercises like aqua therapy, etc. Yeah, is that as effective in maintaining or if you need to grow muscle? No.

Unfortunately, it's not. So, the muscle is— it's pushing resistance, it's contracting the muscle. But again, if it's something new that you've never done, you're going to see fitness benefits. But if you've been doing it long enough, the stimulus is not enough for muscles. We rely— we are land mammals. We need gravity, we need those gravitational forces. And when we remove gravity in a water environment, um, you just— the muscles, their structure changes. Like, you look at swimmers, they, you know, they're, they're long, they're muscular. Ask them to perform on the land, like with gravity, and they don't do well. There's not a lot of carryover to real life athletics or movement in gravity. This is just working with, with swimmers. They're, they're amazing in the water, but there's not a lot of carryover. And, the same thing, if you never learn how to swim effectively, you're never going to be a Michael Phelps. But, if we're looking from a longevity perspective, water aerobics isn't enough. It's good for the heart, it's good for blood circulation, it's easy on the joints. The water, it does improve proprioception because we can feel the limbs move with the water, but we do have to get out of the water eventually and we do have to move in the real world, which is not in water. So we can't rely on one. If you enjoy it, do it. But it's the same thing as if you enjoy running, great, but you still need to lift heavy things once in a while. You might need to carry something, you might need to push or pull something, and the odd time you might need to move really, really quickly. So we want to have those quick feet if we need to.

That's a good point. I guess it's good for people who are in a lot of pain, at least they have that flexibility, you know, they're warm water gives them relief. But like you're saying, you still need to maybe do that plus the isometric exercises.

Yeah, I would still add in land, dry land training on top of the water. Again, if you enjoyed— if people enjoy doing it, yeah, do it every day. Just add in other stuff.

So Tom, tell me, you know, when you're in your 20s, 30s, and sometimes even in your 40s, you know, you see women who are working out sometimes just as hard as the men, you know, with their weights and they're doing the jumps and those ropes and very fit. But what happens when, as we age, are there exercises that women and men should be doing differently?

With, with regards to— because premenopause, like women who are still menstruating, there's— because of the hormone fluctuations There are times during their cycle, and we know this, that the ligaments and the tendons become a little bit more lax or a little bit more loose. So those are typically times where a little bit more of tension building is needed. Some of the ballistics like jumping and explosive stuff, we don't want to impose on their structure because it's higher likelihood of tendon damage or ligament damage because of the laxity. It's understanding the different structure. Men's structure is designed stiffer so we can do more jumping, which is why we can sprint a little bit harder, a little bit faster. We can lift heavier weights. I mean, testosterone allows tendons and ligaments to stiffen up. Okay, estrogen kind of does the opposite. It's really the, the level of intensity, I would say, and the amount of volume. Women can actually handle a little bit more volume. Okay, but the intensity is like is not necessarily there because of the hormonal differences and the and the structure's ability to manage that tension. Everyone should be doing relatively the same thing. It just depends on the intensity. And as we get older, I mean, even I'll speak upon myself. I'm mid-forties. One of the things that we start to lose as we get older is our collagen stops becoming as a lot that we lose that elasticity. We lose that pop, that. And, what I've started incorporating with all my training now are isometrics. I'll grab a couple kettlebells and I'll hold a lunge for 10 seconds with the calf because I would have chronic Achilles issues before my hospital issue. And, I was losing the ability of the tendons to hold on to tension. They would collapse, they'd overstretch, and then I have these chronic flare-ups. This is where using isometrics in your training can help build tendons and the connective tissue again, not just moving through full range of motion, which is great. I hop. I do lots of hopping, especially barefoot, to create the elasticity in the feet so I get that spring so I use less energy if I'm running or jumping. I crawl every workout just to kind of build up that relationship to work on the core, the shoulder strength, the hips, the knees, everything. So, those are kind of the 3 things that I've evolved. In my training lately. When we're younger, we can abuse the body. In your 20s, in your teens, you can work out, lift heavy every day. The body recovers. It's amazing. And then, you try and do that in your 20s and 30s, like, this isn't working anymore. I'm like, because your structure's changed. Everything's changing. And, if we don't adapt, we can still lift heavy into ripe old ages, but we lose— can we do it every day? No, we have to do some recovery Recovery is not as good as we get older. So, imposing that stress of exercise, it needs to be more methodical. We can't just hammer the gas every day. And, that's the difference working with my friends in their teens, 20s, and then when they started to get 30, they're like, I want to bend over without hurting my back. I'm like, welcome to the club, man. But, because they were doing all heavy lifting and they weren't working on mobility, I'm like, we need to work on some mobility and control. And then as soon as we start balancing out their body, they could still lift heavy weight, but they just couldn't do it every day.

Mm-hmm.

I'm like, some days need to be a little lighter than others. And then— but that holds true. We can still lift heavy weight into our 40s, 50s, 60s. It's just we have to be more methodical and a little bit more structured in how we do it, right? We can do all the stuff, we just can't do it all the time. And we need to maintain some of that balance in our programming. I tried to answer your question with the difference between men and women, and it— there is, there is differences. But I mean, when we're looking at overall movement, athleticism, balance, control, living in the everyday world, we can all do the same things. It's just going to be at different levels, different intensities, at different times.

What's your opinion, especially for people that don't like the gym, they want to maintain some strength? Especially as you're getting older, around Pilates and Tai Chi.

Yes. So Pilates is great. It works on a lot of balance, a lot of lengthening and strengthening depending on the type of Pilates. They have the reformer machines where it's using your body weight and cables to really work on core strength and working on that nice long length flexibility. Pilates is great that way. I would say somewhere where it falls behind is There's not a lot of transfer to lifting skills, right? We still have to deadlift. We got to pick up groceries. So we need to have that pattern, that proficiency in order to hinge effectively, stabilize the core, engage the grip, and then lift with our hips, right? So we don't fold and bend in half. Pilates is great, but we have to get up off the floor and we do have to lift things once in a while in the everyday world. And it doesn't teach that, okay? Because it's all body weight and leverage, which again is great.

Mm-hmm.

Tai Chi, amazing for proprioception, body awareness, balance, feeling how the body— it's also nerve mobility. So, by moving the limbs in these kind of circular patterns and reaching, we're actually mobilizing the neural tissues. So, it works a lot of that and that mindfulness and the breathing. So, it improves balance and movement proficiency. And those are great places to start, and combining those is awesome. Sometimes the real world throws things at us where we need to pick up a child, right? We need to run up a hill or run up a set of stairs because your child's screaming, right? They did something. Like, there's just so many other ways, but, you know, that's a good start. That will make you feel really good.

Yeah.

But just know that not those 2 practices don't necessarily carry over to a lot of the functional strength that we need in our everyday life.

You know, especially for someone as they age, you know, like I'm visualizing older people or older couples and say a partner's falling on the floor and you have to try to pick them up, you know, and you're The same age. Yeah. So there's, there's the strength. So it's sort of saying to— if you want to exercise and it's not something you love, a combination sounds like a good idea. Like you say, like tai chi is beautiful and it has all those, you know, flexibility and, you know, balance, etc. But combine it with the isometrics or a little bit of gym work for the strength.

Yeah.

So it would keep it so much more interesting anyway.

For sure, right? And Tai Chi is a great thing. It's also good for recovery. Say you did a heavy gym session where you lifted a lot of weights and you moved, you know, your body's a little bit sore. Tai Chi is awesome for recovery because you're still getting movement practice, but there's no stress on the body. You're actually going to help with recovery because you're improving circulation, you're improving breathing mechanics, you're improving balance. You're getting light contraction of the muscles and lengthening of the muscles, which do help with recovery. So, you can do something every day. It's just when we do too much of one thing, well, then we lose those other aspects of athleticism and human movement. Again, I always tell people, I'm like, start somewhere that you can maintain, that you can sustain, and that you enjoy. Find an entry point, whether it's—

Mm-hmm.

CrossFit, yoga, Pilates, I don't care. Start somewhere, right? And then do that. And then if, if problems occur or if something starts to get some little aches and pains, there might be imbalances happening. But at least you're doing something because something's better than nothing.

Yeah.

The last thing you want people to do is like they get so discouraged, they're like, I'm just doing nothing. I'm like, well, that's, that's the worst. Go for a walk, find a yoga video for 5 minutes. on YouTube, just follow that. Get on the floor and just roll around. I don't know, but start somewhere because doing nothing is probably the worst thing you can do.

Don't choose to sit on the sofa all day. Yeah, I'm not that every— not that people really have a choice to sit on the sofa all day, but right, don't make that your only option once you finish working.

Yeah, and the— I just want to touch upon that because A lot of us, we technically sit all day. It's not on the sofa, but we're sitting, but we're not being active. Our minds are working, but the body's not working. And, that fatigue, that tiredness that people get at the end of the day, oh, I'm so tired after work. I'm like, that's not physical fatigue, that's brain fatigue. But, if you get the body moving, you actually kickstart energy again. You'll actually get that second wind because once you start getting blood to circulate back up to the brain, it can remove a lot of that— say oxidative free radicals and all that brain fog that's been happening and that stagnation. It's really a lot of stagnation in the body. And, when the body— a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion. But, if the body's just used to sitting all day, it's just going to want to keep sitting because it's like, I'm tired. I'm like, yeah, but you're tired because of a lack of movement, not because of too much.

Yeah.

If you're a physical laborer and you're building homes and you're carrying 8, 10 hours a day, yeah, you're physically exhausted. Go sit down, right? But maybe do some stretching because things are probably a little bit tightening. They might be tightening up. But it's understanding also what type of fatigue we have and what we also need to do because it's just, is it brain neuro or is it more like physical body?

That is so important. Sort of goes into that motivation. Like, if you keep giving in and thinking you're tired and just sitting down when you've been sitting down in front of a computer, yeah, well, that isn't really tired like what you're saying. It's— and then that breeds that lack of motivation and to do things. So for my last question, for the people that haven't exercised much in their life, they've been— they haven't enjoyed exercise Sure. And they believe that once they get into their maybe 50s, 60s or on, that, you know, I can't start now. Is it ever really too late to start?

No. The, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

Love it.

I love that quote, right? Like, it's, you know, yeah, could we, could, could we have done better 20 years? Yeah, for sure. But, or you can start right now.

So don't let the fact that you haven't been an exerciser be an excuse not to start. You can start when you're 60, 70, or 80. You can start. Yeah, it doesn't matter. You're still going to find benefits, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So to finish off today, Tom, what can you leave our audience with as one of the best things that they can do for their flexibility, strength, and balance?

Today, I don't want to say motivation because motivation is fleeting. I'm like, yeah, find motivation. Create discipline. When you create discipline around something, you create a level of importance. Discipline means I have to do this no matter what. Put it in your schedule. If you were to book an appointment with somebody, you're most likely going to keep that appointment. You're not gonna— you're not gonna not show up. And if you create an appointment with yourself Block it in your calendar saying, okay, this is where I'm showing up to do a walk or some yoga or some push-ups and air squat, whatever it is. Create that priority, create that discipline around it so that it starts to become the thing you do. It's not something you have to do. It's like I brush my teeth, not because I have to do it. I just, I brush my teeth because I want a healthy mouth, right? I don't want my teeth to rot out. So, you do that repetition, you create that discipline around, I brush my teeth first thing in the morning and I brush my teeth before I go to bed. It's the same thing with exercise. Create discipline around exercise and some kind of movement practice and it's way easier to adhere to.

Because it is that discipline. Like you said, motivation is fleeting. It's like, I'm going to do this today. Then you say, no, I'm not going to do it, and it's gone.

I don't feel like it.

Yep.

Motivation, yeah, it's your feelings. You're like, I don't feel like it.

Exactly.

Your feelings don't matter right now. Do the thing.

Exactly. Have the discipline. Get on the floor.

But how much better are you going to feel after you do that thing?

Exactly.

You always feel better. You always feel better. I always latch onto that. I grew up just— I enjoy exercise. I enjoy moving around. I like lifting weights. I like jumping around. I always like the feeling after. I'm like, oh, that was a good work. Like, I feel stronger, I have more energy. You know, it's the aftereffects. It's like cold plunge. Cold plunge sucks. Like, I do it, it never feels good, but I love the feeling after and how long that lasts. So you get addicted to that aftereffect. And if you can look past that little bit of discomfort or suffering, whatever we want to call it, and realize on the other end of that You just— you're a better version of yourself and you feel so good. That's where you can kind of keep that motivation in the back of your head and also create discipline around that reward.

Good feeling comes after discipline. Tom, thank you so much for being on the show. It's always great to hear your advice. You know, it's always, like I said, very foundational, it's very functional, and it's wise. It's just, you know, people around moving their bodies. And for everybody who has loved Tom's advice, all his details will be in the show notes. So do go there, contact Tom. He has a big practice. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Oh, thanks for having me. And actually, this just came to mind because, um, I created a whole— a complete home training program. So during COVID— yes. So I want to offer that to your audience at 50% off. So, we'll set up a discount code for your audience. And, I came up with the idea during COVID because everyone was trying to buy home gym equipment and everyone's getting fleeced and all the prices were going ridiculous. I'm like, you don't need much. You need to get a band, get a little exercise ball, and you just need to know the movements. And, I structured— it's a 6-week program. It's all laid out, all the instructions. It's all videoed. I'm doing commentary over it to coach. And you just follow the videos and then write, you know, it's a whole, it's like a little 26-book, 26-page, um, training manual that goes along with it. So let's get, you know, for, for those in your audience who are looking for a place to start, this is a good place and you don't need much equipment and you just need your body.

Thank you so much for that offer. And that link will be in the show notes.