Episode 84: Mobility Training for Chronic Pain and Why Simple Flexibility Isn't the Fix with Mr and Mrs Strange

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• Joe Gambino
• Joe LaVacca

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Summary

In this episode of the Beyond Pain podcast, hosts Joe Gambino and Joe LaVacca welcome guests Sarah and Grayson Strange to discuss their journey from CrossFit to FRC training. 

They explore the importance of individualized training, the transition from traditional methods to joint-specific training, and the significance of understanding sensations during workouts. 

The conversation also touches on the myths surrounding training to failure and the ongoing journey of fitness and health.

Takeaways

• Coffee preferences can reflect personal routines and habits.
• The transition from CrossFit to FRC training was driven by personal experiences with pain.
• Joint-specific training focuses on individual needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Mobility is often misunderstood; it's about more than just flexibility.
• Training to failure is not always necessary and can vary by individual.
• Understanding sensations during training is crucial for effective progress.
• Clients often fear losing strength when changing training methods.
• Individualized training plans can lead to better outcomes for clients.
• Communication about sensations and feelings during training is essential.
• The journey of fitness is ongoing and requires adaptation.

Transcript

Joe Gambino (00:00)
Welcome back into the Beyond Pain podcast. am one of your hosts, Joe Gambino, and I'm here with our other host, Joe Lavaca. And we have two special guests here with us today. Is this the first time, Joe, that we've done two guests at the same time?

Joe LaVacca (00:13)
I was just thinking that and I think you are 100 % correct. This is the first double date that we've had.

Joe Gambino (00:19)
Double date.

Sarah Strange (00:19)
Next

Joe Gambino (00:19)
There we go. We got our repeat guest on in ⁓ Grace and Strange and we have you guys are married. Yes. I didn't want to make I didn't want to make like, you know, the let's see. Yes. The assumptions here.

Sarah Strange (00:21)
This is crazy.

Yeah

I really wanted to take

Joe LaVacca (00:32)
Yeah.

Sarah Strange (00:34)
the name Strange because Sarah Strange has a super girl sound to it. I was like, I'm going to do this.

Joe Gambino (00:36)
Yeah, you never know. Yeah.

Yeah, there we go. And we have Sarah Strange here as well. And I'm excited to have you guys both on the podcast. And I want to give you guys the floor to let us know a little bit more about you. But Grayson, you have the you already know the question. I don't know if Sarah will know. But before you guys get into it, you have to let us know how you take your coffee.

Sarah Strange (01:01)
but Chemex pour over is the method. gotta weigh the beans, measure the water temperature. It's a very precise, probably the most precise thing that happens in my life actually. Everything else is just sort of, I feel it out, but the coffee is very regimented and that's thanks to you. Yeah, and I can make you guys shed a tear probably, but I, due to some like weird kind of perimetopause MCAS.

strange crap. don't do very well with coffee anymore so I am on a I prefer black tea from the Yunnan province of China at this point. Yeah, caffeine for less drama. ⁓

Joe LaVacca (01:39)
Hey, look, whatever works, whatever works. That's great.

I like that a lot. That's a great description.

Joe Gambino (01:47)
you

Sarah Strange (01:52)
Sad but true. It's good, I'm drinking coffee for both of us now, so it's cool.

Joe LaVacca (01:58)
Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. You got to

double down. I mean, if you're to do all that process, Grayson, then you got to at least have what? Five, six cups a day minimums?

Joe Gambino (02:05)
Yeah.

Sarah Strange (02:06)
Yeah, yep. You know you're getting

old when having a cup of coffee is like a cheat, you know? Yeah.

Joe Gambino (02:12)
Yeah

Joe LaVacca (02:13)
yeah, I

actually really value that time. And we were just all talking about kind of kids offline. But I wake up early, I'll run down to the gym here in my apartment building. And then all the time in the gym, I'm just like, wow, I can't wait to get upstairs and just like, sit in silence and have a cup of coffee and maybe read and, you know, get caught up on some emails. And then every time I open the door, there's my daughter. Hey, dad, what's going on? And I'm like, ⁓ but it's

Joe Gambino (02:39)
You

Joe LaVacca (02:39)
But it's Saturday, why are you up at 620?" And she was like, you know, just told Alexa to wake me up. I got lots to do today. I want to do my makeup and my hair and my this and I got to get ready for dance. I'm like, dance is in six hours. Can you go back to bed, please? Like, so yes, I do know.

Joe Gambino (02:54)
You

Sarah Strange (02:55)
Yeah. Wake up at like four

with that private window. Yeah.

Joe Gambino (02:59)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (03:00)
Coffee

tea time is sacred and I realized that it is definitely a sign of getting, I don't want to say older, but wiser, right? Because we value our time more as we get, you know, later on into life. But exactly, exactly.

Sarah Strange (03:10)
Yeah.

Joe Gambino (03:13)
Particularly the quiet time.

Sarah Strange (03:15)
We have

one like coffee memory that we reminisce about the most and it's it's so gone now but like before we had kids when we lived in Denver we would go teach class in the morning and then go skateboard and drink cold brew in the afternoon like a 3 p.m. cold brew was like the best thing ever and I mean one just having the freedom to go skateboard and like leave you know that's gone but also drinking caffeine that late in the day like you know now I have to be pretty regimented like I cut my caffeine off early so I could sleep and it's just it's so funny to think about

Joe Gambino (03:31)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (03:32)
You

Sarah Strange (03:45)
that freedom that we just took for granted. That was like the peak of low stress levels for us. Like we always look back on that. Remember the days after we could just fuck off and drink cold brew. sorry. Can I swear? ⁓

Joe LaVacca (03:47)
BAAAAY

Joe Gambino (03:47)
Hmm.

Joe LaVacca (03:50)
you

Joe Gambino (03:50)
Ha

Joe LaVacca (03:55)
Yeah, totally cool.

Joe Gambino (03:55)
Yeah, you can swear. All you

want. We got the explicit tag.

Joe LaVacca (03:59)
Totally cool. Totally cool. We actually welcome it. It means the stores are getting real and the emotions are getting connected to it. yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Strange (04:05)
I

Joe LaVacca (04:12)
All right, you guys want to talk a little bit about the basis and where you guys are and where you're going. I know you got some exciting things on tap. So when we fill us in and then we'll start with opening up some questions and stuff.

Sarah Strange (04:27)
Cool. You want to start there? I always am very thorough in my storytelling, so I apologize if I go good. I'll interject if I need to. just pinch me. Grayson and I met, I joined his CrossFit Jam, so we started off as CrossFit people. then... 2010? 2010, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that evolved from CrossFit, then we moved to North Carolina Conditioning, worked with Rob Wolf for a little while.

He sold his gym. opened our own space in Chico called Basis with a business partner that we had from NorCal. And then that's kind of really where we started to really implement FRC with strength and conditioning. And then during the pandemic, we moved from California back to upstate New York. I'm from here. Grayson's parents have moved with us to Chico.

They were totally on board after the pandemic, not just the pandemic, but the fires. California is in the state of like the Valley just kind of burns every other year, every year, however often. And it's really, really like rough. Yeah. Like Bonnie was born in 2020 and she for like two solid months could not go outside because it was like a purple dot hair quality for two months straight. It's horrible. So I decided.

Joe Gambino (05:29)
Hmm.

Joe LaVacca (05:44)
wow.

Sarah Strange (05:49)
you know, forget this, are we doing here? So we upped and moved and then we transitioned from a big location to this basement that you see here in this house. So the goal was to do a personal training studio and to kind of patch over with the online stuff that we've been doing with the pandemic. And then we realized that the online thing actually wasn't that bad and we enjoyed it. ⁓

And it's more, a little bit more scalable. You can reach more people. You can really target the specifics rather than just having to deal with who's willing to come train with you in your specific location. You can really get into like, I really like this specific type of person. I want to find those people. So now we have clients all over the world. We have an online program. We also do personalized programming. We do personal training. We do assessments. So we have a good blend now with people who come to the house to train and then all the.

Joe Gambino (06:35)
Hmm

you

Sarah Strange (06:45)
online side of things. So it's, that's a nice balance. Yeah. Sorry. I, you have anything to say? No, beautiful. Concise. Perfect. Yeah. I'm a verbal dominator.

Joe Gambino (06:47)
Hmm

Yeah.

Hahaha.

Yeah.

So I'm curious. mean, we always, we kind of start this off with asking like your own personal pain or injury or journeys, how it might, you know, lead you to, to where you guys are today and what you guys are doing. I'm also curious. I don't know if, ⁓ that leads to it, but what the, I'm really curious about your journey from going from like CrossFit gyms all the ways now to do more of like the FRC internal strength model training and how that stuff differed and what kind of like really brought you in that direction. So.

there's a question there somewhere.

Sarah Strange (07:36)
Yeah, totally. Well, you know, mean, we both have very different backgrounds, but, you know, I was always just like a meathead and I loved lifting and doing cool athletic things, but not on the sports side. Like it was always gym oriented. did no traditional sports really. And with my own body, like what led us to this was just kind of progressively feeling more and more like shit from training.

Joe LaVacca (07:36)
I

Joe Gambino (07:38)
Hahaha

Sarah Strange (08:02)
Like, you know, being in the mindset of like, I'm doing these things that are healthy, I'm trying to be athletic and strong, and I still have these problems. And then adding that on with training people who are all going through the same thing. Like we're all, you know, doing the right stuff, quote unquote, and still having pain and problems and not really having a good answer as to why that was outside of just trying to avoid stuff. So I think that was really the motivation was to find a better way to train people and actually like really.

figure out what's going on with people. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like in the life cycle as a trainer, you basically, you try to figure out the best thing to do, you know, like what are the best programming methods? What's the best kind of way to exercise gravitate towards one thing or another. And eventually you kind of basically like get off in a certain bus stop, you know, where you're like, this is good enough. Like I like this, this thing here, and I'm just going to keep doing this forever. And whatever happens, it's like,

just make an excuse for it and say this is what I do. And I feel like a lot of trainers, ⁓ they don't try to expand their knowledge farther into like a semi-therapeutic zone where it's like I want to be able to use these tools to help you not get injured and then help you manage injury rather than having to constantly just send you to some other source, a physical therapist.

at which point they might say, need to stop swinging a kettlebell or you need to stop doing crossfit. Cause we all know that so many like orthopedic surgeons, therapists, chiropractors, whoever their advice is like, well, just stop bending your knees past 90 degrees or, you know, like you're just going to have to never put weight overhead again. And then you lose those people. So with CrossFit, mean, that's like the ultimate example of like a gauntlet.

like so many things that people have no business doing when they just start exercising. And so we kind of saw that and it was like, huh, this isn't really going like we thought it was supposed to go because their whole mentality was like, the figure you are, the healthier you are, bing, end of story. And we're like, well, we're not seeing that. Like we're doing all of your exercise standards. You know, we've got this motherfucker with the bar straight over his fucking head. His hips are below his knees. Like he's doing everything exactly like he's supposed to be doing.

but he looks terrible, his shoulders are about to fall apart. Like, you know, he's already had three back spasms this month, you know, and some of those people will stay and others just go away. And we were like, how do we fix that? Like, that's not good enough for us. So CrossFit just became too much. It was like, we tried so hard to make CrossFit doable for everyone. And the real solution was like, you got to stop doing CrossFit basically. Like you have to compartmentalize it so much.

Yeah, when we went to NorCal actually, I that was really the first kind of like, these guys have already gone through that gauntlet of running through clients and getting people injured and so they had a pretty good idea of a better way to get people to do CrossFit but in a little more...

slowly progressable version where you have them go through an on-ramp week. I that was something that we hadn't really thought about, but instead of just throwing people into CrossFit classes, it was like, let's get people in and introduce these things to them and find different options for them to use. we were like, wow, that's a really good idea. They had a really good, I mean, they had just been in the game for a long time already, so they had kind of seen the meat grinder effect on people, but that was kind of our first, ⁓ we don't have to do CrossFit. Not everybody just needs to do CrossFit. I when I was, I think about this all the time,

poor mother was taking CrossFit classes. know, my little, at the time she was in her 60s, never really done any exercise and I'm like, we should do some cleans. I know your elbow doesn't really do elbow stuff, but we're just gonna do cleans and we'll start lighting. Snatches. Snatches, we'll get you on the pull-up bar, we'll throw some bands on you and it's gonna fix your problem just like everybody else and you now when I think about that, I'm like, I can't believe I ever thought that was appropriate, but you know, here we are. Yeah.

Well, yeah, just that whole concept that like an exercise, like an overhead squat is going to fix somebody's mobility issues that can't overhead squat. If you use good technique. Yeah. And then so the next, the next phase was, okay, well, maybe there's a progression of exercises that you have to be able to do this many reps at about this weight, have it be in proper form. And then that's going to allow you to progress the next exercise. You know, that's where we, that was the next stage that we went to.

Joe Gambino (12:13)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (12:31)
⁓ And then that was also combined with trying all of these like random mobility wide exercises for mobility to just kind of like floss and stretch and stuff like that. ⁓ You know, pulling people off of kipping pull-ups and certain things, basically limiting exercises. So it was like, you can't do these exercises. We had this whole kind of complicated system going on. I personally, wrapping back into that, your own personal injury story,

I was hell bent on being a professional ballet dancer, so I did very intense 13 years of ballet. I wound up at Joffrey, just about ready to become a professional, and I fell apart because I couldn't maintain the eating habits to keep my muscle mass low enough to pass for a ballet dancer, because I just do not have a ballet figure. But my hips were fucked up. So I started doing CrossFit.

Joe Gambino (13:03)
Hmm.

Joe LaVacca (13:18)
Interesting.

Interesting.

Sarah Strange (13:27)
And my hips were just like, no, thank you, forget this. ⁓ Hips and low back. So I had gotten to a point where I just like, couldn't really train legs, like squatting, cleans, all this stuff I love to do, running, just forget like super hip pain, couldn't walk. I mean, it would just be debilitating. Yeah. So anyway.

Joe Gambino (13:31)
you

Joe LaVacca (13:48)
Yeah, that's

no, that's really interesting. And I remember reading a while ago or perhaps, ⁓ one of my coaches told me this because he owns a CrossFit gym too, that the average CrossFit membership lasts about three years. ⁓ and I think it's a lot of it for that reason. It's group, right? It's all group classes. I mean, I've been there a few times and I've run some workshops for them and I've tried to educate, you know, different CrossFit boxes across the city, but it just seems every time I walk in, you know, there's the wad.

Joe Gambino (14:07)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Joe LaVacca (14:18)
And I'm like, well, what, what about Nancy or John or Corey? Like they all look different. They have different training ages and it's like, well, wait, we do all the movement prep stuff. So I think hearing you guys talk about, you know, mobility water, Rom water, this and that, the other thing is what you guys were doing to mix in with those classes. Now, how do you describe joint specific training versus mobility training with your experience and now the way that you kind of implement it with clients.

Joe Gambino (14:32)
and

Hmm.

Sarah Strange (14:49)
It's a good one. Yeah, you just jump in whenever. ⁓ I mean, the way that I usually explain it to people is joint specific training is training your joints to be better at being the joint. Like your shoulder needs to do specific things. And we can train those things using the same principles that you would use for any other strength training exercise, but the outcome is...

I don't care about your bench press per se, I just want your shoulder to be better at doing shoulder stuff. And the side effect of that often is more mobility. And I think where when I encounter people who've heard about mobility training, think they're always thinking about like, ⁓ I need to be really flexible and bendy. You want me to be a contortionist. And we're always coming back to like, it's not about getting really bendy and being really like a contortionist, it's really just about

making that joint a little bit better in its end ranges and that looks really different for people and it's very, very individualized. So, you know, like that component of joint specific training is so much like, let's look at this person's shoulder and see what is missing based on what they want to do and that might be really different from Billy. thinking about it from that perspective, like, that's really what got us so bought into the joint specific thing because all those clients that we've been working with for years, get Billy on the pull up bar,

pull

ups and Billy's like, I'm getting better at pull ups and my shoulders feel awesome. And then we have Susie who is also capable and they have similar, you know, athletic abilities. Susie does pull ups and she's like, I'm not getting better at pull ups and my shoulder feels like shit. They're like, that's right. Because we're not looking at those shoulders as shoulders are just like, I don't know, you just need a bigger band and just keep doing pull ups and it'll all work out. also changes like joint specific mindset.

⁓ kind of supersedes form. So, you're initially taught as a trainer that exercise form is your safeguard. know, the better you are at guiding somebody through proper form, then they will be biomechanically safe from injury. And when you realize that not everybody is the anatomical skeleton, with, you know, movable parts exactly as predicted, ⁓ that...

Joe Gambino (17:06)
Hmm.

Sarah Strange (17:07)
form is not going to help everybody. You you can give somebody, you can give 10 people the exact same squat form and make sure that their squats look identical. You don't know what is happening internally though. Like you have no idea if you haven't done an assessment, what those 10 hips are looking like. And you have probably some of those hips, I'd say six out of 10 of those hips are borderline where they have so little internal rotation, that it's a very short.

period of time before they start having problems if they don't train to get more hip internal rotation in addition to squatting or maybe as a priority. ⁓ So you have to start looking at that first and then that might change the squat. You might say, well, this person can do some version of a leg press, but they don't really have any business in this super deep degree of hip flexion. They would do much better with something else. But then you can also universally say, back squats are bad. Nobody should back squat anymore.

Joe Gambino (17:37)
Hmm.

Sarah Strange (18:05)
just do unilateral stuff, that'll save the day.

Some people can load that stuff and a back squat could be really advantageous for strengthening their lumbar and all these things if they have all the capsule space. So it just changes the game basically. it, it, it puts the person before the form and the exercise. And then you can decide what they need to be doing based off of how their joints are already, you know, in what situation. Yeah, that's, that's probably the biggest difference is just the specificity thing. Like you say mobility, it's like, well, whatever, get more mobile, but

the joint specific aspect really does take the individual into account and looks at like Where do you need to be more mobile? Why is it it may not even be mobility really? I mean, that's a that is really a side effect. There's this common misconception that drives me nuts I mean all of us we watch Instagram and get driven nuts by different people's major claims, you know that the claims that drive me nuts or that that like flexibility and bendy Ness is some sort of a cure-all to joint pain like that you're in pain because you're

Joe Gambino (18:44)
Hmm

Thank

Sarah Strange (19:08)
tight. It's like just not true because most of the really flexible people that I know hurt more than the tight people like they're a wreck. So that's not fixing problems you know like Grayson is way less flexible than I am but he's just as flexible as he needs to be for the stuff he likes to do whereas I do heels you know like put Grayson in a heels class and he'll be in it won't be good.

Joe Gambino (19:13)
Hmm.

Joe LaVacca (19:13)
Yeah. Totally. 100%. Yep.

Joe Gambino (19:32)
Hahaha

Joe LaVacca (19:32)
I wouldn't

mind seeing that. That'd be kind of cool.

Sarah Strange (19:35)
It would

probably make some good Instagram content. At least there's that. Yep.

Joe Gambino (19:38)
Hahaha

I really like, ⁓ go ahead, Joe. Yeah. I was going to say, I really like the stuff that you say where you're talking about maybe more like joint specific training being, you know, superseding form, so to speak, because something I've been thinking about for a while now is, know, you have all these people and I've known, I've worked with a lot of people who've done weightlifting and power lifting and cross fitting and they look really good from a movement perspective.

Joe LaVacca (19:43)
Well, I really appreciate that. Yeah, that was great. No, no, no, again, I was just going to say that was great.

Joe Gambino (20:08)
But a lot of those people also still have pain. It's like, well, why is that the case? And there's even the whole debate online about strength. If you're strength trained through a full range of motion, you guys have been talking about this and you're going to be saved from injury. And it's quite not the case. just, I think there's a lot of people on this podcast who probably don't really know FRC. They don't know what like internal strength model really means. Maybe joint stuff versus mobility is something kind of newer to them. So you guys are kind of like,

You mentioned mobility versus joint specific stuff and flexibility. would you, I always feel like, because we are in the same kind of like, we've taken the same seminars and things like that, we have very same knowledge base. How would you, if you had to change the definition of mobility based on the things that you do currently, how would you define that? And how would it be different from a normal mobility routine that most people would expect that you might provide them based on how we talk about mobility?

Sarah Strange (21:07)
That's a good one. That's a deep question there. Yeah. Got an answer? How much time you got? Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, there's kind of the nouveau definition of mobility, which is just sort of like, you know, you have usable, controlled ranges of motion. I kind of, I almost just like find the term to be too vague to even really

Joe Gambino (21:08)
Mm-hmm. We're philosophers on the podcast here,

Joe LaVacca (21:10)
Yeah, Joe, was, wow, that's,

that's great, man.

Joe Gambino (21:14)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (21:34)
too excited about because it's just such a, I only really use it because it's the language that people understand. Sort of starting to get into this whole like recovery, joint health, like something's wrong that needs fixing and mobility is the first word that like pops into people's heads. They're like, I need to go find some mobility when really like to me, I don't even know. mean, like we look at things like, ⁓

Joe Gambino (21:51)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (22:02)
connective tissue and neurological function dysfunction. know, like one of the biggest things that we have come to learn in the more recent years of using FRC and Grayson was really the first person to very strongly insist on how important it was. And you see it in our program, Joe, how it pops up where it says, don't feel this in the wrong place. ⁓ Feeling things in the wrong place, basically, like you take an athlete that's been practicing

Joe Gambino (22:19)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (22:29)
whatever it is for a really long time, whether it's just a strength athlete or an athlete athlete, typically is where you start to see the most kind of dysfunctional stuff happen. And they might look okay when they're moving, but then you try to get them into loading, you know, end ranges and they just don't have the capacity to load the right tissue. It's just not there. Like they feel it in the wrong places. And so that to us is almost a bigger indicator. It's like how

Well, does your nervous system understand what's happening and how much control does it have over the joint and all of this like more kind of finer tuned? But it doesn't make a person more mobile It just grants them better access to the tissues that they have and it like starts to fix the problem And then the pain starts to go away Yeah, I I I think I think we're the there's a disconnect that's hard getting somebody in who's never thought about it from this perspective there's like

I deadlift and the right side of my back hurts often when I deadlift. And sometimes it hurts when I lift really heavy, but sometimes it hurts when I'm just warming up and like I don't understand because I can deadlift 500 pounds or whatever. And you get that person in there and you start explaining this like, okay, let's take a look at your hips and you get them moving each hip individually, going through that little process of looking at their movement and trying to load some specific aspects of just their hip and they're like, wow, like my right hip.

really feels way different than my left hip, and I've never felt that before doing squats and deadlifts. You gotta get into that layer of specificity, but once you start doing that, then it really starts, they can really start to feel the difference. like, ⁓ yeah, that's weird. When I try to do this on my right hip, it doesn't do that at all on my left side does. That makes sense why maybe when I'm picking this thing up and using both my hips, my back is so pissed on the side. I think that component of.

getting them in and having them feel it. Again, like what Sarah's talking about, like feeling it in that tissue when you're trying to load it really, it's a big aha moment for those folks who've never done that stuff before. mean, I, you know, like with my own body, my trajectory of my back problem started at lifting really heavy, but then it started to progress to like, it would happen randomly. And if you looked at the technique of my deadlift, you'd be like, that looks like a good deadlift. You're not doing anything wrong, but I could throw my back out.

warming up with 135 pounds. And when I started to look at this stuff, it was like, wow, my right hip is totally different than my left hip. That's something that was really hard to notice without that specific component of going in and like really trying to explore that stuff. think that's the key with understanding that. And once you start to see that, can sort of, I think that helps change the perspective of what mobility is. Like mobility isn't just this general, want to be able to move in all these directions. It's sort of like you get a hip that

Joe Gambino (25:01)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (25:18)
doesn't do as much as the other hip, that hip is not really mobile compared to the other one. If we can improve that and that hip behaves like the other one, that is mobility, but there's so much more than just the term mobility. Like that's just a hip that does more stuff. Yeah, mobility is basically like a word like exercise. know, like it's a, an entry point to a bucket, you know, and some people's bucket only has two tools in it. You know, like, well, I know how to stretch and I know how to foam roll. That's your mobility bucket.

Joe Gambino (25:38)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (25:46)
Yeah.

Joe Gambino (25:47)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (25:47)
But then the more you do,

the more education you have, the more experience you have, that just turns into this whole aspect to me of like, well, there's joint health. I don't know, where does it cut off and where does it become therapy? There's probably some massive flow chart that would branch under the mobility terminology. We track people with the mobility term and then we funnel them through these.

The flowchart basically.

Joe LaVacca (26:17)
Right, right, right. I want to,

I want to stick with that concept because I think it's so interesting how you guys highlighted it. You know, someone comes in and they can deadlift 500 pounds or they can squat 500 pounds. And I think a lot of the messaging from even maybe more so a rehab standpoint is you have to get stronger, right? Your core has to get stronger. you just need to be able to get stronger at your hip and stronger here. And people come in with that and I tell them, well,

Joe Gambino (26:41)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaVacca (26:47)
You're already stronger than me and I don't have pain when I deadlift or I squat. So I don't know how I, you know, pitch that to you to get stronger than what you already are. And I love this idea then of, well, let's pivot. Let's see what the affordances are at each one of your hips. Let's see if you are maybe compensating without knowing it. You start to put them through this training thing and

What I'm thinking about for clients listening or clients I've worked with is a lot of them then get worried about their 500 pound deadlift and their 400 pound squat. So how do you guys navigate maintaining these high numbers with training there? Cause people took their lives to get there and then still backing off and creating some of this joint space with the training.

Sarah Strange (27:33)
Okay.

It's managing panic a lot of the time I mean it depends on the person but a lot of the the stronger or consistent people that we've had Grayson has to feel a lot of these guys Where he gets somebody that's a hot mess, you know and they're like I have been trying for years and they're never really willing to go too far down this road because Strength and conditioning builds the concept of a one-week D load into people's brains so hard that they can't take

Joe Gambino (27:46)
you

Sarah Strange (28:11)
time off, like they don't understand like, they understand it maybe on a CrossFit level where it's like you want to work on your conditioning, you put your strength on maintenance and you do a conditioning cycle, you know, same thing for your joint health, you put the strength on maintenance and you do a joint health cycle where you funnel the energy in that bucket towards building new tissue that you need. But the funny part is, is it just takes experience to understand that when you really bump up the quality and capacity of your joints,

you're still strength training your joints. It's not just a relaxing stretch, some guy with a pine branch comes over. It's hard training and Grayson is able to pop in and be like, oh, I haven't snatched in, I don't know, four years. I just threw two or pounds over my head, no big deal. I can still pull 500 pounds off the ground. I haven't tried that in a really long time. By maintaining, and for me, I popped right back into dance at 46 years old and I was

It was like boink, like no big deal because I had been doing all of these things. But people don't understand that and they don't trust that. They come to you and they immediately think that they're just going to suddenly wither away and get super weak. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely a trust component there and like a probably reassurance that needs to keep happening. like, don't worry. But I think some things that I find helpful are, you know, just talking to them. Like, what have you been doing this whole time?

well I lift four days a week, I deadlift whatever, twice a week. How does your back feel when you're deadlifted? It feels like shit. And I go, do you think doing more deadlifts would make your back feel better? And like, no, I know that. And they're like, okay, and what about last week when you told me that you had to go pick something up off the ground and you also hurt your back? It's like, okay, cool. So we know that that shape of your body is problematic.

And then you get them, maybe we get it, hopefully on that first session, we're like, we get in there and we take a look at their hips and we start loading stuff. We start maybe loading like a hip that you find just doesn't rotate anymore. It has no internal rotation. And like, look, you're getting into that position when you're dead lifting and I'm just having you, you're not lifting any weight. You were literally just trying to do an isometric here and like push your back ankle down in the ground. And you're having a really hard time doing that. We need to work on that. Like that will make your hip better and you can feel that.

and you're asking your hip to do something that it can't do without all the weight. And that usually is like, okay, that's cool. I always, I really do use, I use this story all the time. I probably said this the last time I was on a podcast with you guys, but when I first started, went to FRC and started doing this stuff, I was 32, so it was like 10 years ago. And that was at my sort of peak of like, was throwing my back out pretty consistently, my left shoulder was bugging me, my left knee, just had like all these nagging things that just were.

going on in perpetuity. And I kinda just quit lifting and I was so depressed because I've heard all the same things that we all heard, like, if you don't do this many sets per week, you're losing muscle mass. I'm just gonna give it all up after like 17 years of lifting. But in that year of just working on my deficient stuff and not doing any training, I was feeling way better, but I did lose weight. I probably lost like 10 pounds from not lifting. And I went back.

and I was feeling good enough that I was like, just gonna lift. I'm just gonna try to do like a little lifting experiment and do, you know, one day a week of a couple sets of squats, a couple sets of press, and a couple sets of deadlifts. And in basically like eight weeks of doing that, so I had eight sessions of each lift basically. I PR'd every one of my lifetime press, squat, deadlift at 10 pounds less body weight. And that, you know, then it was like.

This all makes sense like my joints do more work through more range of motion. Of course, that's gonna make me stronger. I Would be lying to you if I said even after all this time ten years I still don't have that little voice that's like do another set just go deadlift one more time You know, even I mean I will fight with that I'm sure for the rest of my life So I really empathize with people who have that fear of like I don't want to give up my deadlift

I think though that component of getting somebody in and getting them to feel that difference and you're like, dude, your hip, I just had you stand up and try to rotate your hip with no weight and you can't do that on your right side. It makes sense why it doesn't feel great when you squat 400 pounds. That's it, you know. It's hard to people also, which is funny because a lot of these people are professionals and that voice in their head is still so whacked out that it's like,

Joe LaVacca (32:44)
Right, no.

Sarah Strange (32:54)
this is gonna take time. Like this is a, building new tissue. Like you wouldn't expect to deadlift for two weeks and get it all the way to where you want it to go. Like you need to do this for a long time. Like, you know, and a lot of these things, just like you guys know as therapists, like.

Joe Gambino (33:08)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (33:14)
you can't just stop doing the damn exercises. There's an effect of the exercise, it gets better because you're doing the thing. It's not something that you just take some kind of magic vacation and then forever you have to keep doing it. Yeah, and I should have said this too. When I took that year off, I don't ever recommend anybody do that. I could be an idiot and not follow good advice, but I would never recommend that somebody just takes a year off. There's definitely an aspect of...

Joe Gambino (33:25)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (33:42)
find the stuff that you can still do. I probably could have done hinging in less range of motion or something like that. I just gravitate towards that extreme of like, fuck it, it's not working, I'm just gonna do this instead because I'm- Grayson just really took that movement prerequisites thing apart. Like, if you don't have this, and you have no business doing that, and he was like-

Joe LaVacca (33:58)
Yeah.

Yeah. So it sounds like strength from what I'm hearing from you guys and what I try to elicit to patients is that strength is a lot more than just a muscle, right? It's your nervous system. It's your coordination.

Sarah Strange (34:04)
Can't do it anymore.

Joe LaVacca (34:17)
It's your motor control, whatever you want to label as a factor under that umbrella. Like you said, mobility is the umbrella. And then we've felt people through exercises, the umbrella, then we funnel people through. I think a lot of times do strength can be that umbrella where people miss out on just thinking of, my muscle has to be as big as possible to solve a complex problem, like a snatch or a squat or deadlift. And instead it's, well, maybe you actually don't have.

the space to solve that problem. So I really appreciate that kind of underlying message that you're you're giving us because I think that's really, really valuable.

Sarah Strange (34:54)
There's also like there's space, know, like having joint space is obviously like first and foremost, but there's also just this funny misconception that, you know, somebody that can deadlift 500 pounds or, you know, overhead press 300 pounds or whatever it is, that every single aspect of their shoulder joint is strong because they're very strong at that specific lift. But then you take that person and you give them some end range.

rotational isometric and they hardly have anything. You know, it's there's nothing there or there's tissue lines that have been injured. They're very weak at this one specific spot. So there's it's kind of part of mobility is kind of finding what's happening in this full range and they might be an absolute beast in this band right here. But right here there's an old injury and then this is just super weak and then this is neurologically like hell, Twilight Zone.

And so this is the stuff they need to work on because this thing right here is fine and you can easily maintain that. But you have to address this stuff because this stuff is going to start to encroach on this stuff. And that's just the whenever we hear people, they're like, you don't need to be specific in all of the working with people that we've ever done. Not being specific has never worked for us. Like it's never fixed somebody's problem to be like, ⁓ do more nonspecific crap and hope that that fixes your very specific shoulder issue.

Yeah, specificity is extremely important. It's almost so hilarious. Like Grayson had a back thing from jujitsu. Like he did this competition and he was unfortunately thrust in with a bunch of younger men that had something to prove at that Blue Dog level. And every single one of those people left with an injury because it was just like, er, you know, like big man time. And so like a day after that, his back like freaked out and he was annoyed. And so there was

Joe Gambino (36:36)
SsSsSsSs ⁓

Joe LaVacca (36:37)
Ha

ha ha!

you

Sarah Strange (36:51)
I don't know, a period of a week or so. And then he just found this one very weird specific, like had his hip on the sink and his hand on the whatever. And it was just this very specific directional change in the isometric. And it was like relief, you know, it just went away and it dramatically changed the course of that back spasm. Like it was absolutely annoyed. And then this one little very specific change in the line and direction, totally different.

Joe Gambino (37:15)
.

Sarah Strange (37:20)
That makes me think of something that I tell people a lot because I think another thing with mobility, people are like, well, I like all this training and I hear that I need to be more mobile and so now I think I need to go add in like five hours a week of mobility training to get more mobile and they're like, that sounds terrible, I don't wanna do that and I always try to reiterate to people that if you find the right thing, like if you're working on that thing that's missing, you need one thing to fix that.

Joe Gambino (37:32)
Mm.

Sarah Strange (37:45)
That's it. you're not, that one thing doesn't really make it better, I don't think we're doing the right thing. We haven't found the right thing yet. And it is really always, even at this point of doing it and seeing it so many times, that one thing is enough to make a difference. if I can get you working on this thing for two minutes, three days a week, that's probably gonna fix that problem. And if it doesn't, I haven't found the right thing for you yet. And people are like, oh, oh shit, that's it? You mean I can just add this in, like, before I go do my regular training? Like, that's it. It's really...

Joe Gambino (37:57)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sarah Strange (38:13)
It's the whole, I think the whole idea can definitely be overwhelming, but like in practice it actually is simple. It should be simple.

Joe Gambino (38:21)
I'm really glad

you brought that up because when you were talking about how you were in the bathroom using a sink to get into these positions, I'm like, man, this guy must be doing it all the time. You know, he's in the bathroom, he's about to jump in the shower and he's, you know, he's getting another 10 more minutes of mobility in his day. So I think it's a nice clarification there.

Sarah Strange (38:38)
Well, when there's a problem that you need to solve,

you will be busy trying to solve that problem. mean, you know, I feel like that's our nature and probably your nature when there's something where you're like, God, this is... Because we've all found it now. Like now we know that there's a solution. Like there's a movement method that's going to fix the problem. And so you're always kind of searching for like, what is that real specific thing?

Plus it helps you with your clients because you have spent a lot of time with yourself and other people finding the specific things that change and really move things forward. like the training thing. Somebody said it. Probably lots of people have said this, but training should be working on the things that you suck at. And a lot of people know that. In the strength and conditioning world, people are like, well, I do this variation of press because I suck at this variation, and that seems to help.

Joe Gambino (39:12)
Hmm.

Sarah Strange (39:30)
I think what people don't think about though is that it goes so much further than that, like what Sarah was talking about, like this line of tissue is injured, this one you have no neurological even recognition that it's there. Like that's really looking at what you suck at doing and that's really the training stuff is really exploring that and it can be explored so much more deeply than just changing up your exercises. Like that's part of it and that has worked, but that still only gets you this far. There's all this other stuff out here and that's the stuff where it's like.

Joe Gambino (39:52)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (39:59)
Look at the joint. What does that joint do? You know, the shoulder, it does a lot of stuff. There's a lot of untrained, unused zones in that that you're probably not hitting with those exercises. And that, I think that when you start to look at that, you can really feel it in your body. You're like, damn, I can't pull my arm out here. This one feels great. This one, not so much. Why is that? And that leads you further down the rabbit hole. Yeah, and people, think, often just will.

Joe Gambino (40:23)
Hmm

Sarah Strange (40:24)
gravitate into the ruts of the exercises that they enjoy doing that they're good at and then they avoid the things that they really should be doing so they just overdo this you know and then miss these things yeah this it is way more fun to train things you're good at I that's never gonna change I think

Joe LaVacca (40:39)
Yeah.

Sarah Strange (40:45)
Yeah, it's a hard balance, like the... You have to train all the stuff. Like that's the other thing that... It kind of contradicts in some ways like what Grayson just said, but there are specific things and it's maybe one thing that you need to deal with a problem that you're having or ⁓ a deficit that you have. But in general, like you have to train all of your tissues. And that's something that as you hit perimenopause...

Joe Gambino (40:45)
.

Joe LaVacca (41:13)
Yeah.

Sarah Strange (41:13)
as a female

and your hormones are doing all kinds of weird shit and you're like, where are my forearms going and my neck muscles? And like, you realize like you have to really, the older you get, the more important training becomes. And it becomes weird because when you're young, you can just do whatever exercise program and your body's maintaining all of the random weird little muscles that you have. But then when you start hitting that like rapid sarcopenia age, it becomes very apparent that if you're not

Joe Gambino (41:25)
.

Sarah Strange (41:41)
exercising it in some way, it's going away. So, you know, your hands, like all kinds of stuff, it just starts to weaken. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot about what we do to train people. Like I really think about the one of the biggest components that I work on with people is organizing this stuff. Like because there is a ton of stuff to do. You want to be athletic, you want to be strong, you want to make your joints healthy and that your connective tissue does the things that it needs to do. You can do that with

Joe Gambino (41:45)
Mm.

Sarah Strange (42:10)
Minimal inputs, but you do have to know which ones to use and how often to do them and there's lots of you know could do that in two days a week. You do that in seven days a week I think about what we're what we're really doing is like we're really helping people understand the organization of all that stuff and I think that is the part that takes practice and is is Overwhelming for people because they're like, I don't know you start you hear all this stuff. Okay, my joints my connective tissue my muscles I want to be athletic. I want to lift I want to do cardio Am I gonna train like four hours a day like?

Joe Gambino (42:35)
Hmm.

Sarah Strange (42:39)
professional athlete, think that always, my mind typically goes to that and I think a lot of people do as well. It doesn't need to be like that, but you do have to, it's good to have somebody help you like specify where the priorities are and how to organize that. There aren't infinite options for organizing it. It's just, that's the, those are the little, little, little dials to tweak. Yeah. Where to spread the volume and intensity through a training program, you know, to not overdo the stuff that you're just good at and enjoy doing. like, well, I could just.

you know, hide into these like bicep curls. Three sessions a week. I've hit my optimal 10 sets, but it's like, well, there's probably some more optimal bicep training that you could do that's more specific where you can keep one or two of those regular sets, but then also add something that's more specific to your elbow. That would be better down the road. Like you'll still hit your volume per muscle group, but you'll have also been doing joint specific work rather than just, you know, you're

Joe Gambino (43:10)
.

Joe LaVacca (43:35)
Right. Right.

I think the programming piece that you guys brought up is so important. And I know with all the well-intentioned podcasts and gurus and everything that you mentioned out there, everyone seems to have an opinion. And obviously our clients follow all follow us. They hear us, but then they hear all this like background noise and it does seem very overwhelming. So one of the questions that Joe and I had to then was

You know, what is this idea then of training to failure for people? And should that be something that they do with just one movement once a day? Should it be just their big lifts? Like we want to train to failure with a hinge or a push or a pull. ⁓ Or are you bringing that into that accessory world too of like training to failure with your biceps and your calves and your toes, for instance.

Sarah Strange (44:27)
It's um, it's kind of a humbling concept because There's such a range of capacity there that depends on a good number of things Like Prior to the ISM, know We were of that kind of thing where if you train close enough to failure within a couple reps and reserve you're getting the benefit So we didn't really ever push too much to failure

unless it was like maxing out on something. And then after doing the ISM, they're like, no, no, one set's a failure, period. know, like just very hard and fast about that. So we did that. We were kind of surprised at how much misery is actually in between that point where you think you're one to two reps from failure, but you're actually like seven reps of nightmare from that situation. But that being said,

Joe LaVacca (45:18)
Right.

Joe Gambino (45:18)
Mm-hmm.

Thank

Sarah Strange (45:26)
Not everybody is really capable of going to failure. And I personally have been in a situation lately with this whole menopause bullshit where I just don't have the ability to produce the intensity. It's like my oomph is just really lacking and it's been crazy because I'll come down here and I'm like, ⁓ my, I just don't have the juice. So I'm having to change the way I do things to hit.

The point, like the goal of that one set to failure is that you're hitting that, telling your body that you basically don't have enough resources. And so if you can't, for whatever reason, take something to absolute failure in a set, you have to find a way to provide that same kind of, maybe suboptimal, like you might not be quite in the same, you know, blooming benefit, but you can't just like not do it and not be intense. I have a lot of...

Women clients, for example, seem to be more risk averse in general in life, but when it comes to training, they're like, I don't want to get hurt. And so intensity to them equates immediately in their brains to injury. And so you'll ask them to take something to failure and you'll watch and it's like, you are not anywhere close to failure, even though you've said it four times. So then you have to just change the way you program and continue to encourage it.

Joe Gambino (46:33)
Mm.

Hmm.

Sarah Strange (46:51)
but recognize where they're uncomfortable and maybe where you can push it. ⁓ But yeah, so it's hard. Yeah, think, I don't think everybody has to train to failure. I think if you could ignore all of the things, the aspects of reality, like people's pain tolerances and training age and all that stuff, you could say, yes, training to failure probably works the best. Like, from an intensity perspective, that's maybe the clearest signal, but I don't think it's practical. I always try to tell people that

you know the intensity thing is like a very challenging skill that takes a huge amount of practice to learn and they may never get to the point where one set to failure works for them because they don't want to push that hard or they don't have the mental capacity, whatever it is, like there's lots of reasons why that might not work. I do try to let people know though that progressing intensity, whatever that is, if that's two hard sets or three hard sets, that's a good thing to be able to progress the intensity and we'll get better adaptation out of that and

I want to see that they're able to do that because that tells me that the training's working because their body's resilient enough to deal with that. But I think that is really different for everybody. I will say for my own training, like trying to push the limits of training, I always have, that's why I've probably injured myself many times training, especially in the old days. I do try to do everything at or to failure just to see where I can progress and what I can recover from. So that might be big toe extension, but I'll do that for...

On a lower body day, I'll do my spine, my neck, my deadlift, and I try to do that all with one set, and I really try to do it until I can't with everything. And it's taking time to get to the point where that feels tolerable, but that's been working really well, and it's allowed me to spread out my time between training, too. I think that's another good conversation for people is like, if we can really take this to failure, you need to do it less. If we are not taking it to failure, maybe we need to add a little more frequency to it, and that just.

Joe Gambino (48:37)
Thank

Joe LaVacca (48:44)
Yeah.

Sarah Strange (48:47)
You gotta figure out what works. mean, I feel like the longer we go on, even with the joint specific stuff, like there's so many ways that you can apply these principles that it really does come down to you figuring out what's gonna work for this person and kind of let them know like, here's some of the optimal ideas that we like and let's see where we can get close to those and where we need to make adjustments. And that's how it's gotta be, I think. I think it's just not possible. Yeah, and also the way that we used to do the classic.

Joe Gambino (49:09)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (49:14)
It still is progressive overload, but it doesn't have the numbers assigned to it that we used to. You know, we used to work off of reps and percentages and you know, you're going to do this many reps and this many sets. And hopefully the weight's going to be close enough to bring you to that intensity. Whereas now it's kind of like, here's a general time zone to shoot for, for hypertrophy. Here's a general time zone to shoot for, for efficiency, endurance, strength. ⁓ like if you're never lifting in that

short time to failure, your strength progress won't be as good as if you do. ⁓ But then it's like, can you get more reps the next time? Are you able to get more reps at the same weight or are you able to get more weight same reps? That's the progress that we're looking for. And if every time you come back, you're not, you either have to figure out, is it because I'm not doing enough or is it because I'm overdoing it?

Joe Gambino (50:02)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (50:09)
And

that's like the subtle ⁓ shifts that you make. Used to be what you would do is just overload someone to death until everything was looking worse and they were getting sick and ready to die. And then you would give them a little break and watch all those qualities pop back up and go, yes, okay, we're do that again right now. And it was just this constant wave of beat downs, which maybe works for a professional weightlifter, but for people that are trying to lift long term for their whole life, that kind of like insanity is not.

Joe Gambino (50:21)
You

Sarah Strange (50:40)
I don't think necessary. We can see progress without driving people to this point of extinction, basically. Well, and here's one more layer. I don't even know where this fits in. The other thing about intensity is that I think for people who've done training, they can increase the intensity on the things that they're familiar with. But if you've never trained your hip rotation directly before, your scale of intensity is way off for that.

Joe Gambino (50:45)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Sarah Strange (51:06)
I know what it feels like to deadlift heavy, but when I go into internal rotation, one, maybe we are working in true end range, so you're putting this joint in its position where it has the least capacity to do work, and then you're trying to work hard there. Sometimes what doesn't feel like a lot of effort is actually putting that tissue under a huge amount of stress, and so then you have that whole aspect too of like we're exploring, training all these untrained areas, and sometimes it takes what feels like

little force to overload that stuff too. that's like, there's that other variable there too, which is something that you really, again, like going back to what Sarah was saying about where we're feeling stuff, what we've really learned with all this trading is like the level of discussion that needs to happen when you're doing all of this stuff needs to be detailed and often. Like, I want you to tell me all of the feelings that you're having during, after, you know, the next day. Like that information is...

Joe Gambino (51:35)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (52:00)
I think the best way to really gauge if you're doing anything, doing it appropriately because it's so easy to get somebody in a position, explain what to do, have them do it and be like, all right, I did a good job. They look like they're in the right position and they're doing what I'm asking them. If you don't get all that other information of where they're feeling it and what it feels like, it is really hard to gauge if that's the appropriate setup intensity, all that stuff. Yeah. And also this kind of dovetails into a little bit of this addressing that concept that you can just.

Joe Gambino (52:20)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (52:28)
train full range of motion in your basic push-pull functional movements like squats and deadlifts and that's going to take care of your hip internal rotation because anyone who has gone into their deep end range and tried to produce intensity there, it's really weak and gentle. you know, take somebody and put them on a bench and have them go into max hip IR, their maximum hip IR and then remove that bench.

Joe Gambino (52:48)
Mm.

Sarah Strange (52:56)
and say hold that position with your body weight, probably aren't gonna be able to do that. So there's definitely no way with the 300 pound bar on your back, you're addressing end range hip internal rotation. You're not anywhere close, hopefully, maybe you are and that's scary, but that's probably also why your back's gonna tell you you're at the next day. Yeah, so you need like specific tools to train different ranges ⁓ at intensity.

Joe Gambino (53:11)
Yeah.

Joe LaVacca (53:12)
Yeah.

Right.

Joe Gambino (53:25)
think

my final question around this is, ⁓ you keep talking about what you feel, how you feel it, certain feelings are probably not gonna be good, right? You might feel something more painful the next day or something like that. So if you have somebody like a new client sitting in front of you and you were talking about this, what kind of sensations would you say, hey, these are the things that you need to avoid or really not push through because at the end of the day, it's probably going to...

inhibit how much progress you're going to make and move forward.

Sarah Strange (53:57)
That's a good one. You want to go? Just feeling things on the wrong side of the joint. the problem initially for us was that we heard the whole pain word, you know, and it's like, okay, well, if you're feeling a pain, then that's obviously bad. But what we've realized is that 90 % of the time, it's not painful at all. It's basically like a subtle language that your body has that's like, I don't have enough capsule space.

So, know, like a pinch, like people are very familiar with this. There's a, I feel the tissue on the inside of the joint or when they're laying down in a passive ⁓ shoulder external rotation stretch, they feel the backside of their shoulder. It doesn't hurt. It's not even pinching. It's just a sensation. What we've come to realize is that that sensation is enough of a sign that you're outside of the boundary. Like you're starting to basically pinch. You're starting to close rather than,

like open glide, don't be there. You know, like we need to start training outside of that and figure out what it takes to expand that joint so that you can then move into that position without feeling that closing angle tissue. And that's how we guide training. And so we'll try an exercise with somebody and if it provides access almost directly after doing that exercise, we know we're on the right track. And it's like, this is the thing that you need to work on to progress this.

Joe Gambino (55:13)
Mm.

Sarah Strange (55:24)
so that every time you get into this position, you no longer feel the back of your shoulder. And that was a big like, because it's not pain, it's just feeling things in the wrong spot. And a lot of those people also can't feel things in the right spot. So they only, their brain is only like, this is important, this is important. And so it's giving them that sensation and they're like, I don't feel my hamstring. Or I don't feel the front of my shoulder at all. And so then there's this whole like,

Joe Gambino (55:33)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (55:53)
starting at a ⁓ pre-starting point, which is like just some isometric loading, not a stretch. know, like I need to develop more caps and space, I need to stretch. You might not even be ready for a stretch yet, which is kind of... Yeah. Yeah, and even maybe even a deeper layer too. I mean, just I try to relate it to things that people have felt before. You know, if I get somebody and like, okay, you know, you do a bicep curl and you really feel your whole bicep working.

Joe Gambino (56:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sarah Strange (56:21)
When you're doing this, does it feel like that whole area is working or do you feel one spot? Like if I gave you a marker, could you just draw over one area and say, I really feel it in that one really acute spot. I think that stuff like that is really helpful for them too to understand like maybe we're just maxing out a line of connective tissue that is under so much strain, you're only feeling that in one small area. That tells me that we're potentially at that line of like maybe we're just gonna irritate things and your body can't adapt to this level of stress.

And mean, for most people, myself included, after years of working out, I never thought about the really deep feelings of training. It was like, I went in, I squatted, I did three sets of 10, okay, today was a good day, I did everything that I needed to. I never really thought about what does this feel like when I do it? What does it feel like when I get out of that? If I ask somebody, again, that acute sensation, you have that acute sensation there when we're loading it, does that feeling go away when you stop?

Because sometimes people will say, no, I really still feel that whole area. I'm like, OK, that tells me we probably put enough load into that tissue that that area is irritated now. We need to make some adjustments on intensity, position. And I see this with everybody. It's something that we just haven't thought about it. You haven't thought about it at that level. And I think to me now, I'm like, this is all the stuff that we've got to figure out. The feelings, where it is, what it feels like, the doing of it is the easier part.

Joe LaVacca (57:45)
easier part.

was like, need to talk about this a lot more. Because people are so talkative their position. I have to use this position. Now what? know, guy who has a huge back pop, he puts out a stick, puts out that shooting pain in front of his knee, you you put out it, give you like a quad, it feels quad at all, it feels like f*** on the outside of your knee. And it's like, that's too deep for you. Like, don't even do that.

Sarah Strange (57:47)
to talk about a lot more. These people are so top position like I to keep this position. Now what like you know, guy ⁓ has a huge back down the stairs. get that shooting pain in front of his knee. You know, out and maybe like a quad. It was quite a lot. It was like on the outside. And it's like that's to like you don't know that.

Joe LaVacca (58:14)
So you have to essence

Sarah Strange (58:15)
So you have to ask him.

Joe LaVacca (58:17)
things earlier. Otherwise, they just go backwards. Right. All right, Joe, you have anything else? I want to be respectful of the strangers time. I know we went a couple minutes over, so I wanted to make sure that we were good. Joe, anything else? All good. All right. Mr. and Mrs. Strange.

Sarah Strange (58:17)
things earlier. Otherwise they don't rest, they just go backwards for the same

Joe Gambino (58:32)
Mm-hmm

All good. Appreciate the time.

Joe LaVacca (58:44)
Thank you so much. ⁓ think Joe said this is the first time I think we had a double date. ⁓ Is this the first time we had a return guest too, Joe?

Sarah Strange (58:46)
Thank you!

Cool.

Joe Gambino (58:55)
I was thinking about that earlier, might be. We might have had one other returning guest, so I'm not sure.

Joe LaVacca (58:56)
thinking about that earlier, it might be. I think so too. So, so milestones here on the podcast. We could not

be more grateful for you guys. Thank you so much for answering our questions, sharing your knowledge. We'll definitely have to do a part two because I have about like 16 other questions that we didn't get to. ⁓ So we'll definitely double date again, but thank you guys. Joe, thank you. Listeners, thank you. And don't forget to tune in next week for another exciting episode of the Beyond Pain podcast.

Joe Gambino (59:11)
Ha

Sarah Strange (59:11)
Okay. Let's do it.

Awesome.

See you guys.