Tyler Tsujimoto’s journey into fitness, health, and wellness grew out of a deeply personal experience – bullying. As an early teen, Tsujimoto endured harassment from his peers, and when he decided he had had enough, he gravitated toward sports and physical fitness as a way to prevent further pain. Tsujimoto graduated from the University of Utah in 2004 with a degree in Health Promotion and Education. Prior to graduating, he also obtained his Certification in Personal Training, and has since added several nationally accredited and impressive certifications in both movement and nutrition. The combination of his triumph over bullying, his education in health and personal training, and his desire to help others achieve their personal best led him on a career path that he feels is deeply fulfilling. Tyler believes that his clients cannot achieve their potential without a foundation of proper posture and balance. Tyler is the owner of New Star Fitness and Nutrition- a private fitness studio with a room dedicated to posture assessment and education. The NewStar Fitness & Nutrition motto is ‘Helping you discover your true potential.’
Find Tyler at-
https://www.newstar.health/
Phone- 801-857-7447
IG- @thepostureprovider
Find Boundless Body at-
Tyler Tsujimoto’s journey into fitness, health, and wellness grew out of a deeply personal experience – bullying. As an early teen, Tsujimoto endured harassment from his peers, and when he decided he had had enough, he gravitated toward sports and physical fitness as a way to prevent further pain. Tsujimoto graduated from the University of Utah in 2004 with a degree in Health Promotion and Education. Prior to graduating, he also obtained his Certification in Personal Training, and has since added several nationally accredited and impressive certifications in both movement and nutrition. The combination of his triumph over bullying, his education in health and personal training, and his desire to help others achieve their personal best led him on a career path that he feels is deeply fulfilling. Tyler believes that his clients cannot achieve their potential without a foundation of proper posture and balance. Tyler is the owner of New Star Fitness and Nutrition- a private fitness studio with a room dedicated to posture assessment and education. The NewStar Fitness & Nutrition motto is ‘Helping you discover your true potential.’
Find Tyler at-
https://www.newstar.health/
Phone- 801-857-7447
IG- @thepostureprovider
Find Boundless Body at-
Hello and welcome to another episode of Boundless Body Radio. I'm your host, casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce you now. Tyler Sujimoto's journey into fitness, health and wellness grew out of a deeply personal experience. Bullying as an early teen, sujimoto endured harassment from his peers and when he decided that he had had enough, he gravitated toward sports and physical fitness as a way to prevent further pain.
Speaker 1:Sujimoto graduated from the University of Utah Go, utes, in 2004 with a degree in health promotion and education. Prior to graduating, he also obtained his certification in personal training and has since added several nationally accredited and impressive certifications in both movement and nutrition. The combination of his trying over bullying, his education in health and personal training and his desire to help others achieve their personal best led him on a career path that he feels is deeply fulfilling. Tyler believes that his clients cannot achieve their potential without a foundation of proper posture and balance. Tyler is the owner of New Star Fitness and Nutrition, a private fitness studio with a room dedicated to posture assessment and education. The New Star Fitness and Nutrition motto is helping you discover your true potential, and we are recording here. Live with Tyler Sujimoto in his facility. Tyler, what an absolute honor. It is to welcome you to Balmous Body Radio.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks for having me, casey. I'm really looking forward to this. I'm super excited about it and I appreciate you inviting me. How long have we known each other? Oh goll, it's got to be 2006.
Speaker 1:2006, 2007. Yeah, you were already a trainer at the gym that I eventually started working out in 2007. Okay, yeah. We have known each other long enough for me not to butcher your last name, which I absolutely did on the first take of this, which is going directly into my recycle folder. Nobody's going to hear that way too long We've known each other for me to goof up your last name. I think I said Suji Moji or something.
Speaker 2:I don't know. That's not as bad as I've heard it from a lot of people. That's good. You are forgiven.
Speaker 1:That's good. We did mention that you attended University of Utah at the date of this recording. You just won their football game last night against the University of Florida, which is awesome. I did not go to the University of Utah. I haven't graduated from anywhere. I actually attended school down south, which is now, I think, utah Tech. It used to be Dixie State when I was attending.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I did school down there and did school at UVU, but I've adopted the University of Utah and I've heard the saying goes that there's no such thing as a University of Utah fan. There's only anti-BYU fans. I think I agree with that. What would you say about that?
Speaker 2:I'm not going to disagree with that. I will say there are different levels of fandom. But here in the state of Utah you're either a Utah fan or a BYU fan if you wear red or blue. A lot of my clients wear blue and they know that I wear red. We razz each other a little bit on that. All kidding aside, it's fun to have the rivalry go and it's fun to kind of jaw back and forth with friends and clients and all that.
Speaker 2:If you can take the sports and athletics side of things and just enjoy it for what it is, have fun with it, let it be a part of your life if you want to, and enhance it, but don't let it control you, yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that you were a cheerleader actually at the University of Utah. You saw probably some nasty moments, I would think.
Speaker 2:I did. We actually when I was a cheerleader there back in 2002, 2003,. We were able to see a lot of you have a different perspective when you're down there on the field and you interact with the crowd differently than when you're up in the crowd. This didn't happen when we were at a game down at BYU, but we were at another road game and we were down there on the sidelines stunting. We had the girls up in the air and the fans of the home team where we were visiting started throwing food at us. The girl I was holding the air got hit with a hot dog in the head Wow, wow, that's terrible.
Speaker 2:It's a you think about. It's kind of funny to think about it, but it was potentially very dangerous situation because she's supposed to be focusing on staying up there, not falling out, and she's trying to dodge hot dogs and they were throwing beer bottles and they were throwing. So we were encouraged not to do that anymore throughout the rest of the game and thank goodness they had new security that had to take care of them. But yeah, we've been through some pretty interesting things as a cheerleader. You see, you're in the moment. You see a lot of things. You feel things a little different down there on the field, but we also see all the bad too, that you go on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, true, Well, that's awesome. I don't know where my podcasting strategy has gone so awry. This is the second interview I've done in a week's time where I've interviewed somebody local to my area. I interviewed Logan Hurley, who just moved here from Minnesota. He's opening up a studio in Draper, which is close to us. Why am I interviewing local trainers who do similar things to what I'm doing that are going to put me out of business? This is so dumb. What am I doing?
Speaker 2:You know what I look at this, as there's no competition out there. Okay, so the most interesting business approach is everybody out there who does fitness, who helps people improve their health and their quality of life through fitness and nutrition. We should all be allies for one another. There's plenty of people out there, there's plenty of business to go around and everybody has kind of their own unique, amazing spin on the things that they do and why they do it that way, and I think it's all valuable and nobody could put you out of business. First of all, you're too good, but yeah, it's more of a hey, we're allies, we're here to help each other, so everybody benefits from being healthier and being more fit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Logan said the same thing last week when I interviewed him. It's like you know what? Go to Costco, go to the mall, go to an airport. Realize what state we're in as a country. It's not good. No, we're not going to run out of clients anytime soon, because it's pretty rough out there yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think we need, as an industry in general and for our society. We need so many fitness professionals out there that have a unique take on what they do and that have the education to back it up and the experience to back it up, because there's not a one true, correct fit for everybody. Yeah, right, I think it's all about identifying what your passion is, what you want your niche to be, what you want your specialty to be in the industry, and then identifying those individuals who would be ideal clients for what you offer. Love that and you know, the services we offer, I feel, benefit everybody, but not everybody is a perfect fit for us, and that's okay. Yeah, that's all right, and so I want there to be.
Speaker 2:I want to be flooded with experts and fitness professionals out there who know what they're doing, who can lead their clients in the right direction and who are a good fit for the people they're looking for, because you know, like everybody else in the industry too, you have clients that are ideal and then other clients that you go. Huh, I don't know if we're. I don't know if this is the right thing for you right now. There's maybe another option out there that's better for you.
Speaker 1:It's such a good point. It's cold. We all have those specialties and we're certainly going to be talking about that today. I so much appreciate you and your specialties. You know when, when I, when we met, I was new to the industry. You were one of the kindest trainers on staff. You really helped me out. You taught me a lot. You were very patient with me and I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:And I also look at you and I look at somebody like my wife Bethany. You guys have this eye of seeing the human body move. That is unreal. It's some weird gift that you guys have. Like Bethany will do a correction on somebody and watch them walk away and say like, oh, look at that person walk away. Can't you see like all this stuff? I look and I go, yeah, they're walking away. Like what are you looking at? Where she's looking at? You know the ankle, the shoulder, how that interacts with each other in the opposite parts of the body. So I know you've got that gift as well. We're going to talk about that today. So before we do that, let's talk about your personal story. I guess I was a little surprised that you were so open and vulnerable about bullying in in kind of your bio and introduction. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, bullying is a very going through it. Personally, it's a very sensitive subject for me. So this started back in when I was in elementary school. I started getting bullied when I was in fifth and sixth grade and I was being bullied by younger kids in the school. I was being bullied by third and fourth graders and I never I never understood why I was the target, why I was the kid that was getting picked on all the time.
Speaker 2:I was a very shy kid. I did not go out of my way to talk to other people or do anything. I was also very, very small. I was very short for my age. You know, when they take pictures for elementary school, they they, they take them in order of height, and I was always the last one to get my picture taken, even out of all the girls, because I was literally the shortest person in the school, and so that's what I assumed was the reasoning behind the bullying. It got a lot worse as I got into middle school, to the point where you know what you would see on the movies back in the nineties of kids getting pushed in lockers and the lockers closed on them and spit on and thrown down the halls. And I had a couple of ribs broken one time and it was. It was miserable, you know it really was. It was something that I didn't want to. I didn't want to show that it affected me as much as it really did, but it had a lifelong impact on me for sure.
Speaker 2:And bullying continued even up in high school. And again, I was short. You know I when, when I was in ninth grade, I was four foot eight and between my the summer of my ninth grade and my sophomore year in high school, I grew six inches in one summer. So I was a whopping five foot two. Wow, and I thought man, I'm a giant, I feel huge, I'm going to start high school and I'm going to be one of the bigger kids and nobody's going to bully me.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately that didn't change a thing. So I vividly remember walking through one of our local malls with my mom one day after school and I saw a cardboard cutout outside of a nutrition shop of a guy standing there with his shirt off and he had the six pack and kind of the ideal male physique, right, I guess you you can identify it as that. And I remember asking my mom how did he get like that? And she said, oh, he probably does sit ups every day, and I took her so literally on that. I did a thousand sit ups every day for about three years Wow.
Speaker 2:And that's the only thing I did.
Speaker 1:I didn't do anything else.
Speaker 2:Right, I didn't know anything about fitness, I didn't know anything about how to properly strengthen or balance your body out. I just I committed to something and thought, okay, well, if I can get a little stronger, maybe I won't get bullied. And when I got into high school, I started weightlifting. I got into cheerleading as I was in high school and I got into weightlifting and not only was that helping my athletic ability for the cheerleading aspect of things but it was helping me get stronger and put a little more size on. And the bullying did stop. Wow, it did stop.
Speaker 2:And you know, unfortunately, you know a lot of kids. I know I'm not the only one, by a long stretch, that has experienced something like that, but it was something that years later I thought how can I take an experience like that and learn from it? And I have a client. He's a good friend of mine as well. He's been a client of mine for years. He he one day during a session, said you know, I try to look at life, especially when something bad or unfortunate happens, is not why is this happening to me, but why is this happening for me. And that really struck a chord with me and it was kind of at that point where I started reflecting on one of the most impactful experiences I had as a kid, which was the bullying, and thought, well, what that happened for me not to me and what can I learn from that and how can I, how can I grow from that, how can I also help Hopefully, you know, other people just be able to have an outlook on maybe unfortunate circumstances in their lives. That can really be a lesson, a teaching opportunity for them. And so you know, that was that was the experience that I had with, with the bullying and and like it was up until there there I still had some bullying issues even through my senior year in high school by an individual that was older and not even in high school anymore, but he, he was the boyfriend of my stunt partner on the cheerleading squad and and so, anyway, that was it.
Speaker 2:But it ended after that and you know, hopefully most of us, as we get a little older, get into college age, things like that were mature enough that that's not typically something that happens in church, but so that was, that was really what started getting me into interested in the direction of of fitness and strength training and weightlifting and all of that and once I started to recognize that the results I was getting physically was decreasing, the amount of bullying that was happening, I also made a stronger connection with just how it made me feel, with how how it I had more energy, I had more strength, but I felt more confident about myself and and I, I started to develop a sense of self-worth a little bit, and I know that might sound silly, that, oh, you didn't have much self-worth before them, but you know, when you're getting harassed and bullied every day, for years and years and years, I felt like a doormat.
Speaker 2:You know, I felt like just something. People would step on me, wipe their feet on me and then and then leave and that was it. And so I, I. That experience also helped me identify deeply within myself, intrinsically, that I have value, that I have purpose, that I wasn't what these kids were saying and and you know, I that wasn't me right, but it took years for me to be able to identify that. So that that was another reason why I have such a strong passion for the fitness industry and what it can do, not just for somebody physically, but somebody mentally and emotionally, and it's, it's powerful that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate you wanting to go there and wanting to talk about that. I think it is really important. I think it dictates, you know what we do later on in our lives and you know I, as I'm thinking about it when I first started getting into lifting weights, I I wouldn't say I experienced a lot of bullying, but I got into a fight that I didn't want to get into and the kid punched me in the face and from there, like I wanted to start lifting weights and I had the posters on the wall and my unfinished basement and I bought, like the cheap set of weights. And you know I've got one of my clients. His name is Garrett Gunderson.
Speaker 1:He's a best-selling author, writes about finances, but he also writes a lot about childhood traumas and identifying those childhood traumas that are maybe holding you back from anything in life Could be finance, could be whatever emotional state you're seeking, whatever professional state you're seeking.
Speaker 1:And you know he gives an example of him being maybe like two or three and he is going down for a nap and his mom is with him and he wakes up from the nap and the mom had to go to work and like that's a very small experience and it was so small that it wasn't something he ever thought he needed to deal with. But later in life you realize that he felt a sense of abandonment in that moment and, yeah, that's not a huge thing, but it was enough that it was holding him back and he needed to go back and address that and show himself some self-love and self-care. And so I think all of us may or may not think that we experienced a lot of childhood trauma, but I don't think it really matters Like to what degree it was. We all have those scars that is worth it to address and move forward from.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Our subconscious mind is very, very powerful and hides things well oftentimes. Yeah, just because I wasn't whipped or something that doesn't mean I didn't experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, yeah, well, fantastic. And so your journey into health and fitness began kind of from there. You went to college, you got your certifications. Where were you the most drawn? Because, you're right, like in the beginning, it's fitness. You learn really basic things, but certain things kind of catch you and you start to specialize. And so what was that journey like for you and where did you end up?
Speaker 2:So I love sharing this story with clients and potential clients because it really it helps them understand why I got into what I'm doing right now. I was certified for about seven years prior to this incident happening and I was a cheerleader through college. I was active as a young kid too. I played soccer, I played basketball, I played volleyball, I was a gymnast for a little while and did cheerleading, and so I was active.
Speaker 2:I had beat my body up quite a bit over the short time at that point in my life that I had been around and there was an incident. I was living at home, still with my parents, and we had a gym set up in the basement and I was down there working out and I had finished my workout. This was in the morning and before I went to go train clients, I hopped in the shower and I was washing my hair and I felt a pop in my neck and my left arm dropped down, limp to the side of my body. What? And I thought, oh my gosh, I just paralyzed myself by washing my hair. Now I'm not a vigorous hair washer.
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna say you're getting into it.
Speaker 2:I'm not flailing my arms all over, doing anything like that. It was a normal everyday routine that I did right. And I was in so much pain and I was panicking I was terrified because I literally thought I paralyzed myself, right. And I remember nobody else was home at the time my parents were at work and I was so I thought, okay, you know what do I do. And I took myself to the emergency room because I could still drive with my one arm and they said, yeah, you need to go see a neurosurgeon, and all this. So a couple days after I had appointment, went saw the neurosurgeon. They did an MRI and he comes out and says, well, your cervical spine looks like a train wreck, looks like a derailed train. Okay, I had five cervical disc herniations out of the seven that you have in the neck and they were all going different directions. And he said this is an absolute mess. And I said, well, I'm in excruciating pain. Can we, can you fix this? And he says, absolutely, I can fix it, but I'm three months out. I can't, I can't get you in for surgery for three months and the plan is to fuse the cervical spine right Now.
Speaker 2:At this point in my career I had been training clients. I had been training myself for seven years. I was pretty experienced, but what I was missing was the understanding of proper movement mechanics, proper tissue pliability, proper, a balanced approach to any type of programming that you're doing. And from a lot of the sports that I played and, being a guy, you know I did a lot of bench press, I did a lot of bicep curls, did a lot of ab work everything was in that anterior portion of the body and flexion and all sorts of things like that. And what had happened was over the years I was training my muscles. Certain movement patterns and muscle have memory right. They don't know good from bad, right from wrong. They do whatever you teach them to do most often. And I was telling my body to be locked up through the front, pull my shoulders forward, push the head out, do all those things, and all the while I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing to be healthy.
Speaker 2:Right, I was working out six days a week, I was eating well, I was doing all these things and and then I throw my neck out, wash my hair in the shower. So there's a three month wait list for me to before I can have surgery done. And in my opinion, right at that point, the thought that went through my mind was this is the only thing that's going to get me out of pain. So can you just operate on me right now? You know I'll lay down on your office table. You do surgery on me. I said what do I do in the meantime? And he said do whatever you want. If you make it worse, we'll fix it when we're in there. And I thought, okay, that doesn't sit well with me. One. I can't even use my left arm, you know, to say do whatever you want or do what you want.
Speaker 1:I can't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I can't do it. And and two, the if you make it worse, we'll fix it when we're in there just didn't sit well with me, and so I had three months right to to try to figure things out. Can I ask?
Speaker 1:a stupid question, Of course. Fusing, fusing the neck would mean that you have no more mobility. Correct, Like it would be stiff. So so, from from the bottom of the neck, what? What about? Like checking your rear view mirrors, or like turn, you would have to turn your entire body. Turn your whole body. Oh my goodness, Turn your whole body.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't have been able to tuck my chin to my chest. I wouldn't have been able to look up at the stars at night.
Speaker 1:My neck wouldn't would not have the ability to move. Okay.
Speaker 2:And and this is a common approach in in spinal issues with surgeons out there is to you know well, hey, let's fuse it and it. Luckily recently there are some surgeons out there that aren't quite as they don't push for surgery quite as quickly and say, hey, let's see if we can maybe get this better with another approach. But it during this three months that I'm waiting my turn to have my neck fused. I thought you know what I got to try to find an alternative method to healing my body, because I was thinking about it. And this dawned on me one night as I was laying there in pain because I couldn't sleep and I thought what caused this to happen in the first place? It wasn't washing my hair in the shower. Okay, there was something else that caused it. And I started to think back about what I had been doing. I thought, okay, surgery isn't going to fix the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem for me was I created such an intense muscular imbalance throughout my body that my structure, my spine, my bones in the body couldn't be in the right position because I wasn't allowing them to be, which means I couldn't move without being in excruciating pain. So if surgery wasn't going to fix the cause of the problem. Would it eliminate pain for a while? Sure, but it wasn't going to fix the cause of the problem. I needed to address my incorrect approach to really fix the cause of the problem. So I met an individual who specialized in body work trigger point therapy, structural integration, type of corrective type body work. I actually also got introduced to a chiropractor at the time who was going to be a neurosurgeon and then decided he wanted to try to help people prevent needing a neurosurgeon. So he went down the road to chiropractic, just had a different approach with it.
Speaker 2:And then I started getting more into. I started researching more into just basic kinesiology and human movement patterns and what they're supposed to be and how the balance is supposed to be there, and that led me into corrective exercise type stuff. It led me into posture exercise type things and with me working with the person who does the muscular work, the chiropractor at that time, and then I was implementing corrective and postural exercises. Within an eight week timeframe I had full range of motion back in my arm with no pain we re-extraid and I didn't have any disc herniations anymore and I had the proper curve back in my neck and I canceled the surgery, luckily so I never had it. I still have mobility in my neck, there's no fusions in there, and that was something.
Speaker 2:It was such an eye-opening experience for me that I thought if I'm missing out on this key piece for myself, I'm also missing out on all of that for my clients, and I want to be as beneficial to my clients as possible. And so that's when I really started to develop a passion for, okay, my mindset has to shift from just moving as heavy a weight as I possibly can when I'm working out, because that was my mindset for the first several years of my weightlifting. Experience was just, I got to max out every week. I got to lift more weight. My numbers have to go up. My numbers have to go up and over time that's really damaging to your body, especially if you're not balancing out the muscular system with other exercises, right, which I was not doing at all. So that personal experience is what really made me connect with I have to help people move better, right?
Speaker 2:I heard all the time from my clients that are a little bit older in years would say, oh, don't get old.
Speaker 2:You know, getting old is painful, it hurts, but it's not because we're getting old, it's because we're not moving the right way as we age right. And so I kind of made it a personal mission at that point in time that I am going to become the posture guru, the posture expert. I want to be the person that clients come to because they are sick and tired of being in pain all the time, not moving the way they want to, not being able to do the weekend activities or the daily sports conditioning or just the day to day driving your car to work, sitting at work, going home, playing with your kids, going on a walk, doing that stuff. We should be able to do all of that pain free. We shouldn't have pain when we move. But so much of us just accept it as part of aging that we lean more towards Advil, tylenol, ibuprofen, aleve things like that and say, oh well, if I take one of these every day, I don't notice my pain as much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just put the piece of tape on the check your engine, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:You're not looking at root cause. Cover the light and then it's gone. It's fine. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And so the getting to the root cause of the problem really became something that I realized I had to start implementing with all of my clients with myself and all of my clients and so I went through a almost a two year long course certification program to become a certified posture exercise professional.
Speaker 2:I've traveled and helped teach posture conferences and things like that to chiropractors and physical therapists and there has just been it has been the singular most impactful thing that I've done for my career and for my clients, and for myself and for myself, because I'm big on practice what you preach type thing, and it's been life changing for me. And so the amount of abuse that so many of us put ourselves through earlier in our life, as we're, you know, into sports and things like that, it catches up with you. You know you hit 40, 50, 60 and you go oh my gosh. Well, I can't move like I could when I was 20. Well, but that's also because you're not practicing or not aware of how to be moving the right way and moving without pain. So that's the one biggest impact that I had personally that really drove me towards this area of fitness.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I often reflect how we're so different than other animals out there, like why is it that humans have both summer and winter Olympics, for example, like you couldn't have the Olympics for a tiger or giraffes because they do like giraffe things or just tiger things? They only do those like two or three things where we can do so many different things. And often when I'm out, like walking at a park, you see people cycling, rollerblading, walking, running, kids playing in the park, hanging, climbing, all of this cool stuff really generalists. As far as movement goes, we can move in many, many different ways and planes of motion. I think that's a big part of what makes us human. But I really want to deep dive into posture. I think most of the listeners will know what posture is without really knowing what posture is. How do you explain what what posture is to your people?
Speaker 2:Okay. So the first thing that I educate my clients on as far as posture is concerned is posture is the way your body moves, the way your body balances and the way your body holds still. Okay. Now, if you think about those three aspects, those three components of posture, is there ever a moment in your life where you're not doing one of those three things? Yeah, that's everything. Okay, everything. Sleeping, sitting at a desk, driving a car, doing back flips off the high dive, jumping your dirt bike over a Grand Canyon, something like that Everything that we do is posture, okay. So if every aspect of our life implements one of, if not all three of the components of posture, why do we not strengthen our posture? Right? Why is there not more information, more education, more media out there about strengthening posture? And when we start working with clients, the first thing we do is an in-depth posture screening and movement analysis for them. Okay, I'm a big believer that, as somebody who works in the health and fitness industry and works specifically with human bodies and how they move and trying to help them move better, I can't accurately work with a client in that aspect without first seeing how their body moves, balances and holds still. There are telling signs from every client in all three components of posture that if you don't address and identify those at the beginning, you completely miss out on those. When you go through your programming aspects and when you are educating the client about oh well, you know your low back hurts when you do this. Well, because we've done your screening and assessment, we know your body has a tendency to do a lateral shift to the right when you get this far down squat. That's because of X, y and Z right and so, with posture being something that is impacting your life every second of your life, you are either consciously aware of your posture and you are doing things to strengthen it on a regular basis and and and aware of when you're in a weak posture position, what you recognize that first of all, and then know how to correct it and and change that so you're in a strong posture position. Or you are unconsciously aware of your posture and everything you're doing is potentially creating more imbalances and a weaker posture and therefore a weaker body. Okay, and and posture is not just about.
Speaker 2:I say this a lot when I speak in in bigger groups. I'll say I'll just say the word posture, and it is so funny because everybody sitting at the table sits up taller. They all stop slouching and slunching their shoulders and they all sit up taller and that's all I say is posture. I don't even, I don't say anything else. I'll do presentations and that's what I'll do. I'll say posture and they just sit up taller and go okay, good, now what do you think posture is? And they'll tell me you know, sitting up straight. Okay, yeah, it is absolutely Keeping your shoulders back. Doing this, I've had people say, oh, being able to walk while balancing books on your head right, go back to the etiquette classes that they used to teach way back and set books on. Oh, you need to be able to walk around and balance books, and posture is absolutely those things.
Speaker 2:It is, you know, strength and mobility of the human body, but one thing that a lot of people don't understand about posture, too, is how it directly impacts our health internally. All the systems of our body, inside our body, are directly impacted by our posture, and there was a study that came out several years ago that has identified sitting as the new smoking in terms of lung health, right and, and there's something called upper cross syndrome or rounded shoulders, and it typically comes from people having excess tension through the front of their upper body the chest, the shoulders, bicep tendon area, things like that and it causes the shoulders to round and slouch forward. What happens with that too, as you work down the kinetic chain of what's going on? The reaction to that movement? It makes your chest muscles so tight that it doesn't allow the lungs and the rib cage to expand and contract fully. As we inhale and exhale, right, and as we inhale we're inhaling environmental toxins, and you can't get away from that if you're living in the world right there out there. And as you exhale, you're supposed to be exhaling the bad stuff. And and people that have excessive upper cross syndrome around its shoulders actually have as high a likelihood of developing lung disease as people who smoke a packet of cigarettes a day. And because it creates a toxic environment within the lungs and so the respiratory is impacted by that, it affects the heart.
Speaker 2:Okay, poor posture can create essentially kind of like a roadblock as far as circulation and flow of blood and oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. When we are in a, when we're not in an ideal position posturally speaking, and we have these roadblocks, blocks that we've created throughout the body, we suffer from circulation issues. A lot of people that have cold hands and feet all the time. That's actually a posture imbalance. Yes, it's a circulation issue, but it's caused by a posture imbalance. People that have they're forgetful, they have a foggy brain A lot of that is a posture imbalance. Okay, digestive issues are directly associated and impacted by an individual's posture, and so when we're working with people, we're not just looking to get them out of pain and moving better, but we're looking to help their bodies heal from the inside out as well.
Speaker 2:And that was something that, a few years after I initially got into the posture aspect of things and I started learning more in depth about that, that really hit me and it blew my mind. I just thought, holy cow, posture is so important. I like to tell people strengthen your posture, improve your life. Okay, and it does. It does that. It honestly does.
Speaker 2:Your mood increases when you change your posture. Yeah, right, you look younger when you change your posture and you move better, and the doctor that created the posture program that I got certified through used to always say if you want to move well, you have to move well. I love that, and you have to know how to move well, right, you have to. So it's just I don't know. It's something that became a real passion of mine. I have seen incredible results in myself with it and it is the foundation of everything that we do with every client that we work with, no matter what their goals are, because, like it was stated in the intro to, we're out to help you discover your true potential, and when you don't have proper movement mechanics and you have a weak posture, you have so much potential that you're not able to tap into, regardless of what it is athletic potential or just energy levels, mood, whatever it is right. So balancing the body out in that sense does help you honestly achieve your potential and whatever it is that you're looking to do.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. That's a lot more than I would have ever considered as well, fascinating. And I just think you know you mentioned energy a few times. Energetically. You talked about shoulders. Rolling your shoulders backs exposes your heart, your more heart centered, open. Some people might think that's woo woo. I absolutely don't think that's woo woo, but let's talk specifically. I think this is a really common one and so we can go there. You mentioned the shoulders coming forward. So why? Why are we seeing that? What is it about our normal lifestyles that make us kind of seem a little bit more slouchy forward? We're kind of crunching in forward and I guess, like, let's talk about maybe what, what the actual problem is like. So what, my shoulders are coming forward, like what does that do? What's the problem?
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so the to answer your first question why do we see that so often? Okay, why do we see rounded shoulders so often? We we, as human beings we have joints and muscles and tendons and ligaments, because we're designed to move right Now. That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be periods of time throughout our life, throughout the day, where we're stationary. A lot of people have jobs where they're at a desk and at a computer all day, every day, and then they get in the car to drive to and from work, and then they get home from work and they sit down on the couch and they relax and unwind and they're watching TV, and then they go to bed and then they repeat.
Speaker 1:Wasn't the average step count like pre pandemic for most Americans, like 4000 steps a day, like nothing crazy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy, and most individuals spend about 13 to 16 hours a day sitting.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Okay, sitting. I mean that's that. That's a lot of sitting, it's not great and you're not.
Speaker 2:You're not doing much when you're sitting right. So technology has been one of the biggest key factors in the increase in the poor posture that we've seen lately. Cell phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops things that are portable, that are extremely helpful in a lot of ways to us. We have information right at our fingertips. We have the ability to pay for things and and look up information and exchange contact info and things like that, so they're great in that sense. But it encourages you to bring your hands in front of your body, towards your chest. It encourages you to tuck your chin down to look at your cell phone. And how often do we get our cell phone out with a expected purpose of, oh, I'm going to reply to this text or I'm going to do something like this, and then find out 20 minutes later I'm still on my cell phone?
Speaker 1:That's never one time happened to me, not once ever.
Speaker 2:Well, you are the anomaly this is. This is something that you know. We all deal with it, and I myself included. Right, I try to. I tell my clients all the time, just because I have an expertise in in posture and what it should be, it doesn't mean that I am not prone to all the same things that everybody else is and I am. I catch myself doing things all the time that I go what, what am I doing? Change this, sit up taller, do this, and it's so everybody's. Everybody is exposed to it, right, but it doesn't take long for muscles to learn a specific pattern. Okay, and the more often that you put your body in a certain position, hands out in front on your steering wheel, on your cell phone, typing on a keyboard, if you don't have things at your workspace set up to be posturally conducive, you know strong posture. You stay there for hours a day and our body learns that position, and so each day, day after day after day, getting into that position starts to feel normal, and generally you don't have pain associated with it either until several years down the road. But it feels normal, and so that's what we do, that's what we know, and so we continue to get back to that position.
Speaker 2:Then also, I've had a theory this theory for years for individuals who do go to the gym and work out and they say, alright, hey, I have a desk job, I want to be active, I want to be healthy, I'm going to go work out. They go to the gym and oftentimes, if you look at yourself in the mirror, okay, those muscles that you see in the mirror are typically the ones that we spend the most time working on, because those are the ones that we see. So that's how we gauge progress, right. And we go oh, okay, my chest is looking a little more toned than it was before. Great, that's all the push-ups and the bench press and all this stuff I've been doing. My quads are a little more toned great, that's from all of this and this.
Speaker 2:How often do we look at the backside of our body and go, oh, I think my teres major, my teres minor, my rhomboids, my subscap, need a little work, right, we don't, nobody does. And so there's also a generally speaking and imbalanced approach for those individuals who do take on a fitness exercise program. And I fell into that, like I said, the first years of my career. That's what. That was partially what led to that neck issue that I had. And also, you know we're creatures of imitation, so we look at other people at a gym and say, hey, I want to look like that person, so I'm going to watch what exercises they do, and then I'm going to do those exercises right and logically thinking well, if it worked for them, it'll work for me and I should get the same results, and it's a very common approach.
Speaker 2:But the problem with that is, unless something is specifically tailored to you and the person you're working with, or, you know, if you don't know what your body does and what it needs and how to get there, all that hard work and effort and time and energy and sweat that you put into it can potentially lead to something that I experienced, you know, and you go, oh, was this just a waste of all these years of working out? And it wasn't. It was a great lesson for me to learn. But you know we try to get people hey, you're going to look on your cell phone right, but instead of bringing your eyes down to your screen, bring your screen up to your eyes right. When you're walking around. Don't look at the ground, don't stare at the ground.
Speaker 2:A lot of people, especially if they have some balance issues or things like that. They look at the ground and shuffle their feet because they're afraid of falling, especially if they have fallen before. But one of the leading causes to repeat falls is eliminating your peripheral senses and not being able to have appropriate reaction when something does happen. So when they stare at the ground and shuffle their feet, they're more likely to experience a fall again. And so the cell phones, the laptops, I tell people get your screens up to eye level, don't bring your eyes down to your screen.
Speaker 2:Bring your screen up to your eyes and they'll say well, when I hold my cell phone up there in front of my face, my shoulders get tired after a minute. Well, good, then you don't need to be on the phone anymore. Right now, take a break from it. Right, but let's strengthen the shoulders, let's do that. So that's a big. That's probably the number one thing that we've seen, and I recently did a post, a video, on a. It's called the Dowager's Hump I don't know if you're familiar with it.
Speaker 2:It's the hump that typically we used to only see in the older population, like back of the neck, that forms at the bottom of the neck, top of the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, top of the back. That's called the Dowager's Hump and for a long, long, long time it was thought that that was just due to quote, unquote, old age. And well, my grandma had it, my great grandpa had it, so I'm going to get one right. What, in reality? What actually causes that? Is muscular imbalances over years and years and years, changing the alignment within the structure of our body, our spine, and eliminating curves. When your shoulders round forward excessively, your head has to push forward to compensate for the lack of space that's now there. Okay, when your head moves forward, the curve you're supposed to have in your neck goes away. In my case, when I had all the disc herniations, my neck started curving the opposite direction that it was supposed to. Okay, well, our bodies are amazing at adaptation and compensation, okay. So over years, these muscles learn this movement pattern. They don't know that it's wrong, and most people who are developing it don't know that it's wrong. But as they lose the curve in their neck, the body says, hey, wait a second Curves in the spine are therefore reason. They help us absorb impact and fight against gravity throughout the day and they give us some cushion and some spring, which we need. And since you got rid of this curve in the neck, we're going to create another one as close to the neck as we can, but it has to go the opposite direction of where their head is going to counterbalance, otherwise you'll fall over. Every movement that exists, there is a counter movement that has to happen in order to maintain balance. So that dowager's hump is 100% a postural imbalance, which means it's 100% preventable and in a lot of cases you can even reverse it. You can always improve on it. But I've had clients where we have fully eliminated a dowager's hump.
Speaker 2:And Casey, I got to tell you this there was a mother that had reached out to me a couple years back about getting her son in for some training and I was asking her what he was looking for, what was the reason. You know what are the goals and all that. And she said well, I want to help him with his confidence a little bit. He wants to get a little stronger, do all this, but he complains of neck and back pain too, and he's 12. And I thought, kyle, you know, no 12-year-old should be dealing with back pain, right, that's nobody should, but when you're 12. And so they came in for a consultation and, as I'm talking to him, asking him what he likes to do, what he spends his time doing, he's a gamer, like a lot of younger kids are right, spends a lot of time on playing video games, on the Game Boys, the I don't know, I'm old school, they're probably not called Game Boys anymore but the portable gaming devices, right, that you can hold, and he spends all his time with his head down, chin to his chest, looking at a screen, playing video games.
Speaker 2:12 years old, had a Dowager, something Wow At 12. And this is that was the first time I had seen a Dowager's home in such a young individual. And it is something that comes from lack of awareness, lack of education and also lack of movement, lack of proper movement. But it can be reversed, which is cool, it can be prevented and it causes a lot of people Most, or it has a negative cause for a lot of people as we age and people say, oh yeah, I used to be two inches taller.
Speaker 2:It's not because we're shrinking so much vertically. It's because we start to lean forward, folding over. Yeah, we start folding forward. That's where that, that Dowager's hump, is forcing us forward, because our shoulders are pulled in so much, our head so far forward. Our body just starts gravitating that way, and so it's. It's not a genetic thing. It's not something that if your grandmother had it, it means you're going to get it. It is something you can completely avoid with simple things of you know, like I talked about bringing your screen up to your eyes instead of your eyes down to your screen, and doing a well-balanced workout program too. You know there's muscles on the backside of the body. A lot of us don't know that Dude chest and biceps. You can see them both the front. What else do you need? So?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's amazing, during the pandemic I saw Bethany, you know, make her clients significant others take a picture of them working at these workspaces. That you know my workspace and now it was my kitchen table. I haven't used it as a kitchen table since, you know, march of 2020. It's now my workstation and she has people take pictures of you know the other person, the person she's working with, in their workstations. And yeah, there's things you can do. Most people, looking down to the computer, they don't realize, like add a few books to your monitor or something Like. There's things that you can do. Okay, I'm going to preface this next question by saying hire a professional, hire a trainer, hire a professional, hire somebody anybody in this field could be a chiropractor, could be PT, but hire somebody who knows their stuff and can answer really good questions without immediately going to things like surgery and things like that. It's worth the money, it's worth every single dollar. Whatever you're going to pour into a surgery or medications to manage pain or whatever, you will spend a fraction of that working with a professional. So that's my number one.
Speaker 1:As I understand it, very top high level is like okay, we mentioned the shoulders coming forward to allow that to happen. My chest needs to become very tight and my back needs to become very, very weak and stretchy to allow that to happen. It's a protective thing. So is it fair to say if somebody were listening to this and they wanted to start kind of addressing some of these things? The story that I have always been told is you want to strengthen the weak muscle and stretch the tight muscle. In this case, when my shoulders are coming forward and rounding off, I want to find ways to open up my chest, but also I really would love to do some strengthening exercises, like a row or certain kinds of pull downs. Is that accurate? Is that a good way?
Speaker 2:to say that Absolutely, absolutely, it's every for every muscle in the body. There's opposing muscles, there's stabilizers, synergistic muscles. Okay that if one muscle is too tight, the opposing muscle is too long? Okay, if a muscle is too short, one's too long. A muscle doesn't always get too tight because it's too strong, though. Sometimes a muscle is too short and tight because it's too weak and it's trying not to get injured by having something else happen. Okay Now.
Speaker 2:But yes to your point stretching or releasing okay, this is where I like to preface stretching with muscle release work first, whether it's using a foam roll, a massage gun, a lacrosse ball, something to alleviate the excessive knot or trigger point within a muscle before you stretch it. Okay, the importance of that. I like to have clients think about this analogy If you have a rope, a length of rope, and there's a knot tied in the middle of it, okay, we're just, we're using this to say a knot in a muscle is not a muscle untie, un-detaching from one end, tying in a knot and reattaching, but the signals from the brain sending to the muscle to say tight and contracted there form a what we call a knot. Okay. So if you have a length of rope with a knot in the middle of it and you stretch that rope without getting rid of the knot. What happens to the knot? It gets tighter, it gets tighter, it actually gets tighter. Most people make the mistake of I feel tight here, so I need a stretch. Stretching is not bad, it is not wrong. Okay, it is something that should be done, but it should be done once you've untied the knot. Okay, once you untied the knot and the rope, you've given yourself extra slack that now you can actually pull the rope and make it longer. Okay, for every muscle in our body we have a length tension ratio. There's a length tension ratio for muscles when they're at rest and when they're at contraction. Okay, most of us that have postural and muscular imbalances have a length tension ratio of a contracted muscle, even when we're not actively recruiting or trying to use that muscle. So what we have to do is through some sort of body work techniques, right, whether you're going to see somebody to do structural integration or scraping or trigger point therapy or deep tissue work, something like that, or if you're doing your own work and you're doing foam rolling at home, or you have a massage gun and you have lacrosse ball, you're doing things like that. That needs to proceed.
Speaker 2:A proper stretching regimen. Okay, I have clients that I work with a lot, specifically runners who get really tight through the calves the IT band area, things like that and they say, oh well, I stretch every day before I run but it doesn't help with the pain. And I said, okay, don't stretch before you run, roll out before you run, and 100% of the time they go I can't believe how much of a difference that made. You know that made such a difference. I thought I always rolled out after but never before.
Speaker 2:And I get asked sometimes why do you encourage us to roll out before? I have clients do that before a workout session. We're going to roll out. If they didn't roll out on their own before they came in for their session, we spend the first couple of minutes rolling out.
Speaker 2:Say the reason for that rolling out helps prepare your body to move the right way.
Speaker 2:Why would you wait till after a workout to say, hey, now I want my body to move the right way.
Speaker 2:Nothing wrong with rolling out after, but it should be in addition to rolling out before.
Speaker 2:And I in myself and with my clients, I've seen a huge increase in the ability of somebody to move more fluidly and without pain during a session and during activities that they do when they implement that rolling out beforehand.
Speaker 2:So you know, for the rounded shoulders, get a lacrosse ball and lean up against a wall and put it on the in the chest and roll around and find some tender spots and breathe into it and let it release right.
Speaker 2:Once you've released those tense spots, then, yeah, exactly like you said, do some rowing exercises, wake up the muscles, the opposing muscles of the chest on the backside of the body, and you'll go oh my gosh, after a good back workout you feel like you stand taller, your chest is just a little bit more lifted, your rib cage is more open and it's.
Speaker 2:You're not even trying to force it, it just happens because those muscles were stimulated and go, oh, we're supposed to do something. All right, we've been used to just kind of hanging out and snoozing for so long, so now that we're activated, this is what it feels like, right, and I typically, when I work with clients that have severe rounded shoulders and oftentimes shoulder impingement issues or bicep tendon issues too, we won't do any chest strengthening exercises, generally for three to six months until we've corrected the muscle imbalance that's existed there for so long, and then, once we've balanced that out, we're completely safe to get back into those chest movements and stuff too. But this time around we're not going to have all the negative side effects that they've been experiencing, it's just completely counterintuitive and goes against your goal If you're already slouchy and you're doing more and more chest exercises it just exacerbates the problem.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what it does, and that's another big thing that is missed out there. And especially if you're doing people watching at the gym and that's how you design your exercise program. Or if you're doing exercise programs from YouTube or on DVD or something like that, not faulting the people who put them out there, it's great, but they don't know you, they don't know your body right. And if you already have an existing imbalance, you have to approach that area in a way to decrease and eliminate the imbalance, not compound it and make it more present.
Speaker 2:And I have a lot of people I know that say I never had shoulder pain until I started working out and they blame it on working out. Well, what do you do for your workouts? Well, I do bench press, I do shoulder presses, I do bicep curls, things like that. Ok, well, if you had an existing muscle imbalance that you weren't aware of and then you start doing these exercises and now you make those muscles even stronger at doing the wrong thing, of course you have pain. It's not because you worked out, it's because you weren't working out in a way that was ideal to strengthen your posture.
Speaker 1:So Well, like I said, I think it's so important to hire a professional, but I think that gives the listener some really good practical tips. You'll love this one. So I had a guy tell me his goals. He's going on a trip in four months. He wanted to do training two or three days a week. I found out after I designed this entire program, wrote everything out for those three or four months, that he hired me. First workout all he wants to do is chest. Second workout of the week all he wants to do is biceps. So he wanted his entire program to be chest and biceps, and so when I would give him a bicep exercise, I would at least set the weights in front of him on the ground to be like, OK, at least you got one dead with it in every single set.
Speaker 1:That's all I'm going to get.
Speaker 2:That's what we have. I love it. You know what you know in this industry. So much of what we do client-based is helping clients achieve their goals. We have to help them in as safe a manner as possible. We need to ensure that our programming is hitting what they want and also what they need, and I tell clients sometimes you know we're going to identify some things that you don't love doing, but I'm going to educate you as to why you need to do it and the importance behind it, so that you do it, because that will help you be able to do the things you want to do.
Speaker 1:Yep, so well explained, so well explained. Tyler, can you believe we have been sitting here chatting for an hour? No, 10 minutes, five minutes is what it feels like. I'm going to put you on the spot big time and ask if you would like to do this again sometime, because I have absolutely loved this conversation and I feel like we have barely scratched the surface on any of this stuff. This feels so high level, even though there's so much information. Can we do this again and record another one?
Speaker 2:I would love to Casey, I would love to this has been so fun and anything I can do to help get this knowledge out there to the listeners and help them start to discover their true potential and strengthen their posture and build on that and just really start loving life again, being in control of their health and fitness. That is, that's my goal, so I would love to do this.
Speaker 1:If I think, if you were to ask anybody who's listening to this right now, am I going to be excited talking about posture for an hour. I think everybody's lit up like yeah, this is important, like we love your energy and your passion. This has been so much fun. Tyler Sujimoto, where would you like people to go to go to find you and connect with you in your work?
Speaker 2:So you can find us at newstarhealth N-E-W-S-T-A-R. Dot health H-E-A-L-T-H. That is our website. There's a lot of information on there about what we do, and there's also a phone number that you can reach out. It is 801-857-7447. You can find that on the website as well. I'm more than willing to just talk if you have questions. There doesn't have to be commitment for anything. I just want to help educate people and help empower people to take control of their health and their fitness again.
Speaker 1:Wow that's amazing. We will link that in the show notes. I don't know if we've ever had a guest that put a phone number as one of the ways to reach. You actually want people to call?
Speaker 2:you, I do, I do. Oh, my goodness, I want to talk, I want to get this out there. I want people to do it.
Speaker 1:Who calls people? It's 2023, dude.
Speaker 2:That's true, it's all just text. Man, my phone does still work, so you can call.
Speaker 1:You didn't mention any social media, so unfortunately you're not the one who's doing the doom scrolling on Instagram for 20 minutes. I'm assuming I'm the only one. Do you have social?
Speaker 2:media, social media, we do, yeah, on Instagram and Facebook, it is the posture provider. The posture provider, and you can find a lot of great content. We post regularly there. Simple, easy tips and tricks that you can do at home to avoid a dourger's hump, to get rid of neck pain, pull your shoulders back, strengthen your core, how to be aware of your posture, and all that.
Speaker 1:I know social media is not your favorite, but I really appreciate the content that you do on Instagram. You do such a good job with it, so I really look forward to seeing more of that. Tyler, it's been such an amazing conversation.
Speaker 1:You're such a great friend and we learned a lot today, so thank you so very much for hosting me here at your facility, and thank you for taking the time to be on our show today. We really appreciate you. Thanks for the invite, casey. It was my pleasure Absolutely, and this has been another episode of Boundless Body Radio, as always. Thank you so very much for listening to Boundless Body Radio. I know I say this all the time, but I really do mean it. It has been such a joy to make and produce this podcast and to watch it grow.
Speaker 1:Our business started in the pandemic in July of 2020, and we started the podcast in October of 2020. So it has been three years now and to see that we have generated over 400,000 downloads worldwide is just simply unbelievable to me. This year in particular has been such a blast to travel to different health conferences and not only meet some of our amazing guests, but also to meet many of you, our listeners and supporters. We really just can't thank you enough. As always, feel free to book a complimentary 30-minute session on our website, which is myboundlessbodycom. On our homepage, there is a Book Now button where you can find a time to speak with us about health, fitness, nutrition, whatever you like.
Speaker 1:We've loved chatting with people all over the world and many of you out there to bounce ideas off each other or to try to come up with plans to achieve specific goals, or even if it's just to reach out to introduce yourselves. We would just love to meet you and connect with you there. Also, be sure to check out our YouTube channel if you'd like to watch these full interviews and also the shorter interviews on more specific topics that are taken from these full interviews. We've gotten really good feedback over there. It's also a really fun way to interact with people who comment. We read and reply to every single YouTube comment we get, so head on over there.
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