Strength, Mobility, Breathing, and Staying Injury-Free After 40 Ep 133

Every endurance athlete remembers the moment when things finally click. Your swim feels smoother, your pacing makes sense, your fueling works, and suddenly the sport feels not only easier, but more fun. And for many athletes, that moment happens at training camp. That's exactly why we created the Endurance Edge Triathlon Training Camp happening April 22nd through 26th at Lake Jocassee in South Carolina. For 4 incredible days, you'll train in a small group with expert coaches, sports nutrition support, and sports psychology guidance, all designed to help you train smarter, race stronger, and finally connect the dots in your performance. We swim in crystal clear mountain water, ride beautiful and challenging roads, run scenic trails, and spend the rest of the time recovering, learning, laughing, and eating some seriously amazing chef-prepared food.

Mm-hmm.

Camp is intentionally small, just 20 athletes, so you get real coaching, true connection, and amazing breakthroughs. So if you want an experience that can transform your entire season, we invite you to join us. Head to theenduranceedge.com and click training camp and reserve your spot with just a $100 deposit. Come train hard, learn a ton, and leave stronger than you ever imagined. I'll see you there. All right. Welcome back, friends, to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am here with a guest from Next Level Physical Therapy. I'm all about PT. PT is just so great. So obviously, Dr. Jerry Yu knows all about that and has come to a couple of my strength training classes. So he knows what we do and vice versa. And it's, it's like this lovely ecosystem of trying to make endurance athletes stronger, better, faster, not only for their sport, but in life. I know the term longevity is like, you know, kicked around, but Jerry, do you disagree that that's like always been the focus, but now it's like the hot thing, you know?

Absolutely. Yeah. I think there are a lot of things that we've done over the years, both you and I, Chris, where we've done the things, And maybe we haven't called it longevity, even though it was in the back of our minds, but now that it's termed longevity, I think it's now come to the forefront. And again, I think a repeat of what we've done and known for the last 20, 25 years. So yeah, I agree with you. Yeah.

Yeah. So good. All right. So I have to give a little bit of a shout out to you because you did a triathlon and you overcame a very specific fear. So you gotta speak to that.

Thank you for bringing that up. And Chris, thank you so much for having me on your show too, by the way. So triathlon is, has always been near and dear to me, and I think it always will because when I was younger, against my better judgment as an 11 or 12-year-old at the time, my family and I were at a remote beach in Florida with our family friends. And what happened was my brother got caught in a rip tide. So I didn't know any better and I had some lessons so I could, I had basic proficiency in swimming. So I just instinctively just swam out there, and then we were both caught in this undertow. And even though I was only 12, I could literally see my life flash before my eyes. Like, this is it. Like, we're just goners. And I tried to push, you know, I didn't know that you should swim along parallel to the beach at the time. And so out of nowhere, Chris, these two surfers came. And I'll just say it was God's providence, but these two surfers came out of nowhere. And were it not for those guys, we would have actually drowned and not been here to have this conversation. And so after that, I had this incredible phobia with the water, although I was glad I didn't drown. And for a number of years, anytime I go near the water, even, even at the pool, I would start to get a little panic attack. And one day I decided that I just needed to get over this and I just had to resolve. So went to the beach a couple of times, stayed. It was several hours of this, like going to the water, coming back out, like shaking off the, the jitters and finally got in. It was just this moment of triumph and From there I decided like I should back, get back in swimming. And that's when I came across somebody who had talked about triathlon. And so that began my journey. After my first race, I just felt more than the race itself, Chris, which is of course a feat in itself, the, the feeling of accomplishment of getting over this phobia for myself that I didn't think I would ever get over was so powerful that it stuck with me for, for since then.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing that story. And I think that that's, where triathlon is so special for a lot of people of like, wow, I had no idea that I was able to do this or to overcome your fear of water. I mean, we have people all the time who come to us of like they were dropped in the water as a child or had some sort of traumatic experience like that. And yeah, it's a feat. So congratulations.

Yes. Thank you so much.

Now you're kind of getting into some other cool soirées.

Yeah.

Now, so, and you'll also have to mention how, uh, wonderfully young you are.

I will be 51 this April.

Okay. All right.

Very young. But so as we speak, I am chronicling my journey to my first HIIT event, which I'm planning on doing this in May or June in New York City. And so I've been training for the last year and a half or so. I first got inspired by a gym in New Jersey that I work with, the workout I used to work out with, and they talked about HIIT. And I was like, what's HIIT? And they talked about this thing, oh, it's just another fad. And here it is now exploding in the United States. And so, I decided that, you know what, I've pushed my limits in many different areas and I wanted to challenge myself with something different. So, I have been chronically on my journey towards doing my first HIITX event in New York City later this year. Hopefully, I'll get in. It's apparently really hard to get in now as far as like the waitlist and stuff like that. But, just being able to push myself to a very hard level, something I love to do. And I think doing hard things is something I've always done in life and it's always made me a better stronger person. And so this might be the one more thing I wanna add to my bucket list of things to do as I'm getting older.

All right. So for any of the folks who are listening are not familiar with HIROX.

Yes.

That's like the brief rundown. Sure.

It's basically a 1-kilometer run 8 times, but between each kilometer run, you're doing either—

5-ish miles broken up.

5-ish miles broken up. Exactly. And so you're doing anything from, let's see, it's always a standard of wall balls, And not in this order either. Wall balls, burpee broad jumps, lunge walks, heavy farmer's carries, rower, SkiErg. And I think the— am I missing anything? Along those, basically those are the activities you do in between each of these 1-kilometer runs. And so, it's really hard and it's basically like lactate threshold the entire time. I feel like you're just constantly running on high zone 4, zone 5. So, It's a lot. I mean, from what I understand, I've worked with a lot of pros recently, and I have a pro as my coach right now. And, you know, he was saying, dude, it's a lot. It seems like it's not that much, you know, a couple burpees. It's really, really hard. So I'm just preparing myself for that. Yeah.

And what type of times are like pros turning in?

Under an hour, I think, is like the goal. And so if you're, if you're in that, which means you're running really fast. And by the way, I should mention that There are a lot of triathletes transitioning to HYROX and they're crushing it because they got the rundown.

Yeah.

The other stuff is sort of like the sort of cherry on top, but like they really got the rundown. So they, they, they have the, they excel on that. They excel on that. Absolutely. They do. Yeah.

Yeah. Are you running outside or are you running inside?

Uh, I believe it's usually, it can be either one outside or inside depending on the venue. Uh, at New York City, they're actually trying to move it indoors for whatever reason. So it'd be interesting to see what that happens, how that happens. Yeah. Oof.

Yeah. That like makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it. The, the vomit potential for an entire hour, especially with wobbles and burpees.

Oh my God. It's such a bad— and of course they do wobbles at the end, so you're already like taxed and then 100 wobbles, by the way, not just like 20 or 30. Yeah. Oh my God. It's a lot. So the volume intensity are very, very high. Yeah.

Such, such an interesting, almost like CrossFit, uh, hybrid sport in a way. Yeah.

Yeah. And the, the cool thing, predictability. That's exactly it. And that's what's so cool. It's standardized. So if you do a race in Germany or you do a race over here, it's the same events every single time. So you can actually work on improving your times quite a bit and know that the standard is there so you can work towards those getting improvement over time.

Yeah. And I love that there, there's likely maybe a little bit less potential for injury because you're not, you know, doing snatches at high speed or deadlifts at high speed, which, you know, like, if that's your jam, that's good on you. But oftentimes that's when people come to see you.

CrossFit was very good for my business. I'll just tell you. But to say that, yeah, so when you go to CrossFit Games, there's a lot of high skill involved. This is not so much because, you know, the events ahead of time, you can do plenty of things to prepare your body for that. And train for it.

Yeah. So speaking of like physical therapy and trends and what keeps you guys in business, because you know, the beauty of what you guys do is like AI can't replace you.

Thank God.

Like I would, I would hope like, you know, because somebody who can shove a needle in your glute or, or, or do, do like Graston or, so there's all these different like techniques and stuff that you guys have up your sleeve. So like what's the latest and greatest right now? What kind of injuries are you seeing? Are you seeing something from like certain certain sports? Because I know that you like to work with a certain population. So, tell us about that.

Yeah. Absolutely. We specialize in lifelong athletes and runners over 40. I would say that's our, our jam. We do have subsets of women with pelvic floor disorders, college athletes, and high school athletes, but we tend to see a lot of people who are just trying to optimize themselves to continue doing what they love to do for the rest of their lives. The people who often see us are those with either chronic pain or they have performance plateaus and they're not sure how to get over those things. And sometimes, it's merely a tweaking of their programming saying, hey, Listen, I know that you're doing these kinds of things, or I notice you're not taking a rest day, or I notice that you're not— your nutrition sucks, as you already know. And that's a big part of, I think, what— where injuries do tend to linger on, or your mobility really needs some work. And so once we identify those areas, it helps these people to be able to get to where they want to be and stay on that path. Because as you and I both know, the, the most important thing that you and I can do over the age of 30 or 40— I know you're only 29, But the most important that you and I can only do, the only thing you and I can do is to stay uninjured. And how do we do that? And so that's what we're truly like going after people who are looking to, maybe not, maybe they don't necessarily have an injury, but they just want to be able to stay uninjured and we serve that population as well. So to that end, in our system, it's the Move, Excel, Inspire system. It's a 3-step process. And what we try to do is figure out Really two things, and there's always two diagnoses in physical therapy. There is the diagnosis one, which is the symptoms you might be coming in with, whether that's plantar fasciitis, rotator cuff issues, neck pain, low back issues, whatever it is. Those are often symptoms that we present with, and you can often touch those pains or you can reproduce those pains. The more important diagnosis is what the root cause is of those symptoms. So as an example, we have a lot of runners who wear— if their running form is off, we find that they often end up with certain kinds of issues when you add volume and time and intensity with those different gait deviations. And so, we're always looking to how do we solve for both of them because you want to make sure you're feeling better, but we also make sure that we prevent as best we can what caused this in the first place so that you don't have this issue in the future. Having said that, there are times when we will have to refer out when we figure out that the root cause is beyond our scope. So, it was like you, you need to get this really checked out. Because of X, Y, and Z. And so, we have those referral partners in our community that we can refer to in case those instances arise. But, the question in our first phase, which is our move phase, is how do we get people to get better faster? And, that's where our cutting-edge technology comes in. So, some of your athletes from Endurance Edge in the past have experienced something called Shockwave, which has been a real big game changer. And, it's not just my own personal experience, the literature on using Shockwave for things like plantar fasciitis, hamstring issues, even chronic low back shoulder pain, rotator cuff issues, the speed at which this can help get people feeling better faster is unparalleled. More than anything I could do with my hands. But, when we combine that in our regenerative program where we combine electrodry needling with the shockwave and something called blood flow restriction, which I'll get into in a little bit, this regenerative program really helps to get people better faster. And, our goal is always within 3 to 6 visits, that person should feel at least 30 to 40% better if not more. So, once we identify what issues that person might be having and figure out what that root cause might be and if we can solve it, we apply these different regenerative modalities into our programming, making sure that their movement quality also is supplementing what we do with the technology. Because if I just put the shockwave on your foot and I don't address what that root cause is, you're going to come back with the same thing. And that's what we're trying to prevent from happening. Once we go from there, we go into our Excel phase, which is basically how do we now stabilize, strengthen, and secure this area. So it doesn't become an issue. And how do we incorporate this, these activities that this person needs to do into their overall programming if they're a triathlete or if they're a runner or a HIITX athlete so that they can integrate these things into what they do already so that becomes part of their now new habits that they acquire. And for us, the rehab really starts when the pain stops. And so, and I always tell people, hey, the best time for physical therapy is when you're not in pain. You want to be able to fix things. We can actually do a lot of things to help you to not run into the problems you might be— you might have if you don't address these things. And finally, in our Inspire phase, our phase 3, that's where we do a lot of tests and retests to make sure this person is safe and secure to go back into their activity without any uncertainties and with the confidence they need to excel.

So do you guys support people like in an ongoing way, or is it like I need to come back in every 6 months, or what kind of strategy or plan do you set up with that?

Sure. We have a number of athletes who are on our high-performance membership, and that basically is once a month they'll come in for a reassessment of everything going on to see if there are new findings. And then from there, we'll either update or provide a programming that will keep it in place. And once a month they come in to just check in for those kinds of things. And it's been really effective. We have one guy who's— who hasn't been injured now for the last year, but he's like, I just want to keep coming because I just feel good and I don't want to feel not good again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's almost like mental and physical insurance.

That's exactly what it is.

Or muscle insurance, perhaps.

Oh, sure. That too.

Yeah. Yeah, we have folks like that who are on like a nutrition maintenance program, which is once a month we check in. And I mean, I've had some folks who are on that for years and they don't need it, you know, like I'm, I'm not changing the diagnosis necessarily. I'm not necessarily changing the intervention, but they're just like, no, I would just like you to physically be there for me once a month all the time. So I don't know whether it's somewhat similar, but you know, I, we, the mental side of things is so huge.

Definitely. Yeah. You know, it's funny cuz, uh, have you heard of the 4 stages in parenting?

Oh God, yes. But if you wanna, if you wanna go through them for, for our listeners, certainly.

Absolutely. And it applies to us as professionals, by the way. So you'll hear it.

I think that's a great analogy.

So your first phase when your kids are young, it's being caregiver.

Yes.

Second phase is being a cop. Third phase is being a coach. Fourth phase is being consultant. For me, my girls are in college. I'm in the consulting phase, thank God, making them— having them make their own choices and face the consequences on their own. But I can give some guidance. And I think for us as professionals, you and I, Chris, we are all 4 of those at any given point in the process. Sometimes in consulting, sometimes I'm like putting on guardrails and saying, you can't do this. And sometimes it's like, hey, you need a hug. You know, it's that sort of thing where you kind of have to be there in different roles depending on where that person is mentally and emotionally. And where they are in their continuum of the care they're getting or in the rehab process.

Yeah, I agree. And I think folks like you, Jerry, are such a great asset along people's journey to what can be their best at any given moment.

Yes.

It's like right now the Olympics are on and I just like, I am obsessed with the Olympics. Like I, And just like, I'm that person who will like cry at anything and be like, oh my gosh, I just want to hug all of them.

That's awesome.

And just be like, you know, you've just put in the legwork and like you're just trying your hardest. And, you know, they're obviously not getting paid. Well, most of them are not getting paid gobs of money. So it's just a different motivation, which in my mind is kind of like the folks we work with. Yeah. You know, they want to do something amazing for themselves. It's not like they're going to win necessarily. I mean, you know, there is a subset of folks who that's their intention. Yeah, but most people are just like, you know what, I want to— I deserve and should live as best as I possibly can for as long as I possibly can.

Yeah.

In a healthy and active body. So why not have your team of amazing professionals behind you to let you do that? Right.

100%. I mean, I think it's worth investing in yourself, especially if you've gotten to a certain level. Of trying to continue doing what you love. And I think all of us at different phases in our life, you know, I think after the age of 40 where our kids are growing up maybe, or on the older side where we can start looking at the next level for ourselves, what does that look like? And something you've touched on, Jeff, that was important is that yes, longevity is important, but healthspan is even more important. So the quality of a life that we live, especially with respect to our physical health, is even more important as we get older. So who cares if you're living to 90 if you're always sick in bed and you can't get up and take care of yourself? I would rather if I, hopefully I don't have to, but I'd rather live a shorter life, but being able to still do the things I do and be strong, mobile, independent. And that is the same sort of rehab approach we take, I guess you could say, with our clients.

Yes, I agree. I had one client who told me, who's one of our maintenance people, who's like, she doesn't need me, but she, you know, like, we keep coming back and she's like, you know, my intention with all of this is that I wanna be able to wipe my own butt for the rest of my life. And I'm like, you know what? Life goals. Like, we all have to have them, you know, like things that you don't necessarily think about. It's so, it's so true. And speaking of, like, as a dietitian, I can talk about these things. When you lose shoulder mobility, you literally cannot reach behind to do the things. So, and you came to talk to us about shoulder mobility, one of our socials. More from like a swimming perspective, but also like it matters for all the things you're gonna do.

Big time. I'm gonna say that the, the biggest issues that I see for men and women both over the age of 40 is losing shoulder mobility and also losing hip and pelvic mobility. And so, and you think about things that you do on a day-to-day basis, even getting up from the toilet, let's just go there, let alone wiping your butt. But definitely those things can be really inhibiting towards doing everyday things. And so, I always, for myself, I always do routine daily just because I know that I don't wanna lose this stuff as I get older. And so these are things that I give to my own clients. Hey, these are things you should be doing on a day-to-day basis because you're, you're gonna lose these things if you don't continue using them for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this will also be on YouTube for our friends who are watching. So like, what are some of the tricks of the trade that maybe we should be thinking about? Because you did the shoulder mobility that you did for our group. Like we've incorporated that into our strength training.

Love that.

You know, group, which, and everybody's like, oh, you know, Dr. Sorry, tell me. So, I let them lead. Oh, I love it. Which is great that they're all— So, yeah, like what are some of the things that we should be thinking about that you're telling your clients about?

So, I think the first thing that I didn't learn until relatively recently was just how important breathing is as far as maintaining mobility all throughout. And, I know that diaphragmatic breathing, often people use, I used it a lot too when I was doing a lot of yoga in the day. But what I've come to realize is that unless we also look at how do we expand our rib cage and get the mobility there as well, we're going to shut off mobility to the shoulders and also the hips and pelvis. So, I always start with let's get the breathing. Let's think about 3-dimensional breathing first, not just belly breathing because that's one part of it but really kind of getting 3D expansion through entire system to be able to release certain areas and also create more space so that we can do the things that require capacity because we have the ability to do that as well. So, once we start off with breathing, getting people sort of situated there, then learning how to dissociate the shoulder blade from the rest of your shoulder movement. So, really got to thinking about, oh, rotator cuff and like, you know, external rotation. But, if we don't get the shoulder blade to go in line or in sync with the rib cage, and we can do that through breathing, then we're never going to get the full capacity of how we can get into the activities we want to do or the mobility that we need to get to those places. So, that's the first thing we start off with. And then, the second thing is making sure that we're not just addressing the movement you want to do because we can always wrench ourselves into those positions. But really seeing if there are limitations in the capsule because every joint has a capsule around it to keep it stable. And so, if we can identify that there are limitations in the capsule, then we can work on specifically mobility techniques to get those to be looser so that we don't keep wrenching into the ranges, try to force our ways into overhead movements, or into a swim stroke for triathletes, causing more issues and ending up with something that's more serious down the line.

What I'm also thinking of, okay, so now we're addressing breathing, we're addressing shoulder mobility, but what if we're sitting at a desk? I mean, I feel like it all kind of goes together. What if we've— something from, like you had mentioned, like the pelvis? What if it's— could it be stemming from the pelvis, from the neck for which, like you said, I can reach my arms over my head, and people are just like, look. No, that's no, that's not happening. Around their back like we had mentioned. You know, is this something where they— people should be going to PT to see, you know, because I think the standard model of care is like, I'm injured, therefore I go to PT.

So glad you mentioned that. Oh my gosh.

So like how— yeah, we just need to move better.

Yes.

People in that 3-step process that you work with people are— do they have to be injured to come?

That?

And then how do we figure out like where along the line is all of this stemming from potentially?

Yeah, I would say that definitely the person who is conscientious and has limitations, that is definitely a good place. And they're not injured per se, they don't have an injury. That's the best time for us to take a look at things. And for us, we offer a free assessment for any of our Endurance Edge members as our way of giving back. But we just want to give people the right tools so they don't end up coming back for something more expensive. You know, we aren't cheap, but we give the best care that we can. In the meantime, here, here are some things that you really need to work on in order to make sure that you don't end up with a longer-term issue. So yes, physical therapy is absolutely appropriate when you don't have pain, but you do have limitations for sure. And that's the message we're trying to preach. It's like, listen, if you, if you're coming when you're in pain, it might be too late. And now we have to deal with the pain and then we can get into things that actually will give you long-term benefits. So my advice to anyone coming, anyone out there who's listening is like, listen, when you're not injured, get yourself checked out. Doesn't have to be with us. There's a number of physical therapists out there who will help you to find out what you can work on now to become the best athlete, of course, first and foremost, but also so you can move better for everyday things in life.

Yeah. And that's, that's the end goal, right? Or it is in my mind. It is.

Yeah, definitely.

We don't just want to be amazing at the sport, but also like wipe your own butt, friends.

I know, serious. I mean, the, the few times in my life where I had some serious back things, like Not being able to turn to wipe was like, I did not expect this. Like, what? Oh my God. It's like, it's really humbling.

No, honey, can you, uh, yes. Um, talk a little bit about, um, strength training. Cuz again, you've come to a couple other strength training classes and you've led the warmup and the cool down and everybody just absolutely goes gaga for it.

Thank you.

Strength training. And then also like As we age, tell us about the importance of warmup or cool down or whatever variation or whatever you wanna call it. Mm-hmm. Like, is it like I'm cooling down, you know, here's like stretching my stretching the thing. Like, is that, yeah. What we do. So yeah, go for it.

Let's go into warmups first. And I have found this the hard, unfortunately I learned this the hard way because I wasn't warming up properly in my thirties. Even in my 40s. It wasn't until I finally realized I got to do something differently now. So every time I go to a workout, and you might see me do this, I'll just do my own set of things because I have sensitive areas that have had injuries in the past. As long as I do the pre-warm-up before the actual warm-up, I'm in a good place because I've come to realize that I need a good 15-20 minutes to feel like 80%, you know, and that I can get going and then go into the workout. And if I don't do that, I'm gonna get in trouble. And that's the first question, Chris, I ask a lot of our clients coming with chronic issues. And you know the answer is going to be, hey, so what's your warm-up like? Oh, well, you know, some of these, some of these, you know, that kind of thing. And that's it. Or they'll always go for a run. I just go a little later. I was like, you got to do some stuff. Let's talk about this. And that in itself, I think, will save— if I could just teach warm-ups for our guys and gals over 40, I think that'll solve at least 50% of the issues that we see coming in.

I think you're probably right.

Like, what's your warm-up?

I turn— I put my shoes on.

Exactly.

Okay.

It's not warm up. But you really want to get your nervous system involved. So, you know, I do a lot of bouncy kinds of things to get things prepped, then go into breathing and then going into mobility things because, and then even like a preload. So if I know we're going to do deadlifts that day, I will do a couple of isometrics, usually overcoming isometrics. So I'll try to move a heavy object but not move the object and try to generate tension so that I could really prep everything to get ready for lifting heavier. That's a really important part of my own warmup and what I advise a lot of my clients to do. If you do these things, there's a good chance you're not getting hurt when you do the workout. Going back to strength, it has become— I mean, Chris, I went through many years of just preaching strength and, you know, doing light stuff when I was in my 30s because I didn't have time. I was just focusing on triathlon and just racing. So who has time to do strength? Even though later, years later, I realized if I had done what I do now back then, I might have been a better athlete. But that being said, we know that the strength training is so important, especially for endurance athletes. And there's papers on papers showing the evidence that runners who lift often run better. They run safer, they have fewer injuries. So, there's something to that that I really wish that endurance community would really take in that my strength training is part of my training. It's not this thing that I do when I have time. It's actually essential if I want to become the best athlete and become the best version of myself as I get older. And so, that's what I always preach. And for myself, when I started doing my 40s, when I was a mere 160, now I'm 172. But, putting on muscle over time for me has been a huge thing. And, still actually, the funny thing is having a lot of PRs in my 50s, so hitting times I haven't been able to hit in my 30s or 40s was huge. And, I was like, "I should have just taken my own advice years ago." So, anyone out there, you really got to add in strength training. And, strength training, and Kris does an amazing job, by the way, if you haven't gone to her Monday/Wednesday strength training class, by the way, it's awesome. The programming is great. I always leave more tired than I expect, which is good, and more taxed than I think I will be. That being said, if you're not lifting heavy weights, and heavy can be relative, but you got to be lift— you got to be progressively loading over time. You don't want to be squatting 10-pound dumbbells for the rest of your life. That's not going to get you to where you need to be. It's also not going to provide you the benefit that you think you're going to get from strength training. So, making sure that you are on a program that gets you to lift heavier in a progressive fashion is how you're going to get the results you want to get.

Yeah, love that. And then any notes on cooldown?

Yes. So if you're going from that period of high intensity, especially when you incorporate some sort of cardio into the workout and all you do is like go into your car, for example, your body has to transition. And I find that the cooldown also, as I've gotten older, is so much more important. It's as important as the warmup. So, going from one state of just high intensity to nothing, I think, can really kind of put you into a tailspin sometimes. And I've had moments where I've done that, where like, "Oh, I don't feel so good." So, making sure that you're— be gentle with your body. You know, this is how you can nurture yourself. Bring yourself down from that intensity so that you can recover properly. Obviously, part of that recovery and that cooldown might be getting in your protein, your carbs, which I've learned to do over the last couple years. Which really has helped my recovery too. So including that supplementation into your cool down, I think is really key as far as having an effective way to transition into the next thing.

I love that. So cool. Jerry, I would love for you, if you could, as we sort of wind down the episode, would you lead us through like a very specific breathing routine that you would give to clients?

Oh, yeah. Actually, there's two. I would right away.

As you're talking about cooling down, I'm like, yeah. And every time you say breath, I'm like, okay, if I miss something from the breath. So like, so, you know, and somebody might be listening to this on the treadmill or on a walk, like, hey friends, maybe we need a reminder to breathe.

So there's two things I want to say, and this is one that's really good if you have the race jitters or if you're doing something very stressful or you're in a situation where you're stressful. And I learned this from Andrew Huberman. If you— I'm a Andrew Huberman junkie, but one of the things I learned from him was the stacked inhale. And the way you do this is if you find yourself in a moment of panic or anxiety or race jitters, what you wanna do is take a sharp inhale through your nose. So I'll just demonstrate that. And once you get to your max, take another one on top of that. And then yeah.

So like a deep breath in and then like a little extra sniff in and then a nice long breath out.

Exactly. And that's the physiological side. That has been shown to dramatically decrease your heart rate. If you do that and do it as often as you need to, I do that frequently, especially for this podcast. I even did that just to kind of get my nerves down. The second way of breathing is this three-dimensional breathing I was talking about. And the best way to do this is if you're either sitting down in a chair, making sure that you are in what we call stacked position, so that your head, your shoulders, and your pelvis and hips are in one line. So you're not like arching forward, you're not like leaning back into slouch position. You're really in that optimal position for the inside area of your thorax to really get the maximum expansion. So the way you can do this is you're going to take an inhale through your nose, a deep inhale. Take it deep enough where you can take a slow— take it in slowly and not get your neck involved. So we don't want to breathe through our neck, which I see a lot of people doing when I ask them to take a deep breath. So keep your neck relaxed, eyes are forward, feet are flat on the ground. Take an inhale through your nose, make sure it's deep, and think about 3D expansion. So not just, again, through your belly, but also through your rib cage, through the front, back, and sides. So take that in. And then you're gonna exhale, but I want you to make that exhale last for about 8 to 10 seconds, which should be easy for triathletes, but let's just see how it goes. So we're gonna take a breath in, and on my count, we're gonna exhale through our mouth as if you were fogging a piece of glass. So open mouth. So if you did that correctly, your diaphragm, your pelvic diaphragm are gonna descend on the inhale. And on the exhale, then return back to the starting position. So if you do that, you can do that multiple times throughout the day. That's gonna help to free up space. It's also gonna help you to engage your parasympathetic system to start to relax and downregulate so that you can get into better space, be more at peace so that you can go into your next tax, uh, task or get ready for whatever the thing is next that you're gonna do.

Do you like for like proprioception to, cuz I imagine that people are doing this with you and you'll notice. Yes.

Yes.

Like you're just breathing into your chest. Like I could feel myself being like, I can see myself in the camera. Like I am just breathing into my upper rib cage here. Do you like for people to like have a hand on their belly or have a hand on the chest?

It does. If you have your hand on your chest and your hand on your belly and you observe that you're breathing in the right position, you should feel expansion happening at the same time, both of the belly and the chest. The other thing that you can tactically feel every now and then as you breathe is feel for your neck to make sure that you're not breathing through your neck muscles, which again, like I said before, a lot of people do just to kind of keep yourself, okay, chillax, keep the shoulders down is another thing I often keep people on so that they can really get the maximum out of their inhale.

Yeah, that's great. Cause I'm often looking in the, in the mirror going, oh wow, that's, there's a lot going on in my neck. I just need like a, like a, like a, you know, live-in massage therapist.

So do I, for that matter. I think we all do.

Love that. All right, Jerry. So how can people get a hold of you to potentially work with you? Because you have not only clinics here, but also in New Jersey.

That's right. We have two offices in New Jersey. I have an amazing team that's managing those in Woodcliff Lake and Montclair. And we have our clinic down in Cary and Raleigh, which we opened up about 8 months ago. So, to reach us, if you go to our website, N as in Nancy, L, so Next Level, NLPhysio.com. You can also go to our Instagram. Mine is @DrJerryYoo, one word, or @NextLevelPhysioPT to see what we're about. We also have a YouTube channel, Next Level Physio. So, if you want to learn more about us, and of course, like I said before, for anyone in the endurance edge community, if you'd like to just meet us and just kind of get a handle on what's going on, if you've been frustrated even after PT or chiro or injections or surgery even, and you don't have the answers you're looking for, we'd be— we would love to have the opportunity to just present you with other options that you might not have tried and maybe even a roadmap to how you can become the best version of yourself this year and beyond.

Let's tie it all up with one or two things that you think people could walk away with if they learn— if they remembered nothing else. What are some of it? What are your final tips for them so that they can truly be active and amazing for life?

I think of 3 things off the top of my head. The first one is always tying in what you're doing to a greater purpose for yourself or for your loved ones. So for me, I want to be the best version of myself and I want to do hard things because I love doing those things. But I also do it because I want to still be able to carry my wife when I'm 90. I wanna still be able to do things with my kids and hopefully grandkids one day and not be the guy who's stuck on the couch because I didn't do my stuff in my 30s and 40s or 50s. So tying in what you do with a greater purpose that, that helps you to serve other people better. Number 2 would be making sure that you always think about how you can incorporate strength training and mobility into your training. It is part of your training. So making sure you do those things. And finally, making sure that what you do outside of your training also contributes. So for example, making sure that your sleep, your nutrition, uh, your stress levels, all those things are in check so that you can do the things that you love to do at the best, at the very best.

Love that. Dr. Jerry Yu from Next Level Physio, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Well, thank you so much for having me, Chris.

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